Empirically, I can say that Epirus spent decades with a total civilian population of 800-1200 (two cities hovering between 400 and 600 people each) in my game. Meanwhile several large stacks (mostly slingers, as I noted in another thread some weeks back) just stood around nearby. EB replacing population does help explain why the city population shot up so dramatically later on, I assume when Epirus reached the point where their economy couldn't support any more troops. Going from 400 to 10000 should take quite a while by normal rules...

Do the rebels get this population replacement help? A lot of those provinces have also had enormous garrisons protecting ~500 pop. cities. Maybe Messina and various Alpine provinces are supposed to be tiny, I don't know...

Starforge - I thought I read something on these forums to the effect that population dumps like that are frowned on in EB. Not appropriate to the period, etc. If they wanted us to do that, they'd have given us peasants!