Does negative growth work?

[CIaagent11]

I have come across a few mods that have buildings that give a negative population growth.
For example Roma Surrectum and Imperium Julianorum.
That looks like this in export_descr_buildings:

population_growth_bonus bonus -1

The only problem is, that I think negative growth does not have any effect in the game.
Negative health and negative law/happiness is possible,
but the negative growth bonus just doesn't "show up" in the game.
That throws balancing completely out of whack.
(Because cities grow more than intended. Like in RS.)

Has this been discussed? I could not find anything about it?
How to mod it out?

Sorry to repost, but in the RTW-main-forum they told me to go here.

[Arthum]

Asked myself the same thing, found the answer here:

Negative effects...

population_growth_bonus bonus -5 displayed the expected -2.5 in the building scroll but seemed not to affect the settlement population growth indicator on the settlement scroll. The same seems true for law_bonus and happiness_bonus. Religious_belief , however, does seem to work in the negative (this needs more testing). The general principle in actual terms is that a negative will only deduct from a positive; so a settlement with 15% law will drop to 0% law when a negative bonus of -20% is applied and not -5%.

http://forums.totalwar.org/vb/forumdisplay.php?f=77

[Pompeius Magnus]

this negative growth bonus has the effect that the population is decreasing. This was discussed long time ago by me an Ramon. The problem is that the population was drastically decreasing in the latter periode of the late antique.

Before Ramon corrected the strong increasing (of the population) the situation in the western half of the empire was totally a-historic. Nearly 2/3 of all cities were in danger of uprisings.
Beside the uprisings of Brigands/Bagaudes the empire was calm at all times.
The problems were so called "ursupers" or had a religious background also several other reasons, however, the people were notangry because a triumph gate(bow) or a victory column or a bigger church was missing in their settlement.

This procedure has 2 advantages:
The population is decreasing, you can't build dozens of new armies (if you do the cities are empty, nobody is living there any more) and the empire has less problems with uprising. And, by the way, the game is more playable.
Before we had the situation that an uprising occurs, and some turns later there was an loyalist revolt and the city is agin yours. Anyway: several buildings damaged, still no money, and the population of that city was again angry one turn later = again an uprising. This happened with at least 12 cities in the west and that has nothing to do with a fair gameplay.

[CIaagent11]

Like you said, Arthum. Negative effects will only work if there is something to deduct them from.
I found that to be true with health, law and happiness.

I just found negative population growth to not have anything to deduct itself from.
So the intended effect in the file is shown in the buildings scroll,
but will not translate into lesser settlement population growth.

Pompeius Magnus, I totally agree that the negative growth should be in the game.
I just wonder if it really is.
Which effect does negative population growth deduct itself from?
I'm sorry if I am missing your point. But I have never had a decrease
in a settlements growth after building a building that gives negative growth.

[Pompeius Magnus]

are you sure?
because when I take the cities of Rome or Carthago or Mediolanum the population is decreasing drastically very quick.
But I will check if it is an event of a missing towncenter-level X (or other core buildings) or if it made by the growth bonus.
Interesting point and we have to check that.

[beatoangelico]

I just found negative population growth to not have anything to deduct itself from.
So the intended effect in the file is shown in the buildings scroll,
but will not translate into lesser settlement population growth.

this is almost correct: in IBFD there's only 1 building that provides a "population growth bonus" (a temple for moors, berbers and slavs), so the effect of these negative growth buildings is basically none, at the moment.
The population of the biggest cities descreases just because the RTW engine does not "support" those huge population, unless you add some really big bonus.
In other words, the whole population thing doen't work at all and should be revised sooner or later.

[CIaagent11]

are you sure?
because when I take the cities of Rome or Carthago or Mediolanum the population is decreasing drastically very quick.

I am pretty shure that the negative growth effect does not work.
I came across that in Roma Surrectum. RS has a lot of buildings with negative population growth.
But all cities grow like crazy.
When I exchanged the negative growth in export_descr_buildings with negative health and
the same amount of law bonus, cities had a more normal growth.
This is how, I think, the developers intended to balance the game.
Unfortunately the one side of this balancing act does not "show up", (the negative growth) so growth is too high.

In IJ there are not many buildings that have a negative growth.
So it's not that big a deal. But I love IJ so much, I want to play it exactly as the developers intended it,
and not have some misunderstanding of hardcoded effects mess up the balancing of growth rates.
(I don't think there are any negative effects in vanilla at all.)

Edit: Is my attempt of modding this correct?
I exchanged all the negative growth with negative health and positive law or happiness.
Negative health should have the effect of both less population growth and less public order.
So the extra public order is to make up for that.
That way it should have the same effect as negative population growth.
Of cause that only works in cities where there is health left.

Maybe I should change all effects that give growth (like farm upgrades) to health (plus negative public order)
that way there is more health.

[beatoangelico]

I am pretty shure that the negative growth effect does not work.

it works, in a limited way: read again Arthum's post. If it does not have an effect in IJ/IBFD, it's because there's only 1 building that increases population growth (i.e., that in the "settlement details" panels show up as "buildings"). In EB, where these buildings are much more common, the whole thing works good (but always deducting from a positive value).

[CIaagent11]

beatoangelico, I think you're not getting me.
My whole point was that the negative growth effect will not
translate into lesser growth in the game, because negative effects
only work if they can be deducted from a positive, and there is no positive.

So the effect the modders put in the file, is not the effect you get in the game.
Read my last post, I think I put it very nicely there.

I wonder if that is something the modders knew when developing IJ.
That would mean that the netative growth not has the intention of reducing growth.

[beatoangelico]

beatoangelico, I think you're not getting me.
My whole point was that the negative growth effect will not
translate into lesser growth in the game, because negative effects
only work if they can be deducted from a positive, and there is no positive.

So the effect the modders put in the file, is not the effect you get in the game.
Read my last post, I think I put it very nicely there.

I wonder if that is something the modders knew when developing IJ.
That would mean that the netative growth not has the intention of reducing growth.

the fact that negatives only deduct from positives is well known, but it doesn't matter concerning IJ or IBFD, since it's the whole system that works badly.

[CIaagent11]

the fact that negatives only deduct from positives is well known, but it doesn't matter concerning IJ or IBFD, since it's the whole system that works badly.

Good to know that this is well known.
What about IJ, why does its whole system work badly?

Edit: The IJ modders did know that the negative effect woudn't have an effect
and still put it into the file?
Why bother with that?