What is the point of population?

For some reason, the game keeps track of population in your cities, and upgrading a farm will increase the rate at which population grows.

Now, what exactly does population do? It does not seem to increase income, it does not give you additional building plots like it did in E:TW, what, pray tell, is the point of population? Fluff?

it really increases income

Originally Posted by Alsn

For some reason, the game keeps track of population in your cities, and upgrading a farm will increase the rate at which population grows.

Now, what exactly does population do? It does not seem to increase income, it does not give you additional building plots like it did in E:TW, what, pray tell, is the point of population? Fluff?

More population=more people to tax

MUHAHAH

how come french doesn't have 10 times incomes compared to british

Tax rate is by your population.
For instance 33% tax for 100,000 people id gonna be less than 33% tax for 1,000,000 people

Originally Posted by HellFell

it really increases income

How, exactly?

Originally Posted by Grand Duke Vytautas

More population=more people to tax

MUHAHAH

Originally Posted by Dynamo11

Tax rate is by your population.
For instance 33% tax for 100,000 people id gonna be less than 33% tax for 1,000,000 people

See, this is incorrect, tax income is the percentage of your town wealth, farming and industry that you actually get to see. Town wealth in turn, is based entirely on factors that are not population, and so is industry/farming. This has not changed since E:TW.

Originally Posted by Alsn

See, this is incorrect, tax income is the percentage of your town wealth, farming and industry that you actually get to see. Town wealth in turn, is based entirely on factors that are not population, and so is industry/farming. This has not changed since E:TW.

Blimey no wonder I have been going bakrupt, haha

Originally Posted by Dynamo11

Blimey no wonder I have been going bakrupt, haha

Well, it's not entirely obvious until you actually go into a city and look where the income is coming from in detail.

It just seems like the economic system is incomplete, either that or the advisor is really bad at giving advice.

Originally Posted by Alsn

How, exactly?
See, this is incorrect, tax income is the percentage of your town wealth, farming and industry that you actually get to see. Town wealth in turn, is based entirely on factors that are not population, and so is industry/farming. This has not changed since E:TW.

town wealth is partially based on population. That's why Moscow without economy will give you ~1600 income and Drezden with full-fledged economy and farms will give you some 800-900

Originally Posted by HellFell

town wealth is partially based on population. That's why Moscow without economy will give you ~1600 income and Drezden with full-fledged economy and farms will give you some 800-900

Well, even if that is correct(and I'm not sure it is), the growth of town wealth is disconnected entirely from your population growth.

So while you are correct that some cities have a higher "base" town wealth, I don't see any evidence supporting the hypothesis that it would be based on population more than some arbitrary value the developers decided to add.

For support of my argument, just take a look at the "loot" feature. It will basically destroy a region's town wealth down to a ridiculously low amount but the population will still be the same.

Edit: I would like to point out however, that unlike in E:TW, lowering the "lower classes" tax slider does in fact increase growth of town wealth. Or rather, lower class tax has a "tax burden" negative effect on town wealth growth, something that it didn't have in E:TW(only nobility/upper class tax affected it). One could say that population growth is the same as town wealth growth, but the lower class slider explicitly states that it affects lower "town wealth" and "population growth".

That still doesn't give population a purpose however, a region with a population of 500k gets no different bonuses than a region with 30 million.

I still wish recruitment would affect your overall population. So that in a long protracted war, the populations might actually be affected, and even in due course a war of Attrition could actually be won.

Huh, I'll have to take a look at it. It's definitely true that population doesn't really do anything except let you build bigger versions of buildings, but that aspect is apparently gone now, so yeah...what does population do now?

Don't forget that that population determines the size of the garrison required to suppress unrest as well as the relative cost of the town watch. These are big factors on harder difficulties when your budget is stretched thin.

edit: to see this, click on a garrisoned unit and check the happy panel. Flashing pips will show the effect of removing this unit, including the resulting town watch level. It will vary by region based on population. It was the same in Empire (without the handy visual). I used to like to edit the town watch cost per population variable to make ETW economics a bit more challenging. Running a police state in a huge city should be prohibitively expensive. APE:TI employs this, I believe.

edit2: I see that Dogmeat's rather cool Tyrants and Patriots mod for NTW also bumps the town watch cost per pop a bit.

It may effect the new supply system, as in a higher population town has a higher replenish rate

I remember back in RTW your population could be too low to recruit military units (usually after a small territory had been sacked and rescked several times.) One of the things I noticed back then was recruiting a unit actually did take that many people out of the population of the town.

Of course, when you have a city of millions, a 160 man "regiment" doesn't do that much.

Population has no purpose in Napoleon, because it does not have emergent towns, presumably this mechanic was left over from Empire and there was no reason to remove it as it has no effect on gameplay. The only effect it has is as a morbid reminder to the player that people were starving in their thousands during this period as food was diverted to the army or foraged by attacking forces.