Realistic population values

I was looking at population values around EB's world of 272 bc. Most of these cities I know very little about. But it struck me that, at the very least, the biggest most important cities of the time probably have insanely low populations compared to their real-life counterparts - especially Rome. Didn't Rome eventually achieve nearly a million people, as opposed to 10,000? I suppose a million people would have about 100,000 little squalor icons. But couldn't something be built into the government building to counter that extra squalor? Sometimes I find city after city, suppose to be large, completely depleted of recruitable people. It's worse than the black plague. Maybe higher population values would fix that.

well, I don't play EB (my CPU won't) but I know it still runs with the RTW engine in which squalor values are hard coded.

It's possible to increase the population in cities and to give further happiness bonus to buildings to counter the increased squalor.
But now, what happens if a city with all those bonuses is sacked and its population exterminated ?
You now have a city with a few thousands inhabitants and a +200% public order. That is to say, a city that will never rebel (or maybe in the next century)

Population must also be compared to the army you field.
Even when you play at huge unit scale, the total amount of soldiers is very few compared to what it actually was in ancient times.

Low population in the game is not so much a problem as long as the proportion is right.

Any EB player shall correct me if I'm wrong.

Just my unofficial twopeneth-worth here...

Good news: Don't forget to apply a scaling factor - at least 10:1, then another x4 for women and children.

Bad news: The settlement population represents the whole province.

I think the problem here is that all mods have to work within the RTW design. CA seem to have taken the view that progress is always upward and things always get better - so cities cannot actually decline except by the mechanism of capture, extermination and selling buildings. Even then, some buildings are indestructible.

If cities started large, they would also have to have a lot of buildings already built (to avoid instant rebellion), which doesn't leave you with much tech tree left to climb.

If only RTW modelled building upkeep we might be able to have more realistic growth and shrinkage over time (for example you don't have the money or labour to run your farms, so they fall into disuse and your population begins to fall).

Weapons and armour should need upkeep as well - leather rots, iron rusts and bronze gets turned into souvenirs.

But what market is there for a realistic Ancient History game where the objective was to survive for a hundred years, build a temple and maybe capture a small island in the western Mediterranean?

EB has worked wonders - but it can't work miracles (of course I could be wrong).

As with much in RTW, it's an abstraction. It might help if you view it as the maximum number of people actually available to fight; not just with regards to gender, age, and suchlike, but also the fact that it would be physically impossible to recruit more people without damaging the economy and agriculture.

So realistically, when we sack a huge city, the bonus-giving structure related to that city size should be destroyed or reduced along with it, but that doesn't happen, so we end up with a post-sack small city with uber bonuses meant for larger cities. Hmm.
Is tax revenue related to population? If so, I figure that a million-person Rome would provide not only stupid amounts of squalor, but stupid amounts of money. Maybe cities of that size, then, (in order to counter that silly hard-coded issue of unmanageable income and squalor) would have a building that would do just that - reduce the hard-coded income and squalor to reasonable, manageable, playable, realistic levels. When we sack Rome, that building would be providing us with uber stupid health bonuses... but it'd rip the crap out of the income of a small town, so we'd want to sack it too. Didn't it cost a fortune to put on major gladitorial celebrations in the coliseum anyway? Anyway, this is all just a rant against the frustration of seeing towns so easily get depleted of men. I can conquer all of the Greek penninsula and find that it's a wasteland of 400-person towns. I have to struggle not to deplete most of my own towns in response to countless stacks thrown at me. Nice job, AI! If the AI is really going to treat ancient warefare like total all out nuclear warefare, then it's a problem - and higher, more realistic town populations would solve that issue (as well as making the towns more realistic).

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Originally Posted by Danest

Anyway, this is all just a rant against the frustration of seeing towns so easily get depleted of men. I can conquer all of the Greek penninsula and find that it's a wasteland of 400-person towns. I have to struggle not to deplete most of my own towns in response to countless stacks thrown at me. Nice job, AI! If the AI is really going to treat ancient warefare like total all out nuclear warefare, then it's a problem - and higher, more realistic town populations would solve that issue (as well as making the towns more realistic).

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We give the ai a bonus to population whenever they recruit troops, equal to 80% of their total men recruited. You can change that to be higher I believe, in the EBBS, if you so wish.

Foot

Rome had a million in its empire days.

Rome in 272bC was much smaller.

for depleted town, you can invest in a temple of Ceres/Aphrodite/whatever gives pop growth in an already fast growing city and send stacks of peasants.

unless there's no more peasants in EB

No more peasants... then how about disbanding your war-weary veterans ? Total Role Playing...

No more peasants in EB.

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Originally Posted by Juvenal

If only RTW modelled building upkeep we might be able to have more realistic growth and shrinkage over time (for example you don't have the money or labour to run your farms, so they fall into disuse and your population begins to fall).

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Atilius, are you thinking what I'm thinking?

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Originally Posted by Foot

We give the ai a bonus to population whenever they recruit troops, equal to 80% of their total men recruited. You can change that to be higher I believe, in the EBBS, if you so wish.

Foot

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Ahh, I see how this is good for the small starter villages for barbarian factions, but this seems to be causing populations to grow much more in ai towns than mine, making it very unbalancing (not in the fact that i have less polpulation but in the fact that all the small villages held by the ai become cities very quickly).

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Originally Posted by The_Mark

Atilius, are you thinking what I'm thinking?

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Yes, she's lovely. I'm trying to catch her eye...

And implementing building upkeep would be good too.

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Originally Posted by Dumbass

Ahh, I see how this is good for the small starter villages for barbarian factions, but this seems to be causing populations to grow much more in ai towns than mine, making it very unbalancing (not in the fact that i have less polpulation but in the fact that all the small villages held by the ai become cities very quickly).

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Can we make the AI population replenishment script only work in villages and town? Or maybe have it be 90% in villages, 70% in towns, 50% in large towns, etc?

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Originally Posted by QwertyMIDX

Can we make the AI population replenishment script only work in villages and town? Or maybe have it be 90% in villages, 70% in towns, 50% in large towns, etc?

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That wouldn't work, you'd need it based on the population totals, not the level of the core building. But that certainly is an interesting idea.

Foot

Well we can use population figures instead and get the same results.

In the scripting world, we never have any idea what the population of a settlement is. (There's a caveat to this statement, but it really doesn't help matters.) If we were to do something like this, we'd have to go by building level. Perhaps barracks level would be better than core building.

Yes, to be exact, we know the population level iff we know the number of soldiers in garrison at that point. And we know the exact garrisons strenght only at the beginning of the campaign, and even then it's four approximate multiples of some figure. That's how we can determine the used unit size.