A new population growth model needed for Civ4?

[Drachasor]

All my information indicates a population explosion happens during the transition from primitive medicine to advanced medicine, and before the advant of birth control in some form. It doesn't have anything to do with wealth, really, just the ability to control family size better.

Still, a tech that gave birth control would be bad, unless it gave some large bonus too.

-Drachasor

[Zeiter]

The birth control tech could give a huge bonus to economy and gold output perhaps. I think that would make up for it. It could also reduce the chances of riots, and just generally make people happier (which partly offset the growth penalty.

Or maybe it could give you an option if you were running a totalitarian or authoritarian govt. to restrict your people from using the birth control, or at least to heavily discourage it, thereby protecting your growth, but also denying your empire the other benefits of the tech, like the improved economy and such.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Drachasor
Nope, look at the family size in modern countries. Does it average 12+ children a couple? Does it average 6+?

That's birth rate, not growth rate. Growth rate is (birth rate) - (death rate).

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by GePap
Then comes improved sanitation and medicine- this hits the death rate and cuts it significantly while the fertility rate remain very high- meaning population explodes. Then finally as the population becomes wealthy, fertility drops and populations stabalize or drop.

That would work.

Each city has a birth rate, a death rate, and a quality of life. These numbers are affected by civilization advances, city improvements, education level of the citizens, and wealth. For example, the presence of some kind of medical facilities will both increase birth rate and decrease death rate.

Quality of life is a bunch of factors together, such as crime rate, happiness, education, cost of living, etc. It affects whether people want to move into or out of this city in general.

[Drachasor]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger


That's birth rate, not growth rate. Growth rate is (birth rate) - (death rate).

My point was that birth rate, e.g. raw growth rate, has gone down along with the death rate. Partly because of greater survival chances, and a good part because of birth control in various forms.

-Drachasor

[Drachasor]

Also, I think we can eliminate death rates and birth rates (though keep Family Size in the demographics--did they get rid of those in Civ3?)

Just have *Growth Rate*, and have various advances modify it directly. Behind the scenes, if you want, there can be more elaborate indicators, but the individual numbers don't matter for city sizes as much as the net effect.

Generally all medical advances would increase growth rate, and eventually you'll be able to spend money to increase the rate (via giving people money to have kids, basically). Lastly, the more crowded a population is relative to the tech level and what is built there, the more the growth rate is decreased. More tech and buildings allow high growth rates, until you again reach an equilibrium. Naturally you'll need food to sustain growth and population though.

Hmm, I sorta like how all my ideas on various threads fit together. Contraception could increase the happiness in a city, thereby increasing the productivity (as I proposed in my corruption/waste/etc thread). Then you could choose between outlawing contraception (making people a bit unhappy, with higher growth) or allowing it (happier with less growth).

-Drachasor

[Urban Ranger]

Anybody else has ideas on population growth? This is central to Civ, afterall.