Slitherine

The population buildings (shelters) for all factions should not be a technology but available from the start. There are already enough technologies to research and having to research something so it doesn´t stop the growth of your economy is really bad.

Also I would like the loyalty building also to be removed from the tech tree since loyalty has been nerfed.

The HQ buildings in cities should be able to hold more population than 6. Minimum 8-10, you have to build pop buildings way too soon and waste research on them. It does not give a lot of room for different building orders from the start and decline in pop growth starts way too soon when you only have 6 pop cap. When you have your second construction building then your pop will never catch up if you are building constantly

+1, as they say

I concur on the HQ building allowing a boost for the early game. Having to build 'dorms' too soon seems a bit off. imho
One thing I have done for my own games, as an experiment, is to increase the 'pop limit' to 9. (original=6)
This, also, appears to help the AI.
I will upload a tiny mod that does this.

+1, Im new to the game (only played with SM about 5 games), this is about the first things that bothered me. Especially pop building should be buildable without research as you just cant play the game without it.

I agree. As a matter of fact, population, loyalty and tile expansion are all technologies that you'll researching as early as you can no matter which faction you play with. Having to go after that dilutes the uniqueness of each faction. It also effectively increases the cost of other important faction-specific technologies, as every technology you acquire increases the cost of all others by a small percentage.

There is a mod that does this, aptly named "Housing, Loyalty, and +1 radius from start":
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/ ... 2987557219

But this is so important that it should be a default part of the game. Thank you for making this thread.