I know that this is me being really stupid, but I'm unable to understand how the domination population limit is calculated and I really need someone to set me straight because I'm playing a Time game on a small map and am teetering on the dom limit in a most alarming manner.

I've done this to myself, I know, and I also know that the straightforward way to avoid domination is to keep under the land limit and forget about population before you all point this out to me :) :blush: This is a try on Deity level, which I find really hard, and I kept too many cities because Gandhi had obligingly founded FOUR religions & built about 8 wonders - including the Pyramids, the Gt Lighthouse, the Colossus, the Gt Library & the Parthenon, all of which are just so jolly handy in the early to mid game. I couldn't bear to raze them. So I weakened and thought "I will bust the land limit and keep under the population limit". Not clever. I am now playing this unbelievably painful game, where I have to think really hard about almost every turn, and I need a way out! The population % limit is varying in a really alarming manner and although I can partly see why I'm still confused :confused:

Land, I understand (I think, heh). The percentage of land required for a domination victory is determined by the number of opponents in the game. In my last Warlords domination game, this was 51%, and so I needed just over 600 tiles on a map with 1181 tiles. This percentage did not change over the course of the game, even when AI civs were destroyed, so all was well.

Clearly, unlike the number of land tiles, the total number of population isn't fixed so it makes sense that my % population score will vary not only according to my growth or reduction, but also according to that of the AI. If I stop growing altogether (which I've tried) my % of the population reduces, and that of the AI increases as they grow, in the expected manner. So far so good. But what I don't understand is why the % required to achieve the domination limit *also* changes? It increased to 61% at one point - but is now down to 55% and Still Falling :dubious: :dunno:

I know there's a simple explanation but I'm too dim to see it so please - could someone explain how it works?

I'm a bit surprised by your 61%, because the population-limit is the percentage of your biggest opponent + 25%.

This means that if the biggest opponent has 20% of the world-population, you'll need 45%!


This of course means that capturing cities from that opponent is very interesting: his share of the total population decreases, your share increases, and you'll probably need less population overall :goodjob:

It is extremely simple, but you're definitely not being dim - it's certainly not an intuitive calculation.

On Vanilla the dom pop limit is recalculated each turn and is the pop % of the 2nd most populous civ +25%. So if the 2nd most populous civ has 30% of the world population, then the dom pop limit is 55%. If on the next turn the 2nd most populous civ has 28%, the dom limit is reduced to 53%. etc. etc.

I assume it is the same in Warlords/BtS but cannot say for certain.

So the reason the dom limit is dropping in your game is either because civ#2 is losing pop or more likely, because civs 3 and 4 (or however many you have left) are increasing pop faster than #2 which reduces the % of the #2 even though it's pop stays the same.

The easiest way for you to fix this is to increase the pop of civ #2 by having them capture cities from the other civs. But since you are playing deity #2 will likely get too big and lauch eventually. And you can't raze cities of the #2 since that will drop the pop limit like a rock. Maybe you can just pillage all the non-food improvements then to slow commerce and production

Alternatevly you could dance around the pop limit until the mid-game wonders are obsoleted and then starve/rush those cities down to size 1 and let them be captured and auto-razed to get back below the land limit.

Good luck!

Can you give away cities that aren't all that great near opponents? They might take them to get you below the land/pop limit

One quick way to reduce population is to switch to Slavery and whip them down to an acceptable level. The only thing that would prevent this is a UN resolution to make Emancipation a global civic. 3-5 turns of whipping should do the trick.

One quick way to reduce population is to switch to Slavery and whip them down to an acceptable level. The only thing that would prevent this is a UN resolution to make Emancipation a global civic. 3-5 turns of whipping should do the trick.

If teetering on the edge of the dom limits, they should be able to stop a UN vote anyways.

What CrisFromLux and FiveAces said.

... I'm playing a Time game on a small map and am teetering on the dom limit in a most alarming manner.


There's something I don't get here. In a Time game you want to maximize your points. Pop is one of the most important contributors to points. If you insist on trespasing the land limit but staying under the pop limit you will probably win but you'll get a lousy score. Why don't you just gift a couple of your cities and allow the rest to grow to their heart content?

What CrisFromLux and FiveAces said.



There's something I don't get here. In a Time game you want to maximize your points. Pop is one of the most important contributors to points. If you insist on trespasing the land limit but staying under the pop limit you will probably win but you'll get a lousy score. Why don't you just gift a couple of your cities and allow the rest to grow to their heart content?

It may be a lousy in-game score but it still should be #1 in the table - I don't think there are any entries for small/deity/time (ancient start) on any speed.

Next time try a terra map - old world should not have enough land for dom, and you can just stone-age the last civ down to one city preferably on ice or island. Just don't let them get astro.

The problem he's going to have with gifting cities to get under the dom limit is he can't raze them afterwards, and that gives the AI a chance to rebuild and launch - even a 2049 AI launch will beat you if you are going for time, and deity AI can do that with just a couple cities unless you constantly pillage the heck out of them. Maybe gifting cities and then razing the existing ones would be better, but you will need to keep razing as the AI will constantly try to resettle.

Hi ... thanks so much for all the replies & advice :goodjob: especially to ChrisFromLux and FiveAces for the clear explanation of how the pop limit works. This is exactly what's happening - Frederick's pop + 25%. I don't feel so bad now about not spotting what was going on, heh.

I assume it is the same in Warlords/BtS but cannot say for certain.

This is a Warlords game, & it definitely works that way here.

And you can't raze cities of the #2 since that will drop the pop limit like a rock.

Yep, that's exactly what happened. I nearly died when it dropped from 61% to 57% in a single turn ... Earlier on, I got fed up with Frederick (#2 in pop) constantly declaring war so took one of his cities and gave it to Asoka (#4 in pop) thinking that this would more or less keep the population stable but slow Fred down. Now I know the formula, I can see what a disaster that decision was <wry grin>.

Maybe you can just pillage all the non-food improvements then to slow commerce and production

Yes, that's what I thought. Have now been at war with Fred and Gandhi (#3) for around 150 turns, doing exactly that while preventing my cities from growing (except my capital, which I've continued to grow for obvious reasons).

Can you give away cities that aren't all that great near opponents? They might take them to get you below the land/pop limit

Not easily. I am playing Pangaea with low seas, which has given me a single large continent with quite a few islands to the south. Fred and Gandhi are now confined to the islands, Asoka is still on the mainland with three cities in tundra to the north. The only player to whom I could gift cities safely is Asoka, I think if I try the other two they'll just flip back. Asoka borders my *best* cities, including the two driving my economy. Aargh. I have kept 3 poorish cities to gift to him in a nice group, but I'm not sure that will take me under the land limit because, inevitably, I've built up some culture now. They don't actually border him and might even flip back. I keep looking at it, but I just can't predict how it will work :( If I get under the land limit and build up pop and then they flip ... Curtains.

One quick way to reduce population is to switch to Slavery and whip them down to an acceptable level. The only thing that would prevent this is a UN resolution to make Emancipation a global civic. 3-5 turns of whipping should do the trick.

Excellent idea. If only I'd thought of that before I voted for Emancipation to solve my unhappiness situation linked to the emancipation/war weariness combo. (Did I already mention that I'd put myself in a really stupid situation? :) )

If teetering on the edge of the dom limits, they should be able to stop a UN vote anyways.

Absolutely right. I have been blocking things - just - by one or two votes. So I could have stopped emancipation. If I'd thought of the benefits of slavery. I thought I was only sacrificing caste system and that seemed worth it at the time ...


There's something I don't get here. In a Time game you want to maximize your points. Pop is one of the most important contributors to points. If you insist on trespasing the land limit but staying under the pop limit you will probably win but you'll get a lousy score. Why don't you just gift a couple of your cities and allow the rest to grow to their heart content?

Yes, yes, I know, you're absolutely right. The way to play a Time game is to stick under the land limit and max your population. But I just couldn't bring myself to raze the Pyramids, the Parthenon, the Colossus, the Great Library and 2 shrines, plus assorted other wonders. Just couldn't do it. I'll know better next time. Probably :mischief: And actually, I think I'd have to gift 4-5 cities to make the land thing work, but even then I'm not confident. That one city of Fred's that I gifted to Asoka is not performing at all well against me in terms of its cultural borders, and it's not even right up against my closest cities.

It may be a lousy in-game score but it still should be #1 in the table - I don't think there are any entries for small/deity/time (ancient start) on any speed.

There are no ancient starts - Wasting Time likes future starts for his time victories :) Don't know how the score would pan out with limited population points ... if I manage it, it will be interesting to see if it does beat the future starts. I do have the advantage of a few extra available wonders of course ...

Next time try a terra map - old world should not have enough land for dom, and you can just stone-age the last civ down to one city preferably on ice or island. Just don't let them get astro.

Yes, Terra is good. I wanted Pangaea though, I already have a couple of deity victories on terra

The problem he's going to have with gifting cities to get under the dom limit is he can't raze them afterwards, and that gives the AI a chance to rebuild and launch - even a 2049 AI launch will beat you if you are going for time, and deity AI can do that with just a couple cities unless you constantly pillage the heck out of them.

Yes, that's my worry. If I hand Asoka a couple of great cities it's not going to help my pop situation that much given the formula, it probably won't solve my land situation and he'll start researching like a demon. I am pillaging the heck out of Gandhi and Fred and I *think* I can stop them from launching - they're a mass of techs away and there are only 300 turns to go now. Asoka is *way* behind on tech so I'm leaving him alone for now, but his time will come. He has oil in his tundra ...

One thing that did help was gifting biology to Asoka. He has no use for it in tundra with no fresh water ... but he very obligingly traded it to my two sworn enemies with whom I was at war. They grew like the clappers after that - in fact, I had to grow a bit to keep a veto in the UN :crazyeye:

Good luck!

Thanks - I'll need it after all the brilliant decisions I've made :rolleyes:

Thanks again for all the help guys ...

You won't beat the future start score if you are not maxing pop based on the map - that was the problem with my terra win. WastinTime's Great Plains map allowed him place his cities in high food areas and ignore the peaks/plains whereas terra or pangea you just can't optomize city placement like that - there's probably a ton of seafood around the islands on your map for example.

But you won't have to for EQM - the non-ancient starts don't affect your scoring. QM though yeah, it could lower your score a bunch.

Try this to get out of emancipation - next UN vote call the emancipation global civic vote again and veto it. Now I think you will be able to switch to slavery. I'm not sure if it will work, but it can't hurt you to try.

Well, I finished the game eventually, assuming it is accepted. Thanks to the advice here, I was able to manage my population within the limit until around 1800. War weariness was such a problem that I really couldn't grow much anyway until getting Future Tech. Asoka would not accept the cities I wanted to gift to him, so I gradually built a chain of horrible little cities in ice along the northernmost edge of the continent running from his territory towards the cities I wanted to transfer. I built and gifted them one by one (didn't want to get stuck with a bunch of rubbish cities!) and eventually it got to the point where the others were close enough to his territory to be acceptable. In the end, I think I had to give him 7 cities to get under the land domination limit, but I kept the Wonders & shrines I'd taken from Gandhi. By the end of the game, I had maxed out population in virtually every city but was nowhere near Wasting Time's score.

I was at war until 60 turns from the end and so I couldn't afford to come out of emancipation - even with future tech & 4 religions I was barely keeping up with the unhappiness from hundreds of years of war. However, after I finished the game, I loaded an old save to test FiveAces' suggestion just to find out if it worked. I had always just assumed that once those UN resolutions were passed, they were permanent. Not so - you were quite right FiveAces. If you call the global civic again, vote against it and the motion fails, you once more have the option to choose slavery or caste system. Well worth knowing :)

One quick way to reduce population is to switch to Slavery and whip them down to an acceptable level. The only thing that would prevent this is a UN resolution to make Emancipation a global civic. 3-5 turns of whipping should do the trick.

Or: Since he says he has emancipation: Just assign millions of specialists so that the cities starve.

True - and I did that in a couple of cities early on. Just for the record though, and it's not mega-important or anything - I'm a she, not a he :queen: There aren't many of us, I know, & I'm not exactly Moonsinger or anything, but still ....