Tips for getting a high population?

Started by Zork, November 08, 2017, 02:40:27 PM

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YokoZar

The most important thing is to play Randy Random.  The other two story tellers give a soft cap around 12-13 where they make prisoner recruitment nearly impossible and make other colonist-giving random events almost nonexistant.  Randy only does this after 50.

Sbilko

I suggest that you rescue (not capture) escape pod survivors. Sometimes they join you after they're healed out of gratitude. And if the outside environment is unsurvivable (e.g. ice sheet or extreme desert), they always join you.

If they decide to just wander off after they're healed (and they do this without a warning! So watch out when they do), then just capture them.

Wintersdark

Quote from: YokoZar on November 11, 2017, 12:06:54 AM
The most important thing is to play Randy Random.  The other two story tellers give a soft cap around 12-13 where they make prisoner recruitment nearly impossible and make other colonist-giving random events almost nonexistant.  Randy only does this after 50.

I should note A18 is somewhat different.  There's a few extra sources of colonists in A18 that [at least currently] are not curtailed with Cassy.  I'm playing a Cassy Rough game at the moment, and got 19 colonists without buying any from slavers.  New recruitment methods:

Social Inspiration (guaranteed recruitment of prisoners: find someone you're interested in, arrest and instantly recruit them)
Injured/stranded people in the world - you can rescue them, as per escape pods.  They may or may not join, but it's more rolls of the dice (and you can capture them, of course... I didn't really think about it, but I suppose you could be a travelling slaver this way?)
Pawns held prisoner by bandits - if you kill the bandits, it's a guaranteed new colonist (looks like handcuffs on the world map)

Wanderers stop joining after ~12, but there's enough other sources that you can keep propping up numbers.

Furthermore, people in caravans don't count as local population, so sending a caravan out to trade/mine/whatever reduces colony population, which increases the rates of traditional joining methods.

Shurp

How does the population mechanic work if you have multiple colonies?  Say you have three bases with 4 colonists apiece; will Casssandra start throwing people at you because each only has 4 or does the total of 12 count instead?
If you give an annoying colonist a parka before banishing him to the ice sheet you'll only get a -3 penalty instead of -5.

And don't forget that the pirates chasing a refugee are often better recruits than the refugee is.

Yoshida Keiji

Quote from: Wintersdark on November 11, 2017, 11:24:15 AM
Quote from: YokoZar on November 11, 2017, 12:06:54 AM
The most important thing is to play Randy Random.  The other two story tellers give a soft cap around 12-13 where they make prisoner recruitment nearly impossible and make other colonist-giving random events almost nonexistant.  Randy only does this after 50.

I should note A18 is somewhat different.  There's a few extra sources of colonists in A18 that [at least currently] are not curtailed with Cassy.  I'm playing a Cassy Rough game at the moment, and got 19 colonists without buying any from slavers.  New recruitment methods:

Social Inspiration (guaranteed recruitment of prisoners: find someone you're interested in, arrest and instantly recruit them)
Injured/stranded people in the world - you can rescue them, as per escape pods.  They may or may not join, but it's more rolls of the dice (and you can capture them, of course... I didn't really think about it, but I suppose you could be a travelling slaver this way?)
Pawns held prisoner by bandits - if you kill the bandits, it's a guaranteed new colonist (looks like handcuffs on the world map)

Wanderers stop joining after ~12, but there's enough other sources that you can keep propping up numbers.

Furthermore, people in caravans don't count as local population, so sending a caravan out to trade/mine/whatever reduces colony population, which increases the rates of traditional joining methods.

Can you post your History with Population graph?

mrKafe

My strategy in A17 when I had already a large population would be to "raid" nearby tiles to find Ancient dangers and open them. This would better work on "small hill" tiles where AD are easily spottable.

I would designate a "comando" of 5 to 6 pawns with power armors and pack them with everything to survive. Then do a temporary settlement until moods where stable enough to raid the ancient danger.

The pacific pods would typically have lower recruitment difficulty and IIRC also the non-pacific ones too.

Also the loot inside the ancient dangers was typically quite interesting (Luci, artifacts...).

marten

Step 1, Don't die.
Step 2, Eat food. 
Step 3, Add the mod Children and Pregnancy .
Step 4, Got some lovin.