Quote Originally Posted by Wolfe
Re city growth and population

I don't know whether or not any one has though about this at all but here are my thoughts:

Growth rate should be almost entirely dependent on trade (I know this is possible as Forth Eorlingas has instituted a similar system) rather than farms and health. To do this I would suggest the keeping of the old market building string but totaly removing farms and replacing them with another economic set. As farms are specific for cultures I think that this should be done so that each faction has an iconic industry that represents the goods that they are famous for producing. (for some this could very well be farming but it would not in itself produce a growth bonus (or only perhaps +1% by the highest tier (I love brackets ))). Imho this would far more realistically portray the growth of a city, prosperous cities after all are the ones which flourish whilst poor cities languish and everybody who can still afford to emigrates.

Another weakness of the Rome engine is the ridiculously high growth rates of a city that has just been enslaved/exterminated. Imho this whole idea could be tied in with the above by introducing a goverment system (That would also help with the Aor systems). Goverments would give massive increase in tradeable goods bonuses to counteract a hidden negative resource. When you take a city you then have to spend time and money on building a goverment before the trade will start up again. This system would also eliminate AI problems that goverment mods such as EB have had, namely that the goverments appear to the AI to be huge building times for very little benefit. The effect of this has been that they have had to script a building for the AI whenever it takes a city. Using the system i have suggested this problem would be eliminated due to the AI seeing the goverment as a brilliant economic building and eliminating the problem that the AI can very quickly incorporate a city into its empire whilst the player can't.


P.S. Part 1 (Part 2 and maybe 3 to follow)