Population

Every colony has a population. To get a larger population you can build buildings. Build a housing to provide living quarters for your population.

If you have troops at your colonie then population that is shown next to your resources are alot higher, but on the screen when you click on the colonie tab on the top it shows a smaller population, so basically the population shown next to the resorces can change depending on the amount of troops you have, but the other shows your actual population like it would be without troops there. Also under game statistics, it shows the "True Population" under the colony rankings.