Verdict of BI by a TW Vet.

[player1]

That population growth depends from the extra amount of food produced.
The bigger the extras, the bigger the growth.
If that was true in real world there would never be hunger.

[dismal]

If there's not as much food, the population doesn't grow as fast.

Don't see why that's a big problem.

If you that want something more complicated should try Rome:Total Agriculture.

[screwtype]

If there's not as much food, the population doesn't grow as fast.

Don't see why that's a big problem.

Why should the population growth rate change just because there is a food surplus? A food surplus just means a bigger sustainable population, it doesn't mean a change in the actual rate of growth of the population.

The problem with the model in RTW is that there is *always* a food surplus, no matter what. You begin with a food surplus that enables you to sustain a growing population. And that food surplus remains regardless of how many people you have, or how much you neglect your agriculture, or natural disasters, or warfare and pillage, etc etc.

The problem you're met with in RTW is not one of providing enough food to sustain a growing population, which is how it should be, it's about deliberately neglecting your agriculture so as not to trigger unsustainable growth rates. That's just silly.

If you that want something more complicated should try Rome:Total Agriculture.

I've already tried it . It's called Lord of the Realms II, and it has a far better and more engaging economic model than RTW. But I don't really want a replica of the LOTR II model in RTW. All I want is a model that's challenging and that conforms to common sense.

And BTW, I agree that not everyone would want a more complex economic model. But that's easy to fix - you just give players the choice between simple and complex economic model in Options. Then those who want to manage a realistic economy in order to bash heads can have it, and those who just want to bash heads, period, can also have it.

[Mongoose]

i think i agree with Scretype. The RTW campaign is so bland compared to SMAC or Civ


Though i admit that i haven't played BI. maybe it changed something to make the campaign if not much more complex, more interesting.

[HarunTaiwan]

In RTW, as Screwtype mentions, you sometimes will not supply more food to your people in order to control population growth rates.

That's plain silly and completely ahistorical: in ancient Rome one of the problems was supplying the people of Rome with food, not starving them.

Grain fleets were very important and many political issues were about grain...who controls Sicily, protecting Egyptian grain fleets, etc. They even had elected officials (quaestors) who had to go on foreign grain buying missions.

In RTW, there could have been Senate missions to secure grain, and if you let too many pirates exist, you would run into grain issues.

[Butcher]

I agree, the fact that building farms is counter productive is daft.

[Puzz3D]

I agree, the fact that building farms is counter productive is daft.

It isn't counter productive if you want to increase the population faster. I actually don't care what the game calls it. It's just a trigger to get more people to come to the city. But you are right, the unrest isn't being caused by a lack of food. It's being caused by overcrowding, lack of water, lack of entertainment, lack of organized religion, etc.

[Puzz3D]

That population growth depends from the extra amount of food produced.
The bigger the extras, the bigger the growth.

Maybe extra food draws people from the countryside to live in the city.

[Lord Armbandit]

Actually, i reckon the Civ food system was as simple as it could be without being absurd, which made it very effective given the number of cities you ended up controlling.

One thing to remember about the Civ system was that it allowed the city to grow to the size of the food supply. there is nothing unreasonable about this. Improving your land, or setting up food trades (with caravans) allowed you to grow your population. The population would start to fall if the food supply was inadequate, whether this occured through enemy interference, lack of workforce etc.

The only absurd thing about the system was the size of the granary (food store) so that when food supply ran short it took too many turns for poipulation to start falling.

A similar system could easily work in Total War, which does have a truly bizarre system at the moment. Doesn't stop it being a great game though!

[screwtype]

Actually, i reckon the Civ food system was as simple as it could be without being absurd, which made it very effective given the number of cities you ended up controlling.

I agree. I thought the Civ food system was quite logical, albeit a bit clumsy. It certainly didn't offend common sense the way the RTW system does.

[screwtype]

That population growth depends from the extra amount of food produced. The bigger the extras, the bigger the growth.

But that's exactly how it *does* work in the real world! Modern agricultural techniques have allowed us to sustain a far larger population than at any time in history. But stay tuned, because the world population is now growing at such a rate we may soon discover that Malthus was not wrong, just ahead of his time...

If that was true in real world there would never be hunger.

Hunger occurs in the world today not because of insufficient food, but because of unequal food distribution caused in turn by political factors. There's enough to feed everyone today, it just doesn't always get to the places it's most needed.

[eire1130]

because the world population is now growing at such a rate we may soon discover that Malthus was not wrong, just ahead of his time...

Malthus said Population *Tends* (keyword) to grow geometrically while food supplies grow arithmatically.

He was proven wrong by Henry George in book two of Progress and Poverty. So, if your basing your theory of roman population controls on the "dismal theory" then you need to reasses your hypothosis.

Secondly, most populations will cap at a certain level with only one farm built, sometimes 25K, sometimes 32K, sometimes some other level. It depends on the productivity of the local area. However, if you upgrade they can sustain a higher population. This does not contradict Malthus.

Those farm upgrades do not say that there are no farms out there at all. The Latifundia are large landed estates while the smaller landed estates become dispossed citizens. The farms are still there, just not as efficient as they could be. George also wrote about the Latifundia in his book P&P.

[Trithemius]

Malthus said Population *Tends* (keyword) to grow geometrically while food supplies grow arithmatically.

He was proven wrong by Henry George in book two of Progress and Poverty. So, if your basing your theory of roman population controls on the "dismal theory" then you need to reasses your hypothosis.

Secondly, most populations will cap at a certain level with only one farm built, sometimes 25K, sometimes 32K, sometimes some other level. It depends on the productivity of the local area. However, if you upgrade they can sustain a higher population. This does not contradict Malthus.

Those farm upgrades do not say that there are no farms out there at all. The Latifundia are large landed estates while the smaller landed estates become dispossed citizens. The farms are still there, just not as efficient as they could be. George also wrote about the Latifundia in his book P&P.

It seems to me that the big problem is not with farms, per se, but with the side effects of the results of improved farming: population growth that leads to squalor.

This is actually reasonable, since very few cities of the period could actually sustain a population without major migration, and people tended not to migrate to areas with insufficient food-supply. Disease and emigration rapidly depopulated those urban areas that became less attractive to migrants.

If the farming improvements are taken to represent development of the provincial hinterlands to provide the main centre with a steadier supply of food, thereby encouraging migration from rural and other, less popular, urban areas then I think the farms are quite effective at modelling things. RTW doesn't permit for variable spending on sanitation or urban policing, instead relying on the structures, but there clearly are upper limits to the population of cities of this time period (given sanitation, town planning, and transportation technology). The game just attempts to "model" this in a simple way, so people don't have to commit huge amounts of their budget to maintaining water supply, roads, and sanitation facilities.

Personally, I wouldn't mind a more complex simulator of this sort of thing, but it has been done (or at least attempted) in other games and it would detract from the military experience of Rome Total War. If I was going to nitpick the game, I would quibble about the manner in which troops are recruited; I would not complain that vast masses of humans tend to give rise to diseases and mob-violence.