Population Growth issues

[Caz]

There seems to be breakpoints where the population will stagnate until some unknown condition is met and population will grow again. I hit one of these seeming breakpoints around 200 Nuggets. Was stuck around that number for a few hours and then suddenly population grew again. No clue what caused it to stagnate nor what caused it to start again.

Now I'm stuck between 700-750 for a couple days now. Even if I go on a Cupidon spree (which done several times now), within an hour it will go back to being in the 700-750 range. It's basically slowed expansion down to less than a crawl since I can't staff all the production buildings properly.
It's not a food issue since I have 11k Raw and stay consistently over 200 Prepared Food. Eateries and Farms dotted all over the city to ensure easy access to food (with warehouses dedicated solely to food storage usually right beside the Eatery).
Reservoirs aren't a problem. Almost the entire city is covered by them.
Happiness and Crime are at their best.
Hospitals are dotted throughout the city.
There's literally nothing I can find that would prevent further population growth. Almost 50 of 91 pages of Nuggets are age 40 or below.

Only issue I'm seeing is that they aren't building Residential anymore because the existing buildings aren't being filled. That leaves the outskirts without housing, creating a long walk from home to work/job site. But other than destroying Residential buildings (which I shouldn't need to do and I don't see how that would affect population growth in a positive way), I can't think of anything that could possibly solve this issue.

Is this a known issue? If not, is it something devs don't consider to be an issue? I'm open to suggestions. But please refrain from suggesting something that's already mention here. Already feeling frustrated and getting a suggestion that's already been done just adds more frustration.

[unknowncapybara]

Can you please send me your save file? If you're not sure how to do that, you can go ahead and save your game, go to load, select the file, and click Export. Then you can zip the files, upload them to Google drive, turn on the "allow anyone with the link to access" in share settings, and drop the link here, if that's easy for you :)

[Caz]

Originally posted by unknowncapybara:

Can you please send me your save file? If you're not sure how to do that, you can go ahead and save your game, go to load, select the file, and click Export. Then you can zip the files, upload them to Google drive, turn on the "allow anyone with the link to access" in share settings, and drop the link here, if that's easy for you :)

Yea, gimme a few minutes and I'll have that.

And thanks. I've read so many of the posts about this issue that I'm just frustrated at this point cuz I've done everything I can think of.

[unknowncapybara]

Originally posted by Caz:

Originally posted by unknowncapybara:

Can you please send me your save file? If you're not sure how to do that, you can go ahead and save your game, go to load, select the file, and click Export. Then you can zip the files, upload them to Google drive, turn on the "allow anyone with the link to access" in share settings, and drop the link here, if that's easy for you :)

Yea, gimme a few minutes and I'll have that.

And thanks. I've read so many of the posts about this issue that I'm just frustrated at this point cuz I've done everything I can think of.

I definitely understand the frustration. No worries! We can take a look and see what's going on :)

[Caz]

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1NsoYnVFopcdgzzSMU90QLGmOXsAK07pj/view?usp=drive_link
I assume it's meant to export from the game directly into ZIP format?

[unknowncapybara]

Originally posted by Caz:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1NsoYnVFopcdgzzSMU90QLGmOXsAK07pj/view?usp=drive_link
I assume it's meant to export from the game directly into ZIP format?

I think sometimes it will zip automatically, but sometimes you have to manually zip it, but not sure. Either way, this works :) Thank you so much!

[unknowncapybara]

Okay, so I've been playing the game a little bit just to try to see what's going on in your file, and so far, it looks like your Nuggets are mating pretty normally. Currently at a population of 752, with about 20 kids, and about 191 unmarried.

The way the game is balanced, Nuggets won't expand the population exponentially because the amount of Nuggets you would end up with might fry your computer or at the very least tank your computer's performance. There's no designated cap on the quantity of Nuggets you can have in the game; just the more have of them, the harder it is to manage.

[CaptainRAVE]

800 is about the most I've ever managed to sustain.

[Caz]

But should the population still be increasing, tho? It's staying in the 700-750 range. Shouldn't it still go up, even if slowly? Glad there's nothing bugged, tho.

Is there something I can do, other than Cupidon and Clone Center, to spur the population to grow?

[unknowncapybara]

Originally posted by Caz:

But should the population still be increasing, tho? It's staying in the 700-750 range. Shouldn't it still go up, even if slowly? Glad there's nothing bugged, tho.

Is there something I can do, other than Cupidon and Clone Center, to spur the population to grow?

So basically, the way this has been explained to me, is that the population will still steadily increase, just like how it was when I loaded up your save file. But because Nuggets, unless there is a research perk or a trait that changes this, only live for about 50 years, the oldest group will start dying all at once, which looks like a big dip and is totally normal. Their kids replace them and start having more kids, and the cycle kind of continues. You can research different perks that will allow your Nuggets to live longer and have more children. There is also a Nugget trait when starting a new game called Matenator if you want to watch your population boom very quickly (though they also die faster too).

I hope this all makes sense. Please let me know if it doesn't and I can try to clarify more :)

[Kyle]

I got up to like 1-1.1k but it dropped to 800 because I stopped managing it, one of the biggest drops I noticed was when I upgraded my garages and they stopped working b/c they all refuel at once, as opposed to individually and my cars were out of commission for awhile. (So basically, travel time)

I often had pairs of 200 unmarried nuggets at any given time, feels like they don't pair or mate enough to keep up with high numbers. I tried introducing some Matenators but it didn't really do much as they didn't pair up as often as I'd like and just spent time working.

If you want a bigger population you can try cloning and then breeding some highlanders since they live forever, basically a permanent working population, barring accidents.

[Caz]

Originally posted by unknowncapybara:

Originally posted by Caz:

But should the population still be increasing, tho? It's staying in the 700-750 range. Shouldn't it still go up, even if slowly? Glad there's nothing bugged, tho.

Is there something I can do, other than Cupidon and Clone Center, to spur the population to grow?

So basically, the way this has been explained to me, is that the population will still steadily increase, just like how it was when I loaded up your save file. But because Nuggets, unless there is a research perk or a trait that changes this, only live for about 50 years, the oldest group will start dying all at once, which looks like a big dip and is totally normal. Their kids replace them and start having more kids, and the cycle kind of continues. You can research different perks that will allow your Nuggets to live longer and have more children. There is also a Nugget trait when starting a new game called Matenator if you want to watch your population boom very quickly (though they also die faster too).

I hope this all makes sense. Please let me know if it doesn't and I can try to clarify more :)

Yea, it makes sense. I get the logic of how the system is supposed to work. And it does work, up to a certain population threshold where it seems like the population dies just as quickly as new nuggets are born. That's what I don't understand. Why does this population growth suddenly plateau like that? I would expect it to slow down, but it just ends up getting stuck with the birth/death rate balancing each other out and resulting in no more population growth.

[Kyle]

I would expect it to get stuck, but once I use Cupidon for it to raise, since this is me injecting nuggets into the system. Yet even with Cupidon it just falls back down if I stop spamming it. I have dozens of unmarried partners often yet people at the end of their lifespan who aren't hermits that just never got around to marrying.

[Apostle of Lies]

Yeah, just ran into that problem too. This is my first game. My city's population is now 225 and does not want to grow further, even though I have perks open to increase the life expectancy of nagets. There is a lot of food, water and resources in the city. There are many places to eat logically placed in different areas of the city. There are enough hospitals. But for about 30 minutes now, the population has been at 225.
It's frustrating. It can't be due to a focus on computer performance, as I have a very powerful pc. Haven't found a reason for this yet...I hope my population will continue to grow.

[Wynn]

Just a thought, since I haven't seen it mentioned here, but have you sprinkled enough leisure sites throughout the city? I know Nuggets use them to recover stamina, and this not only prevents them wasting time going home, but reduces collapsing Nuggets (whose stamina recovers more slowly). If the Nuggets have to spend less time fulfilling their needs, I've found they're more likely to mate naturally instead of being distracted halfway home. I've been able to get to stable 1k pops this way (without any use of Le Cupidon). It won't eliminate the natural soft-capping of numbers, as I think that's tied to Nugget lifespans, but I think it's more about doing whatever you can to nudge it upwards.

Something else to consider isn't so much how well spread and stocked the eateries are, but rather how much actual usage they're getting. You might have enough cooked food, but it could be there aren't enough free tables to eat at, so then hungry Nuggets won't be able to get their food from Eateries anyway. Instead they'll be forced to eat raw food, sometimes from the other side of the planet. I've also noticed that the food minister tends to place farms/fisheries/garrisons when this starts to happen, so I usually take that as my first indicator to check the usage. I also do the same for leisure, i.e. just open a few random business/parks and see how full they are. If they're looking full, then I build more until this stops.

With any luck, maybe some of this will have helped you, OP.

[Furin]

Housing space and mobility are the most important factors, if they can't build new houses because there's no building materials the population won't grow.