Population Growth

[stufer]

Good day to all here.

I've been lurking on these forums since I downloaded the open beta and I haven't seen anything talking about this so I apologise if I've missed a glaringly obvious thread relating to this.

I'm playing as Rome and having a thoroughly good time (best campaign I've yet played with RTW) but just recently my cities are getting way out of control.

They're all rapidly reaching the 24,000 mark and Carthage and Rome are in the 40,000 level and still increasing at a rate of 4.5%.

Are there plans to curb this runaway growth? Personally I think that only a very few cities should be able to reach the huge city level, and find it quite hard to do. The rest should be able to reach the lower level perhaps.

It's just that this mod does so much to add an entirely new level of realism that it seems a shame that I seem to have unlimited population for my armies.

By the way I am in 237 with my campaign and driving the Carthaginians out of Africa. The Punic war has been long and bloody - I've lost thousands of troops, yet you'd never tell from looking at my enormous cities.

When I conquer a settlement I am forced to enslave it or face instant revolt and rebellions there, even with full stack armies in place.

Anyway, I hope this doesn't come across as a gripe. I just wanted to point it out. It may be that you're already aware of this and are adjusting it for the next patch, or maybe you've decided to keep it the way it is.

Cheers.

[pezhetairoi]

I'm thinking of the same thing here too, but it occurs to me that if you slow down the population growth, that would seriously curtail your recruitment since you would depopulate cities very rapidly, assuming you are playing on huge like I am.

Perhaps if we raised the population limit, assuming it's not hardcoded? So instead of 2000/6000/12000/24000, maybe we could have something like 2000/12000/36000/84000? Just a thought. Of course, if it's hardcoded, nothing to be said. *shrug*

[QwertyMIDX]

At some point in the future BFL's will be cut pretty drastically and a farming income script will be added.

[Cozur]

I remember when playing the Roma Mod that bouis made for rtr 5.4.1, that the population would be easily be eradicated in fx roma, because of an instant recruiting system.

[stufer]

Thanks Qwerty, that's encouraging. The farming script sounds quite intriguing too. I was reading on another thread somebody saying that it might make the majority of farming income appear in the autumn turn to represent the harvest. That would be incredible.

Great work chaps - having a lot of fun with this mod.

[QwertyMIDX]

There would be two harvests actually, one in the spring and one in the fall, the fall one would be larger in most places though.

[Kralizec]

The problem is that cutting the population growth is going to hurt the AI a lot. When I conquered Greece and Macedonia their cities were barely populated simply by their own recruitment. 20 years later now they're all thriving cities again, some of them at the highest town level.

[QwertyMIDX]

We can have the script give increased population restoration to AI cities.

[jebes]

I think that the economy gives a pretty good check to army sizes and I don't know that there needs to be another one through population sizes.

[O'ETAIPOS]

The problem is that cutting the population growth is going to hurt the AI a lot. When I conquered Greece and Macedonia their cities were barely populated simply by their own recruitment. 20 years later now they're all thriving cities again, some of them at the highest town level.

on the other hand almost all cities in asia minor had 12000+ so i had to exterminate them in my Mak campain. I hate exterminating cities!!!

[Spendios]

on the other hand almost all cities in asia minor had 12000+ so i had to exterminate them in my Mak campain. I hate exterminating cities!!!

Gah ! I have to exterminate most of the time in my Pontos campaign (I play with Very Hard difficulty) if not the cities always rebel even with a big garrison.

[stufer]

on the other hand almost all cities in asia minor had 12000+ so i had to exterminate them in my Mak campain. I hate exterminating cities!!!

I hate that too. I also don't like to enslave unless it's a barbarian settlement (according to Rome's view of course). Of course enslaving brings its own problems too because the population you've enlaved gets carted off to all the settlments with governors. Since I put the governors into troubled settlements, the problem is quickly amplified.

Other posters on this thread have also stated that in some places the Ai is depleting it's settlements and that is true. Playing as Epeiros recentley I could see how that was possible as I had a real struggle with population in that campaign. Recruiting a unit of Pezhetairoi was a matter of deliberation as I could only recruit them in settlements with low population.

But as soon as I had got them over a certain level, the increase in population became runaway again.

So I think that at low levels, the balance is just about perfect. Maybe there are too many buildings that increase growth. At higher levels the growth spirals out of control.

But, as has already been stated, this issue is being addressed, so all this is nought but piffle. Thanks for all the responses.

[Arman616]

What's so wrong about population growth? It did happen. It's not like the population only represents able-bodied male soldiers. There are old people, women, and children to consider.

Keep it the way it is.

And i never exterminate or enslave the populace as pahlav; it's in my persian blood not to oppress and subjucate the conquered! (despite the clerical regime in power in iran today :()

[jebes]

I think that the real problem is that we can't have armies of 100,000 men or even a million as some nations were able to field. That is where the unrealistic population comes from.

[paullus]

I'm pretty sure the population is just representing the adult able-bodied male population (since you use it to recruit army units). What if you gave some more negative bonus buildings at the higher city levels? I know Carthage has one (thank you for that, I had 6% pop growth with 28000 before that thing got built...still growing like wildfire though). Funny thing is I haven't had a plague yet to clear out some of the surplus population...

How about if upper level markets, rather than a pop bonus, gave a pop decrease, or at least negated the mid-level market bonuses? This would reflect the phenomenon seen in many large cities, where once wealth and size rolled in, the young male population got less interested in traditional values of marriage, farming, etc.

[EdwardL]

Leave it as is. its fine this way.

[the_mango55]

Yeah this seems to be one of the main problems with the game with the larger mediteranian cities. It is the opposite with the northern barbarian towns, most seem to start with less than 1000, and the need to have troops coupled with the need to have taxes high in order to get a little bit of money, it makes getting anything going really tricky. I have been tempted before to take my entire starting army with a barb faction, put them all on a boat, except the family members who I devide among my family. Then I would take them all the way down to the mediteranian and take a tour, capturing and enslaving carthage, then doing the same for Rome, before heading down to Alexandria and trying to take it with the troops I have left.