Starting Population Amount

[DonCorazon]

That's "unprotected" sex Omni - don't believe everything your momma says, including the stuff about blindness. Oh wait, maybe that's what is ruining Utgard.

[JimMorrison]

Giants touch themselves!

I always wondered why even capitals have a variable pop. I think it's mostly aesthetics, so that they're not always pegged at exactly 30000. Though, it seems to me that the variance is a little wide, I think it can go anywhere from 29000-31000, which is a decent chunk of people, especially if you DO have a Growth or Death scale that is going to compound directly from that value to the end of the game.

It takes ~11 turns to get from 29k-31k. So, one year of game time worth of your Growth can significantly impact the actual benefit of a strategy involving that scale.

[konming]

I agree. There is no reason not to set starting capital pop to exactly 30K (except for LA Ermor, obviously). If we can have the flucuation in population, what next? Randomness in starting army? Starting leader?

[Tifone]

Ouh c'mon, now let's not start with super-balancing issues ^^

I dare to disagree, it is fun (and quite irrelevant i think) this way. Surely it's an advantage. But a casual one in a big game involving many things - this time happens to you, next time to me. ^^
If we start complaining this we go back to the Monkey PD and the blessed Jarls topic ^^

[konming]

May I say those are designed to be different, while this is random for no good reason and entirely unneccessary?

I would also think someone starting with 350G instead of 400G a small thing in such a big game, still, why do it?

[Sombre]

No idea why it happens. I've noticed it too.

I'd also like to know if the terrain type of the capital matters.

[Ballbarian]

If I remember correctly, the terrain has no affect and I would even go so far as to say that the terrain for the given province is ignored and is treated like plains even if it was tagged as swamp or waste in the map file.

Take that with a grain of salt. A lot of time and several patches have passed since I last tested it.

[capnq]

konming said: May I say those are designed to be different, while this is random for no good reason and entirely unneccessary?

I can't think of any good reason for it not to be random. Different provinces have different land areas. A capital is going to have more people than a non-capital of the same area, simply because the capital will attract people to it. Terrain type should probably have more effect than it does now.

All population below the thousands digit is just noise anyway, IMO.

[Tifone]

To me the only thing "entirely unnecessary" would be losing even 1 minute, for someone doing the next patch, to change it ^_^

(jk konmig, don't take it badly )