One of the biggest issues I have with the new economy, and what I consider the singular worse game design decision that Paradox has made with the 2.2 patch – is the almost singular use of pops as the measurement of progress and success.
What I mean by that is that the value of your planet is decided, almost exclusively, on multiple levels, solely by the number of pops on the planet.
Pops are the basic production units, so the more pops your planet has, the more productive it is. But more pops also unlock higher capital building levels, which grant access to more rulers (more productive pops) as well as better – and more diverse – buildings (that allow your pops to be more productive, and for you to employ more pops). The maximum number of buildings on your planet is, also, dictated by the number of pops. So, the more pops you have, the more buildings you can have, and the better capitol building you can have, which unlocks higher level buildings, which employs more pops.
Having more pops doesn’t just make every single pop more productive, it also unlocks more options, with basic low pop planets usually restricted to making use of their districts and basic economy planets, and as they grow, can start investing more in things like planetary defenses, for example.
So, as your planets grow in population size, they gain more options both in quantity and quality and become more productive, in both quantity and quality. This is a self-feeding loop.
There are several issues with this approach. For once, any self-feeding loop usually means is almost impossible to properly recover. Let’s think of a planet that has been nearly completely devastated, losing most of its population. The player won’t just lose productivity, they will lose access to high-level buildings as well. In principle, all their technology and resources and wealth elsewhere in the empire will pretty much be for naughty – high-tech buildings almost exclusively need high pop counts.
Now, there are ways to rationalize this, of course – how advanced tech relies on existing infrastructure and production chains. Still, the result is can be almost impossible for a player to recover from a significant blow, as they lose access to their advanced tech benefits as well.
Tying planets almost exclusively to pops is also something that simply doesn’t really fit the theme of Star Trek. In Star Trek, the value of an economy really depends on access to technology, established infrastructure such as replicators and transporters, as well as energy sources. Labor and the size of population has far less importance.
More than that, and what I consider the core issue, is that it takes away from the uniqueness of the individual planets. Under the new regime, the only real measurement of a planet’s value is the number of pops it has.
Especially in vanilla, there is very little that makes individual planets distinct. The differences in deposits, again especially in vanilla, are slight and boring, and even habitability matters less in 2.2 (something that Paradox is aware of and promised to address, I should note).
Previously, the tile system, at least with the changes we did in STNH, where multiple buildings could only be built on specific tiles, made planets, and their construction, a lot more interesting and fuller of decisions. Labs especially could only be built on their respective research tile, which made some planets quite interesting and productive.
Millennia ago, they abandoned their belief in the supernatural. Now you are asking me to sabotage that achievement, to send them back into the dark ages of superstition and ignorance and fear? No! – Captain Jean-Luc Picard