Rising City Population

[Ango1eiro]

As far as I know the only way to rise city population is a business bulding , which creating new workplaces and attracting new citizens. New business produce goods, which are consumed by that population, BUT, the demands of population are far less then production. I mean, in every playthrough I have less then 10 cities with about 2k population each, 100% prosperity and every product is on excess. If i will build more business I will start to lose money. I can see AI cities having 6k+ population and 15+ businesses of single type in single city, how can it be profitable? Is there any ways to rise city population or demands of a population?

[PastaCrusade]

have you unlocked all the businesses yet? 4 cities each porducing different things with trade routes between them keeps goods in demand.

[Ardelo]

The most important thing is to get a very wide variety of goods. You want to unlock and use all the goods in the game as soon as possible, the more types of goods you have means you will have more production without overproducing goods, you will then get a higher population to demand more goods.
So you wrote that you have less than 10 cities, that's fine, around 6-7 cities are generally enough to provide all 20 kinds of goods assuming they are well placed. The fact is that even though you still have excess of all goods, you should keep building. When you force buildings you get a higher populations and they will in turn demand a lot more goods. If you can get a couple cities up to level 8 or higher then they will absorb a lot more goods than the small cities around. Look at the all towns tab, build more buildings of goods that are in red OR white, production in white is easily expanded on without over producing because the new buildings you add to it will generate more money and set all the other consumptions up higher to eat those goods. This game is designed so that you will pretty much always have 3-6 goods in red or white consumpion under the assumpion that you have access to all 20. There will ALWAYS be room to expand more.

[Abraxsus]

Please understand that EVERY City HAS a DEMAND for EVERY GOOD and EVERY CITY can JUST produce 5 GOODS... so u get MORE shortage if u have MORE citys.

Think about it and u will understand how to play the game.
In the Middle or Lategame u cant push every city to 100% Happyness, becouse u CANT support every GOOD ^^

If u ever get to citys over 5000 People u dont even think about traider income any more ! Becouse u just finance ur empire by TAXES ^^

[Ango1eiro]

All goods were green. I had allmost all variety of goods.I disovered almost all production upgrades, which boosted my production significantly. Guess thats the reason all my goods are in excess. Does difficulty influe demand of goods?

[Kenbutsu]

You can support every good. Citizens produce roughly 4% more than they need, assuming you've unlocked all techs. Which is important, because you need that extra production to fund your military. However, I wouldn't expect all goods to be green simultaneously. The numbers would be white because your production was just slightly higher than consumption. You have all green because you are not making all 20 goods. Finish your pomp production and that will eat up lots of other resources.

I believe the difficulty affects the max price of a good at highest demand. So in a town with no wine, citizens might pay 100 per barrel on normal, but pay a lower max price on pro. At least that's what I've seen when moving from normal to advanced.

[Matthew]

If the goods are still in green, you should be still getting profits.

If you have a few traders moving between around 6-8 cities producing all or nearly all type of goods, it should be nearly impossible to keep getting excess on a lot of different items. By the time you boost up the ones lacking, the others will be in demand again. It is a constant balancing act.

If you are getting excess goods too much, you aren't trading across enough cities.

My last game my starting area cities were all level 15/16 and had about 20 cities before I started taking over the rest of Europe.

Make sure cities which have goods which require other goods always have what they need. You lose a lot of money if you have workers standing around not able to produce anything.

Also make sure your traders have enough carts to pick up and distribute a variety of goods. For example if the last city in a trade route desperately needs an item but your trader's carts are too few, he may sell off that item before he reaches the last city.

From what I can tell, you don't need that many traders. I like to set up trading rings between ~6-8 cities, and 2 traders each is usually enough. Like my 20 cities in my previous game, I was only running 8 traders on 4 trading rings and was making massive profits.

[Ango1eiro]

Guys you don't understant me.I understand game mechanics. I have millions of money, traders etc. I can't rise popualtion of my cities, cause I already have all the goods(except jewelry) in excess.

[Matthew]

You are correct then, I don't understand you. If you are making millions of money, what is keeping you from adding more production and, as a result, more population?

[Ango1eiro]

I have much more goods then my cities consume. If I will build more production I will increase my goods excess more then population needs. I consider that production technologies are a bit imbalanced. Shoukd try to play without them next time. Would be nice to see some consuption management mechanics.

[Ardelo]

Originally posted by Kenbutsu:

You can support every good. Citizens produce roughly 4% more than they need, assuming you've unlocked all techs. Which is important, because you need that extra production to fund your military. However, I wouldn't expect all goods to be green simultaneously. The numbers would be white because your production was just slightly higher than consumption. You have all green because you are not making all 20 goods. Finish your pomp production and that will eat up lots of other resources.

I believe the difficulty affects the max price of a good at highest demand. So in a town with no wine, citizens might pay 100 per barrel on normal, but pay a lower max price on pro. At least that's what I've seen when moving from normal to advanced.

This is a good informative post ;)
you are correct that prices change on higher difficulty. They both sell for less money as well as increase and drop demand much faster, you can see more about these options if you press the button for advanced options when making a new game.

@Ango1eiro
You will always have more goods than your cities consume. In the game where own europe I have many hundreds of thousands of goods in stock but then again I also have 400 cities. You will always build stockpiles in the cities, this is not a bad thing. Even if your production is green you should still build more buildings to increase production and demand. The point of having level 16 cities is that they will consume more goods and earn you more money per minute which leads to you being able to expand faster and keep a larger army sitting around doing nothing. If your citizens were to consume all the goods you have in all your cities at a rate which empties then many people would simply run out of goods because of imbalance in buildings combined with famine and workers leaving. There would be no recovery from that if you had no goods to shuffle around and things would crash and burn.

[Gelotri]

If you get to the point where your city productions are all green and growth stagnates, then that is the key to build some settlers and establish a couple new cities. Once they are initially established then you will notice some of your original city production will slip to orange or white status which gives you the opportunity to restart your balancing act. Rinse and repeat.

[Silverfang]

Originally posted by Ango1eiro:

Guys you don't understant me.I understand game mechanics. I have millions of money, traders etc. I can't rise popualtion of my cities, cause I already have all the goods(except jewelry) in excess.

Your "except" there is very important. Are you lacking in Pomp (jewelry) production?
In my experience it takes a very large number of Pomp businesses (and as a result, pottery and metal goods and its raw materials) to satisfy the demands of your cities. That should eat up a TON of the other goods, sparking growth in production lines that might have been stagnating beforehand.

I find there are 3 primary businesses that tend to drive growth once you have your cities well supplied. They are Pomp (production is small and limited by dependence on several raw materials), Meat (the food item that is produced in the smallest amounts per business), and Metal Goods (needed in high numbers for the population, pomp production, and mid to late game construction). Clothing also does to a lesser extent, but with the bonuses to wool and fur in the development tree it has less overall impact on growth than the others.

[Drunk Monkey]

Just use the route analysis screen on the trader tab. If you strive to get all products in the green zone your cities will keep growing until the max population. At first I thought if I got them green the cities would stagnate, but I could never get more than 16 or so products green.

As you build businesses to balance it out more people go to the city and keep increasing the population. These trade routes I used were all only serving my own cities. If you trade with another major faction the cities will grow even faster.

Don't use the all cities tab after your first 4-5 cities as it can mislead. Its great to use it until then though.

[Ardelo]

Originally posted by Drunk Monkey:

Just use the route analysis screen on the trader tab. If you strive to get all products in the green zone your cities will keep growing until the max population. At first I thought if I got them green the cities would stagnate, but I could never get more than 16 or so products green.

As you build businesses to balance it out more people go to the city and keep increasing the population. These trade routes I used were all only serving my own cities. If you trade with another major faction the cities will grow even faster.

Don't use the all cities tab after your first 4-5 cities as it can mislead. Its great to use it until then though.

I disagree, you should use the city tab as long as you are on 1 warehouse route. When you only have one warehouse you can connect it with 12 cities and it will still be of great benefit to use all towns production as they all link to the one warehouse but you probably have 3 or 4 traders.

[Greifenstolz]

Well, if you want to raise the general demand of the population, you could overproduce grain and keep it in storage for emergencies. After all, grain is on the same level of importance as wood and bricks. Famines are bad. And you can lose lots of grain quickly if rat infestations hit several towns at the same time. I think the losses of overproducing grain should be coverable due to the higher demand of everything else.