Struggling with population growth

[GmanUK1965]

Population growth is very slow for me. The first generation are starting to die now and their jobs have to be replaced the small amount of labourers I have, then take workers away from their jobs and place them as the job replacements

Then there's new structures such as a market so as to reduce the storage hut products I've only 2 workers there. Surface stone is now becoming rare so I built a quarry. I can only afford 2 miners there too.

Talking about the market, can the trade post be replenished from the market?

[mbutton15]

The Trade Post will be replenished from where ever it needs to grab stuff from.

[Claybot]

It sounds like you have more jobs than workers. You may need to turn some of them off and on depending on your needs. Wood cutter (unless you need it for trading), black smith, tailor can all be switched on and off. Make a bunch of cloths/tools then turn them off and free the worker. Just watch the levels so you turn them back on again in time.

Personally I work on food production from the start. Trading post comes much later in the game (which goes against most guides/players)

[OhhJim]

I only have one worker per market. Also, one per trading post, unless I'm scrambling to gather goods while the trader waits-then I'll do up to 3, but send them away once the trader leaves.

[Sephrajin]

Once the initial building up is done - aka stable food income (then wait a year or two just to be sure) - I start building 1 new house per year.
This allows for/provides growth without an uncontrolled explosion.

After a few years, one can increase that to 2 houses per year, at which point one is ready for a market and trader, allthough I never ever exceed 2 workers as vendor or traders.
But I also only build them once I have enough resources, so at that point, I can tell them to move quite a bunch of it to the traders - which will happen slowly but steady, without interfering the supply for my settlers.
For this, resources means iron tools, coats and firewood, because those are the values I increase early on - usualy like 50, to 250 or 500 even (over time).

Later on, you can aim for ale (apple), not sure if this is from a mod or not.

[olympe]

In the early game, managing your population is one of the bottlenecks of growth. Because your population does grow slowly. And mine grows even slower because I play with the "1 year is 1 year" mod.

Personally, I play a more aggressive style. I only build 1 house in year 1 (as well as a school), but as soon as my food production is up and running, I build 3 more houses so all 4 of my starting families are housed. And while I also get a blacksmith and tailor, I keep focusing on food and firewood.
And yet, as soon as I have my first new adult, I build another house, and for two reasons: Houses only allow for a set number of inhabitants. If that number is reached, the adults won't have more children. Which stifles your growth. If a new adult still living with their parents can move out, they'll free up space in their parents' home for another sibling. This, obviously, means more population growth in the long run. Eventually, the new adult will be joined by a spouse, and they will start their own family. Which is good for more growth.

However, eventually, you won't be able to keep up with your bannies explosive growth, at which point there's no choice but to slow down. (I reach that point around 1000 bannies, give or take.)

[mbutton15]

Originally posted by OhhJim:

I only have one worker per market. Also, one per trading post, unless I'm scrambling to gather goods while the trader waits-then I'll do up to 3, but send them away once the trader leaves.

If you 'pin' the Trade Post window then the trader will not leave until you dismiss them (or close the window) so you can reduce the rush to restock a Trade Post if you really want more of their goods before they leave.

[GmanUK1965]

I think what is causing my problem is not building enough houses as I am only building a couple every now and then

[mbutton15]

I usually wait til my starting population all have full houses before then building 1 house a year. Slow (but not too slow !!) and steady wins the race.

[HiFive]

I try to make sure the number of children is steady or slowly increasing. If that number drops too low, you won't have enough new workers to replace the dying ones.

[Don't_Drop_The_Cheese]

During the first part of the game, I think like the first 15 to 20 years of it, you can easily keep track of all the houses and the people living in them. Track the number of males to females and build a new house everytime a match is available. This will maximize your growth at the start of the game, obviously food and tool production needs to keep up for this as well.

Once year 15 to 20 hits, your first generation will start to die off but also if you've maximized growth during this time period you should have enough population growth to replace the population loss. Worst case, accept a group of nomads to replace the population lost.

Past this first wave, you should be able to just make homes constantly and they'll be filled with new matches. These waves only happen if you stop building homes and thus population growth stagnates and any new couple now have to wait for a home to vacate. These waves and how much they rise and fall can be see in the statistics menu. However, the larger your city is in general, the smaller these waves are by proportion I believe (someone double check the math on that for me).

[mbutton15]

The Town Hall has a couple of useful figures on the first tab: Houses and Families.

The Families figure is actually 'potential families if you had enough houses for them to move into' You want to keep the Families number around 5 lower than Houses while still expanding. Once happy with population size, stop building and let the natural birth/death curve do its thing.