How go use Population Cheat?

**Siris** · 11-04-2004, 04:21

Just curious, I've tried to use it because my war is getting desperate, and I'm running short of men! My cities cannot be advanced because I'm recruiting so many men, and am still hardley able to hold the main front, loseing it actually. One of my cities the population is down to a mere 400 citizens, and it wont even allow me to create anymore units there, just to show you how dire the situation is becoming. Now I've tried to use it to add a few thousand citizens, not many, just enough to continue recruiting to keep up the war effort is all.

How do you get this to work? I know this much.

~ add_population cityname numberofcitizenstoadd

But, it wont ever work! So how do I do it? For example, Sparta (to keep it generic), to add say 1,000 citizens to it, do I enter the name of Sparta for city name? Or the land name from the map that came with the game? Just tell me how to get it to work!!! I need more men!

**Oaty** · 11-04-2004, 05:02

Well do'nt know how to use the cheat but heres a few tips.

Enslave all conquered lands, you do'nt lose any of the population as it only gets redistributed.

I believe for every town you have enslaved gets a .5 percent population boost. Along with that boost every town it trades with gets that .5 percent boost. So if you have 5 enslaved towns all slave tradingtowns gets a 2.5 percent boost. I have gotten over 5 percent at one time.

I always do this in barbarian lands to get more population there quicker.

Another tip is from the start of the game do not recruit from certain cities so that it grows to a point where you can constantly recruit without a population loss. At least work on 1 city at a time. When 1 gets to that point leave another alone. eventually you wo'nt have to worry about not having enough and it will cometo a point where you want a fox to come in and kill the rabbits

**lars573** · 11-04-2004, 05:10

Like this,

add_population Sparta 1000

you have to have the _ underscore or it won't work. I don't know if the city name needs to be capitalized but I always do it. Alsoput space between the cheat command the city name and the pop number just to be safe. For a city with a 2 word name like Campus Sakae it needs to be worded Campus_Sakae. Once you use the cheat you need to quit back to desktop, remember to save or it will be for nothing. Some cities are named differently by the games inner workings than what is displayed on the front end. Halicarnasus is called something different by the game inner workings so unless you find out what that is (it's probably a shorter more recent name for the same city) you can't ever get a cheat to work for it.

**Vlad Tzepes** · 11-04-2004, 11:53

How do you get this to work? I know this much.

~ add_population cityname numberofcitizenstoadd

...or you could simply pretend you've won the game and use your time for something else.

**katar** · 11-04-2004, 13:42

add_population Sparta 1000

you can only add a maximum of 4000 people to your population, even if you typed in 50000 you would only get a 4000 increase.

a nice wee bonus is that if you type in a NEGATIVE number eg -4000 it will REDUCE your population by that amount.

...or you could simply pretend you've won the game and better use your time.

sure....

**Siris** · 11-04-2004, 15:33

Alrighty, so I have to exit the game & re-enter to see the added population? I'm not going to use this in excess, just enough to gain more men to recruit into my army! I have like, 6 factions vs. me, mainily the Romans doing the brut force.

**lars573** · 11-04-2004, 17:20

Originally Posted by Siris

Alrighty, so I have to exit the game & re-enter to see the added population? I'm not going to use this in excess, just enough to gain more men to recruit into my army! I have like, 6 factions vs. me, mainily the Romans doing the brut force.

Not quite to see the new population just select another city then come back to the one you cheat on it will be there. The whole back to desktop thing is if you mess up entering the cheat, to get it to work again you need to save and quit to desktop and re-start the game. I'm fairly certain CA did it this wayto prevent rampant cheat, but it didn't discourage me I always cheat LANSP if I have half a chance.

**Spartiate** · 11-04-2004, 22:09

A good way to cheat WITHOUT it really being too much of a cheat is this.
1.Make sure the city you want to add population to has a governor.
2.Temporarily move all other governors to the square just out-side their cities.
This means that you only have 1 city with a governor.
3.Select a crap city you have with excess population.
4.Press the ~ key and type in the population cheat with a massive negative value i.e add_population Byzantium -25000.
This will still leave 400 people in the city by the way even if its pop was only 10,000.The GOOD NEWS is that the population will get sent to the 1 city you still have a governor in or if you had several cities still with governors it will be divided among them.Now move your other Governors back into their cities.

I like this way of using the cheat as it doesn't feel like i am cheating as such.I am just redistributing my population.

Have fun.

**hoof** · 11-05-2004, 01:04

Let me guess ... you're playing on huge unit sizes?

The game is balanced for a certain unit size. Unfortunately, the game does not scale with the larger unit sizes, so the larger unit sizes result in a higher drain on population levels. This inevitably means that on Huge unit sizes, factions that don't have "grow like weeds" cities usually end up with low population cities, struggling to field armies, and stagnent tech growth.

Since I have a high end machine, I played my first "real" campaign with huge unit sizes. After that was done, I tried the "large" unit sizes and had a completely different experience. All of a sudden the higher-tech units were reachable, without massive management headaches. I really wish this gets addressed with the patch.

**Siris** · 11-05-2004, 02:44

Yea, my population is drained from most cities horribly, because I must keep up the recruiting to the army, or I'll be overrun by the Romans! Thus, I cannot upgrade my cities, and thus, their units are only getting stronger, while mine stay the same and less in numbers!

My Capital has two names, Sparta & Laconia Sparta is the name of the city itself, while Laconia is the name of the country that it spans in its general area. So when adding the name of the place I want to add the population, useing this city for example (even though its not the one I want to add some citizens too), would I enter add_population Sparta 4000 or would I enterd add_population Laconia 4000 ?

And does it have to be capitalized? Or all lower case? I've tried it and it didnt work over & over, so just need to know!

**TheDuck** · 11-05-2004, 04:18

Originally Posted by Siris

Yea, my population is drained from most cities horribly, because I must keep up the recruiting to the army, or I'll be overrun by the Romans! Thus, I cannot upgrade my cities, and thus, their units are only getting stronger, while mine stay the same and less in numbers!

My Capital has two names, Sparta & Laconia Sparta is the name of the city itself, while Laconia is the name of the country that it spans in its general area. So when adding the name of the place I want to add the population, useing this city for example (even though its not the one I want to add some citizens too), would I enter add_population Sparta 4000 or would I enterd add_population Laconia 4000 ?

And does it have to be capitalized? Or all lower case? I've tried it and it didnt work over & over, so just need to know!

Just a comment here.. but if you are being buried by Romans and having trouble recruiting.. why aren't they having the same trouble? I think I smell an AI cheat (not that I mind.. it needs all the help it can get).

just a thought...

**Siris** · 11-05-2004, 04:24

Yea, that's a possibility, but then there is still three Roman factions that are attacking me at once, mainly Scipii & Bruti. Man thank someone for the Juli not sending their armies against me, I'd be overwhelmed; shoot, I already am!

**vodkafire** · 11-05-2004, 18:48

Ok, you can only use the cheats ONCE per game per cheat, so if you misspell or something, you have to save, quit the game to desktop, and reload. you must type add_population Sparta(CASE SENSITIVE) numberofpeople. If you forgot to capitalize or otherwise misspell the city name, you will see "settlement not found". If you have already used it once, you will see "error: command not found(or something)". Then you have to quit and reload to use the cheat again.

**Siris** · 11-05-2004, 19:56

Alright, I'll try it out as soon as I get to my G-Parents tonight and load up the game. Also I get to tryout the looking upon the city thing, and seeing my citizens walking around doing their daily lives! And then I get to send forth the 4,000 men I have next to Bruti's Capital & sacqu it.