Quote Originally Posted by therother

Lack of food = squalor? I disagree. You can have all the food in the world, but if you've not got the infrastructure to handle the population - not enough houses, water, refuse collection, etc., then you are going to be living in a mess. Humans, like all animals, are messy people; have a room full of them, especially if they are well fed, and watch the waste. The only difference is that animals tend to live in better equilibrium with their surroundings than humans.
Nah, I don't see it as fanboyism at all, just fair discussion. Your analysis has been very helpful. I like the feature, and I want it to get progressively harder to combat squalor with population, but I would like to see buildings have some positive impact on actually controlling it...rather than not building things being the answer. That certainly seems a bit odd.

I see the squalor stat as being more comprehensive, including issues such as nutrition/starvation related happiness factors. Perhaps that is wrong since it is not part of the rigid definition. Lack of food pretty much ensures squalor doesn't it? People will be picking through trash, looking for food, and generally doing destructive things (in the long term) to survive the short term. It certainly has negative public health effects. Revolution often starts with the folks who are not getting enough to eat. The squalor stat implies some of this.

Primitive ag with a large population generally leads to destructive stripping of the land (like devastation in the game.) Topsoil is lost, land becomes infertile, and productivity plummets. Food costs will skyrocket, farmers in the region will suffer, and nobody is happy. The starving rural poor will eventually migrate to the city since they can't subsist, thereby increasing squalor rapidly.