Shrinking Cities

[BetaGilgamesch]

I really like the game a lot so far but I did stumble across a strange mechanic that I don't quite understand yet. I started my game as the Khmer and focused on the growth of my capital in the antiquity. However once I entered the exploration age the population of my city keeps dropping. I startet with 37 pop and am now at 29.
As far as I know you don't have to pay food upkeep for citizens in CIV VII and I always had enough gold and happiness in the capital. So where are my citizens running off to? Shouldn't population decline be more of a modern age theme?
To no surprise I can't find anything about it in the Civilopedia...

[Martin]

No idea.. would expect food.. or lack of. Is your food above 0>? maybe disease? plague? maybe storms or volcanic eruptions?

[Evilgenius]

The age mechanic is there to cover up an abysmal AI, in order to do that they have to "reset" the game every so often, to level the playing field, otherwise you as the player would snowball out of control compared to any AI opponent.

in other words, you are arbitrarily getting punished for playing too good, there is nothing you can do about this, it is fundamental to the game, well atleast until Firaxis decides to invest in making competent computer opponents that know how to work the game mechanics.

[Martin]

Just got a supercell thunderstorm, my everything is dropping now.. soldiers, civs.. trees.. they couldn't win normally so they summoned a storm.

[BetaGilgamesch]

No, my city is as sheltered as can be. It hasn't ever seen a disaster and no army has ever set foot on its territory. Food is at 290 at the moment but the population keeps dropping. Maybe because I lost the powerful +50% growth ability of the Khmer when I transitioned to the exploration age

[Evilgenius]

Originally posted by BetaGilgamesch:

No, my city is as sheltered as can be. It hasn't ever seen a disaster and no army has ever set foot on its territory. Food is at 290 at the moment but the population keeps dropping. Maybe because I lost the powerful +50% growth ability of the Khmer when I transitioned to the exploration age

It is part of the game, you get 2 hard resets, get used to it.

[Martin]

Originally posted by BetaGilgamesch:

No, my city is as sheltered as can be. It hasn't ever seen a disaster and no army has ever set foot on its territory. Food is at 290 at the moment but the population keeps dropping. Maybe because I lost the powerful +50% growth ability of the Khmer when I transitioned to the exploration age

That makes more sense. Could try saving and reloading just in case tho.

[Evilgenius]

Originally posted by Martin:

That makes more sense. Could try saving and reloading just in case tho.

It is not a bug, it is a feature.

[BetaGilgamesch]

Originally posted by Evilgenius:

It is part of the game, you get 2 hard resets, get used to it.

Nah, population drops one by one. It is not part of the hard reset. Sometimes the city also gains population and then it loses it again. I think the growth rate mechanic might indeed be a bit bugged at the moment ^^

[halcyan2]

I was very confused by this as well.

Past Civs had you manually assign each population work which was more micromanagement but it made it easier to understand the system.

With Civ 7, I don't really understand if new tiles are automatically being worked, or if selecting a new tile is simply adding an improvement on a tile that already is being worked, and I really have no idea what happens when the city decreases or increases population through special events.