Population Growth

[Matty_P]

i was just wondering...

has anything been done to make the population growth more realistic? RTW did a fairly good job with rapid growth and then the tapering off of growth as cities expanded.

my qualms with the system is that it tends to have cities behave like an algae bloom; such that growth is almost exponential until the 'environment' is no longer sustainable and the population peeks; floundering with almost no growth.

could the pop growth be made slower? or could a new growth be implemented?

am i alone in this issue? if so, pay it no mind.

[Snevets]

I think the growth system is one of the neat things about RTW because it avoids the common game strategy of building lots of growth buildings early on to promote the largest possible city. It's certainly hardcoded though, so there isn't much we can do about it.

[Matty_P]

okay

[justme]

I think the growth system is one of the neat things about RTW because it avoids the common game strategy of building lots of growth buildings early on to promote the largest possible city. It's certainly hardcoded though, so there isn't much we can do about it.

the population issue is probably quite important...
according to my perception, wars in this time frame (esp. when involving warring greek factions) were decided in battles involving rather small armies, i.e. no 50-60,000 men-strong armies strolling about the greek country side like in hellenistic/roman times.

so keeping the population of cities low, one might be able to recreate the rather limited-size armies of those days AND emulate the great impact a possible defeat and annihilation of the city's army would have on its survival (e.g. like when the spartans annihilated the argive army in 494BC)...

There is a way to sort-of control the population growth in a city, by using the idea implemented in "europa barbarorum": all factions (i think) can build a special "colony" building, mirroring the population decrease in cities as their citizens moved to colonies in other lands (e.g. asia minor, italy, sicily, gaul, iberia for greeks).

If scripting were to be used, one could take this a bit further by implementing a one-time effect of such a colony (e.g. you build a "colony" building in Corinth - a very expensive and prolly long to build structure - and at the end you are informed that so many 100s of your citizens have moved - for whatever reason - to some obscure or not so obscure Corinthian colony in Epirus/Illyria/etc. The "building" could never be allowed to materialize in the city, therefore allowing you to build one again).

Of course, the biggest problem would be to see if the AI would ever try to build colonies to reduce an unnaturally high population...

EDIT: "colony" is only one possible population-control building... "europa barbarorum" has other interesting building with an increasing or decreasing impact on city population, alongside other benefits (e.g. population -1, trade +1, etc). as an idea, these buildings are rather neat and "hegemonia" could benefit from something similar if the team so choses...

[apostate]

according to my perception, wars in this time frame (esp. when involving warring greek factions) were decided in battles involving rather small armies, i.e. no 50-60,000 men-strong armies strolling about the greek country side like in hellenistic/roman times.

actually although thats true for mainland greece, its not true for "magna graecia" where certain greek forces are recorded to raise armies of a couple of hunderd thousands

-for "colonies" (or "colonisation" action) we have made some plans, however they arent coded yet
...so more details later when it will be working

[Matty_P]

...hmm, sounds nice.


but does anyone understand my issue with vanilla's pop growth? the part about it not soliciting any consequence to massive troop losses.

[spirit_of_rob]

Yes we know what you mean this is also te reason we wont be using zero turn recruitment as an army been destroyed completly in this time was a major blow and a city would rarely bounce back within 3 months (using a 4 turn per year) as for population growth the mian thing we could do is remove bonuses like one of the temples in vanilla gave a % bonus on pop growth this is one of those things that will need fiddling with i think.

-SoR-

[justme]

actually although thats true for mainland greece, its not true for "magna graecia" where certain greek forces are recorded to raise armies of a couple of hunderd thousands

You're right there. Italian greek armies were indeed recorded to number many thousands of men, many more than what was the norm in mainland Greece...

However, for one, I suspect that the numbers given by the then historians were slightly exaggerated.

I also believe that such numerous forces must have included contingents of various (confederated for the duration of the conflict) greek city states (think Himera: Theron + Gelon armies) plus a healthy number of "allied" locals (sicani in sicily, brutii or lucani in south italy, etc).

the point is that "citizen forces" of any one single city in the ancient world (at least 6th-5th c BC) could not ever reach many-thousands of men strong (certainly not 100-200 thousand), since that would indicate a free citizen population of quite a few millions (both sexes, all ages) in their city territory, plus a healthy number of slaves (usually slaves were more numerous than their masters - though the latter were not normally totally outnumbered like the Spartans were )...

[I seem to remember that an Athenian census in the 4th c BC showed something like 300,000 free citizens, i.e. men of all ages, but that was after the population had recovered from earlier pestilence and wars and at the beginning of the hellenistic times]

[Matty_P]

in response to SoR, i think that would be the simplest way to solve the problem.

i also like your manipulation of turn recruitment.

[Shaggy1973]

I think the growth system is one of the neat things about RTW because it avoids the common game strategy of building lots of growth buildings early on to promote the largest possible city. It's certainly hardcoded though, so there isn't much we can do about it.

Population growth is entirely moddable, if you want slow growth it is easily done.... unless i misunderstood what you thought is hardcoded

[Matty_P]

well, my issue is that in-game, population growth appears to supply the player with an almost limitless sea of potential recruits.

this is often played out in strategy games; that the player can build, build, build, and kill, kill, kill without any effect being rendered.

the problem in this is: that in history, population growth/size was always an advantage of larger states/cities. this would enable the fielding of larger armies. on the converse, smaller cities/states could not compete with large cities/states because they had limited fieldable manpower.

what i want, or mean to suggest, is a method of accurately reporducing the value of life and population.

wether it be a large city that spawns base-skilled troops to crush a small band of well-trained rebels, it might spice things up having the ability to wipe out the opposition.

at the same time, this runs the risk of reducing playability by having the player totally deplete his/her fieldable troop base.

for instance, the massive persian empire was brought to its knees by the greeks. the persians, of superior number and inferior skill were totally slaughtered by the greeks with superior skill and inferior number. the persian's army was annihilated, this ushered in the hellenistic age, whereby the greeks' defeat of the persians' imperial army rendered them impotent.

...it makes for more prudent play.

[justme]

@Matty_P: this is more or less what I suggested in my earlier post, but to make it a little bit more refined and have a population growth per city-state and make it accurately reflect the historical fact of which was a big power and which a small powerless village, I would suggest adding hidden resources to the provinces...

such hidden resources (e.g. something like "fertile-land" resource in Athens or "barren-wasteland" in Epirus) would allow you to build e.g. better farms in city-states that should become great and get better population growth bonuses... and then when squalor and all that kicks in, you get to build colonies and alleviate the problem a bit...

on the contrary, areas with penalty hidden resources can't build those better farms, their population will grow very slowly (if at all), but they can get other types of bonuses for balance's sake (e.g. a mountainous area with "barren-wasteland" would have fewer people but maybe get better quality skirmisher troops via some other building, not possible in fertile flatlands)

...that's my two bits about what could be possible (as I understand it with my limited knowledge of modding), but I suppose the final word is for the modders

[Matty_P]

to me, that seems like a good idea. however, it stands to greatly complicate things for the mod team.

i really don't know if the hegemonia team plans to address this at all. frankly, i came in here and started a rant....hope they are a lenient bunch.