Population Pyramids for civ 7

[tippyjames]

A country's population percentage based on age have drastic effects on it's overall long term stability. Baby-booms have their benefits when the babies grow up to become productive members of the working class age group from 25-45. But when this large percentage of the population becomes too old, the economic impact and overall happiness of a society dealing with too many old people to effectively take care of become important factors on how a civilization operates. Implementing strong population control dynamics can effect a civilizations overall happiness, allowing for immigration may very well stabilize the population pyramid, but would anyone want to move to a country that has no culture or is currently at war? Would populations flock out of their own country due to forced military drafts or prolonged unhappiness? Population based on age including immigration like themes to game-play can greatly alter the manner in which the strategy for civilization plays out.

 

[PhoenicianGold]

In keeping with Civ's general design philosophy as a sort of "virtual board game" where the pieces are supposed to be fairly simple and in countable numbers, and the mechanics are supposed to go wide rather than deep (because generally increased complexity of scale removes the player further from being able to play "intuitively"), this might be a little on the complex side. The more values and functions are associated with individuals of the population, the more the player might get bogged down or even outright frustrated by how this slows down or messes with the primary scale of the game which is on the city level.

However, this proposed mechanic is much simpler than many other population mechanics I've seen proposed. It would be a single age value and would likely only affect a single element, namely productivity, and there wouldn't be much need for any further interactions. It adds just a bit of dimension, and along a parallel axis to other "aging" mechanics that have slowly been introduced into the series like artifacts. I actually like it a lot.

So, here is the biggest question that I have with many of these sort of "gritty hyperrealism" mechanics. An aging population is generally going to be a "malus," a mechanic that will more often than not only serve to frustrate the player. It's not as bad as, say, a disease mechanic, but generally it's just one more thing like amenities and housing that could pile up to the player's detriment. So how do we balance the malus out with a bonus, so that players see just as much opportunity in the new design space as there is burden? Your ideal population pyramid might be a start, where maintaining within a healthy range grants the player additional bonuses. But I think we'd need something more than that given that I suspect it would be extremely easy to let the population swing out of the sweet spot and therefore most players will be at a disadvantage.

Another thing you could do would be to introduce a separate complimentary mechanic that would offset the population burden. Maybe having more old people increases science and culture generation, while having more young people adds benefits to production and food. That way players would still feel like they can do something with a suboptimal population instead of constantly feeling like they are behind. Maybe introduce some policies like "Quiverfull" to increase reproductive rate or "Culling" to remove older citizens lol. There are probably many ways you could make the player have more agency and therefore more fun with the mechanic.