Most Efficient Population Size

That is not the case in v1.1, where population effect has been changed to a simple 1 pop = 1 raw production, no inefficiency with high pop.  Roughly half your buildings being pop and the other half manufacturing/science/money seems to be a general break point from my experience in 1.1.

When you say "half your buildings being pop," surely you don't mean 5 farms on a class 10 world? Please clarify. Thank you for your help.

Yes, roughly half your buildings should be farms, with the assumption each food building provides 6 pop and each production building provides 100% (adj bonuses are averaged into this).   Changing averages doesnt change the results much, but might on lower class worlds.  regardless, I would still shoot for this target.  Again, this is only with 1.1, not 1.03.

I really hope they get moral to do something soon....   In GCII having low moral would slow down your population growth... and even lead to population loss.

Why this is not in GC3 is beyond me.

People are focusing on min-maxing and gaming the game so much that reading these forums is turning into a killjoy.

This is the case in GC3. Having a lower approval results in direct penalties to population growth, raw production, and influence, all the way to -25%, while having 100% approval results in a 25% bonus. In 1.1, this is properly reflected in the tooltips/UI.

it should be more harsh....    up to revolt level -100% production/research  and possibly as much as a -10% population loss rate.

Granted to do this they would have to make the large empire penalty actually work right...   

Stay tuned, something like this could be coming to your planets in a later release

The -25% growth penalty from 0% approval barely matters. If I'm not mistaken, the approval growth modifier stacks additively with the other growth modifiers rather than multiplicatively, and the each of the other growth modifiers is at least comparable in magnitude to the approval growth modifier.

What the balance 'should' be depends on whether or not you're playing in a way that makes you need approval structures to help support the additional farms. If you can ensure that the approval rating does not change, or does not change significantly enough to warrant the construction of additional morale structures, regardless of the number of farms you built on the planet, then yes, building a farm for each factory, lab, or market is a reasonable balance. If you need to build some number of morale structures for each additional farm, the balance shifts away from a 1:1 ratio and favors building more factories, labs, and markets.

There is also a question of the length of time required for each additional farm to begin paying off. Factories, labs, and markets all begin to provide benefits immediately upon completion, and moreover do not have a build-up period to reach their maximum benefit for the current population. Farms, however, will provide no benefit until the current population exceeds the population which would have been the maximum population without the farm and furthermore have a build-up period to reach their maximum benefit for the current output multiplier.

I'm using 1.03 at the moment. To be honest, I haven't noticed any difficulty keeping morale around 100% from the beginning as long as I research Commerce and Supportive Pop first. The morale issue seems to be a NON-Issue. 

I do love the concept of decreasing population if morale gets too low...say below 33%. If memory serves, didn't "GalCiv2," "MOO2," and even the legendary original "Reach For The Stars" use something similar to this? (Lmao, I think my age is showing.)

With birthing rates being so rediculously OP, I find that once you have built half your world full of factories (and a few farms), it doesnt take too long at all to use birthing subsidies to quickly max out your pop, then spend a few turns building another farm or two, then back to birthing rates.   Yes, thats time out of using your planet for other uses, but you can do it quite quickly.   I've gotten well over +10pop/turn in population growth with birthing subsidies (Granted, I had a pretty high pop already, it may have been when I was boosting from 40 to 60, or 60 to 80).  And of course, while using birth subsidies, your growth goes up every single turn, as pop is related to raw production.  Its quite monstrous, compared to getting that indefinite free +0.1 per turn.

That's why I said in 1.1, the projects seem to be a bit "OP", as the pop and raw production relation are simply linear now.

Oh BTW, on a class 25 world, I had gotten the pop up to 75 or so, with 100% approval.  that took 4 approval buildings.  Granted, I had several tech related bonuses to supplement the buildings.  I removed all approval buildings, and replace with farms and factories.  I then followed with birthing subsidies (which only took a few turns).  I then had 110 Pop, and I actually had more production being at 23% approval with the 110 pop, than I did with the 75 pop at 100% approval.

Part of this was due to already having another 100% in raw production bonuses due to government techs.  I believe I was getting a -11% due to low approval, so that 36% approval swing affecting raw production didnt matter when I had a +25% in population and even more factories.

75 pop * 1.25 (+100% government and +25% approval bonus) = ~94 production

110 pop * 0.89 (+100% government and -11% approval bonus) = ~98 production

Granted, I had Patriotic to make the lack of approval buildings less impacting, I just find it disturbing that the game allows for a planet with no approval buildings to be more efficient than a planet with approval buildings.  And yes, this is a specific case, but still....I think low approval should have a bigger impact.  The more impact it has, the more impact it will have to the larger-wider empires, letting the game not be a domino effect after you conquer your first enemy.

As a matter of personal preference, I let my planets run a population up to @20.  Then I have the local shipyard build build a colonizer ship to send off 9-12 pop to settle a new colony.  What's left behind is still enough to keep everything working fine, and the large number of settlers give the new colony a decent production jumpstart.

And this would be an example of playing in a way that does not make morale structures necessary. Skipping Supportive population for some reason, skipping out on the other 'free' approval bonuses from the tech tree, not stacking starbase approval modifiers to ridiculous levels, these are things which can make morale structures relevant. Choosing to pick up the 'free' morale bonuses in the tech tree instead of the alternatives (and I have trouble seeing why you wouldn't choose to take the morale bonuses over the other bonuses) and stacking starbase morale bonuses is a playstyle that makes morale structures largely irrelevant. It is not the only way to play the game.

This is not the correct comparison to be making. The comparison you should be making looks at total output, not planetary production; you are trading population against the output multiplier much more than you are trading it against the production multiplier. The ~5 maximum level farms you probably built to get that 35 additional population could have been another ~5 factories, or you could have built something in between. ~5 maximum tech factories is +3.75 or more to the output multiplier (with maximum tech labs, it's +5 or more to the output multiplier, while with maximum tech markets it's +1.75).

Increasing the output multiplier by 3.75 adds 281.25 output before production modifiers (after production modifiers, it'll be 268.3125 assuming it cost you the same amount of morale as building the farms to get to 110 population did, i.e. roughly 52 morale since you had 75 morale to have 100% approval with 75 population and reduced it to ~23 to have 21% approval for a -11% production multiplier with 110 population). Did adding 35 population to get 4 additional production give you that much? I rather doubt it; you'd require an output multiplier of ~67.1 (i.e. +6710% to the correct output type) before the changes to the planetary improvements were made. Even with a Singlularity Power Plant and a Manufacturing Capital on the planet you're still looking at making up about 61 of the the output multiplier from Industrial Sectors which provide 0.75 each plus 0.05 per level; assuming an average level of 7, you still require about 55 Industrial Sectors to achieve this. And while you can bring the required number of factories down a bit with global manufacturing bonuses from Precursor Nanites, Manufacturing Relics, and techs, and with starbase factory bonuses, I'm somewhat doubtful you can bring it down sufficiently to make this reasonable for a planet with a planet class less than perhaps 40.

I also notice that you appear to have ignored the base production bonus offered by the colony capital (6.25 with a 25% bonus from approval but only 4.45 with a -11% penalty from approval, which greatly reduces the net increase in production since you gained ~4 production at the cost of 1.8 production when you added 35 population). Unless perhaps you're folding the base production bonus into the 'population' of the colony?

In my specific case, the pop was worth it compared to the factories.  Its not a blanket statement, but in my specific case, it was the optimal.  regardless of farm/factory choice, I was trying to exhibit in this situation that more pop/factories was better than trying to maintain any planetary approval.   Not all situations (I was running Patriotic and had lots of other galaxy wide morale techs), but in this situation it was.

Joe, I'm having a little trouble following your response. I am not sure if your lecturing, chastising or agreeing with me. I don't mean that in an a-hole type way. Are you telling me to make different choices, make the game more difficult...or stating you understand why I don't? Please clarify. 

Ironically, I play this game as a "Civ builder", not a "Galaxy conqueror." I'd actually enjoy reasons to build most, if not all, buildings. 

I understand why you take Supportive Population; it's almost certainly the best option in that set of specializations as Wealthy Populace makes too little difference to any given world's income multiplier to matter all that much and Designated Trading Partner is less immediately useful and more limited in utility. Choosing not to take it or similar techs is nevertheless a valid option, though likely a suboptimal option especially if you cannot or will not trade for it, and one which will leave more reason for you to perhaps bother with building morale structures. It's not so much that morale is a nonissue as that your choices during gameplay made it so.

I follow you. I wasn't trying to imply morale is meaningless. I like the suggestions, by the way. I could easily fall into the trap of making the same choices on the tree every time. The game, designed to be thoroughly re-playable, would lose a bit of that characteristic.