0.7 Population Growth feedback

[Lusted]

Please post any feedback on population growth in 0.7 here.

[miki]

In my current Roman campaing, 480 AUC, I see that roman cities grow slower than with 5.1. I like it because it makes for less full stacks and more decisive battles.

[miki]

In my roman campaign, its 511 UAC, and Tarentum has reached 24000 people. I don't know if this is the anticipated date, but can be caused by my gaming style: Tarentum has been the first city conquered by Rome, in the very first few turns of the campaign (as Epirus is now very agresive, compared to 5.1) and I have built scarcely troops there, as I treated it as a naval base (Neptune temple line and the like).

On the other hand Rome (capital) has reached 18000 people now...

[miki]

Roman population grows too much quickly (as usual). Perhaps its the Marian reforms happening just when you can recruit triarii...

Macedonians, populations grows a bit slower than Romans, but I think the pace is better.

Gaul grows extremely slow, at least in France. You're in trouble if you don't blitz south against the romans soon in the game. Mediolanum and Patavium seems to have higher grow values, but as you build there a lot of units to fight Rome. OTOH, it helps a lot being surrounded by strong rebel cities & stacks, as Iberia, Germans and Brittons shows later when some cities have reached 6-8000 people and you can build 2 stacks to defend-expand both in the north and south. Dark side of that is that you need at least swordmen with some upgrades to take those rebel stacks/cities...

Oh, and I tried a few turns playing the germans too. They're at great dissavantage (spell?) because of their super-slow population grow rates. It happened too in 5.1.

IMHO Rome grow rate must be tonned down a bit and German and Gaul need a boost.

[Mithradates]

In my games as Rome I hate Patavium and such cities with grater than average base population grow, it is useful early for the gauls to build up properly but later after I conquer it becomes a pain because of the constant overpopulation issue.

Just an idea, a special pre-build population grow temple for the barbarians with rather big default pop grow bonus in some of the gameplay wise chosen barbarian towns (like the Gaul and German capital) which the barbarians could not build in the game, they just have it from the start and benefit from it, this gives an easy tool to control their pop grow without tinkering with the base values.
This let them tech up but later when the player conquer the city he can destroy the temple and the city will not overpopulate.