Building population

In 1.3 youre supposedly starting out with a population of 8bill on your home planet instead of 5, so that should help you some. You can also set one of your racial abilities to either planet quality, morale, loyalty(helps a little in growth i think tho not sure)and then the population growth ability obviously "frisky!". One or more of those in combination can really help in the beginning of a game. Also nab some morale resources which will keep your people happy, though honestly I usually pass over those till last. and then keep your entertainment-to-farm ratio about 1:1 depending on the special resources on that planet..but you seem to get the idea about the 'happy' theory.

Do farms do anything but set a limit to population?

If you are under the limit substantially, is there any benefit
to building farms right away?

Do farms do anything but set a limit to population?

Nope, they only up the Pop limit.

If you are under the limit substantially, is there any benefit to building farms right away?

Nope

What's the best strategy for building these large populations which can pump more tax money in

1: Pick frisky for an ability at start of the game
2: Put 500K colonists on all the colony ships
3: Grab and build up morale and economic resources -- military resources are probably worth more and I would grab them first but I would build up morale and economic resources first.
4: build Aphrodisiac as soon as possible -- obviously there are some more important things to accomplish but when you got some breathing time sneak it in.
5: build economy buildings on planets as soon as you get 3 or 4 factories in on all your planets.
6: Go up the economy techs along with going up the factory building techs.
7: if on a huge or gigantic map -- use survey ships aggressively to grab anomalies and get that free cash.
8: build stock markets -- i wouldn't bother building any of the morale specific buildings anymore.
9: you don't have to start with Market Centers ( 30 build ) -- Advanced Market Centers ( 40 build ) or even Trade Centers (50 build ) are fine for the first Economic building

might not be the best but this is a partial list of things I do

Farms should be 1st of the last 2 buildings to make on a planet, followed by the 2nd wich is moral building. The farm sets a cap to the planet. when you enter the colony management screen, on the top left, where the planet is going around in its own axis, theres a nunmber like for example 8.00 in the begining of the game, and when you make a farm, another number will apper in parenthesis like (12.0), that is the cap of the population on that planet, ti'l you make another farm, though I dont tend to use more than 2 farms per planet, unless the planet is a 17+ class planet.


Monc34

when you play really long games and your not so aggresive, here is an idea for you.

build enough farms to have your limit population at around 25B, whenever a planet goes beyond the 20B and moral starts to go down rapidly, put a few B population in your transportship ready to use for an invasion. with this i usually build up a nice army of ships fully loaded with people without hurting my economy.

Build "busses." Create a colony ship on the planet with the highest population, launch it with 500 citizens, and send it to the planet with the lowest population. Those 500 citizens are now part of the population of that planet.

Launch the colony ship, but put only 1 (one) citizen on it (can't seem to launch a colony ship with 0 (zero) citizens), send it to a high population planet, and repeat with 500 more citizens.

In the early part of the game, I pick up 250 citizens from a couple of planets, or even 150, 150, 200 from three different planets.

There's also a thread about this idea over here.

8: build stock markets -- i wouldn't bother building any of the morale specific buildings anymore.

Do you like Stock Markets well enough to demolish and replace existing morale buildings with Stock Markets when the tech becomes available?

Don't forget that you can build the ship on one planet, but have it collect the colonists from another. This means that if you have one super-production planet, you can spread the de-population load about a bit.

8: build stock markets -- i wouldn't bother building any of the morale specific buildings anymore. Do you like Stock Markets well enough to demolish and replace existing morale buildings with Stock Markets when the tech becomes available?

If I find a couple of morale resources, then sure.

There are many legitimate methods to manage pop as indicated in the above posts.

Yet another to consider is IMHO one of the best kept secrets in the game, and that's spending 6 of the 10 racial ability points you have on the 70% pop growth ability. It's expensive but I feel it's worth it.

There's a cap on pop growth at 200M per turn. The racial ability is the only thing in the game that's applied after this cap. Early in the game, if you keep your home planet's pop above 5B and approval at 100% you get 150M growth per turn. With the 70% bonus you get 254M per turn. If you make your home planet your manufacturing capital you can easily pump out a colony ship every other turn. The 70% bonus allows you to pull off 500M colonists every other turn without depleting your home planets pop while allowing all colonies to get a good start with an initial 500M colonists. Also the 70% pop growth bonus makes your colonies become profitable sooner than otherwise.

Population growth is double on planets with 100% morale (those with 99% morale only get a 25% population grownth bonus)!