Civ/Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri/Pop Boom

Pop Boom is a part of the game mechanics that causes a 1 population per a turn increase for as long as the city has at least 1 extra nutrient available when the growth social engineering stat reaches 6 in that city. This can have an outstanding effect on the growth of an empire but must be balanced with proper drone control. Only a faction inherent social penalties/ bonuses, social engineering choices, the children's creche facility, and golden ages can effect your growth stat; though, the cloning vat secret project does in effect trigger a pop boom in ALL of your bases without any other growth modifiers being in effect. All factions are capable of triggering a pop boom.

A summary of values that can affect growth

 * +2 growth Democratic social engineering choice
 * +2 growth Children's Creche
 * +2 growth Planned social engineering choice
 * +2 growth Golden Age
 * -1 growth The Cybernetic Consciousness (inherent)
 * -1 growth the Nautilus Pirates (inherent)
 * +1 growth the Usurpers (inherent)
 * +1 growth the Human Hive (inherent)

Broadly speaking each faction can be lumped into 1 of 2 categories

 * Those that can pop boom without golden ages by running democratic and planned social choices on cities with children's creches:

The University of Planet, the Spartan Federation, Gaia's Stepdaughters, the Lord's Believers, the Peacekeeping Forces, The Free Drones, the Data Angels, the cult of the planet, and the Manifold Caretakers fall into this category.

By far, these factions have it the easiest when needing to produce a pop boom as they are not forced to crank up the econ values to cause golden ages. These groups can sometimes end up with improperly planned pop booms due to the fact that they are so easy to trigger. It should be noted that these groups could also trigger a golden age by not having either a creche, a planned economy, or a democratic system by substituting a golden age for the missing growth points.


 * Those that can only pop boom by using golden ages:

The Human Hive (can not use democracy), the Morgan Industries (can not use planned), the Usurpers (can not use democracy), the Cybernetic Consciousness (inherent -1 growth), and the Nautilus Pirates (inherent -1 growth) fall into this category.

Less flexible than the previous groups, these factions must use all of the growth adding social models (planned and democracy) that they can barring faction restrictions noted above, creches, and golden ages.