Population continues to decrease after defeat of faction

[azpops]

From the change log for release 1.4: "Capturing a rival city now emigrates a certain portion of population growth back to the original owner."

Why does the population continue to decrease after the faction is defeated? I can understand the emigration while a faction is still active, but after a faction is defeated, the population for captured cities continues to decrease. Where is the population going? Are they simply dying? Are they emigrating to a different faction? If emigrating to a different faction, why don't some of them choose to stay in the new faction?

Seems to me that after a faction is defeated, the population decrease for a captured city should stop.

[stiefelss]

Berlin Wall ftw.

[azpops]

After having played now further in the game, there seems to be no incentive with the current morale loss in capturing a city to capture a city. As an example, I captured a 42 population city. By the end of the morale penalty for capturing the city, the city was down to 6. Meanwhile, the faction built a new city and in one turn it went from 1 to 17. So, why capture a city if all the population is simply going to emigrate back to the losing faction. It is better to completely destroy the city with nukes or black holes thereby preventing the emigration of the population and build your own new city in its place.

As I mention in my previous post, the loss of population on a massive scale continues even after you conquer a faction. So again, why capture a city? There seems to be no gain in capturing a city but there is in completely destroying it and preventing the emigration of the population.

[Zak0r]

There is a small trick but I don't know if it is intended. If you active the destruction of the city even huge cities will only shrink 1 pop per turn and the enemy doesn't get the pop. The moral and migration penalty will still drop slowly until the city will be useful again. If the normal emigration falls below 1 pop per turn you can deactivate destruction again and slowly start producing. However, I've already informed the devs asking if this was intended so we may see a change there soon.

[Megas]

Definitely not intended. Nice trick though.

[jdmillard]

I wholeheartedly support the changes with growth. But it does need some balancing for sure. There still needs to be an incentive to capture, but the vanilla release strategy of early conquest was insanely and dramatically OP.

[Apheirox]

There's plenty of incentive to capture. azpops's assessment is not correct. Cities don't even lose any infrastructure on takeover. Even it it were true that a size 42 city drops down to six population at the end of the migration cycle (that's a wild exaggeration) it would still be six population gained, nonetheless.

Like millard says, the mechanics may require some fine-tuning but the concept of cities being weakened on takeover is *miles* better than when they did not.

I do agree that it's strange to see the population continue to migrate to nowhere(?) after a faction is annihilated - it would be a very welcome (and balancing!) feature if they would instead migrate to the other remaining factions (migration is one of the coolest innovations of Pandora for the 4X scene, keep elaborating on it!). As a matter of fact, cross-faction migration could be interesting to explore further in general. Also, that thing where a city grows from size 1 to 17 in one turn because it's a faction's last city so everybody flees there obviously needs changing.

[azpops]

There's plenty of incentive to capture. azpops's assessment is not correct. Cities don't even lose any infrastructure on takeover. Even it it were true that a size 42 city drops down to six population at the end of the migration cycle (that's a wild exaggeration) it would still be six population gained, nonetheless.

Like millard says, the mechanics may require some fine-tuning but the concept of cities being weakened on takeover is *miles* better than when they did not.

I do agree that it's strange to see the population continue to migrate to nowhere(?) after a faction is annihilated - it would be a very welcome (and balancing!) feature if they would instead migrate to the other remaining factions (migration is one of the coolest innovations of Pandora for the 4X scene, keep elaborating on it!). As a matter of fact, cross-faction migration could be interesting to explore further in general. Also, that thing where a city grows from size 1 to 17 in one turn because it's a faction's last city so everybody flees there obviously needs changing.

I'm sorry, but cities dropping from 40 or 50 population to less than 10 happens every time I capture a city, it's not an exaggeration. Happens every time. That being said, the trick suggested in an earlier post about razing a city solves that problem. Using that trick a 40 or 50 population city will drop about 15 population instead of 35 to 45. While you do capture the infrastructure of the city, falling to 5 or 6 population requires about 80 to 100 turns to bring the city back to its original population, which can be done building your own new city and focusing on population. Doing that eliminates the massive emigration of population back to the original faction. As I said, there is no incentive to capture cities unless you game the system. I'd prefer a system that didn't require a slick trick.

As far as cross-faction migration, that is fine, but is that what is happening? I don't see any increases in the size of other faction cities when one of the factions is eliminated. So, again my question, is the population simply dying? Doesn't make any sense if that is the current system. As you state, the infrastructure remains in the captured city, so habitat is not a problem. Where are the people going? And, as I asked, if there is cross-faction migration, why doesn't any of it stay in the capturing faction.

In the example I give of a city growing from 1 to 17 in one turn, the city wasn't the last city remaining to the faction. It was simply a new one built. The other cities belonging to the faction were also experiencing increased growth, just not as great as the one city. It does make for a disturbing situation when a city grows that fast and takes over so much territory so fast.

I am not against population emigrating when a city is captured, I am simply asking why is it so great and where does it go when a faction is defeated? Without gaming the system, the incentive to capture a city simply goes away. By completely destroying a city, you eliminate the population emigration back to the faction. Each time I capture a city the majority of the population leaves and I have to capture it again in a new city until I defeat the faction, at which point the population simply disappears. Why keep recapturing the population only to have it disappear any way. Simply obliterate the city and build your own.

[Zak0r]

I do agree that it's strange to see the population continue to migrate to nowhere(?) after a faction is annihilated - it would be a very welcome (and balancing!) feature if they would instead migrate to the other remaining factions (migration is one of the coolest innovations of Pandora for the 4X scene, keep elaborating on it!). As a matter of fact, cross-faction migration could be interesting to explore further in general.

That is also what I suggested one of the devs on our last live event at the release of the addon. He seemed interested in the idea and agreed that disappearing pop is a bad solution. We might see a change there soon. We also came up with a change for the big mechs to make them more useful in offense.