Your'e wrong. I've already tested it. The number of slaves exported remains fixed regardless of the number of cities to which you are exporting. Under your explanation, the number "lost" would decrease as you exported to more cities. For ex:

I conquer city of 2k. Game tells me 1k are being enslaved.

If I have one governed city, it gets a boost of 500.
If I have two, they both get a boost of 250 (rounding down).

In both scenarios the conquered city has pop 1k remaining.

Moreover, if you check the conquered cities population before and after, there is always a 50% drop -- which exactly reflects the number of slaves the game SAYS are being exported.

1/4 of a city's populatoin, in other words, disappears into thin air. Another 1/4 is enslaved in governed provinces. 1/2 of the populatoin remains. Whether this is bug or feature, I cannot say. THe in-game feedback, however, is clearly bugged.

You're also wrong about taxation. There's absolutely no lag at all. The turn you change taxation will have growth affected accordingly. Test this for yourself.

Finally public health buildings are probably the worst pop growth devices. In addition to providing no income, they have a trade building pre-req -- and it defeats the purpose of exponential growht when you have to wait so long for each upgrade. Public heatlh blds do provide a 5% order bonus/level. But you should be building these in the early game (pop growth is not nearly as valuable in the mid-to-late game). And in the early game, order is not as important and in any event is easily (and more cost effectively) achieved by garrisoning peasants.

Please do not post information so definitively when it is based on pure speculation. If you think there is an alternative explanation for the phenomenon i describe, just say so. Saying things definitively will simply confuse and mislead people.

Quote Originally Posted by oaty
ALL CITIES with a GENERAL recieves slaves. So that city you just conquered, half those people go back into that city and the other half go to Carthage. I almost never enslave as all it really is doing is shoving the problem off elsewhere.

If you want population growth public health buildings will really help to increase this.

Also it seems there is a lag effect, when it comes to population and taxes.