New population idea

[airdrik]

The goal of this is to kill 2(+) birds with one stone.

Instead of having the population of a city based on the size of the city, have the size of the city based on the population. The growth rate of the population would be based on several factors including (but not limited to) the food production of the city (including food from trade routs), immigration, the number of units built (and supported), etc.

Whenever a city's population exceeds a certain amount then the size of the city increases with all of the normal changes ala civ 2. The only difference will be that since groth is not based on filling a food storage unit, the food storage will need to be re-vamped (as well as the food production). An idea I have is that pre-granery, 1/2 of all surplus food is stored, or the entirety of a deficite deducted from the food storage. After you get a granery the entire surplus is stored.

Food surplus can be shipped to wherever it is needed (kind of like food caravans).

[me_irate]

This is very simular to the way pop works in ctp2. I like this system allot. every 10,000 pop citizens the pop of city increases by one. In my opionin this is a good way to do it. No longer do the cost of settlers get messed up late in game. If i remember correctly civ 2 the pop between pop increase was varied. 5-6 increase 15,000 while 25-26 increases 50,000 or somthing like that. But in ctp2 all pop is the same.

[airdrik]

You still have a food storage box in this system. It never overflows (like if you have lots of trade, it just scrunches them together), but if it becomes empty then famine occors.

They would have to revamp the pop growth rates, and some other minor factors, but everything else should be able to work around it (it is also a ton more realistic as you have actual population values rather than rounded to the nearest 10000).

The smallest unit of population would be 1 ie. you can have populations 5,253, or 2,562,685 or whatever, and you gain a size every 5000*next city size population points (size 1 starts at 5,000, and can go from 0-14,999, 5,000+2*5,000-1, size 2 is 15,000 to 29,999, size 3 is 30,000 to 54,999, size 10 is 275,000 to 329,999, etc.). This way growth rates can remain constant, but not get eponential size growth rates ie. a city with a growth rate of 5% increases in population by 5% every turn, so if one turn it's pop is about 125,000(size 6), the next turn it's pop would be 131,250 (still size 6). In 2 turns it's pop would grow to about 144,700 which is size 7, at which time it would gain another worker and size population.

Units built would deduct their population cost (rules.txt tweekable) from the population of the city that built it and that would be it.

There are two ways to do settlers/workers, one way is that when you build settlers, it takes the pop down to half way to the next size rank ie. a size 4 city builds a settler, the city size goes down to 2, and it's new population is (15000+30,000)/2=22500.

The other way is that they have really big population costs, like settler: 30,000, so that you can't build them until you have that population and then the pop is deducted, so that early on it kills to build settlers, but later on the toll is not so bad.

[SerapisIV]

I'm all for more realism, but only when it helps or at least doesn't take away from the fun of the game. If every idea that I support is more realistic but takes away from the fun in testing, I wouldn't complain about its loss. Along those lines, I like the simplicity of just counting a few heads, whether or not the actually count as specific population. THe whole idea of population in Civ is skewed anyway, because in modern times, population can triple in 20 years, yet few if any of those people would be old enough to contribute to society if it was realistic and only adults contributed to production/resources. In this respoect civ is nowhere near conforming to reality, but for the simplicity of it, (such as changing elvis to einstein as a specialist, Tom Jones and Wayne Newton can't going working for IBM and actually help increase my science rating, but real demographic data and education factors are way too complex for inclusion in civ. So in keeping the current pop method, ie, not effected by army size, I don't mind.

[airdrik]

The main purposs of this was to find a quick and easy way to find a solution to the immigration and units cost pop problems that have popped up. If you want these aspects in the game, then this would be the easiest way to deal with them, but if they are not, scrap this idea it would be almost totally worthless.

[jdlessl]

I think that using real numbers for population is much simpler and consistent. But it allows for more complicated ideas to be implemented effectively. Population growth rate is no longer just a function of food, but can be modified by a variety of factors, like health. The only difficult part is applying it to resource gathering; ctp2's system would work fairly well for that. It'd certainly be better than the Civs where 30k people can only gather twice as much resources as 10k.

Also, if they were given a fixed population cost, settlers wouldn't represent wildly varying populations. Building one can deduct millions from a big city, but then represents a paltry 10k when you found a new town. It's unrealistic, annoying, and stupid to boot.

--
Jared Lessl
[This message has been edited by jdlessl (edited April 13, 2001).]

[airdrik]

The problem with fixed pop for settlers for game play, though is that it kills in the early stages, but is extremely inexpensive when you have booming metropolises. Using a fixed-rate settler cost means that a settler would have to cost the same population as the maximum population of a size 2 city in order to have it cost 2 population points. Then if you have a city with 30,000 population build a settler, then that city's population would go down to 1, and would never be able to grow past that. Or if it is a size such that it will be able to grow after building the settler, it will still be extremly stunted. On the other side, building a settler in a city with a population of 1,030,000 would reduce the pop of that city by only 3%, which is quite a bit less than the average rate of growth of a city of that size.

While this may reflect how things are in real life, it is one of those things that you have to toss in place of game play.

[King Richard]

I support the idea of excess food to everyone who needs it (caravans), so that ****ty cities can still grow, and that some cities can be very large (1.000.000 citizens 200 B.C. etc.). I also hope that cities that are important trade-cities can grow more than others. And, oh: Immigration, yes please!

[Roman]

quote: Originally posted by airdrik on 04-13-2001 11:32 AM The growth rate of the population would be based on several factors including (but not limited to) the food production of the city (including food from trade routs), immigration, the number of units built (and supported), etc.

I STRONGLY support this idea. However, it is apparent from the screenshots that the "food box" has stayed and hence the rest of the system remained as well. Too late to change it, I guess.

[jglidewell]

I want the city size and radius to be reflected by population as well.

Food should be a commodity and sustainer of a pop and not a factor in pop growth.

PoP growth has more to do with lenght of military service, religious values, moral codes, health and in essense how soon and how often the people get it on.

Say there are 100 females with avg begining child bearing age of 13 and ending at 50. That's 37 years * 12 divided by avg 9 months to bring to term all times 100 which equals max 4933 potential pop expansion with one generation. That's 100 to about 5000 thats 50 times the current pop!

Now all of this depends on health (my aching back), mores(when and how),military service(do i have the time).

food only maintains a pop and indirectly the health. There should be more starvation and plagues and disieas which would knoch the 50 to 1 down.

[tniem]

I love this idea! It works perfectly with what I would love to see in Civ III with trade, cities, immigration, and other suggestions.

Unfortunately, it doesn't look like it will be in Civ III. Instead, from what the CGW article said it appears that the number of the city size will be a part of Civ III. I say this because of what they have said about settlers. I for one though have always wanted to have Civ III include actual population numbers not just real numbers. So it appears that this feature will not be in Civ III, something hopefully we can get into Civ IV.