Population dropping constantly

[MosulVet]

It seems like there's something wrong with the population math in the game? (Or I don't understand it) Even though I'm not recruiting units, my city populations are dropping constantly, and not really growing at all (I have 'moderate' set for the growth policy). It's hard for me to see why the populations are dropping (the UI should make this easier), but it seems like there might be a bug in way populations translate to units -- e.g. recruiting or healing a unit in fact causes really large population drops?

Right now, as Rome, I own the entirity of the Italia and Sicily. I'm supporting 3 units of Princeps, 1 Peltast, and 2 boats. I can't get most of my cities to grow above 1, and even Rome has been dropping from 6 to 5 despite having nothing recuited there. Does this seem correct?

[Cablenexus]

From the pinned FAQ:

Population

My population is not growing – what am I doing wrong?

First of all check the Birth rate policy tool. You should set the state grant to maximum if you want your cities to grow fastest but be aware that this means higher usage of other resources especially gold, food, stone and wood. Alternatively, you can increase local birth rate grants in some of your cities if you do not have too many spare resources. By building “Temples” close to your cities, you will increase the birth rate there twofold.
Building new units consumes a lot of citizens so you should be careful how many new units you are building/recruiting.

[MosulVet]

As mentioned, I'm not building units (and I'm barely supporting 3 legions), and my birth rate policy is set to moderate (globally). Best guess right now is that units actually consume 10x what you would expect when they are healing. Supporting those 3 legions fighting in Sicily cost me ~50 population units, 1/3rd of my total population, and nominally about 500,000 people.

Just looked a little more and that's exactly what's going on. So, recruiting a legion (10,000 men) costs 10 population units. But each population unit = 10,000 people, so recruiting a legion costs 100,000 people. That seems rediculous and broken.

[gwgardner]

manual, pg. 113

Number of citizens is not the same as the population count shown in the
State window. “Citizens” are that segment of your populace that can be
used for field and construction works, as army recruits, etc.

Not sure where you got the term population unit, or the 10000 figure. I'm not saying you have that wrong, I just can't find it right now.

You may be experiencing high emigration. What's your happiness level? You can see what the emigration levels are for your cities by going to the state map, selecting the city filter, and hovering the cursor over each city. That also tells you the factors related to the current happiness levels in the city.

Pop can fall if neighboring countries are more enticing to the people.

Did you perchance have an earthquake or plague? Any rebellions?

If none of that helps explain things, sorry, perhaps the developer will chime in with other possible answers.

[gwgardner]

The developer did tell us during playtesting that the overall population figure for the empire is eye candy, an extrapolation of the citizens in the cities. It's the citizen levels of the cities that matters.

[Pavel-Ku]

Hi MosulVet,
Cablenexus and gwgardner are right.

When recruiting a unit (and withdrawing the citizens from the city) or in general when building any unit, it is not just the soldiers, you take out of the city. Those are workers who maintain the supplies, those are servants and slaves used for work, those are families taken with them, etc.

The ratio of one soldier serving in army and one city-inhabitant is really 1:10. It is rather exaggerated but it was fine-tuned during testing to have the game balanced (at the expense of realism).
I hope it makes sense a bit.

[n0kn0k]

Don't forget to build Temples on strategic places. It really helps.

[MosulVet]

Originally posted by gwgardner:

Not sure where you got the term population unit, or the 10000 figure. I'm not saying you have that wrong, I just can't find it right now.

You may be experiencing high emigration. What's your happiness level? You can see what the emigration levels are for your cities by going to the state map, selecting the city filter, and hovering the cursor over each city. That also tells you the factors related to the current happiness levels in the city.

Your population as shown in the overal display is exactl 10,000 * Citizen units.

Happiness is around 125-130% globally, though some newly conquered cities are lower.

[MosulVet]

Originally posted by Pavel-Ku:

Hi MosulVet,
Cablenexus and gwgardner are right.

When recruiting a unit (and withdrawing the citizens from the city) or in general when building any unit, it is not just the soldiers, you take out of the city. Those are workers who maintain the supplies, those are servants and slaves used for work, those are families taken with them, etc.

The ratio of one soldier serving in army and one city-inhabitant is really 1:10. It is rather exaggerated but it was fine-tuned during testing to have the game balanced (at the expense of realism).
I hope it makes sense a bit.

I think I understand your point (long logistics tail is an economic and social drag)... but this seems like a heavy handed and awkward way to implement. If I have a minor battle and lose a thousand soldiers in the legion as casualties, why would I lose 10x that many replinishing those casualties? The workers and slaves were not also lost. Why do those folks that are supporting the legion logistics get removed from the overall breeding-and-multiplying population pool? Even if they are working on weapons, they are still contributing the population and economic life of a city.

Maybe I'm getting hung up on the numbers, but It feels inellegant that recruiting a legion can suck a decent-sized city dry of inhabitants. It seems like there a better ways to create tradeoffs on recruitment, or soft caps on army sizes.

[Pavel-Ku]

There are couple of tradeoffs involved in this.

Firstly, we didnt really have any kind of quantification of number of soldiers in each unit. It was requested by testers so we added it.
It soon became clear that if we calculate the number of soldiers the same way as we count citizens, it cannot work (the number of soldiers in each army unit were simply huge).
We could have done one of three things:

• Lower the multiplication coefficient, but in that way the number of population of those countries will not match history.
  
• Lower the number of citizens required to build an army. This would lead to much higher number of armies and the whole "citizens" concept would be ruined. Not talking about balancing.
  
• We create a new coefficient which will calculate the number of soldiers differently.

We went for the third option and set it as 1:10. You can however change this once you are setting up your own scenario (this is entirely moddable). Cablenexus already did this for his holland scenario where one military unit has just 700 warriors, etc.

[MosulVet]

Thanks Pavel. I think the problem is my expectations - cities populations are listed as individuals, and unit sizes is also listed as individuals, so it's easy to assume one equals the other as the 10:1 ratio isn't presented in the UI.

[Garga]

I think there is more to it. When i play Odrysian kingdom, i cant really get my capital to increase past 5.1 pop. If i build a unit it drops to 4.x and then fastly comes back to 5. In the growth window, immigration is shown (several percent), but population does not increase past 5.1. Smaller towns do increase. Smells like a limit or a bug to me.

[Pavel-Ku]

Originally posted by Garga:

Smells like a limit or a bug to me.

There is no limit. I cannot rule out that there can be a bug but we are not aware of any bugs.
If you want, you can drop be an email to [e-mail] and I will investigate it deeper.

[gwgardner]

Originally posted by Garga:

I think there is more to it. When i play Odrysian kingdom, i cant really get my capital to increase past 5.1 pop. If i build a unit it drops to 4.x and then fastly comes back to 5. In the growth window, immigration is shown (several percent), but population does not increase past 5.1. Smaller towns do increase. Smells like a limit or a bug to me.

I think what you refer to as immigration is rather emigration - labeled as migration in the game. Those are people leaving your city. If you go to the state map, select the city filter, hover over your capitol, you'll see what the factors are leading to the migration away from the city.

[wolf-jesus]

Originally posted by gwgardner:

Originally posted by Garga:

I think there is more to it. When i play Odrysian kingdom, i cant really get my capital to increase past 5.1 pop. If i build a unit it drops to 4.x and then fastly comes back to 5. In the growth window, immigration is shown (several percent), but population does not increase past 5.1. Smaller towns do increase. Smells like a limit or a bug to me.

I think what you refer to as immigration is rather emigration - labeled as migration in the game. Those are people leaving your city. If you go to the state map, select the city filter, hover over your capitol, you'll see what the factors are leading to the migration away from the city.

Hi gwgardner, I'm also very confused about population growth. Garga mentioned the “growth window" which will display immigration, but I never find it. And you mentioned "city filter" in "state map". Does it mean strategic overview in state window? But there's no indication of pop migration factors when hovering over a city. Anyway, what is the best way to check population growth factor?

[gwgardner]

F4 takes you to the state map, the 'strategic overview' window. On that window are various filters on the left side, such as 'cities.'

Click on that filter and you get all the cities known to you. Hover the cursor over one of those cities on the map and you get various bits of info about it.

Another way to check on cities is to click on a city label on the main map, and then right click once. Then hover over the city, and you will get a tooltip showing all sorts of info on resource production, happiness, and citizen growth (the little three-person icon.

And then there's the resource map window. Resource Usage window. For example on that window, click on the 'citizens' filter and then hover over one of the cities on that map, and you see growth, migration, etc.

Click on the 'happiness' filter on that same resource usage window, then hover over a city, and you get reasons why a city is happy, whether there is migration away from it. When hovering over a city, up above the map are various factors - such as whether there are military present, etc.