Population seems a little undervalued to me as well. I thought something like square root of population x2 might be a little better. So you would have 4 pop = 4 raw production, 9 pop = 6 raw production, 16 pop = 8 raw production, 25 pop = 10 raw production, so on and so forth. As it is currently, your population is trivial in contributing to production compared to asteroids, which just seems a little off to me. It won't bother me if they just keep the system the way it is now, but I think my method would be a little bit better. I definitely do NOT want them to go back to the old 1 population = 1 raw production system, I think that over values population.

One thing to keep in mind though is that population does seem to effect your influence in the United Planets. I currently play a custom synthetic race, which is easy to build large populations with because they are not hindered by morale penalties. I have noticed that my voting power in the U.P. is huge compared to when I play with a race that doesn't have large populations. So if you have two empires that are equal in all else, the one with the bigger population has more pull in the U.P. So there are benefits to having a large population count besides just raw planetary production.

Hope you have a great day!

I hope this gets rebalanced. Population should be way more important than asteroids.

The problem with that is the game needs to be rebalanced for the increased exponent. Among many issues, a straight raw production increase makes more buildings/tiles/research complete in one turn, reducing your effective production per turn. As a rough example: if my planets have 60 social construction and my enemy's have 50 but all starting buildings cost 50 or less, my higher production isn't giving me a head start. It's only giving me a boost to a later expensive project. That's just one example.

I took it on my plate to number-crunch all this.  At a base of 10 production, a -20% productivity hit due to morale will reduce you by 2, which nullifies what you get for having a 16 population instead of 4.  And you can't measure it as a straight -20%:  you have to measure from whatever positive morale modifier you would have had at 4 population vs. what you get at 13.  And since a city basically costs you three tiles (if you don't mod or cheat:  1 for city, 1 farm, 1 entertainment), it's not too hard to find better uses for those 3 tiles.

I like to play the stock game with no mods right now, but thanks for the heads-up! I'm hoping Stardock will gradually address balance and defects as more people play the game and report their issues.

I think the morale penalties should do all the work, and not the declining exponential power of the population.  

Yes, they are, but those points aren't helping you get ahead on the current turn: the early colony ship, research tech, or wonder. 

Like most (it seems) here, I'm playing stock and hope Stardock implements a balance change in a future update.   

Pop effects wealth the same as it does research and construction,  do not know about tourism

I hope you at least got free internet access to post this reply!

What's a Rogers? 

Google is translating that as "a miscellaneous object, approximately a few grams in weight and a few centimetres in diamater, originating from a donkey's orifice".

My home has Rogers for broadband internet... gotta love the telecom monopoly   .

I'm just glad Ver-spy-zon didn't make it across the border.

It's tourism INCOME, and aliens probably have different ideas what constitute tourist spots.  Although in Hawaii we could probably work something out.  The Terrans get the beaches on Oahu and Kauai.  The Drengin get the big island, get to visit all the volcanoes.  Jump in every now and then.  Sacrifice the occasional virgin Drengin.