newbie question concerning population

[Boron]

hi all
i ordered dominions 2 yesterday and now until it is finally shipped to me ( 3-7 days )
i play the dominions 1 demo since in dominions 2 demo you can only play until turn 4x

as far as i found out the only setting which influences my population is growth . only with positive growth my population increases very slowly .

this seems a bit strange to me though since there are many ways to quickly lose population but the only way to increase it slowly is growth ?
so every nation expect ermor loses slowly income then when it can't expand for a certain time because pops die slowly .
it seems to be exactly the same in dom 1 and 2 .
ihmo you should get pops when you set taxes to 0% too .
i didn't look much at spells so far and the demo research is only until lvl 4 .
if there are some spells to increase population would be good too