world popualtion

[Nuk_um]

the growth of world population seems not linear. the word pop increase 6 times in 100 years. in CIV, the growth of pop seems did not have that effect.

my idea is may be using the factory idea which double resource (shield). CIV 4 should have something that double the food too.

 

[Mr. Dictator]

hmm could work but would you use an improvement to start the double food, if so im thinking some farm or new storage available from the outset of the industrial age

does that make sense?

 

[KrikkitTwo]

unfortunately those don't stack

But this gets into the general population model of Civ which is seriously off from realism.

If you want to increase food output significantly there are a couple options
1. cut food requirements to 1 make most terrains give a base of 0 with 1 from irrigation (2 for grasslands).. means that Railroads will about double population
and/OR
2. make irrigation only available with later techs (call it advanced Farming) give it substantial bonuses ie +10 food (to make this balance well you should disallow mining on terrains you want irrigated)



For Civ 4... what we really need is 'noncontributing' population, ie population that is in excess of the amount needed to work the land, and that you don't have the city improvements to allow them to do useful work, or at least useful work at your tech level. So that the only reason city X is growing is that if you run out of food again, the population will riot
(for this to happen, people need to stop being buildings that are build out of food)

 

[dh_epic]

To some degree, you have to take the city-numbers with a grain of salt. To me, they're more logarithmic than linear. The difference between a size 2 and a size 3 city is smaller than the difference between a size 6 and a size 7.

 

[Nuk_um]

I like the idea of non contributing population. however, it should have "birth control" tech to resolve this problem.

However, the noncontributing population should have both pros and cons. pros is cheap labor. cons is less income per capital.

what do you think?

 

[Vael]

To some degree, you have to take the city-numbers with a grain of salt. To me, they're more logarithmic than linear. The difference between a size 2 and a size 3 city is smaller than the difference between a size 6 and a size 7.

I agree with this assumption. Personally I don't mind the numbers simulating history as much as long as the concept is in place (Farms from Civ 2, RRs giving extra food in 3, etc.) and the gameplay is sound.

 

[dh_epic]

Yeah, I tend not to be too picky with the exact numbers.

I'm not gonna argue about whether a unit represents a "company" or a "battalion", and then say "the game needs to promote more/less units, because most armies had X amount of troops..."

Neither am I gonna argue about how many months it takes for a war to be faught in a game that's measured in turns.

So I'm not gonna get all wrapped up in how to make those population numbers more realistic. Right now, the individual population heads are there just to give an overall sense of growth and the strategies that come with it.

 

[mhIdA]

Civ should replace it's base tiled system for a more realistic model, where agricultural productivity, medicine, birth rate, religion as a role.
The agricultural productivity start at a certain level for different terrain type and once we achieve this or others techs like:
- Iron Working (better tools to better cultivate soil) => duplicate agricultural productivity
- Industrialization (coal agricultural machines) => triplicate agricultural productivity
- Motorized Transportation (coal agricultural machines - Tractors) => duplicate agricultural productivity
- Genetics (genetically modified organisms or transgenics) => triplicate agricultural productivity
We can add also pesticids.
I think this is more realistic than irrigation actually works or RR. RR increase speed of travel not food production.

 

[Mewtarthio]

That would give you thirty-six times the original amount of food! That's too much. Techs that increase food should be more along the lines of Agriculture (eg Crop Rotation), and should give bonuses more along the lines of x1.5. The real bonuses should come from city improvements.

 

[Colonel]

Um this sort of relates but I seem to remeber an idea from a while ago. Instead of haveing food based sole for one city have all the food an Empire has be in a one thing so if one city is surronded by desert then it can still grow as much as if it were surronded by grassland. Also a little add on to this. The farther a city got from a capital or Forbiddion palace like city the less food it could use to grow---this would also be dependant on roads rail harbors and such.

 

[Mewtarthio]

No, it should be possible to shift food around, but only with some difficulty. For instance, if you wanted to trade food with another city on the continent, the giver would lose that food instantly, but the reciever would not get the bonus until (most direct route length / 3) turns--that is, the amount of time it would take a unit with movement rate 1 to travel between the cities along the road. This would improve over time, and eventually be eliminated. The distance would also cause some food to spoil (again, improved with better technology). This would allow you to build agricultural cities that fuel the more important cities in your empire. Food trade would be limited by government type, and you could never trade out so much food that you starve to death. Over sea, I would like to see a Convoy system implemented to create and sustain trade routes (almost entirely automatic; you only give the city the order to forge a route). This would require almost no micromanagement save positioning your fleet to protect the convoy.

 

[mhIdA]

Mewtarthio
Maybe you'll right, maybe is too much, but think about the fallow:
1 - At begining city population = 10,000
2 - 1 popunit = 1,000 population. At begin city popunits = 10
3 - 1 popunit eats 2 food
4 - City radius = 21 tiles
5 - If we have 8 popunits worked on tiles with productivity = 4 to Flood Plains. Is the maximum of popunits farming tiles.
6 - Then results: 21 * 8 * 4 = 672 food
7 - By # 3: 672 / 2 = 336 food by 10 popunits
8 - By # 2: 336 / 10 = 33.6 food by popunit
9 - By # 1: 33.6 * 10,000 = 336,000 population
10 - Increased by factor 36: 36 * 336,000 = 12,096,000 population

Notes:
- This calculations assume 21 tiles of Flood Plains, wich is not realistic, is more probable we have only 11 or 12. So the city population could down to 7 Millions.
- The values for Grassland and Plains is respectivelly: 10.2 Millions and 7.5 Millions.
- The Genetics tech is only available almost in end of the game and since in real life this technology is recent we don't see all this effects (in Civ how it gonna increase productivity: 2, 3?). Until then maixmum population is 4 Millions, 3.4 Millions and 2.5 Millions respectivelly to flood plains, Grassland and Plains.
- City improvements: Workshops (Iron Working - farm tools), factories (Industrialization - coal machines), factories (Motorized Transportation - Tractors or fuel machines), chemistry factories (Pesticides or Genetics).
- It's not an automatic process, since workshops and factories don't supply all farmers at once, so population gradually increase.
- Cities more productives sell food to less productive cities, so less growth a city had.