why is my population so low

[kamex]

just playing a continents on emperor as augustus.

wiped out all the ais on my continent, then settled everywhere i could, and have been building ever since.

i have around 20 cities, with an average of 4 pop each, happiness is an uphill struggle atm.

i check the demagraphics, expecting to be ahead, and to my horror i am last in population.

my pop 1.8 million

average 3.6 million

best 8.8 million ???

whats going on?

 

[Giant Dwarf]

Well, your unhappiness is going to limit population growth. You will pretty much stop growing when you become unhappy, so connect happiness resources, build happiness buildings, and don't expand so quickly. In addition, trade luxury resources and get city state friends.

 

[MuteWolf]

If by "happiness is an uphill struggle" you mean that you are unhappy that is probably why. Unhappiness means your cities grow at 1/4 of the normal rate.

 

[kamex]

Yes I'm aware of this, yet I already have improved every happiness resource available, and traded for everyone I can get.

Also building as many colosseums and circuses as I can

 

[MuteWolf]

Yes I'm aware of this, yet I already have improved every happiness resource available, and traded for everyone I can get.

Also building as many colosseums and circuses as I can

are you still unhappy? if so then you need to limit your number of cities. You might even consider selling some to your neighbors, the ones that are useless at least.

 

[kamex]

doesn't that kind of beat the point of icc,

not only that, how can an ai get 8,000,000 ???

 

[atteSmythe]

Social policies? Have you headed for Meritocracy, or something else that will give you a goodly happiness boost?

 

[MuteWolf]

doesn't that kind of beat the point of icc,

not only that, how can an ai get 8,000,000 ???

The thing is you over did it. You shouldn't have expanded beyond the happiness you had, I was just offering a suggestion for fixing it. Also I'm assuming some of those cities are not placed in the best spot so giving them away won't hurt you too bad especially if you get the AI to declare war on an unfriendly AI or give you a chunk of cash.

As far as the 8,000,000 thing goes. I would say if you had 1.8 mil pop growing at 1/4 of normal speed then 1.8 times 4 equals 7.2 mil. Assuming he has a maritime CS ally, the right social policies, some spammed granaries, or other source of food I don't see why he couldn't get 8 mil.

 

[MouseyPounds]

The demographic population numbers are skewed very heavily toward large cities; so much so that they are pretty meaningless to draw any gameplay conclusions from. For example, one size 10 city will have a *much* higher demographic population than 10 size 1 cities. Don't worry about huge disparities with that number.

 

[Set]

once my pop was 1.8 million with a large empire and then I conquered a 21 person dehli, it immediately went up to 12 million so as mentioned before demograph populaton is skewed

 

[Stanislaw]

The demographic population numbers are skewed very heavily toward large cities; so much so that they are pretty meaningless to draw any gameplay conclusions from. For example, one size 10 city will have a *much* higher demographic population than 10 size 1 cities. Don't worry about huge disparities with that number.

This.

If you have multiple huge cities, numbers like these are even possible in Civilization V:

Spoiler :

 

[Tabarnak]

Don't bother about population. It's the worthless info in demographics screen. Way better to have lets say 3 cities with 4 pop than 1 big city with 12 pop, unless you go OCC.

Edit : @Stanislaw

That's a lot of turns played lol

 

[DaveGold]

i have around 20 cities, with an average of 4 pop each, happiness is an uphill struggle atm.

20 cities with a coliseum each and maybe a circus, plus the resources from 20 cities, plus a bonus from a policies, plus wonders, plus traded resources, should give you enough to grow. At the moment you should probably lock down some of the cities and try to get some key research and production cities grown. It sounds as if you've expanded too fast though, which generally results in too many cities that never get big enough to be useful except for cash.

 

[antidrocefalo]

my best 8.1...19 cities

 

[Rathelon]

Build farms. Dont rely on maritime city states for food.

 

[ifinnem]

Don't bother about population. It's the worthless info in demographics screen. Way better to have lets say 3 cities with 4 pop than 1 big city with 12 pop, unless you go OCC.

A closer comparison (although not perfect due to Maritime CS) is to look at crop yield in the demographics - divide by 2 for an idea of the number of citizens (esp in larger empires)

 

[Nunya]

I once ran a OCC with Ghandi to figure out how much "population" each city is worth. Here's the data:

Spoiler :

size 1 = 1000 population
size 2 = 6000 population
size 3 = 21,000 population
size 4 = 48,000 population
size 5 = 90,000 population
size 6 = 150,000 population
size 7 = 232,000 population
size 8 = 337,000 population
size 9 = 469,000 population
size 10 = 630,000 population
size 11 = 823,000 population
I missed 12
size 13 = 1,315,000 population
size 14 = 1,618,000 population
size 15 = 1,963,000 population
size 16 = 2,352,000 population
size 17 = 2,787,000 population
size 18 = 3,271,000 population
size 19 = 3,806,000 population
size 20 = 4,394,000 population
size 21 = 5,037,000 population
size 22 = 5,738,000 population
size 23 = 6,498,000 population
size 24 = 7,321,000 population
size 25 = 8,207,000 population
size 26 = 9,160,000 population
size 27 = 10,181,000 population
size 28 = 11,273,000 population
size 29 = 12,436,000 population
size 30 = 13,675,000 population
size 31 = 14,990,000 population

As you can see a single size 24 city gives more than 7 million population in the demographics screen, but 6 size 4 cities would only give 288,000 population in the demographics screen despite providing you with the same number of actual tile working citizens.

 

[fed1943]

20 cities and 80 pop.
Colisseum in each city offsets the pop unhappiness. Meritocrassy leaves just 21 unhappiness.
So, you just need 5 luxuries.

 

[kamex]

An update. - I won.


Was on emperor, continents, diplo victory

The turning point was finishing FP, then not founding any more cities. Yes I had been using the liberty branch to get happiness for cities connected to capital.

After getting planned economy as well as FP, things started to get a bit silly.

Just a note - Rome + ICS/Rexing + FP + Planned Economy = Awesome!

On openeing order, the + 25% building rate is great for any civ, but with Rome its even better, as the synergy with Romes UA is scary! (+50% towards anything already built in the capital)

 

[kamex]

I once ran a OCC with Ghandi to figure out how much "population" each city is worth. Here's the data:

Spoiler :

size 1 = 1000 population
size 2 = 6000 population
size 3 = 21,000 population
size 4 = 48,000 population
size 5 = 90,000 population
size 6 = 150,000 population
size 7 = 232,000 population
size 8 = 337,000 population
size 9 = 469,000 population
size 10 = 630,000 population
size 11 = 823,000 population
I missed 12
size 13 = 1,315,000 population
size 14 = 1,618,000 population
size 15 = 1,963,000 population
size 16 = 2,352,000 population
size 17 = 2,787,000 population
size 18 = 3,271,000 population
size 19 = 3,806,000 population
size 20 = 4,394,000 population
size 21 = 5,037,000 population
size 22 = 5,738,000 population
size 23 = 6,498,000 population
size 24 = 7,321,000 population
size 25 = 8,207,000 population
size 26 = 9,160,000 population
size 27 = 10,181,000 population
size 28 = 11,273,000 population
size 29 = 12,436,000 population
size 30 = 13,675,000 population
size 31 = 14,990,000 population

As you can see a single size 24 city gives more than 7 million population in the demographics screen, but 6 size 4 cities would only give 288,000 population in the demographics screen despite providing you with the same number of actual tile working citizens.

Yep, this is true. The demographics screen is indeed misleading.