Kind of silly question about population

[Darkone (OP)]

... But, I would like to hear the rationale behind the default 500m starting pop. Is it for game balance, or is it an abstract number (say, representing one country having most of the power) or something else entirely? Just wanted to kind of know that and couldn't find anything in a forum search

[Father Tim]

Yes, to all of the above.

Well, actually it used to be randomly generated, with an advisory message that the game worked best with a starting pop of 500-1000 million.  But it was originally chosen to represent the size of the 'power blocs' in the first (multiple-empires-on-earth) campaigns, and the game was balanced to starting pops in that range.  Later, low industry, high-population options were created to more accurately represent polities like real-world India & China, as well as low-income and/or small civilian sector options.  Eventually the 'standard empire start' became 500 million.

[sloanjh]

Interesting that you should ask....

I like conventional starts, but I got a little tired of the challenge of running into aliens who've had 15-20 years to advance their empires and tech before I managed to get out of Sol system.  (The game makes NPR generated later more technologically advanced, IIRC, based on the game's start date.)

So this game I decided to up my population to 10billion in my conventional start (I usually use 1Billion), as well as upping homeworld minerals by 20x to match the bigger population.  Actually ran a 1billion start and then used SM to up the population, research labs, and minerals, since I inferred from one of Steve's responses that Aurora remembers your starting population and bases NPR initial population on that - I wanted to run into smaller, more advanced civilizations, rather than just making everyone 10x bigger :-)  In other words, the game really does seem to be balanced for starting pops of 500m to 1b.

John

[Darkone (OP)]

Thanks for the replies. I figured it was a bit strange for 2025 to start with a mere 500 million, but, like you answered, it makes sense in that case. Although that leads me to wonder what sort of non-unification there can be when one nation has space age technology, and the rest are sitting around with basic stuff

[sloanjh]

Thanks for the replies. I figured it was a bit strange for 2025 to start with a mere 500 million, but, like you answered, it makes sense in that case. Although that leads me to wonder what sort of non-unification there can be when one nation has space age technology, and the rest are sitting around with basic stuff

Try reading some of the fiction - Steve's TNT campaign in particular