How to control population?

[eternalsway]

Playing japan and the population grow is 0.7% and thus makes 100m pops very soon and can't get enough grain or job(pay) for them. And they all get angry.

Anyway to lower birth rate? I thought if they starve and unemployed the birth rate will drop but they don't.

And I guess it also doesn't kill them even though food isn't enough?

[ac566]

Well if you're goal isn't economic growth then the strategy doesn't really apply. You can have both though. To ensure industrialist don't overpower the land-owners, you could make heavy use of nationalization + agrarianism, to fund more construction/growth.

[John Hadley]

My projected population growth rate in that game now as Japan is 0.1% (40.88K per year) since I passed Propertied Women.

The laws I have are:
Monarchy
Land Voting
Cultural Exclusion
State Religion
Elected Bureaucrats
Professional Army
No Home Affairs
Traditionalism
Isolationism
Land-based Taxation
Tenant Farmers
Frontier Colonization
Local Police
No Schools
No Health System
Censorship
No Workers Rights
Restricted Child Labor
Propertied Woman
No Social Security
Closed Borders
Slavery Banned

Looking at these laws I see that a big part of the reason I need less construction to max out my investment is because I have traditionalism which lowers the investment pool contribution efficiency of aristocrats, capitalists, farmers, clergymen, and shopkeepers by 50%, because Japan starts with that and I've not had anyone arrive that could pass any other law given that Japan has closed borders so I can't just add an agitator that already has that goal. If I had twice as much money being added to the investment pool then I would need twice as much construction to utilize it. I'm not sure if the other 50% that was reduced is just lost or if they just use the other 50% to increase their SOL.

Of these laws Propertied Women reduces the birth rate and increases the work force rate and may also increase the mortality of the population indirectly since some jobs have additional mortality rate such as mine jobs. Restricted Child Labor increases the mortality rate for Farmers, Laborers, and Peasants.

Health system laws typically reduce mortality, but I don't have any of those. Having no welfare laws makes unemployed peasants starve faster than having them and that will increase the mortality rate of them to keep their population from growing too much.

If you don't provide any of the laws that provide increased health, workers benefits, or labor protection and you put all the women to work so they won't be at home making babies and you allow the unemployed to starve a bit the population growth seems to end up pretty small.

[eternalsway]

Originally posted by Vellsi:

I think you are missing a bit of game knowledge, so I'll break a few aspects down a bit:


Let's talk about peasants and pops first:

Pops generally start as peasants, who work in subsistence farming to feed, clothe and intoxicate themselves. Subsistence farms require free arable land in a state and if you build an agricultural building it will remove 1 arable land to drain peasants from subsistence farming and turn into farmers/laborers.
The farm will produce more goods per pop for the economy than a subsistence farm would, except that the farm is specialized and only produces a certain type of good (such as grain or cotton), while the subsistence farm produces food, clothing and heating for the poorest of pops.
That means if you were to only spam grain/rice farms you'd eventually see people become poorer, as the price of clothing and intoxicants (liquor, tobacco, opium or wine) increases.

If one were to drain all peasants into farms, resource buildings and factories, it would make goods significantly cheaper than they were with subsistence farming, thus increasing standard of living of the pops over time. However, that's before considering that farms and factories could also satisfy certain needs of wealthier pops, which subsistence farms can not and there's a bit of a step ladder of increases and diminishing returns one climbs through over time.


Consumption of goods, standard of living and employment have a few overlapping mechanics:

If you uplift pops from peasants to workers their standard of living goes up more and more, the higher they are able to get climb the employment ladder, which depends on literacy (education) and wealth they already have. A pop therefore slowly works its way up through the ranks - provided the literacy rate of the country goes up and the pop income compared to the cost of their most demanded goods allows for their wealth to rise.
Standard of living increases impact birth rate positively to a certain wealth level (as someone mentioned above) and have diminishing returns past that but initially drags birth rate down significantly until you have laws to reduce it. Literacy reduces birth rate.

If a pop becomes unemployed they will turn into a radical and their standard of living quickly drops. In case there is no work but arable land available, they will eventually be so poor that they revert to working in subsistence farming. They will be unhappy and a radical but they will be able to feed and clothe themselves.

In case you run out of arable land in a state, the unemployment could actually turn into a problem, as standard of living can fall to the bottom. Pops without employment generally migrate to states where they can find employment (or could become peasants in subsistence farming again). For this very reason migration attraction considers available jobs, empty arable land and standard of living in a target state.

As a rule of thumb: Assuming no factors to impact birth rate or mortality, pops below standard of living 5 will slowly die off, those at standard of living 5 will stay equal an those above 5 will see population growth..


Which now brings us full circle to your game and what you experience:

What likely happened in your case - and someone else pointed that out more directly - is that you weren't mindful of the direction the economy is taking, which led to stunted standard of living increase and eventually decline, causing ever more radicals. As of 1.7 it's no longer advisable to run at highest taxation all the time, as the amount of radicals one gets has been increased significantly and that eventually destabilizes the country, especially one that already has a challenging climb ahead.

What you should know about standard of living and wealth is that it's better to build factories than spamming grain farms to keep prices cheap. The reason is the added value increase with each tier of manufacturing an industrial good goes through. Turning grain into groceries is much more effective at feeding pops and increasing standard of living than it would be to make multiple grain farms. However, not all of consumption is food, so clothing and raw materials for heating (wood, coal, oil, electricity) are also important to provide. At the same time income needs to be high, which means an oversupply of workers on a certain tier of education/wealth will drive prices down, while a shortage drives labor costs up. If you don't build enough buildings, people rising from poverty will not be able to find enough paid work, causing issues, too.

Let's talk about taxes real quick:

To not hurt the poorest people the most it's advisable to avoid high taxes and avoid taxing consumption goods they need. Early in the game the biggest consumption tax gains come from things poor people mostly consume but if you tax them they'll not rise to higher standard of living, preventing higher employment and just has them end up as radicals. It's therefore best to tax luxury goods, porcelain or transportation, all of which the upper strata consumes most of and the lower the least.


As others pointed out the entire journey from poor peasant to developed nation hinges on building enough stuff so people can tag along. Construction scaling is therefore important and that hinges mostly on costs, which come from the amount of sectors times the price of goods they consume. It's highly advisable to overproduce wood and iron, which make up the biggest construction goods for Tier1 and Tier2 construction respectively, to keep costs for construction on the low end, which saves you a ton of money and lets you build more construction sectors.
Higher construction tiers are more cost efficient per money spent on goods, so switching early, one state of construction sectors at a time, while you build more resource supply, is advisable.

I don't want to burden you with more arcane game knowledge but if you provide more resources in a state than are consumed locally it has a positive impact on price. That means stacking construction sectors where you have wood and iron, a few tools and some fabric made will help keep prices much lower.

Make sure to not overshoot into debt when building, as unrecognized smaller nations pay insanely high interest rates on debt, easily causing a spiral. If you pause your construction the AI investment pool will keep on building, so you aren't missing out entirely. Speaking of which, make sure you provide enough construction for the investment pool to drain (which is a lot), as else it stacks up to infinity, draining money into a useless pool that could else have benefited your economy.

Hey thanks for the very wholesome answer that almost explains everything about this game!

Switch early did help alot!