Your biggest Metropolis!

[Tartaros]

Hi everybody,
i want to know: whats your biggest Metropolis ever!

for me, in my current seleucid campaign:

[Maion Maroneios]

WOW MAN!!! You deserve a balloon for this:

Maion

[Tartaros]

Whow
thanx a lot!!!!

[Cbvani]

Whow
thanx a lot!!!!

I had something close in my Romani campaign. Rome had over 40k citizens. I don't know if I hit 45k though. that's impressive.

And when the great gov. kicked the bucket.... Population dropped like a stone. It was quite an exodus, apparently.

[Tartaros]

i try to train a good successor for it - they have to pay tax for my army!

[Maion Maroneios]

Yeah, such huge cities tend to give you a LOT of tax income. Especially good, in your case, is to train Successor units like Argyraspidai and Hetairoi there

Maion

[Centurio Nixalsverdrus]

And he has Katoikiai built and Very High Tax Rate set. I believe Alexandria in my current campaign has 39,000.

Anyway, I think the game counts able men in warrior age, not all inhabitants, multiplicate it with say four so you got 180,000 inhabitants. Then multiplicate it with your preferred roleplayed multiplicator that you use for armies (very frequently 10) and you have a 1,800,000 metropolis. I'd say your Seleukeia exceeds Rome in the prime of her existence.

[desert]

But still, how can a region with say 4,000 men(rped) of fighting age suddenly grow to 40,000 men in 5years? I am assuming that they don't spring out of their fathers' heads fully grown and armored.

Regions should have a fixed pop in 272 BC with a growth rate dependent on population size. Then you could train 240,000 men in 25 years, and have about 100,000 mature to fighting age in that period. That example is completely arbitrary, btw.

[SwissBarbar]

in my current roman campaign (year 182 BC) Taras is the biggest City in the empire, bigger than Rome itself. 34'000 men in warrior age, so in Centurio Nixalsverdrus calculating system (wich is very logical, i roleplay it too this way, it can't be the whole population becaus you could recruit them all ;-) ) that would make 1'360'000 inhabitants.

[craziii]

you guys are nutty, I never manage to get above 30k in pop :(

[SwissBarbar]

just don't train troops in every town ^^ of course it depends on the dimension of your empire. the bigger it is, the more cities don't bother with troup training and the more big towns you get. And with factions like SPQR, Seleukeia or the Ptolemaioi you get sooner big cities than with Casse or Sweboz who start with small towns

[desert]

I use the City Mod, so it is pretty much impossible for me to get above 35,000 population except by cheating.

[ludwag]

hey, I had much more than 45 000 population in kart-hadast, just recently. But then my faction leader died and stuff. Why is this so big thing? I am sure I can easily make a new population like that again.

[LordCurlyton]

Yeah I've surpassed 50k more than once. If you get the right traits and ancillaries 40k is very attainable in fertile areas. All the major cities should be able to exceed 40k with minimal effort. Can't say as I've every busted 60k, and 50k is not an easy feat.

[gamegeek2]

I bet the Sweboz could easily pull it off with the temples of Frowon if they conquered a city or naturally grew one. I tend to sack cities that are out of culture.

[teh1337tim]

*looks at my roman campaign*

ahem.. i think my roma has 57k inhabitants... with 0.5% pop +
it might just by that my faction leader has max influence/managements and 6 command stars, triumphator consul and lots of traits for soldier and farmer...
hell every city in my roman empire has 30-40k with italy and sicially hovering around 40-49k
Quite easy to accomplish after a hundred years of construction etc
(i send sharp/charis characters to iberia to take control of provinces and 16 years later i send them back and send new FM's there... all will have very good managements/traits etc)

now.. to conquear ptolemaio/makedonia and seleukid...

[satalexton]

oh god, think of all the cash i can make by sacking roma....

[hoom]

One can of course force-migrate a bunch of population via recruitment of groups of cheap but numerous troops like akontistai (works best on Huge unit size).
Probably not the best idea to do it too much but can be useful to bolster a threatened and small but strategically important city or one that you drained the population out of by recruiting too much.

[llib]

As for recruiting, I only recruit in either cities with superb morale bonuses and top level temples of seleukos, or only troops not trainable in any such city. I even first go to top level of foreign baracks type(just if it makes sense of course) under gov.4, then switch to gov.1-2(the most domesticated available) and build these faction barracks, and then switch for permanent gov.2.
So in end I get of course bonus armor for blacksmith, and then seleukos temple morale bonus, government morale bonus, and local specialty morale bonus. These cities being Babylon, West-coast minor asia cities, Persepolis(although this one is somehow not developed for military production as of yet) and the city in... Media? Well one north of Seleukia(and above susa) which has extra morale I think from temple.
Then when Ankyra is available with appropriate gov., barracks and seleukos temple then there I build also the Galatian troops there, and some other local troops on some few other places, and of course at start also some troops on borders as war is very threating in the eastern part to wait for reinforcements from center.
As for highest ammount of people - not sure, but 45000 should be reachable. I prefer priests of Marduk for tak/order benus over pop. bonuses though, not sure what is worth more if extra % of tax or extra thousands of citizens. Any statistics anybody? :-)

[Tartaros]

Hey,
lets have a competition

only rule: no cheating population and stuff

a picture and then then dingdingding!!!

[abou]

Generally, there four cities that immediately come to mind with an ability to hold a massive population: Carthage, Roma, Alexandreia, and Seleukeia. Congrats to Maion. I would be interested to see what would happen if he were to lower the tax rate, but funds could become an issue.

For those of you who are curious, Alexandreia and Seleukeia were rated as truly world-class cities due to their size and magnificence with Antioch managing to eek its way into the same category (at least that is the impression I have due to Strabo's writings). Naturally, Alexandreia became an incredibly important city in the east along with Antioch, but it would have been interesting to see how Seleukeia would have developed if it hadn't been burned by Trajan let alone the trouble it would receive again from the Romans.

[Maion Maroneios]

And he has Katoikiai built and Very High Tax Rate set. I believe Alexandria in my current campaign has 39,000.

Anyway, I think the game counts able men in warrior age, not all inhabitants, multiplicate it with say four so you got 180,000 inhabitants. Then multiplicate it with your preferred roleplayed multiplicator that you use for armies (very frequently 10) and you have a 1,800,000 metropolis. I'd say your Seleukeia exceeds Rome in the prime of her existence.

I do the same in my campaigns and I've also thought about this numerous times. You see, when you ''bleed dry'' a settlement, meaning you recruit the male population, you get to a point that only a handful remain as a standard. This means that population represents only the battle-ready male population, so in order to get a more realistic number, you would have to count all other inhabitants that are not battle-ready like elderly people, youngsters and women. Especially the latter would be at least 3 times more than the men. Then multiply with your preferred multiplier (best would be 10) and you get a more realistic number.

Let's do an example just for fun. Say you have a settlement with 1.500 RTW inhabitants. There would be at least 1.000 men who cannot fight due to health problems or age, 3.000 women and 2.000 children. If we say T is the real total population, then we would have: T=(1.500+1.000+3.000+2.000)*10<=>T=7.500*10<=>T=75.000 total inhabitants. If this number seems too much, then you could multiply with a smaller number, like 5 or something.

Maion

[Ibn-Khaldun]

Have you forgot the slaves that lived in those cities? Also, this thing here will not work with the 'barbarians'. Having a barbarian town with population of 2000 would mean that there would be about 100.000 people living there in real life!(200*5*10=100.000) As far as I know, no barbarian town in those times had so many people. I could be wrong though.

[SwissBarbar]

yeah, but EB is about making your own barbarian town, everything is possible ;-)

[The Persian Cataphract]

Generally, there four cities that immediately come to mind with an ability to hold a massive population: Carthage, Roma, Alexandreia, and Seleukeia. Congrats to Maion. I would be interested to see what would happen if he were to lower the tax rate, but funds could become an issue.

For those of you who are curious, Alexandreia and Seleukeia were rated as truly world-class cities due to their size and magnificence with Antioch managing to eek its way into the same category (at least that is the impression I have due to Strabo's writings). Naturally, Alexandreia became an incredibly important city in the east along with Antioch, but it would have been interesting to see how Seleukeia would have developed if it hadn't been burned by Trajan let alone the trouble it would receive again from the Romans.

By this time, Seleucia was largely merged with the city of Opis, at this time known as Ctesiphon; we have to take this with a pinch of salt and count it as hyperbole. Septimius Severus came to Ctesiphon, and allegedly took no less than 100,000 prisoners and sacked the royal palace, bringing enough loot to stall an upcoming economical crisis for several decades. It does simply not ring compatible with the remarkable rebounding of Seleucia-Ctesiphon during the Partho-Sassanian era; we hear of similar accounts of Sassanian King of Kings Shâpûr I sacking Antioch, deporting its populace to a newly constructed city known as Shâpûr Vêh-Antiâkh, which translates pompously into "Shapur's superior Antioch". There were many sieges of Antioch to come. There is some disagreement; Avidius Cassius is believed to have brought the city into final decline by 163 CE.

However in any case, Seleucia, just like its later geographical sibling, Ctesiphon, easily reached population caps well over the hundred thousands. 600,000 individuals at one time in Seleucia, is a commonly cited figure (Which I must verify one day if time should allow me, as it seems dubious and wrongly attributed whereas Alexandria would seem more apt), while Ctesiphon at 361 CE was peaking at 250,000 individuals, and later 622 CE at 500,000 individuals, at the time the de facto most populous metropolitan area in the world. Constantinople at the time amounted to around 400,000. From verified figures, Seleucia on the Tigris seems to have consistently remained at 150,000 - 250,000 and fluctuate around 200,000. Through Ctesiphon, we have a clue of the capacity of Mesene/Meishân as a population-centre.

[Centurio Nixalsverdrus]

Ibn-Khaldun made a good point. The early Germanic people for example didn't build any cities at all, they lived around the countryside in small rural communities with no more than 200 (real life) inhabitants. Contrary to many of the Celtic people, whose oppida were quite populous iirc. Gaul seemed to have been a densely populated area at least in Caesar's time.

Also, from a gameplay perspective, it makes no sense to have an empire plastered with metropolitan areas in every backwater province. E. g. I currently have Singidunum built up to 15,000 inhabitants, which would mean, after my own calculation, 600,000 inhabitants, or 750,000 after Maion's. That's not feasible. Nomadic settlements even are something completely different.

In my opinion, we have to take the surrounding province into account. The provinces in EB differ greatly in population density and territorial size. For example

• Mytilene: the island of Lesbos with its chief polis. I daresay that 75% of the province's populace live in the city.
• Roma: I guess 50% of the populace could be surely housed in the city itself.
• Susa: extremely difficult, I think that not more than 10% would be living in the capital.
• Swebotraustastamnoz: not more than 1% due to the society's nature.

Second, there must be a progression from a small vicus to metropolis affecting the relation of people dwelling the province to people living in its capital. Is the chief settlement very small, would it be 1/1000 of the province populace. On a middle scale, it could be 1/20 to 1/10. On a metropolitan size, it would be 1/10 (Susa, Ekbatana, Seleukeia, etc.) to 8/10 (Lesbos, Rhodos, etc.). Of course this way the settlement populace size would vice versa affect the province populace size.

Also, determining the proportion of war-able men in a populace is not so easy, in my opinion it differs also from culture to culture. The only constant for every settlement is the women, who generally don't count. Children, ill and old men may make up 30% (Germans) to 60% (Greeks). Slaves are in almost (?) all societies denied the warrior status. But how big is the slaves' proportion in your settlement? Here we would have to take into account your preceding policy! How many slaves did you take in "history"? Were they taken as loot by your troops ("Enslave" option) or displaced and distributed over your empire? Historically, imperial Rome saw a lot more slaves than actual citizens. But that was rather an exception, of course. Perhaps determining the slaves as 1/3 of the populace would make sense in most cases.

So my capital Pella, despite of many recruitment waves, has some 27,000 able men thanks to my generous tax policy:

27,000 / 40 x 100 = 67,500 free male inhabitants (60% unable)
67,500 x 2 = 135,000 free Greeks (50% female)
135,000 / 2 x 3 = 202,500 inhabitants in-game (33% slaves)
202,500 x 10 = 2,025,000 inhabitants in the province of Makedonia (roleplay factor)
2,025,000 / 100 x 30 = 607,500 inhabitants of the City of Pella (30% assumed capital-proportion for Makedonia on metropolis-level)

Alexandria-on-the-Neilous (39,000): 877,500 with the same assumed parameters (2,925,000 in the Nile-Delta).

Singidunum (15,000): Hellenized Celts, that might make for 40% unable men. It's a large city in a fairly wide area, so I let the capital-proportion be 5%. 1,125,000 people in whole Scorcouw, and in the capital itself 56,250.

[desert]

But remember, the cities you see in EB are NOT the only cities in the province. In places like Baktria or the provinces of Greece, there would be hundreds of cities. So how is that calculated? In the province of Latium in EB, there must have been like 10 other really populous and important cities, for example.

[Lysimachos]

But remember, the cities you see in EB are NOT the only cities in the province. In places like Baktria or the provinces of Greece, there would be hundreds of cities. So how is that calculated? In the province of Latium in EB, there must have been like 10 other really populous and important cities, for example.

I guess that is what he is using the different capital-province-proportion values for. In some provinces the capital is dominating the whole region, while in others it is just one city among others.

Btw, good post, Centurio

[desert]

Yeah, but see, a lot of that is based on incredibly subjective data or unknown variables. There might be as much as a 50% +/- difference from Centurio's calculations for Pella depending on how you interpret some of the variables.

[gamegeek2]

Wouldn't the female populations of cities outnumber the male population because some guys would be in the army? Of course, some of these guys would be married to some women in the city, but others might not be. Anyways, some of those guys would be killed, and so the female population would outnumber the male population. This would help account for the "extra" women who would be mistresses, etc.