Maximum Population

Pop is the key factor in Master of Orion II. In this contribution I would like to illustrate the following computations:

How is the pop max value determined?

And how is this value affected by the Racepicks Aqua, Sub and Tol?

First, let us consider the different size classes:

1 = tiny, 2 = small, 3 = medium, 4 = large, 5 = huge

Starting point is the following consideration:
On a Gaia planet the entire surface is habitable and the max population value is then determined by:

(I) max popgaia= 5 * size class

(This relation applies in the current version but actually the formula is not used, you can modify these 5 gaia values separately.)

Thus 5 pop on a tiny gaia, 10 pop on small gaia up to 25 pop for a huge gaia. These 5 max pop gaia values are the so called size multipliers.

However, on planets with other climatic conditions only a smaller part of the entire surface is habitable. For a race without racepicks aqua and tol:

25%: Toxic, Radiated, Barren, Desert, Tundra, Ocean
40%: Swamp
60%: Arid
80%: Terran
100%: Gaia

These are the so called environment multipliers. Max pop is calculated by:

(II) max pop = size multiplier * environment multiplier

This value is then rounded.

How do the individual Racepicks affect this value now?

Aquatic
Aquatic simply means that Tundra and Swamp are rated as Terran and for Ocean as well as Terran the whole surface (like Gaia) is habitable.

25%: Toxic, Radiated, Barren, Desert
60%: Arid
80%: Tundra, Swamp
100%: Gaia, Terran, Ocean

Tolerant
This Pick means that you can use 25% of the surface additionally. The only exceptions of this 25% bonus are Terrans, since here only 20% of the surface was unused, as well as Gaias, since the entire surface was already usable on this planets.

50%: Toxic, Radiated, Barren, Desert, Tundra, Ocean
65%: Swamp
85%: Arid
100%: Terran, Gaia

Subterranean
This pick refers - as the name already points out - no longer to the surface. Additional area under the surface is available for the settlement. For each planet a bonus of 2 Pop per size class is added.

An overview:



To: Toxic
R: Radiated
B: Barren
D: Desert
Tu: Tundra
O: Ocean

The last column contains the environment multipliers (adjusted for tol and aqua). The product of 5 * environment multiplier is stated in the next to the last column (Sub-Races get a bonus of 2 to this product).