Migration? Where, When, How?

This is based upon my experience with the Balance mod but I imagine is more or less true of stock.

1. Population only migrates from one colony to another, and only towards colonies with the correct atmosphere.

2. If you have a ship full of a new type of breather, you can drop them off at the right atmosphere planet ideally, or just any old colony and they will migrate automatically over a couple of turns. Migration, where it occurs, is much faster than manual population transfer and doesn't require spending on freighters.

3. There's no direct notification, but you can always go to the Colonies summary screen and pick the "Races" set of columns. That will give you the population present on each planet, with two lines for planets with mixed population. For those planets you can concentrate on removing the population which do not match the atmosphere type, to bring the undoming. That can be done by population transport again (the purist / roleplay option) or for immediate effect you can eject the non-breathers into space (select the planet and hit Ctrl-K). If you are playing the Balance Mod (or another mod that derived its AI from Balance) then you also have the option to enable the "Colony - Population" minister which will automatically scrap the non-breathers once matching breathers arrive on a colony. This has the added benefit of producing a log entry about the scrapped colonists, which will also help alert you as to what's going on. This is my preferred approach.

4. In the Balance mod I've not noticed any loyalty / rebellion issues due to migration, migrators don't seem to have any extra penalty for having moved. They will also happily help you build ships to kill their brothers if relations with their empire turn sour! Some mods are starting to tinker with the population happiness system to add some extra factors and make things like Urban Pacification centres of more use.

5. Same answer as point 1 - only ever towards a planet with the matching atmosphere type.

I hope that helps.

1) Populations will only migrate to planets with an atmosphere they can breate, full stop, no exceptions
If a population is on a non-breathable planet, the numbers will increase by reproduction only

2) Yes

3) Migration is automatic (also, you dont get notified), you will still need to undome (ie. move non-breathers) other methane planets manually though

4) If you are at war with their native empire, it will cause unhappiness, and abit of disloyality, but Ive not yet personally had it cause me anything to worry about (perhaps someone else can shed more light on this)

5) See 1)

___________________________
Chris Newton dot Net

Also if you have a migration treaty with another empire, and they have a similar treaty with yet another empire, some of the aliens that migrate to them will then migrate to you. You can end up with people you've never met or heard of.

You may know to "space" breathers you don't want. Try to scrap them instead of just jettisoning them into space. You get 1kt of organics for every million you process. Better than nothing. Not much better mind you. People seem to keep referring to this as "Soylent green"

Depending on what race I play I either avoid such an inhuman (or inphong etc) tactic, or I just space them to maximise colony growth, or on rare occasions my bugs eat all the livestock

as i know you get all advantages of race that lives in your planets..

if they are propulsion experts - you get that advantage... if they increase researching - you will get this race ability... So keep in eye to hold them to have that.

Hmm I didn't klnow it went that far. I've seen some ships my foreign colonies build have alien crew. Didn't really give it much thought.

Im using a screenshot on migration in this thread: http://www.spaceempires5.com/en-US/node/5516

~Myrath

Yes, those are some good tips, Myrath: they are very wise to the competitiveness of Play By Web! I liked your section on column headings too, I wish there was a way to load and save them and share them on a forum like this. I've lost count of how many times I've put in my favourites, and good, custom report layouts are key to keeping track of the sprawling information once you expand.

Back to migration - in general where it occurs, it is at a rate that you'll struggle to match with pop transport. That's great but I just wish the population preventing the undoming of colonies would rush to move away without the player's assistance. If you are looking to maximise your overall growth, scrapping non-breathers is the only quick way to deal with it. If you do not happen to be a leader who supports launching unwanted bodies into space / grinding them down for food / melting them down to help build organic hulls, then with a leap of imagination the "scrap" button can just mean granting them the freedom of the quadrant. Whatever you call it, it's always more competitive than population transport imo, which I don't really have a place for in my game any more...

Not a bad tip, but only useful for solo games. Saving your empire after starting the game will violate the allowed amount of technology points for PBW games, because the game somehow includes the cost for your planet type colonization tech in that saved empire file.

----------
See my PBW game stories on http://users.pandora.be/banzaiboy/sevpbw/.

So far in my game, i control over 200 planets (about 25% of the galaxy) and have 6 different races that breathe different stuff (some were captured, but most came through migration treaties), but now im stuck in a all-out-war scenario.. all the AIs are out for blood so no more treaties. My population dont migrate from a planet to another on their own! Im at turn 160.. and the population just increases but isnt jumping from one place to the other by themselves... So about 70% of my planets are domed.. and i dont want to undome them manually... just too long!

Is it by design that my population dont move by themslves.. or maybe it is that their planets are not full yet so the migrants are not forced to go elsewhere?

Im using Balance mod.

____________________________________________________

Without ammo, nice guns are just sophisticated clubs.

Something that seems to speed up migration is when planets are 'filled to the top'. Then internal migrating starts. I'm afraid for the rest you'll have to ferry a bit manually if the population isn't spread completely as you want it to.

Ofcourse you can scrap wrong population groups from worlds. Just be sure to NEVER scrap the last population group on a world, as then you really WILL have to manually repopulte it.

~Myrath

Easy way to fix this, inside a solo game, set the tech points to high, then load and edit your saved empire, goto the tech window, and remove any techs it has
Save your empire, and now it wont be using any tech points

___________________________
Chris Newton dot Net

I find it easier to save an empire set for low tech cost and zero tech points, then load and edit it to add whatever techs the game allows.

-----
"Good morning, Pooh Bear," said Eeyore gloomily. "If it /is/ a good morning," he said. "Which I doubt," said he.

Early in the game you can start a treaty with migration FROM other empires to yours. I usually set some of the later Stellar Manipulation items to MY empire will not do (planet destroying, nebula creation, black hole creation) This 'adds' points in your favor to your treaty offer. Then you have a better chance of your treaty being accepted. Usually, by the time I have that research, the other empires have already broken my treaties. Migrations happens next turn if you have a planet of the correct atmosphere colonized.

I have also noticed that the AI tends to refuse treaties with migration clauses (I ONLY use from them to me) if I do NOT have a colony with the correct atmosphere, regardless of other treaty selections.

No one mentioned that migration also seems to be effected by planet quality, and type (rock, ice, and gas). Populations seem to move to the better planets, and are more likely to move to home world types first.

A few troops (I use 11) on the planet compensates for most minor unhappiness on my planets.

Thanks for the pointers on saving column layouts, I'll try it out.

Perfectly symettrical treaties also seem to be preferred.

As another pointer, checking races is one of the few uses I have for the colony list window. It's not too hard to set it up to display the list of races on each world and the icons for cargo. (status icons) Displaying cargo takes up too much room.

Migration stops when the pop for a certain planet reaches the level of the smallest breathable planet for that race.

Thus, if you have a Tiny breathable planet with 500 M pop and colonise a Huge breathable there will be migration tot the Huge planet until it gets to 500M pop and then it stops.

I tried to figure it out during my last game and it was really frustrating. I captured an Oxygen breathing race (Homeworld of 4000M pop) but there was no migration to my other Oxygen planets because (I think) I had a Tiny Oxygen planet that was on max pop (domed because my first race inhabited it)

I think this is true (we played a on a small map and did a lot of micromanagement, we even wrote everything down in an excel file after each turn so I saw how my population on all the planets changed turn after turn)

Strange thing is that on a world with 4000M (max pop) you first get pop. growth (zero in this case because planet is full) and then the migration gets substracted so you end the turn with +/- 3960 M pop. Annoying...

Hmm, has anyone else experienced similar problems with migration? I don't recall it stopping because your smallest breathable world was filled...

Planet conditions and your race environmental resistance have an impact on migration. For instance if you have -10% env. res. in BM, standard growth, happy mood, you'll have 10%-11% migration, 0% growth on your homeworld if it has Unpleasant conditions.

Me neither...

OK... but why did the migration stop suddenly ??

The first few turns (2 or 3) there was migration to Oxygen planets but right after I colonised that tiny planet with 125M of my Methane breathing race the migration of the oxygen breathing race stopped completely.

What else could have caused this ??

What happened when you colonized another planet?

sorry it took so long to reply

I did a test with that game and tried 2 possibilities

1. I didn't touch the pop of that Tiny Oxygen planet (and thus let my 125M Methane breathers live there) and next turn there hasn't been migration (Oxygen HW pop was 4000M) not even to other Oxygen planets.

2. I scrapped the 125M Methane breathers from that Tiny Oxygen planet ( 0M pop left) and next turn there were 29M Oxygen breathers on that tiny planet and 4972M Oxygen breathers on the HW (thus 28M migration from the HW to the Tiny Oxygen planet)

And that's all that I did, I didn't change any other variables.

Thoughts ?? Ideas ??

Thanks for the input

125M is the maximum population on a domed tiny planet. If you already have 125M population no more can possibly migrate there regardless of atmosphere.

My race is Oxygen breathing and I've conquered a couple of planets with Hydrogen breathers. It's been several turns but none of my hydrogen planets have had any of the native breathers migrate there. I'm having to transport them by ship.

Environmental conditions determine migration to a large degree. Optimal conditions will always invite many more migrants while the other end of the spectrum may keep them away for a while.

----------
See my PBW game stories on http://users.pandora.be/banzaiboy/sevpbw/.

But that doesn't explain why those oxygen breathers don't migrate to another of my Oxygen planets (I think I had 4 more Oxygen planets)

And if planet conditions are a prime factor in migration then why is there migration the very few first turns and afterwards nothing ??

I think I know why... Migration will always be to the breathable planet with the *lowest* number of that particular race. Problem is that when the planet is fully occupied with another race the game will want to migrate some pop there but it isn't possible... And tha's why no migration is taking place after I colonized that tiny planet.

So? relocate the useless pop and migration should resume.

There seems to be (as observed) some migration relationship among the following:

Planet Type... Rock, Ice and Gas, with races preferring their home type.

Planet Quality ... With races moving away from unpleasant to better planets.

Planet Capacity ... the closer the planet is to max population the slower migration in happens, while migration out should be increasing.

Using these 3 premises; it is possible that a large, good home type, with small population might delay migration to a larger, unpleasant non-home type planet until the planet becomes more populated.

Without seeing the actual migration code, that is the best I can do.

If I were coding I might add another based on happiness. Migrating unhappy (meaning anything under Jubilant) to happier planets. If you use the "grass is always greener" theory then happiness could be motivator to migration.