- Compared to civ V there are much less (severe) mechanisms put in place to limit/penalize fast expansion

- Resource dependency is again much less convoluted than in Civ V - more population equals more FIDS (Food Industry Dust(currency) Science) - as long as you keep approval in check - not terribly difficult

- population growth is treated system wise (not planet wise)

- food costs for population growth (EDIT Wrong - do NOT appear to) grow exponentially - but its not a steep curve at the beginning of the game - growing the last population unit in a system is relatively cheap food wise

- Unlike Moo3 in Endless Space you cannot "manufacture" population.. You can move population units between ANY solar systems/(colonizable or colonized) planets using transport ships with civilian "seed" modules... So you will need at least one solar system with extremely high food production and bit of industry to grow fast and then export population all over the galaxy ...



The above is the gist of the fast growth strategy ... Colonies established on less hospitable systems will have a hard time producing food to attain decent population growth speed forcing you to rush buy improvements (assuming you even have the relevant tech & dust reserves necessary) ... Alternatively you can SHIFT (transport ships) ENOUGH population units from a food rich system (that will quickly grow them back) so that the new colony will have enough production to build efficently the early improvements required to kickstart or enough dust to pay for the rush buy costs (and of course at least enough food so the moved population does not starve on the new planet) ...



You want to keep your most food productive solar system(s) on permanent population production (growth) until ALL your colonizible planets are at max population - moving the excess population units to new colonies using transport ships...



With the first +cargo space tech reseached your transport ships can fit 2 civilian "seed" modules per ship so they can move/shift/transport 2 population units...Building transport ships typically tends to "embark" population units from the planet with the most food production - so after each population transport ship built you will need to micro population between planets of the population production solar system to maintain max. food output/population growth ...





Best Food Producing Planets:

1) Terran-Hyperscale Farms (-0) 15 7 12 6 = 40

2) Jungle-Hypersale Farms (-0) 14 9 10 6 = 39

3) Ocean-Hyperscale Farms (-0) 14 7 10 8 = 39



(from this thread https://www.games2gether.com/endless-space/forum/33-strategy-guides/thread/14044-which-planets-are-actually-the-best)





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Start of game population export



Food cost to grow from 5 to 6 (starting planet situation)

(5 * (5 + 0.5))^1.4 = 103.529894



104 / (5 * 3) = 6.93333333 // assuming no other bonuses (hero, approval) you'll need at least an average of 7 food per population unit to be able to grow the 5 to 6 in 3 turns and keep pumping transport ships ...



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Mid game population export



Food cost to grow from 20 to 21 (mid-late game situation)

(5 * (20 + 0.5))^1.4 = 653.150722



654 / (20 * 3) = 10.9 // assuming no other bonuses (hero, approval) you'll need at least an average of 11 food per population unit to be able to grow the 20 to 21 in 3 turns and keep pumping transport ships ...

You can probably even get the 22 food per population unit required to ship them off 2 at a time (2 seed modules on a transport ship) if you luck on a food rich solar system or help out with Hero // other bonuses ..

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I never thought to try this... might be fun as a Sower affinity, since Sower growth rate is worse than any rate until you really get your industry off the ground.

Sezneg wrote:
I never thought to try this... might be fun as a Sower affinity, since Sower growth rate is worse than any rate until you really get your industry off the ground.

The sowers homeworld starts with 3% growth rate (47 turn to grow next population) .... 7% (17 turns) if you delay the first hero (lower taxes for the 30% growth bonus ...) ... Of course you can improve this with food and industry tech but it will take time... Finding a better planet for the first transport ship seems mandatory ...



The ameoba homeworld starts with 24% growth rate (4 turns to grow) ...Lowering taxes gets it up to 36% (3 turns..) ...Without any additional tech//improvement other than Alien Grafting ... (by turn 4 they get 10 food/pop unit) ...Amoebas can get 6 pop (max) in capital by turn 8...



4 turns to pop up transport ships with industry focus (from turn 10 - 2 turns to switch) ... 3 turns to grow it back ... And they see all map ...



And this is without a hero (that becomes available by turn 8-9) and other techs ...Hardly seems balanced

The sower growth rate catches up once you get your industry humming. It's not an issue of the world not being "good enough", it's just the affinity requires infastructure in place to grow properly.

It's interesting, but how exactly you transport people from one world to another? Is it consuming a ship?

Holy.Death wrote:
It's interesting, but how exactly you transport people from one world to another? Is it consuming a ship?

Yup. It uses the same colony ship that you use on uncolonized planets, but instead of moving to a new system, you bring the population to one that just needs the population reinforced.

Note that you can do this a lot faster later into the game when you have +tonnage technology as you can slap multiple colony modules on a single ship reducing the number you need drastically