A rounding problem with population

[Loren]

JimMorrison said:
Well, it only counts in 10s, it's not exactly rounding. The pop is actually counted in memory as 60, and is not increasing by 1, or even .5 and therefor won't go up. You'd need about 850 pop to get it to grow even with G3, it looks like.

But it *IS* rounding--the fraction is being rounded down to zero as the field can't hold it.

I think this should be special-cased: If the growth rate is positive the population should grow by at least the minimum possible amount.

Note that this would also address LA Ermor, LA R'yleh and Hinnom depleted provinces.

[Agrajag]

Hardly, as +10 per month would still take 85 turns (7 years) to reach just 850 (where Growth 3 can first make an influence according to you guys.)

[thejeff]

What happens with population decrease?

Is that also the same way, so a population that would drop by less than 10 doesn't drop at all?
Or does the decrease round up, so it drops by 10 every month?

[JimMorrison]

thejeff said:
What happens with population decrease?

Is that also the same way, so a population that would drop by less than 10 doesn't drop at all?
Or does the decrease round up, so it drops by 10 every month?

The game I played through as LA Ermor, I found it ridiculously annoying how long the last 10 or 20 people could hold out. Since even Dom 10 doesn't kill 50% a month, so you get these scruffy little hillpeople, eking out an existence from -I don't know what-. I actually started pillaging to try to get them to go away, it was not an easy task to hit 0 pop.


I do agree though, it seems like it would be simple to add a couple of triggers that just add 10 pop to all provinces under Growth, and remove 10 from all under Death. Yes, this would impact smaller provinces slightly more, as hitting 850 for example would suddenly yield 20 people, which is actually something like 2.2% growth.

Though personally I would love to see population shifts due to happiness and such. So incessant blood hunting in a province would start to scare people away for example. Also a really destructive dominion would herald itself to people outside of it. You might actually realize where LA Ermor is, first because of the enormous waves of refugees flooding into your lands.

[Loren]

JimMorrison said:I do agree though, it seems like it would be simple to add a couple of triggers that just add 10 pop to all provinces under Growth, and remove 10 from all under Death. Yes, this would impact smaller provinces slightly more, as hitting 850 for example would suddenly yield 20 people, which is actually something like 2.2% growth.

I'm saying to do this only if the effects of the scale got rounded to zero.

Though personally I would love to see population shifts due to happiness and such. So incessant blood hunting in a province would start to scare people away for example. Also a really destructive dominion would herald itself to people outside of it. You might actually realize where LA Ermor is, first because of the enormous waves of refugees flooding into your lands.

Yes, I have been thinking something along these lines would be a good idea, also.

Scales, unrest & bad dominions would determine a happiness rating for the province. The greater the happiness difference between a province and it's neighbors and the more people would move. Make LA Ermor's dominion unhappy enough and you could actually get rid of the pop kill effect, just chase them off instead.

Perhaps the pretender's bless would also have an effect. I would think people would prefer to live in a place with a nature bless and certainly wouldn't like a place with a death bless.

[JimMorrison]

Loren said:
I'm saying to do this only if the effects of the scale got rounded to zero.

And I'm saying that when programmers think someone is just "being a bit picky", they often look at the amount of effort required to make the small fix, and tell you not to hold your breath. When it's just inserting a couple of small lines of code that should have absolutely 0 chance of mucking up the rest of the formulas, then you may be in business.


And damn, I didn't think to patrol..... I am always so careful with my little computer people, they're my sweet little digital cows that I milk for gold.

[Agrajag]

JimMorrison said:
The game I played through as LA Ermor, I found it ridiculously annoying how long the last 10 or 20 people could hold out. Since even Dom 10 doesn't kill 50% a month, so you get these scruffy little hillpeople, eking out an existence from -I don't know what-. I actually started pillaging to try to get them to go away, it was not an easy task to hit 0 pop.

(IIRC) Raise taxes to 200% and start patrolling, as that kills a fixed amount of population per unrest lowered

[Loren]

Agrajag said:
Hardly, as +10 per month would still take 85 turns (7 years) to reach just 850 (where Growth 3 can first make an influence according to you guys.)

It wouldn't make a big difference but it just seems so wrong that a depopulated province doesn't ever recover. People would move in!

[Hoplosternum]

Agrajag said:
Hardly, as +10 per month would still take 85 turns (7 years) to reach just 850 (where Growth 3 can first make an influence according to you guys.)

I don't really agree Agrajag. Not with the maths that I'm sure you have spot on But the problem is completely depleted provinces which cannot ever again produce even a 1 resource mage. Even a tiny population (enough to give a few resources or even just one) would be a huge boost. Often being able to build a unit (scout/ mage/ leader - even over a few turns) is what you want out of a province rather than a troop factory. The pop death does not remove the indi mage sites but it can make them worthless, especuially if surrounded by other zero pop provinces.

So a change to making growth scales give the minimum population growth would be a huge and IMHO welcome change.

Of course you are correct that until 850 pop is reached the difference between growth 3 and growth 1 will be zero, but that is not what is so bad about the death dom of Ermor et al. Nor what is good about growth 3.

Growth 3 only really pays off in big pop provinces. A pop 20000 province becoming a 40000 one (after X turns) gives a big income boost. But a 2000 to 4000 jump is still not giving a lot extra even if in percentage terms the growth is the same.

[Loren]

Hoplosternum said:
I don't really agree Agrajag. Not with the maths that I'm sure you have spot on But the problem is completely depleted provinces which cannot ever again produce even a 1 resource mage. Even a tiny population (enough to give a few resources or even just one) would be a huge boost. Often being able to build a unit (scout/ mage/ leader - even over a few turns) is what you want out of a province rather than a troop factory. The pop death does not remove the indi mage sites but it can make them worthless, especuially if surrounded by other zero pop provinces.

Exactly. That's why I hate depleted provinces--no indie mages from them.

I had another thought--it should only apply if there are people next door. People can't move in unless they are there to move in.