Votes in the Planetary Council

[gwillybj]

I wonder if it is the total number of population points the faction has ever generated:
Current population + those lost to starvation + those lost to conquest = Population Points?
There has been a lot of both types of loss going around in my game.

[Geo]

You might be onto something here.

[Yitzi]

Although that would mean that frequent back-and-forth conquest would inflate scores...

[gwillybj]

Something more to watch in the next game.

[Kirov]

The population in F8 is actually the score for population, as per the scoring formula in "advanced concepts" datalinks (which has nothing to do with 'might'). It states that you get 1 point for each citizen of your base and each citizen of any surrendered base, but this description doesn't match my last single-player save I opened (with MY 2208). In fact, the correspondence looks quite random - one faction has the same number of votes and pop score, me - 87 points for 56 votes, others get results like 40 for 20 or 31 for 11 votes. I've never paid much attention to scoring, but right now it seems broken like hell. I wonder if the same goes for the might formula... My initial tests were rather inconclusive.

[Buster's Uncle]

If only we had a bug report forum and some .exe modders around...

[Dio]

The population in F8 is actually the score for population, as per the scoring formula in "advanced concepts" datalinks (which has nothing to do with 'might'). It states that you get 1 point for each citizen of your base and each citizen of any surrendered base, but this description doesn't match my last single-player save I opened (with MY 2208). In fact, the correspondence looks quite random - one faction has the same number of votes and pop score, me - 87 points for 56 votes, others get results like 40 for 20 or 31 for 11 votes. I've never paid much attention to scoring, but right now it seems broken like hell. I wonder if the same goes for the might formula... My initial tests were rather inconclusive.

Do you have Cooperative Victory enabled?

[Kirov]

I believe so. You mean it counts pact bros pop as 1? Yeah, I think it's true. I thought it's only for the diplo victory (as the 'scoring' datalink says). But why exactly my pact brothers got 20 pop score from me if I have 56 votes? In return, I got the full amounts of their pop towards my pop score.

[gwillybj]

... I've never paid much attention to scoring ...

I don't either. I just had a habit of looking at the Score window to see how I was doing overall when compared to the others. My bases were going to get quite large, so I went looking for information about the population limit. (Is it 127?) Also, the limit for the number of bases, which I discovered is tied to the map size.
For some odd reason the difference between Population points and Votes bothered me just enough that I went searching for the scoring formula I knew I'd seen once or twice. (Didn't think of the Datalinks, duh!)
I'll try to take notes during my next game to see if it comes out right.

[Petek]

The difference between the true population and the entry in the F8 screen is definitely related, at least in part, to the presence of pacts. The attached save file, Test Votes.sav, demonstrates this. Santiago has an actual population of 49, but a population of 59 in the F8 screen. She is pacted with Lal. Now ring up Lal and cancel the pact. The F8 screen now shows a pop of 49. Lal has five bases, so I expected to get five additional pop points for the pact, not 10. Perhaps Lal's voting bonus carries over to the score?

[Kirov]

The scoring formula doesn't mention anything about the number of bases, it's the base citizens. In your save, try giving other factions' bases to Lal ('change owner' button in 'edit base') and see that you get one point for his additional pop2 base or 2 points for pop4-5. So it looks like half, rounded down. But now look at my save here. When cancelling pacts with Domai and Dee, I lose their full amount of pop (11 and 20, respectively), while they lose 20 points each, which is in no way related to my own pop (56). So what gives?

[Petek]

You're right that the score with pactmates should be based on base pop, not number of bases. Will have to think more about your save game later.

[Petek]

Here's what I found looking at your game. The problem seems to be the calculation of the AI population scores in the F8 screen when a pact is involved. Those scores for Deidre and Domai make no sense while the pacts with Sparta are in effect. After the pacts are cancelled, the F8 scores are correct (they are the same as the true total populations of all their bases and also the same as their UN votes). The same is true for the game I posted.

In your game, the F8 pop score for Sparta is correct before the pacts are cancelled. That's not true in my game. Based on your observation that changing the ownership of Lal's bases decreases the F8 pop points by 1/2 of the base's pop (rounded down), it now appears to me that Sparta's F8 pop score of 59 is being computed as her own true pop (49), plus 1/2 the true pop of each PK base (again, rounded down), a total of 10. If you can confirm my analysis, I'll post a bug report and let the exe coders assign it a priority.