Where is the most important resource?

[The Almohad]

What I'm talking about o course is.....population. This bugs the heck out of me in Shogun 2 as well.....why is there no population model? PEOPLE are the most important resource of any empire, I loved numerically seeing my cities grow and I loved the nuance it allowed for, depopulating a city through raising an army or sacking had economic consequences from shrinking your tax base, it was a wonderful and realistic balancing factor. I loved taking extra people and forcibly relocating them to cities that needed a boost. I loved getting agents sick with the plague and systematically spreading it around the world and watching each turn as tens of thousands were killed off by my plots. It was a tedious thing maybe to some, and outright broken if you were playing as or against Egypt (all the damn stack spawns and rebellions *shivers*) but it was a desirable and necessary part of the games that I guess stopped after ETW, I dont know about Napoleon as I never played it. Does this bother anyone else as much as it bothers me? im not trying to turn this into a whole complaint thread theres enough of those. Would there be any feasible way a mod could be made to incorporate a population model? The current growth model feels far too Civilizations-esque. And while I get it they are trying to pry away Civ fans towards this series (the only explanation that makes sense for some of these campaign map changes).......it still sucks. If it can be done in Rome 1 its doable now right?

[Dreagon]

Population is in there, at the top left of the build menu. The whole population surplus thing.

[The Almohad]

Population is in there, at the top left of the build menu. The whole population surplus thing.

My bad for not being more clear, I'm aware of whats already there, there is a growth model, but the result is an arbitrary single digit number kinda like the number of available workers in civilizations or something thats only tied to construction when in reality and in previous TW games it affected both construction AND recruitment AND taxes AND public order. What I meant was like in RTW or Med 2 you could see that London had 17,963 people in it, when you recruited a unit of 100 men it went down by 100, maybe your growth rate went up or down related to the change in food being consumed. When cities got over 20,000 and started getting overcrowded you could recruit a bunch of peasants and disband them in another town, relocating them. In the early game it especially played a role when you've got like 3 or 4 cities with a total population of like 12-15 thousand. A big loss could depopulate your fledgling empire and hurt you economically for years, granted your upkeep went down to mitigate it but you couldnt build back up as fast without putting a big strain on your economy. It just felt so much less gamey the old way. I feel like underneath somewhere theres something like a more real population that must help determine the town wealth or something, but I wish I could see it and I wish recruitment were tied to it. Like what Diamat said.

[Diamat]

I agree. The campaign would be so much more interesting if you would have to balance food, population, unhappiness, recruitment, and taxes (e.g., more pop = more taxes = less food = less happiness = more sources of recruitment)

[Kenios]

I remember waiting dozens of turns in Medieval 2 for a village to get up to 2,000 people, just so I can start a proper town. What a dumb system.

[AuroN2]

SIF
It was the most immershive shystem in the histores of totals war!
Though, i do wish that they brought it back even if it had no real function. s the immersion in the butthole.