Population ideas

[Oaty]

Right now it's too easy to grow a city in size and then have an unlimited pool to recruit from.

An idea I thought of is you can recruit up to ~10 percent of a cities population in a given ~20 turn cycle.

So if you have a huge city with 24,000 people in it. You can only recruit 2400 men from that city within the next 20 turns. (10 game years) This way you can have a true war of attrition. The percentage should also be adjusted to what unit size you are using. Since I play on huge unit size my references are to huge unit sizes.

Also exterminating a city (24,000 population) now has more dire consequences. So instead of having 2400 recruitable men from that city you reduced your recruiting power or possibly the enemies if you so desire down to only 600 men.

Also make it much harder to grow a city/town up in size. You know, just a little magic and Nepte or Dumatha is a large city. Wich is a bit rediculous. And how the A.I. Selucids made Dumatha a huge city is beyond me but I have a screenshot if anyone's interested, not that I suspect any A.I cheating or anything.

Make farm upgrades much more expensive but much more needed in important cities. So going back to some old mechanics a 20 percent increase of base farming level but ontop of that the better the farming the better increase in pop growth. So a Nile city might see a big fat 1.5 percent increase in growth from 1 upgrade a poor farming province only get's half a percent wich makes that farm upgrade that much less valuable.

[Kraxis]

Given how I managed to drain the Iberians, Gauls and Germans in a single game I do not feel it is too bad.

While I agree something needs to be done Ithink your ideas are simply too good for us. We tend to win out battles, or at least inflict serious losses. So the less population the AI can draw on the more we will see factions that run out of steam fighting us for a relatively short period of time.

[Quietus]

Although the population boom in RTW is unrealistic (spawning like rabbits), there are other factors that matter more:

1) Cheap Units.
2) Cheap Upkeep.
3) Cheap Buildings.
4) Short Building time.
and last but not the least,
5) Easy to build economy.

Even with a large pool if it is financially prohibitive then it balances out.

[sapi]

I think that your unit recruitment shouldn't be allowed to surpass the population growth rate over a 10 (or whatever) year period - if there were 10 000 people in a city with a 1% growth rate, you could only recruit 1000 people every 10 years, and if you did them in the first turn

[boastj]

Have different type of population like
Nobles
Knights
Craftsmen
Farmers
Peasants

And you can only recruit units by what type they are in.
Also when exterminating a population you can chose who

[iraklaras]

its a good idea guys to recruit only 10percent .so its more realistic

[A.Saturnus]

I think that your unit recruitment shouldn't be allowed to surpass the population growth rate over a 10 (or whatever) year period - if there were 10 000 people in a city with a 1% growth rate, you could only recruit 1000 people every 10 years, and if you did them in the first turn

The question of how many people you should be able to recruit realistically within 10 years is irrelevant because
there are no years.

[Mooks]

I still dont understand why there are no years...

[IrishArmenian]

Have different type of population like
Nobles
Knights
Craftsmen
Farmers
Peasants

And you can only recruit units by what type they are in.
Also when exterminating a population you can chose who

I like this idea much more. It adds a class aspect that was always present at this time.

[x-dANGEr]

I like this idea much more. It adds a class aspect that was always present at this time.

And makes the game's recruiting system like HoM&M..

[ByzantineKnight]

Have different type of population like
Nobles
Knights
Craftsmen
Farmers
Peasants

Great Idea

[Furious Mental]

Just an observation on population- I noticed in the video with the programmer giving an overview of the game that trade now adds to population growth.

[r johnson]

It would be great and far more realistic to limit troops to the size of the country/city. Also you could have maybe more peasants than knights, out of 2400 maybe 1500 peasants + 900 knights/men at arms

[Riadach]

What about augmenting the race of the population. Was there a way in RTW that when you conquered a settlement of one ethnic origin, which became disloyal because of ethnic strife, that you could add colonists of your own ethnicity who would be more loyal? I know you could move peasants around, but not sure if that changed ethnicity. If not, could such be added to mtw2?You should even have multiple ethnicities in provinces, perhaps certain provinces such as flanders would provide colonists who were better at drainage etc, thus having flemish colonists improves drainage and irrigation. Certain colonists provide better or hardier soldiers. This may be getting a bit racist now or non-pc but thats the way the medieval world operated. The addition of colonists from certain provinces could allow the training of new units in the provinces they're moved too. This could also allow for the introduction of jews in the game as mentioned in another post. All colonists need to be appeased by making sure there are facilities (churches mosques synagogues temples) which reinforce their culture in each province. The abscence of such would lead to ethnic strife. and too much ethnic strife could lead to expulsion or worse?

[poo_for_brains]

It would be great and far more realistic to limit troops to the size of the country/city. Also you could have maybe more peasants than knights, out of 2400 maybe 1500 peasants + 900 knights/men at arms

That's kind of what they are doing: if you listen to the 6th twcenter.com podcast they talk about it. Each city has a recruitment pool of how many men can be trained at a given time.

Far more men at any time can be trained to be peasant soldiers, than can be trained to be royal knights, and so in one turn you can recruit several units of peasants, but mabye only a couple of royal knght units

Over time, the pools replenish themselves, but if you recruit lots of royal knights one year, you may have to wait a couple of turns until there are enough suitable horsemen for you to recruit them again.

The size of the pools depends on the size of your settlement.
(And I would guess that the replenish rate would be tied to the population growth rate)

[Oaty]

damiekpe ^^

Sounds like good news

Anyways sounds great that they have improved the way you can recruit.... oh wait from a military point of view that hurts

Also just another idea to throw in there is perhaps units recruitment time could be related to city size so small cities/towns take 3 or 4 turns, while large cities can pump out the same unit in 1 turn