Population Question`

[Theonlystd]

Foodstamp said:

I disagree, I don't think it is stupid. I feel like the scales are supposed to reflect the pretender god's influence on the world (Atleast in his/her domain). Just think of a scale set to no growth or death as a population where people have 2 kids per family. This is not terribly uncommon in real life, and it is fairly common for populations nowadays to even have a "death scale" as far as replacing and expanding populations.

Even in the United States we are facing a time period where it is predicted we won't be replacining ourselves in the future (Having more than 1 child per couple).

You mention "natural" and "increase" in the same sentence. In a natural environment, population does not tend to expand, it normally stays the same. What causes a population to increase over time is usually an abnormality from the natural norm, (Predators dying off, weather fluctuations, the invention of agriculture ;P).

Finally, it is important to remember that this is a video game. If it bothers you that not taking a growth scale does not increase your population, start taking atleast growth scale 1. With the new sleeping pretenders, its not that hard to squeeze it in.

The majority of the world even now has a positive growth rate and until the last few decades all countries did

.Its hardly normal

Its not a big deal tho as you said.


A little inherant growth would be nice tho..

[Arralen]

I'm proposing some base pop growth for quite some time - but never got one of the devs actually even comment on it - be it positive or negative.

My suggestion is a pop growth depending on the number of starting pop the province has, which depends on terrain: As the pop number approaches 2x the starting pop, growth diminishes, if the pop drops below the starting pop, growth increases.
Growth scale would accelerate growth, but would not alter the max pop number. Slight death scale would mean stagnant pop around the starting pop number, heavy death scale would mean pop slowly dying off down to several hundreds or maybe 1-2000, where it would stay constant again (unless there's a pop-killing domain, o.c.).

FORMULA:
Code:

---

|2*[starting pop]   |

|---------------- -1|	*(1+[scales])*[growth%]*pop

|    pop 	    |

---

[Meglobob]

How come Earth from a mere couple of 100,000 people, just in 4,000 BC (6,000 yrs ago), has grown to 6,000,000,000+ (6 billion in english money ) if population normally stays the same? Prediction for end of this century is 20 billion, I wonder if every person alive would still fit on the Isle of Wight then?

Nah, makes far more sense, like Nerfix says to have a small natural increase.

[Daynarr]

I think 1%-5% yearly natural population increase would be best and least complicated. If devs think that games don't last long enough to make a difference on population increase then 1% in 1 year will do exactly that - make no difference in shorter games.

However, longer games do happen and may take for 10 years or more. Population that is mostly medieval (2 kids per family are common only in developed modern societies) and unaffected by outside events (pretender dominions, random events, pillage, etc.) would show some notable increase in population.

[DominionsFan]

Hm so population won't grow without + points in the growth scale? I gotta check this out, I guess I've played too much with Ermor, and never noticed this.
I thought that it is logical that the pop is growing without taking any points in the growth scale, also that it is growing faster when we take + points in the growth scale. This is rather odd!


*edit*

Just checked it. Pop just won't grow without +points in the growth scale.

[Agrajag]

IIRC the devs commented on this once.
The gist of the response was "This is a world torn by a devastating war of gods, we want the population of the world to deplete".
EDIT: I did a search and was unable to find any such response, so don't consider what I said as the official dev response. I may have imagined it, or maybe it was someone else. Either way, that's one explanation to "no natural growth"

[Nerfix]

Yes, but it seems a lot of the players would like there to be growth. Giving an "Inherent population growth" option at the start of the game would be good.

[Foodstamp]

You guys missed my point. Populations tend to stay the same in a natural environment. You throw in the invention of agriculture or other outside changes, and that is when population increases drastically (Or decreases sometimes).

^^the above was only a comment towards the "populations naturally grow" statement. There has been nothing natural about human population growth rates in the past several thousand years.

How this relates to the game... I see the dominion scales as those outside sources, as well as the other technologies, spells and random events in the game.

It makes sense to me considering the fantasy setting where pretender gods exist, that they would exert such great control over population just because of their prescence. So having the scales is not just an arbitrary number, it's your god's influence on that harvest, he/she is making it happen. If your god is not into the harvest thing (No growth scale or even death scale) then guess what, your population does not get to grow! Your producing just enough food/resources to maintain a constant population.

I don't feel it should be set up like "Our pretender god is a tool that didn't even care enough to give us a growth scale, but since we are human, we get to grow anyway".

Ofcourse this is saying that 0 growth/0 death does not even add a minor amount of pop increase.

[Foodstamp]

"Yes, but it seems a lot of the players would like there to be growth. Giving an "Inherent population growth" option at the start of the game would be good."

You are given this, it costs your pretender 40 points at the creation screen.

[Nerfix]

Foodstamp said:
"Yes, but it seems a lot of the players would like there to be growth. Giving an "Inherent population growth" option at the start of the game would be good."

You are given this, it costs your pretender 40 points at the creation screen.

We're also given the option to tweak the amount of gold, supplies and resources at the game setup! And guess what, these cost 0 points! And they apply for everyone.

Sure we can pay 40 points but with only 350 points to use it's more expensive than you make it to be.

Your argument is like saying "There shouldn't be a way to modify the gold generation in the world because you can always pay 40 design points and take Order"