foreign enterprise and colonies

[Xurr]

I think you are reading too much into this.

Basically from what I can tell the colonial stuff is meant to help level out your population. This helps prevent your very large cities from growing out of control and revolting. In vanilla I can remember having to let a town revolt so I could retake it and reduce the pop. This helps to eliminate that broken mechanic.

As far as where the "population" goes, it doesn't go anywhere. It's just an abstract to represent your population going to an "off map" colony.

[spqr_arcani]

I think you are reading too much into this.

Basically from what I can tell the colonial stuff is meant to help level out your population. This helps prevent your very large cities from growing out of control and revolting. In vanilla I can remember having to let a town revolt so I could retake it and reduce the pop. This helps to eliminate that broken mechanic.

Fair enough.
I do tend to overanalyze things occasionally.

And if this is a feature to help with game mechanics like
the apeleutheroi, then I'm a happy camper.

[Tellos Athenaios]

1) The negative population is a negative 'bonus' (RTW doesn't really understand building 'mali' too well...) ensure less growth. It doesn't remove people. And it doesn't add people anywhere either.
2/3) You rid yourself of potential trouble makers and get access to potentially lucrative trading routes & partners in the process...?