1. A method comprising: determining variables of an optimization problem, wherein a first set of the variables comprises one or more constrained variables constrained by one or more constraint conditions for the optimization problem, and wherein a second set of the variables comprises one or more non-constrained variables that are not constrained by the one or more constraint conditions; determining a plurality of constraint compliant values, for the one or more constrained variables, that comply with the one or more constraint conditions; generating a plurality of non-constrained values for the one or more non-constrained variables; prior to running a computer based simulation that implements a population-based optimization algorithm, randomly combining ones of the plurality of constraint compliant values with ones of the plurality of non-constrained values into a plurality of candidate solutions, wherein each of the plurality of candidate solutions includes at least one of the plurality of constraint compliant values to satisfy the one or more constraint conditions for the optimization problem; and running the computer based simulation with the plurality of candidate solutions input as a population for the computer-based simulation.