Talking about Deadlock 2 here.

At first I was confused. I didn't understand what was causing this. I had less than the maximum amount of colonists in my territory, but it said I was overpopulated.

I read the manual and it said different terrain types experience overpopulation at different rates. How was I supposed to know this? The help function makes no mention of what these rates are, only that some terrain are better than others for housing. So basically I have to memorize the actual rates from the manual? Would have been nice for this to be displayed in the game, preferably when you right click on a terrain. Something like, "overpopulation rate".

Anyway, yeah. =\

Overpopulation is just part of the morale mechanic and typically doesn't kick in until you get around 10+ population in a territory. It can be easy to manage once you get used to it. Once I notice negative morale from Overpopulation in a territory, I will temporarily lower that territory's tax rate to compensate (+5 morale from taxes) while I build a Cultural Center in one turn with 2 workers. Next turn, I assign 5 workers to it, 4 set to Upgrade and 1 set to Culture (+2 Morale). This will upgrade it to a Museum in 3 turns, the fastest possible. You can use Museums (+15 morale with 3 workers assigned) to almost completely offset the negative Overpopulation modifier (the most I've seen is -19 in Swamps) in most territories, especially Plains, which have the least negative modifier at maximum population. I only build one Museum per territory because if I have to I can simply lower the taxes (you end up being able to make WAY more credits from assigning workers to Trade at Replication Stations) . It's also a good idea to have have one Art Complex built in one of your territories with 4 workers assigned so you can create one Art resource each turn. Each Art resource in a territory increases morale by +2 each, up to a maximum of +10 from 5 Art resources. This bonus also stacks with the morale bonus from Museums, up to a maximum of +25 morale from Art and Culture per territory. Note that Art Complexes require the Endurium Mining tech, which is usually what I research right after Cortex Scanners (which requires Anti-matter Containment and Targetting Computers).

Yeah, what Barry said!

Just to be clear, you can adjust tax rates in two different ways: overall, and province by province. If you start seeing morale in a province dropping for some reason, a quick band-aid is to lower taxes in that specific province until you get a cultural center/museum built.

If you play with the fast construction option off, it takes quite a bit longer to build them (with a full compliment of 5 workers it takes 5 full turns to upgrade a CC to a museum), so be aware of that. You'll want to plan on building a CC/museum fairly early in the life of any new colony. Unless you're playing Cyth, because they have a constant morale and ignore modifiers from buildings.

As Barry mentioned, the different rates of morale decay from overpopulation are easy to understand. They're higher in swamps (where your colonists don't like to live) and lower in plains (where your colonists like to live).

Thanks for the input, but I think you guys are missing my point. I was aware of how to lower unrest. The tutorial actually explains this.

I wasn't aware of the actual overpopulation rates, which is my concern. When the game says I am overpopulated, I want to know *why*, *exactly*. With numbers. It's a strategy game. I want to know *where* my problem of overpopulation is coming from.

You are expected to use "common sense" and assume your guys don't like living in swamps... which is actually *not* common sense, since you'd expect various alien races to *like* certain kinds of terrain. For example, I would expect the Uva Mosk to enjoy forests.

My complaint was simply that they don't tell you these rates in the *game*, they tell you in the manual. It's a usability issue for me. Not a huge deal, but annoying. When deciding when and where to place houses, it would help to know exactly how many colonists a particular tile can support before it becomes overpopulated. Not simply *reacting* to overpopulation by lowering unrest.

In the help function, it lists Plains and Forests as "aiding population growth", but this means nothing if I don't know when those particular tiles are considered overpopulated. What's more, although they share the "aiding" designation, they actually have different overpopulation rates (see below), which makes the designation misleading.

Just in case someone is curious, here are the overpopulation rates, according to the manual (i.e., these tiles can hold no more than this many "icons" before they are considered overpopulated):

Plains = 20
Forest = 15
Mountains and Swamps = 10
Wasteland and Sea Platforms = 5

Note: The ChCh-t can hold double the above amounts per tile, but still can't exceed 50 icons total in a territory.

Thanks, that's very useful information. I didn't bother reading the manual since I was already familiar with the game, but I might have to to see if there's any more information like that.

No problem mate.

What makes this a tad more confusing is this.

The most icons you can have in a fully upgraded housing complex - that is, luxury housing - is 15...

The game states that you should never need more that four luxury housing complexes in any territory. This makes sense, since the max icons you can have is 50, while four luxury housings would allow 15 icons a piece = 60 icons. So actually, you'd want 3 luxury housings and 1 regular housing = 50.

But going back to overpopulation, let's say you build luxury housing on...

Plains = 20 max. So that's 5 left over. You're good.
Forest = 15 max. You've reached critical mass.
Mountains/Swamps = 10 max. So you're 5 over. I guess that's -5 to moral now?
Wasteland and Sea = 5 max. So you're 10 over. Same as above?

Also, do other buildings function this way? Or does overpopulation only apply to houses?

Still don't really understand how all this works.

Overpopulation only applies to a territory if that territory exceeds a certain population (the numbers you listed from the manual). For example, Plains only start being affected by Overpopulation at 21 total population (and at 21 it's only -1). One thing the manual doesn't mention is that there are maximum negative modifiers for Overpopulation for each type of territory, which is also affected by the maximum capacity for each territory because some are less than 50 max if they have wasteland tiles. For example, a swamp with a maximum capacity of 47 can only have -19 while a swamp with a max of 50 can only have -20. Here are the maximum negative modifiers I've observed for each territory type:

Plains: -15 if 50 max (-14 or less if under 50 max)
Forest: -17 if 50 max (-16 or less if under 50 max)
Mountains/Swamps: -20 if 50 max (-19 or less if under 50 max)
Wasteland: Unknown
Sea: -8

I'm not sure precisely how the negative modifier progresses other than it starts to take effect after the population levels you listed and will never exceed the negative modifiers I listed.

If you wanted to limit growth so that you would never be affected by a negative Overpopulation modifier (at least until you were ready with a Museum), here's the optimal number and type of Housing buildings you would want in each territory (using the least amount of resources and least amount of labor for upgrades):

Plains: 2 Apartment Complexes
Forest: 1 Apartment Complex, 1 Housing
Mountains/Swamps: 2 Housing
Wasteland: 1 Housing
Sea: Not applicable

Sea territories you colonize start out with a Sea Hab that has a maximum of 15 population. You can't have more than this because you can't build additional Housing on Sea Platforms. Luckily, Sea Habs are self-sufficient because they are similar to City Centers in that you can assign icons to Trade or Culture.

So you never actually had a question, you just posted to complain. Got it.

Whatever dude.

Thanks for the extra info Barry. That helps.

Now I am confused. You say above, 'If you wanted to limit growth so that you would never...". I am not sure what you mean by limit growth. My populations grow constantly no matter what I do. But, like everything else in strategy game, isn't this a trade off? You will get less growth on bad land but will have less people to work tech, food and factories. I too was bothered by the constant pop growth at first but does this not really mirror life on Earth? Don't govts have to try and develope their economies and fight wars while pop constantly grows, at least since around 1700. And it is no good saying that in the future they would know how to keep the pop where they wanted. We know how to do this now. Population does not grow in response to reason, but from illogical reasons of religion, personal psychology ect. Human beings will breed themselves into catastrophe, this has happened many times in the Earth's past. And, if there are other humanoid beings out there, we may find that this kind of unreason is universal. In any case perhaps players should quit trying to find some magic way to make pop always stay where they want it at the moment and see it as one of the interesting problems that any leader of a govt has to cope with.
Thanks to Johndane66 for pointing out a lot of interesting stats I too was not aware of.

thanks

Populations do grow constantly, but only if you have enough housing to support them. For example, if you only had two Apartment Complexes at a plains territory, the population could never exceed 20 and you would not have a negative Overpopulation modifier (until you built or upgraded more housing). If Fast Production is turned on then it's probably best to just max out population as fast as you can since you can quickly build a Cultural Center and upgrade it to a Museum to compensate for the negative Overpopulation modifier. However, if Fast Production is turned off it might be safer to limit the maximum population in territories until you have Museums.