How to grow population?

[Lazy Joe]

I am currently coming to a halt at a population of around 250.

I am running a "mainly human" settlement, with other races allowed to immigrate up to 25 (no garthimis).
So thats 25 cretoniasn, 25 amevias, 25 dondorians, 25 tilapis, and 150~ humans currently.

I have a human nursery to ensure a steady growth. I assume the growth is kinda "linear" until you somewhat reach an equilibrium, right? Because at some point you gonna reach a state where same number of human die of old age as new ones being born. So in order to push further, i will have to build more or expand my nursery, right?

Currently im still taking baby steps, my nursery only has 5 cribs. And before the children mature into adults and leave the cribs, there wont be new babies, right? Yet i get the impression that my food consumption is "exponential", while the population is growing "linear". So right now as im posting this thread, my settlement has come to the point where im pretty much out of food. Im building more hunter houses, im making more farms along the big river to ensure fertility, but i dont have the population to support this and yet the food is running out. Feels bit weird honestly. I have no idea how people can even reach those high population count.

Its like a deadlock situation. No food to support population, no population to produce more food, and no population to run research to improve food yield.

[Ravensblade]

The nursery grow is simple math. You divide expected lifespan by time of adulthood. For humans that would be 80/5 so 16 people per nursery bed.

Each person (including children) eats 0.5 portion per day.

And what's your daily/yearly food production?
Did you invest some tech points in farms as it's cheap +10% increase?

In the first year farms never give full production as it's full year work accumulation.

[annie]

immigrants are the best source of pop growth early game, if you can't attract any more human immigrants then you should look at their citizen menu and try and improve happiness.

i have a feeling your racial demographics have something to do with it - amevians and tilapi really dont mix with other races, much less humans, so if they arent confined to a ghetto then they will tank your humans happiness by starting arguments and brawls

[Lazy Joe]

current production rate is ~160

consumption rate is ~130

stored currently ~1130

food can last for 9 days for now but its only because i just had a harvest. I disallowed consumption of fruits for my humans, because i need those for nursery, other races are allowed to eat fruits, since there will be only 25 of them at max.

every other food type is not even stored to 3 digits, gets produced and instantly consumed.

i haven't put my research points on those yet, only 1 level for spoilage sofar.
I decided to mainly focus on unlocking other "basic" stuff like weaver, smelting, masoning etc. first.
Just so i can get those essential building materials for some buildings. (need cloth for nursery, stuff like that)

[Lazy Joe]

Originally posted by annie:

immigrants are the best source of pop growth early game, if you can't attract any more human immigrants then you should look at their citizen menu and try and improve happiness.

i have a feeling your racial demographics have something to do with it - amevians and tilapi really dont mix with other races, much less humans, so if they arent confined to a ghetto then they will tank your humans happiness by starting arguments and brawls

Yeah my humans died alot in my previous runs because of brawls. Right now they seem to get along, because i placed alot of 3x3 trees surrounded by benches all over the place.

Happiness isnt all too high though. But im not so familiar with the game yet to really pay close attention to their needs. They either demand things i cannot provide yet (no metal bars for building lightings), or demand things i have already provided. Like i built well (close enough and not overloaded) and they still want access to well. Currently none of them is happy enough to have immigrants.

[annie]

Originally posted by Lazy Joe:

Originally posted by annie:

immigrants are the best source of pop growth early game, if you can't attract any more human immigrants then you should look at their citizen menu and try and improve happiness.

i have a feeling your racial demographics have something to do with it - amevians and tilapi really dont mix with other races, much less humans, so if they arent confined to a ghetto then they will tank your humans happiness by starting arguments and brawls

Yeah my humans died alot in my previous runs because of brawls. Right now they seem to get along, because i placed alot of 3x3 trees surrounded by benches all over the place.

Happiness isnt all too high though. But im not so familiar with the game yet to really pay close attention to their needs. They either demand things i cannot provide yet (no metal bars for building lightings), or demand things i have already provided. Like i built well (close enough and not overloaded) and they still want access to well. Currently none of them is happy enough to have immigrants.

service buildings only have a certain radius inside which pops will seek their services, and with wells this can be a bit tricky because they're not for drinking as you might intuit, but for washing. you need them close to farms and mines and such so that the workers there can wash up before going home.

the most important early game happiness boost though is religion, so if you haven't built altars for each god yet thats probably a 15% bonus right there

[Lazy Joe]

Originally posted by annie:

Originally posted by Lazy Joe:

Yeah my humans died alot in my previous runs because of brawls. Right now they seem to get along, because i placed alot of 3x3 trees surrounded by benches all over the place.

Happiness isnt all too high though. But im not so familiar with the game yet to really pay close attention to their needs. They either demand things i cannot provide yet (no metal bars for building lightings), or demand things i have already provided. Like i built well (close enough and not overloaded) and they still want access to well. Currently none of them is happy enough to have immigrants.

service buildings only have a certain radius inside which pops will seek their services, and with wells this can be a bit tricky because they're not for drinking as you might intuit, but for washing. you need them close to farms and mines and such so that the workers there can wash up before going home.

the most important early game happiness boost though is religion, so if you haven't built altars for each god yet thats probably a 15% bonus right there

I have built all 4 shrines, biggest size too.

About service building, i usually just click on them and see how far the colored zone can reach, if home gets outside of the range, i build new ones.

Is swimming in river the same as washing at a well? Because of my farms, most of my town is located near the river. Wouldnt even dare to dream of having people to spare for water pumps n stuff.

[gorgofdoom]

Originally posted by Lazy Joe:

and they still want access to well.

You're missing the most important part of that complaint. They want access to a well of good quality.

Until you can acquire the research and needed materials you can't give them higher quality wells. That said lower quality services are still beneficial-- so just provide the best you can, then move on to set up another service they don't have any access to at all.

Imo the character bio page shouldn't feature complaints that we simply can't resolve at that moment; if it's not researched. Unless every other manageable complaint has been addressed, perhaps then we should see complaints regarding research itself.

for lack of a better way to say it, the character bio complaints are misleading. It's better to look at each race's stats directly to deduce what to improve.

Originally posted by Lazy Joe:

Is swimming in river the same as washing at a well? Because of my farms, most of my town is located near the river. Wouldnt even dare to dream of having people to spare for water pumps n stuff.

Swimming is not the same as bathing, unfortunately. However you can set up moats(?), pools, and ponds further inland to appease the wish to swim.

On water pumps: once you set one up you'll see why they are so powerful. 6 people running a pump can turn unusable land into 8ish 96 tile farms of 80-90% fertility. Creating more fertile land directly allows you to produce more food which means you can double or triple rations, a humongous happiness boost that will spur immigration. Aqueducts are how Rome became so powerful.

[TAW | AndySL]

Originally posted by gorgofdoom:

On water pumps: once you set one up you'll see why they are so powerful. 6 people running a pump can turn unusable land into 8ish 96 tile farms of 80-90% fertility. Creating more fertile land directly allows you to produce more food which means you can double or triple rations, a humongous happiness boost that will spur immigration. Aqueducts are how Rome became so powerful.

Have you had any joy with longer distance pumps? As far as I'm aware pumps will provide 64 squares of coverage. So is it possible to achieve 100 ranage for example by pumping a pond full at a distance of 50, then pumping that out to reach the 100 distance?

[annie]

Originally posted by Lazy Joe:

Originally posted by annie:

service buildings only have a certain radius inside which pops will seek their services, and with wells this can be a bit tricky because they're not for drinking as you might intuit, but for washing. you need them close to farms and mines and such so that the workers there can wash up before going home.

the most important early game happiness boost though is religion, so if you haven't built altars for each god yet thats probably a 15% bonus right there

I have built all 4 shrines, biggest size too.

About service building, i usually just click on them and see how far the colored zone can reach, if home gets outside of the range, i build new ones.

Is swimming in river the same as washing at a well? Because of my farms, most of my town is located near the river. Wouldnt even dare to dream of having people to spare for water pumps n stuff.

i actually don't know if swimming also cleans pops at the same time, but i dont think they'll go swim if they need to bathe, i think they just do that to cool off during hot days

[annie]

Originally posted by TAW | AndySL:

Originally posted by gorgofdoom:

On water pumps: once you set one up you'll see why they are so powerful. 6 people running a pump can turn unusable land into 8ish 96 tile farms of 80-90% fertility. Creating more fertile land directly allows you to produce more food which means you can double or triple rations, a humongous happiness boost that will spur immigration. Aqueducts are how Rome became so powerful.

Have you had any joy with longer distance pumps? As far as I'm aware pumps will provide 64 squares of coverage. So is it possible to achieve 100 ranage for example by pumping a pond full at a distance of 50, then pumping that out to reach the 100 distance?

you can't pump from artificial sources, so no, but you can just add another pump at the start of the aquaduct network to increase the water pressure and extend the range out. YMMV depending on what branch you're on though, water got changed in v66

[TAW | AndySL]

Originally posted by annie:

you can't pump from artificial sources, so no, but you can just add another pump at the start of the aquaduct network to increase the water pressure and extend the range out. YMMV depending on what branch you're on though, water got changed in v66

Ah, I see, so daisy-chaining at source. Thanks Annie.

[madpraxis]

'Make all the things I need'
That right there is part of the problem... As long as you have at least *one* kingdom to trade with, you are set.
Just export all your crap.
All of it.
And buy what you need. Like, a limited amount of metal. Or paper. Or whatever else it is you need in small quantities.
You don't need 'a lot', just 'enough'.

[Catsander]

Originally posted by madpraxis:

You don't need 'a lot', just 'enough'.

Except for food. More food (days) gives higher fulfillment and thus contribute to more immigrants/higher population.

[Lazy Joe]

Thanks for all the replies, folks. Since the game just updated, i cannot access that savegame anymore anyway, so it's time for a new start.

Is there a way to automatically match the price for exporting and importing? Kinda don't want to check it every once in a while to make sure i'm not selling something way too cheap or buying something with way too much money.

[madpraxis]

That is...iffy.
Not sure if you are aware, because...some aren't... But hover tooltip over goods gives you a list of 'neighbors' and the prices paid. And... Ok, honest answer? Your worry? Does not matter.

Trust me on this. Even a trickle of 'junk' exports, no matter the value you are getting, is enough to afford a trickle in of whatever you need. Just keep an eye on your dosh, set the limit of whatever you want on the rather low side (Like, honestly, my 'I'm building up my village to a town' level of import for...say, Metal and such, is literally no more then 20), and when you notice your money going down and staying down instead of slowly going up... You know you have a problem in one of the trades.

And, honestly, it's been long enough that I can't remember how to (or if they still exist) set and use keyboard hotspot keys, hah, but I'd always set one to my 'trade bazaar' area so I can pop over every little while to check prices/inventory.