Population woes.

the higher your morale the faster you pop grows - just something I noticed, not hard fact.

Morale is the most common factor in pop growth rate. There are also three techs and two trade goods that increase pop growth rate. Finally, there are ability picks you can take at the start of the game to boost your pop growth rate.

I've never had that problem. Mine is always that it grows too fast, then I have morale problems. But Populists get Pop growth you can pick it in ability picks, and there are tech's to get it up. Also, at the beginning of the game, you have to buy colony ships via the lease purchase option, load them with about 100m each and get 6 or 7 or so planets to start off. Then you keep up with the computer. And expand like crazy untill your borders are established.

The key to fast pop growth is 100% morale, you get double growth when morale is maxxed. I found the +pop growth abilites to be a waste of time, there is an in-game cap on the max pop you can grow per turn (200 million), and +pop growth abilites and tech doesn't raise that. And since you can (and will) hit +200 million with +0 enhancements with 100% morale, and since if you don't have 100% morale you'll only grow for a few turns anyway before hitting 50% and growth stops, my conclusion is that +pop growth is of extremely limited use.

I'd like it to be changed so that the ceiling for growth rises by the bonus to pop growth you have. So a player with +50% pop growth bonus could grow a maximum of 300 million people per turn. This would make the ability useful for the entire game under all conditions (except low morale).

And yes, the computer grows its population extremely well. Better than I can, that's a fact.

Vorlin: I'd like to know where you came up with the 200 million hard cap? That seems very un-brad-like to do. Additionally, I know that I've seem my population just by billions per turn in the later parts of the game. Do you mean 200 million per planet (which still seems slow to me)?

err.. billions per year, not turn.

Yes, 200 million per planet is the most it will grow in a turn, even at 100% morale and +50% or more bonus to population growth. And how I got that figured was by watching the my planets before and after I hit 'next turn'.