Dammit pops removal alone will break hard like 80% of mods.
Stellaris
Community for fans of the strategy game Stellaris.
I can't imagine having a game as old as Stellaris and just arbitrarily removing a core gameplay mechanic in an update. At the very least it should be a toggle-able option, even if it locks you into the old mechanics/rulesets and out of new content.
I remember the absolute shitfest at forums and such at the 2.0 version when they reworked pops. I loved it back then, so i'm kinda sad they will be gone, but i guess it's because pops did the majority of the late game slowdown which in Stellaris is the worst of any PDX game (though to be fair since i replaced my PC 3 years ago i never experienced it and i run tons of heavy increasing pop mods).
It must be very frustrating to be a Stellaris modder. Unfixable, vanilla/DLC desyncs in multiplayer are also another big issue in this title and (to a lesser extent now) with Hearts of Iron IV (similar engine).
CK3 and (especially) Victoria 3 are in a much better state when it comes to desyncs. I wonder if it's laziness to identify issues or just older versions of the engine not performing or getting improvements backported.
In Stellaris, it's so bad that the mod developers work with Paradox to fix what they can, but with the desync logs being so vague, it's usually very hard to identify the specific issues causing the mismatch between players.
They once even had a period of at least few weeks when the mod loading was just outright broken.