Neat and I'm looking forward to it/trying not to pay much attention to election stuff on my end either. On my end I got the urge to try doing some math when it comes to the Basin's population.
Surface Area of the Basin: pi*1,000,000 miles^2 = 3.14159*10^12 miles squared
Surface Area of the Earth: 196,900,000 miles squared
Basin is Approx 15955.27 times the size of the earth
Approx Oceanic Area of the Basin(Slightly more water than land but not by much) = 3.14159*10^12*.51 = 1.6022109e+12 miles squared
Approx Land Area of the Basin(Slightly more water than land but not by much) = 3.14159*10^12*.49 = 1.5393791e+12 miles squared, approx 7853.975 times the size of the earth.
Area of a lattice efficient city state = pi*5^2 = 78.5398 miles squared
pi*7.5^2 = 176.714586764 kilometers squared
5 Koss approx 10 miles approx 15 km
Approx carrying capacity of a lattice efficient city state before potentially running into Null Zone Problems? = 2,000,000
Number of Lattice efficient city states that fit in the land area of the basin for total saturation: 19,599,987,522
Upper limit on basin land area carrying capacity for people(If the population is approaching this something has probably gone wrong) = 3.9199975*10^16
Billion to Quadrillion range safe for world population?
Focus region for comparison. The Civilizations in the focus region stretch for 70,000 Koss in either direction(Hub or Rim). Let's try viewing the area as a circle. 70,000 Koss = Approx 140,000 mile radius. Pi*140,000 miles^2 = 61,575,216,010.36 square miles. About 1.96 percent of the basin's Total Surface area. About 4 percent of the Basin's total land area.
Assuming the entire area is habitable land which it probably isn't, the number of lattice efficient city states that can fit into that space is 784,000,163, (61575216010.36/78.5398) If all those city states have 2 million people, that sets an upper bound for the focus region population at 1.57 quadrillion people(AKA 1.568*10^15) and it'd be super crowded/something probably has gone wrong if this was reached. If somehow land was divided equally every citizen would have 4 hundred thousandths of a square mile(0.0000392699). That converts to 1094.78 square feet, which would be a small house by American Standards(https://www.hsh.com/homeowner/average-american-home.html). If you change this around to people per square mile, it's 25464.7908947 people per square mile. Everywhere is roughly New York City level crowded.
The USA had a population of 328.2 million in 2019, if you were to just scale up by how many times larger the focus region surface area(61575216010.36 assuming everything is land) than the US surface area(3.797 million square miles), you would get that the focus region is
16216.807 times the surface area of the USA. So multiplying the US 2019 population by that, 328,200,000*16216.807 = 5.3223561e+12, or 5.3 trillion. 5.3 Trillion divided by 2 million leads to 2,650,000 latice efficient city states of 2 million people. If somehow land was divided equally every citizen would have approx .012 square miles of land. 7.4 Acres. If you change this around to people per square mile(5.3 trillion/61575216010.36 square miles), it's 86-87 people per square mile. About the population density of the United States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependencies_by_population_density.
The earth had a population of 7.594 billion in 2018, it's surface area was 196,900,000 miles squared. 61575216010.36/196,900,000 means the focus region's surface area is 312.723 times the surface area of the earth. By scaling the Earth's population we get 2.3 trillion, which divided by 2 million leads to 1,150,000 lattice efficient city states of 2 million people. If somehow land was divided equally every citizen would have approx .027 square miles of land. 7.4 Acres. If you change this around to people per square mile(2.3 trillion/61575216010.36 square miles), it's 37-38 people per square mile.
What happens if you try a smaller number, like 23 billion? 11,500 lattice efficient city states of 2 million people would hold the entire population. If somehow land was divided equally every citizen would have approx 2.677 square miles to work with. 1713.3 acres. If you change it around to people per square mile(23 billion/61575216010.36 square miles) you get a population density not too far away from that of Greenland.
Let's try going up a bit now, How many people for the population density of Australia(it's 9 people per square mile given my earlier source) given the assumption everywhere in the focus region is habitable land? 554,176,944,093
I guess what I'm saying here is that there's probably room to play. Some of your uses of millions in Beta 3 may be overly conservative and could in theory be replaced by the word billions. I'm particularly thinking about the one with the Plot Veto.