Demographics

[Blaupanzer]

The programmers know. Why do they keep it a secret from the rest of us? Note a really good explanation of this screen was not provided for Civ 2 either, although folks like Solo and Samson managed to take some of it apart.

[Wernazuma III]

I'm not sure about this, but I always had the feeling in Civ2 that my family size depended on the number of settlers I had out there.

[Hunter Hutchins]

Thank you; helpful. =)

[MaSsConFUsi0n]

i only take into consideration the mfg goods.... if i am number one, i can outproduce anyone... sometimes even more than one civ. the family size thing is stupid imo cause when it comes to late game and none of your cities can grow, the one child per family makes you look like you're suffering when you really aren't.

MaSsConFUsi0n

[deafhawk]

Maybe I can cast more light in this one. I did a lot of experimenting with one city built very beginning and switch city worker in city screen and waiting a few turns and let city grow and see differences in demographics.

Okay, I find this:

population, okay, of course directly correlated to your total population units, your native workers do not count, I know, as I disbanded one not in city to see if population changed. nope. but exactly what is the formula to convert your number of citizens to the population count showed in demographics. I mean, I have total 21 population units in my cites total and demographics show 508000. how does this work out exactly I have not attempted to find out yet but if it is same as civ II then I am sure someone has already figured out the formula. check out civ II forum I guess.


land area, simple total of squares in your borders divided by 100

mfg goods, simply total shields produced in your cities. This does not count wasted shield. if you're number one in this then you are doing good!

approval ratings 50% means your civ is just stable. all citizen content or specialist is 50% all happy 100% half happy half content 75% so how can you use this? simply if you are aiming for We love the King Day in all your cities you can simple see if you have not failed assuming all your cities are large enough for WLKD by merely look at the percentage, if 75% or more then WLKD in all your cities is possible but it is also possible to have 80% rating and one of your city in disorder at the same time. but you will know for sure that one of your cities is not having WLKD if your rating is below 75% Think about it. happy faces must be equal or more to content faces besides having no unhappy face to have WLKD in a city. And if it is less than 50% I think it follows that you have a city in disorder somewhere.
Just throwing ideas how you can use the approval ratings in playing your game.

GNP simple the total commerce you generate, showed in trade advisor before breaking down to beakers, maintence, etc. if you're number one then you are doing well and probably the tech leader.

pollution now I have not tested that but i suspect it is simply the total number of that yellow triangle things you see in city screen. the more you have the more risk you are every turn of having pollution break out. you can use this to control your pollution. think before building that hosiptal, for example if your pollution is already too high.

military service. simply the numbers of your miltiary units ( not sure if workers and settlers are considered as military units in this reckoning) divided by your total population units multiplied by ten so if you have like 2 cites of total of four population units and 4 warriors and no workers ( no idea if count workers or not) you should be seeing 10 years military service. 4/4 x 1 = 10
how to take advantage of this information, if you are number one in population and number one in military service then you proably have more military units than anyone ( now this is not too certain as I am not sure how the populaiton thing in demographics exaclty work) Other thing is using this statistic to dtermine if you have large enough standing army for your civ size. if you are lagging in this then you know it is time to build up your army. You do not have to be 1 in military service to be sure you are secure. AI civs tend to build too much military at expense of developing infrastructre. Trick is to keep balance, not too unnecassarily too strong military, all those guns just sitting and eating up your gold, or too weak military, and this statistic can help you.

family size is "broken", always at one, no matter what I did in my expermentation

disease, no idea.

life expectation no idea. i would be very interested to see how that works.

producivity tricky, but i doubt it has to do with shields only. In my experiment, I had just one one-size city and I manipulated the city worker. worker changed to entertainer and so not producing anyhing, I have a base of three, do not match factor of production (food, shield, commerce) or anything citybase producing two food, one shield?, two commerce. why 3? dunno.

now I put worker on different squares, two food one commerce, two food one shield, one food two shield, and so on. and numbers gain in producity seems to match the total factors of produciton, food, shield, commerce meaing, if two food one commerce, that's 3 for example. now if I have my worker build road on the square the city worker is working on, I get one point increase in productivity correspending to the one extra commerce. I irriagate. one more point in producivity from extra food and so on. now for more than one populiaton unit in the city or in anohter city, things get confused and i can not figure how popuation plays a part. It does play a part! but it seems not to be porportional related i mean you do not divide factors of production gathered by population or something. Well I could not figure out yet. Makes a good puzzle to solve, eh?

In my opinion the productivity statistic is useless and you should not rely on it to determine the relative strength of your civ. mfg goods, land area,GNP, and population are better and I think only really relevant. military statistic can be useful if you know how to use this one. and for score building, population and land area statistics are useful as score depends on these.
and you can use pollution statistic to manage your pollution of course.

[gamma]

The only stat I tend to use in the demographics screen is pollution. Number of tons produced = number of polluted squares in your territory. This is a really handy way to find out if there are any polluted squares that you missed.

[MarshalN]

Seems like nobody was a Civ2 player here.

Pollution is just like what gamma said, pollution squares that are on the map. Each give a fixed number. I think it used to be 10 in Civ2. I think everyone's number was always equal in Civ2, but now with borders it'd probably be different.

Productivity has something (never bothered to figure out the equation) to do with total production (shields + commerce I believe) divided by your population. It shows you how efficient you are (how many of your guys are not making anything... i.e entertainers, etc, and WLTKD and such). So, not totally useless stat, but I don't know the exact formula.

I remember family size basically tells you how fast you're growing, at least in Civ2. Maybe it is broken in Civ3, but maybe because people experimenting with the number is always playing the same turn or at a point where the population is not moving, so you will always get a 1. If it's not broken, you should always be the highest in this category, otherwise it means other civs are outgrowing you.

Military service basically shows a ratio of unitsopulation. The higher it is, the more military units you have given your population. If you have the highest number, it doesn't mean you have the biggest army, but it tells you you have the biggest army given how big your civ is (like North Korea).

Disease has to do with what disease reducing techs you have, such as sanitation, and how many of those buildings you've built. I don't imagine it to have anything to do with jungles in Civ3. This and life expentancy and literacy are all numbers that go down (or up, in the case of life expectancy) as you progress. Not very useful.

MFG goods and GNP is just straight numbers like others said.

Literacy has to do with your technology level as well as the number of science buildings you have, such as libraries, universities, etc

Approval rating is just how happy your people are.

I haven't looked at this screen much in Civ3 yet (because I don't remember the shortcut for it and there's no more menu to find it). In Civ2 it tells you who's first even if it's not you, GIVEN you have an embassy in that civ. So if China's first and you're second, and you have an embassy in China, they'll tell you that China's first. If you don't have an embassy with them, you won't know. I'd imagine it's the same now.

[Skanky Burns]

Disease is related to the number of jungle tiles directly in contact with your cities. I had several cities surrounded by jungles, and as i cut the jungles down, my disease rating went down. During that time, no aqueducts were built, and as it was in the ancient period, no useful techs were discovered to combat disease either. So i conclude that jungles do figure into the disease equation.