SoL impact on pop growth might not be historically correct?

[Bearjuden]

I think that maybe sol shouldn't then be the most important factor impacting pop growth

Mmmm, it's more complicated than that. The biggest driver of more population is having more food. Populations exploded in the Victorian era because land use was so improved and a lot more food was pulled out of the same land than it was previously, so everyone was just...healthier. There was less starvation in the way that past eras had. This is literally what enabled the industrial revolution itself; such huge increases in food productivity freed up people to go live in cities, which is why the industrial revolution marks the point when agricultural saw a decline of share of workers from a large majority of the population down to (in the US at least) 10%.

And SoL does relate to food, but what it actually captures right now is goods, which falsely means it's possible to raise SoL by building clothing and glass factories to sell clothes and glass. SoL really needs to separate between needs like food and heating, and wants like radios. Having an excess of needs (the predominant of which by far is food) should drive a population boom, and it would be a valuable incentive for players to fund agriculture well in excess of what pops strictly need, while lacking it should both raise mortality and drastically affect radicalism, far more than lacking luxuries would. Things like porcelain are not needs though; they raise SoL, but would not affect growth. But SoL should affect what pops see as "base food demand", so if you build a food surplus and then raise your SoL, eventually that food surplus returns to normal as your population grows and their food demands grow, unless you find even better ways of developing the land or have more land to develop. As lives get nicer, you need to continue to exploit the land more creatively to maintain the same relative food surplus.

 

[Amorenkaire]

I'd say the current system can model the difference between wants and needs relatively well by tweaking what needs each SoL has. For example right now pops SoL 9 and lower have no demand for furniture, they're completely driven towards food, booze, and some clothes.

Some different variation might make sense though to improve things. If we have the rapid point of growth being between 8 and 20, having food needs rise sharply until leveling off and being replaced with more expensive luxury food needs would make sense.

A larger share of the growing classes demands being in food would also mean demand for such good would grow, and if food gets too expensive they can't afford their current SoL and should thus slide back, reducing their growth.

 

[Bearjuden]

I'd say the current system can model the difference between wants and needs relatively well by tweaking what needs each SoL has. For example right now pops SoL 9 and lower have no demand for furniture, they're completely driven towards food, booze, and some clothes.

I disagree, for the simple reason that removing all of the food production in a country and having no food imports can see you still have population growth because most SoL requirements are being met with furniture and clothes and porcelain and whatever*. There's nothing you can change the actual demanded values to that solves that; as long as luxuries and needs are treated as equal requirements for a given SoL level then there's no way around the fact that all needs can be met without having any food.

*this is an actual experiment someone ran in another thread; they reduced the caloric intake of their country by 85% and sustained a full year of stable population growth, so this isn't some hypothetical issue. Nor is it unproblematic not to capture, given that starvation ended at least one power which was otherwise capable of producing industrial products in this time period.

 

[Amorenkaire]

I disagree, for the simple reason that removing all of the food production in a country and having no food imports can see you still have population growth because most SoL requirements are being met with furniture and clothes and porcelain and whatever*. There's nothing you can change the actual demanded values to that solves that; as long as luxuries and needs are treated as equal requirements for a given SoL level then there's no way around the fact that all needs can be met without having any food.

*this is an actual experiment someone ran in another thread; they reduced the caloric intake of their country by 85% and sustained a full year of stable population growth, so this isn't some hypothetical issue. Nor is it unproblematic not to capture, given that starvation ended at least one power which was otherwise capable of producing industrial products in this time period.

Not quite, although it might take some time for the current system to 'bleed a pop down to starvation' if they have significant wealth. As shortages are their own thing, everything is based off of relative demand and supply and the cost that comes with it. To maintain their current Standard of Living, a pop must meet all of its current needs scripted for that level. Any leftover money is put into a wealth pool, and when enough of that accumulates a number of pops increase to the next needs rank.

If any need grows too expensive for the pop to maintain, it'll burn through its wealth pool. And if the situation doesn't turn around soon enough, the pop's SoL will decrease, reducing its demands for goods, change its birth and mortality rate to the new scripted value for its level, and a portion radicalizes. Think of it as the pop dispensing with luxuries to handle the sharp increase in the cost of food (or any other good that's still required at that level). If food becomes too prohibitively expensive, and the pop doesn't have the money to buy the food at its giant cost (not middle or upper class, essentially), its theoretically possible that their Standard of Living will crash all the way to famine and starvation (SoL 5).

Now the experiment seems to reveal that one of these mechanisms isn't working as it should. Perhaps because the cost of any good is capped at +75%, so while a shortage would impoverish the people, and with wages from factories so high, the cost is able to be borne for a long time (a change to the latter is likely coming, the change to the former might come later depending on how the economic situation is going).

Another idea is that the 'food need' for pops should be more flat after the SoL 20 value I mentioned (relatively, at least). As it is right now I believe it continues to increase along with every other need, so one fat cat capitalist falling from SoL 50 to 40 might free up enough food demand to sustain 100 peasants comfortably (which, I know certainly people will laughingly joke about wasteful rich expenditures, but obviously a single oligarch doesn't demand 100x the caloric intake of a commoner no matter how corpulent their physique). Higher SoL should shift their food demand to more luxuries and exotic items (meat, groceries, sugar, etc).

A final tweak could be including a country modifier or events if a food good like grain, meat, or groceries is in 'shortage' (the red icon appearing) to reflect famines appearing that reduce pop's standards of living faster, increases mortality, etc. But any of these tweaks don't need an entire new 'need' system introduced, they just require better implementation of the current system.

 

[Fawr]

This is a really interesting topic with lots of interesting points.

France probably had high sol from the start, Brits too. Population of these countries didn't grow THAT much during victoria timeframe (around 50 percent? Brits a bit more i think). Certainly not as much as in game it grows for France (doubles or triples). At the same time russia who has low sol, following game's logic fails to get almost any growth in game. Historically, russian population tripled and their sol was low. Historically the country with perhaps hugest pop growth in that era had poor sol. Another example is Egypt - its population increased four times in victoria timeframe while their sol was probably even lower than russian (the numbers i talk about in this thread are for actual Egypt, not all lands that it controlled). Needless to say that in vic3 it never happens if Egypt is AI and even playing as Egypt and with best healthcare, decent sol, best child rights it was not easy to get there. Isn't it also this way in modern era? Biggest pop growth in rather impoverished countries.

France is a really poor example case of a wealthy European country as its population growth was different (lower) than every other western country. Vicky 2 put in hardcoded stuff to lower French growth rate because no formula for Europe would fit Franc too.

I have looked at some data from Ourworldindata about historical population and I think is not easy to get a completely clear picture. For instance the population of the UK grew by +85%, while the one of France by +17% over the time period. The population of several countries over the time period:

France: 34.4M-40.4M +17%
UK: 25.7M- 47.7M +85%
Egypt: 4.41M- 15M +240%
Spain: 13.5M-24.8M +84%
Russia: 36.3M-90.2M +148%
Italy: 22.4M-42.4M +90%
Algeria: 2.77M- 7.11M +156%
China: 410M- 509M +24%
Belgium: 3.9M- 8.2M +111%
Netherlands: 2.8M- 8.4M +202%

I have the impression that some low SoL countries have very high pop growth and others very low. With European countries they are around 80-90% pop growth, but Belgium has 111% and the Netherlands +202%!!

Big low SoL countries like Russia and China vary a lot. The former grew by +148% and the later by +25%. So I don’t know what to think.

I liked the idea of using world in data numbers to help work out what we should aim for. I have my own take on them though because I'd look at higher level country groupings to avoid some noise, and stop the numbers at 1914 rather than 1936 (death rates in 1914-1918 had very different causes to what is captured by SoL). War deaths are important, but we need a different mechanic to model them. I'll also leave America alone as the population growth there was less about natural growth and more about immigration, and that is a separate formula.

Pop of Europe 1836 = 255M
Pop of Europe 1914 = 448M
European growth = 75%

Pop of Africa 1836 = 96M
Pop of Africa 1914 = 146M
African growth = 52%

Pop of Asia 1836 = 803M
Pop of Asia 1914 = 1050M
Asian growth = 31%

This suggests to me that the higher SoL in Europe resulted in higher population growth rates as a general rule. Sure there were exceptions like France might be lower than 75%, but England was higher than 75%, and Ireland went up quickly before decreasing even faster. Ireland raises another point - the amount of emigration from Europe might make their underlying growth rate even higher. Also I'd guess that Asia may have been lower than Africa due to the impact in China of things like the Taiping rebellion and the Opium trade, while the slave trade had largely stopped holding Africa's growth back.

So what are the impacts of child labour laws and education laws on birthrates?

Child Labour and lack of education should increase birthrates among relatively poor pops. Because a child who can work is an economic asset. While a child who is educated is a pure cost - and a bigger cost if the parents have to pay for education.

In short, poor POPs should have more children if children are allowed to work, and employment can be found. I think a child is more use in a Victorian-era factory or in a mine than in a field, of some limited use in services, and no use at all in anything requiring skill or training.

This should probably be modelled by Labourers having birth rate that is highest in conditions of limited wealth and low education - then Peasants, Farmers and Machinists.

The impact of child labour laws is interesting. Currently in the game more advanced laws lower deaths. You are proposing to reverse the effect. Anecdotally your way makes sense to me, as I've heard high rates of child mortality are strongly correlated with high birth rates. Some rebalancing might be needed to make those laws still interesting choices (maybe buff the impact of education).

Another idea is that the 'food need' for pops should be more flat after the SoL 20 value I mentioned (relatively, at least). As it is right now I believe it continues to increase along with every other need, so one fat cat capitalist falling from SoL 50 to 40 might free up enough food demand to sustain 100 peasants comfortably (which, I know certainly people will laughingly joke about wasteful rich expenditures, but obviously a single oligarch doesn't demand 100x the caloric intake of a commoner no matter how corpulent their physique). Higher SoL should shift their food demand to more luxuries and exotic items (meat, groceries, sugar, etc).

Food needs already increase much more slowly than luxury needs. This is what I'm seeing from the game\common\buy_packages\00_buy_packages.txt file.

wealth_10 = {
    political_strength = 0.75
    goods = {
        popneed_simple_clothing = 50
        popneed_crude_items = 43
        popneed_basic_food = 133
        popneed_heating = 26
        popneed_household_items = 7
        popneed_standard_clothing = 10
        popneed_services = 23
        popneed_intoxicants = 63
    }
}
wealth_20 = {
    political_strength = 18
    goods = {
        popneed_basic_food = 194
        popneed_heating = 26
        popneed_household_items = 134
        popneed_standard_clothing = 126
        popneed_services = 121
        popneed_intoxicants = 84
        popneed_luxury_drinks = 84
        popneed_free_movement = 42
        popneed_communication = 17
        popneed_luxury_food = 8
        popneed_luxury_items = 101
    }
}

wealth_30 = {
    political_strength = 88
    goods = {
        popneed_heating = 26
        popneed_household_items = 207
        popneed_standard_clothing = 161
        popneed_services = 352
        popneed_intoxicants = 216
        popneed_luxury_drinks = 269
        popneed_free_movement = 207
        popneed_communication = 62
        popneed_luxury_food = 269
        popneed_luxury_items = 642
        popneed_art = 21
    }
}

At wealth 10 food is the biggest item by far, a bit less than half of the total (by eyeball). By wealth 20 it's still the largest but has dropped to under a quarter. By wealth 30 its switched from basic food to luxury food, but other things are 3 times larger, and food is closer to 10% of the total bundle.

 

[Sarmatian]

Pop growth is a bit too high.

I like the idea of growth being reduced by high literacy rates and secularization laws, to offset the huge boost from SoL in the late game.

 

[hide]

Not quite, although it might take some time for the current system to 'bleed a pop down to starvation' if they have significant wealth. As shortages are their own thing, everything is based off of relative demand and supply and the cost that comes with it. To maintain their current Standard of Living, a pop must meet all of its current needs scripted for that level. Any leftover money is put into a wealth pool, and when enough of that accumulates a number of pops increase to the next needs rank.

If any need grows too expensive for the pop to maintain, it'll burn through its wealth pool. And if the situation doesn't turn around soon enough, the pop's SoL will decrease, reducing its demands for goods, change its birth and mortality rate to the new scripted value for its level, and a portion radicalizes. Think of it as the pop dispensing with luxuries to handle the sharp increase in the cost of food (or any other good that's still required at that level). If food becomes too prohibitively expensive, and the pop doesn't have the money to buy the food at its giant cost (not middle or upper class, essentially), its theoretically possible that their Standard of Living will crash all the way to famine and starvation (SoL 5).

The problem is that POPs can live forever on almost nothing. shortage didn't make SOL drop.
This is due to the current system that demand is determined on a price basis. POPs can't find any difference between 20 grains at 10 pounds and 10 grains at 20 pounds. (if they consume grains only)

 

[Amorenkaire]

The problem is that POPs can live forever on almost nothing. shortage didn't make SOL drop.
This is due to the current system that demand is determined on a price basis. POPs can't find any difference between 20 grains at 10 pounds and 10 grains at 20 pounds.

Pops need a certain amount of the good to meet their. If they need 10 grain, it'll take 100 pounds to satisfy it. If the price increases to 20 per grain, they'll spend 200 to satisfy their basic food need. If they don't have the money to satisfy that and the rest of their needs, their expenses will contract as they tighten their belt to satisfy their need. Its not just the 'amount spent on a good' that determines it.

There could certainly be more issues from reaching the extreme side of it like I said, but pops do need to consume a certain amount of goods.

 

[Al-Khalidi]

Pop growth is a bit too high.

I like the idea of growth being reduced by high literacy rates and secularization laws, to offset the huge boost from SoL in the late game.

Yes, my wishes exactly.

Mmmm, it's more complicated than that. The biggest driver of more population is having more food. Populations exploded in the Victorian era because land use was so improved and a lot more food was pulled out of the same land than it was previously, so everyone was just...healthier. There was less starvation in the way that past eras had. This is literally what enabled the industrial revolution itself; such huge increases in food productivity freed up people to go live in cities, which is why the industrial revolution marks the point when agricultural saw a decline of share of workers from a large majority of the population down to (in the US at least) 10%.

And SoL does relate to food, but what it actually captures right now is goods, which falsely means it's possible to raise SoL by building clothing and glass factories to sell clothes and glass. SoL really needs to separate between needs like food and heating, and wants like radios. Having an excess of needs (the predominant of which by far is food) should drive a population boom, and it would be a valuable incentive for players to fund agriculture well in excess of what pops strictly need, while lacking it should both raise mortality and drastically affect radicalism, far more than lacking luxuries would. Things like porcelain are not needs though; they raise SoL, but would not affect growth. But SoL should affect what pops see as "base food demand", so if you build a food surplus and then raise your SoL, eventually that food surplus returns to normal as your population grows and their food demands grow, unless you find even better ways of developing the land or have more land to develop. As lives get nicer, you need to continue to exploit the land more creatively to maintain the same relative food surplus.

Yeah if you read messages down the thread I explain that I also mean food and different sol levels. To put it in other way - achieving food security from near starvation levels should contribute to big pop growth much more than achieving more luxurious lifestyle (good furniture, clothes etc) from just food security. I have a feeling currently it is opposite, not sure why.

 

[Lord Canterbury]

This is a really interesting topic with lots of interesting points.

France is a really poor example case of a wealthy European country as its population growth was different (lower) than every other western country. Vicky 2 put in hardcoded stuff to lower French growth rate because no formula for Europe would fit Franc too.


I liked the idea of using world in data numbers to help work out what we should aim for. I have my own take on them though because I'd look at higher level country groupings to avoid some noise, and stop the numbers at 1914 rather than 1936 (death rates in 1914-1918 had very different causes to what is captured by SoL). War deaths are important, but we need a different mechanic to model them. I'll also leave America alone as the population growth there was less about natural growth and more about immigration, and that is a separate formula.

Pop of Europe 1836 = 255M
Pop of Europe 1914 = 448M
European growth = 75%

Pop of Africa 1836 = 96M
Pop of Africa 1914 = 146M
African growth = 52%

Pop of Asia 1836 = 803M
Pop of Asia 1914 = 1050M
Asian growth = 31%

This suggests to me that the higher SoL in Europe resulted in higher population growth rates as a general rule. Sure there were exceptions like France might be lower than 75%, but England was higher than 75%, and Ireland went up quickly before decreasing even faster. Ireland raises another point - the amount of emigration from Europe might make their underlying growth rate even higher. Also I'd guess that Asia may have been lower than Africa due to the impact in China of things like the Taiping rebellion and the Opium trade, while the slave trade had largely stopped holding Africa's growth back.



The impact of child labour laws is interesting. Currently in the game more advanced laws lower deaths. You are proposing to reverse the effect. Anecdotally your way makes sense to me, as I've heard high rates of child mortality are strongly correlated with high birth rates. Some rebalancing might be needed to make those laws still interesting choices (maybe buff the impact of education).



Food needs already increase much more slowly than luxury needs. This is what I'm seeing from the game\common\buy_packages\00_buy_packages.txt file.

wealth_10 = {
    political_strength = 0.75
    goods = {
        popneed_simple_clothing = 50
        popneed_crude_items = 43
        popneed_basic_food = 133
        popneed_heating = 26
        popneed_household_items = 7
        popneed_standard_clothing = 10
        popneed_services = 23
        popneed_intoxicants = 63
    }
}
wealth_20 = {
    political_strength = 18
    goods = {
        popneed_basic_food = 194
        popneed_heating = 26
        popneed_household_items = 134
        popneed_standard_clothing = 126
        popneed_services = 121
        popneed_intoxicants = 84
        popneed_luxury_drinks = 84
        popneed_free_movement = 42
        popneed_communication = 17
        popneed_luxury_food = 8
        popneed_luxury_items = 101
    }
}

wealth_30 = {
    political_strength = 88
    goods = {
        popneed_heating = 26
        popneed_household_items = 207
        popneed_standard_clothing = 161
        popneed_services = 352
        popneed_intoxicants = 216
        popneed_luxury_drinks = 269
        popneed_free_movement = 207
        popneed_communication = 62
        popneed_luxury_food = 269
        popneed_luxury_items = 642
        popneed_art = 21
    }
}

At wealth 10 food is the biggest item by far, a bit less than half of the total (by eyeball). By wealth 20 it's still the largest but has dropped to under a quarter. By wealth 30 its switched from basic food to luxury food, but other things are 3 times larger, and food is closer to 10% of the total bundle.

This is the proper sort of breakdown this thread needs.

I've done a similar sort of look at historic numbers (1836-1936, though I take your point on the impact of WWI). Key points are:

Wealthy European Nations:
(UK, Germany, Italy, Begium, Netherlands)
Average 100 year change = 224%
Average yearly growth = 0.8%

Average wealth European and Middle Easter Nations:
(Turkey, Russia, Egypt, Iran, Bulgaria)
Average 100 year change = 244%
Average yearly growth = 0.9%

Poor Nations:
(China, Ethiopia, Madagascar, Cambodia, Niger)
Average 100 year change = 150%
Average yearly growth = 0.4%

(Out of interest, New World nations averaged 1200% change, obviously heavily skewed by migration. France has an anomalously low 118%, and poor old Ireland is at 36%, i.e. its population reduced to a third.

Now comparing this to in game growth, which is largely controlled by SoL.

Pop Growth effectively follows a trilinear curve between four points:
At SoL 1, growth = -2.9%
At SoL 8, growth = 0.0%
At SoL 20, growth = 1.7%
At SoL 30, growth = 1.2% (it reduces beyond this... but there are so few pops at SoL > 30 that it doesn't really matter.

SoL does a pretty good job at modelling the overall trend of population growth, i.e. a rapid increase from poor pops, through to a peak at moderately wealthy pops (SoL20)), and a slow decrease beyond that. However in game growth is probably set at about double historic level.

However, this is significantly offset by the fact that the AI struggles to get Pops out of subsistence farms, so countries like Russia and Egypt have a heap of peasants sat on SoL 6 though 10... basically in the zero-growth borderline-starvation zone. This is probably unrealistically harsh for countries with an improving mass agricultural sector... but it is an underlying AI issue, rather than a population growth modelling one.

The game is also massively undercooking migration for this period... but that's another issue.

 

[Amorenkaire]

SoL does a pretty good job at modelling the overall trend of population growth, i.e. a rapid increase from poor pops, through to a peak at moderately wealthy pops (SoL20)), and a slow decrease beyond that. However in game growth is probably set at about double historic level.

One thing to keep in mind is that the base growth. Obviously healthcare laws reduce mortality further and increase growth faster, but wars and potential disease or crop blight/famine events that aren't currently modeled might also be a factor.

The game is also massively undercooking migration for this period... but that's another issue.

I do like the migration wave events... But there really should be a steady trickle of pops out of custom unions. And special migration deals - unless we want to count the flood of Chinese workers to California from agreements with the Qing to be the result of them joining the US market (because Europe would have WORDS about that).

 

[Lord Canterbury]

I do like the migration wave events... But there really should be a steady trickle of pops out of custom unions. And special migration deals - unless we want to count the flood of Chinese workers to California from agreements with the Qing to be the result of them joining the US market (because Europe would have WORDS about that).

I absolutely agree with this. The migration waves add some really nice background narrative to the game, but they are too localised, and much to short term to have a major impact. I'd like to see the waves twice as strong, and five times the length, and have gradual cross-market trickle.

 

[TheLand]

The game is also massively undercooking migration for this period... but that's another issue.

In a sense it's another issue... in another sense it's all wrapped up.

All those European countries you mention were growing while also experiencing significant emigration, Ireland most of all. So the birth rates need to be higher in those countries, but also emigration much more significant. While the poor countries had very little emigration, and must have had much lower birthrates.

I agree the game presently sucks at this.

 

[Al-Khalidi]

This is the proper sort of breakdown this thread needs.

I've done a similar sort of look at historic numbers (1836-1936, though I take your point on the impact of WWI). Key points are:

Wealthy European Nations:
(UK, Germany, Italy, Begium, Netherlands)
Average 100 year change = 224%
Average yearly growth = 0.8%

Average wealth European and Middle Easter Nations:
(Turkey, Russia, Egypt, Iran, Bulgaria)
Average 100 year change = 244%
Average yearly growth = 0.9%

Poor Nations:
(China, Ethiopia, Madagascar, Cambodia, Niger)
Average 100 year change = 150%
Average yearly growth = 0.4%

(Out of interest, New World nations averaged 1200% change, obviously heavily skewed by migration. France has an anomalously low 118%, and poor old Ireland is at 36%, i.e. its population reduced to a third.

Now comparing this to in game growth, which is largely controlled by SoL.

Pop Growth effectively follows a trilinear curve between four points:
At SoL 1, growth = -2.9%
At SoL 8, growth = 0.0%
At SoL 20, growth = 1.7%
At SoL 30, growth = 1.2% (it reduces beyond this... but there are so few pops at SoL > 30 that it doesn't really matter.

SoL does a pretty good job at modelling the overall trend of population growth, i.e. a rapid increase from poor pops, through to a peak at moderately wealthy pops (SoL20)), and a slow decrease beyond that. However in game growth is probably set at about double historic level.

However, this is significantly offset by the fact that the AI struggles to get Pops out of subsistence farms, so countries like Russia and Egypt have a heap of peasants sat on SoL 6 though 10... basically in the zero-growth borderline-starvation zone. This is probably unrealistically harsh for countries with an improving mass agricultural sector... but it is an underlying AI issue, rather than a population growth modelling one.

The game is also massively undercooking migration for this period... but that's another issue.

No, this clearly isn't AI related issue only as explained in the comments above.

In many of my games (Ottomans, Egypt) I got all of the best modifiers for population growth AND reduced peasant population to insignificant minority. HOWEVER I struggled to even get an equal population to the amount these territories had historically, while obviously I was doing better in terms of healthcare, sol, child labor rights etc.

For example, a state populated mostly ba laborers in Egypt still has way lower sol than a state in France and French state gets higher pop growth. I doubt that historically an ability to buy some luxury clothes and furniture made ppl suddenly breeding like rabbits and this is how the game portrays it currently.

As I stated in the OP - they should change the impact of sol on pop growth - biggest increase in pop growth should fall on 10-15 and not 20- god knows how much sol level. This would nicely nerf france and subsidize countries which should be subsidized such as russia.

 

[Fawr]

SoL does a pretty good job at modelling the overall trend of population growth, i.e. a rapid increase from poor pops, through to a peak at moderately wealthy pops (SoL20)), and a slow decrease beyond that. However in game growth is probably set at about double historic level.

However, this is significantly offset by the fact that the AI struggles to get Pops out of subsistence farms, so countries like Russia and Egypt have a heap of peasants sat on SoL 6 though 10... basically in the zero-growth borderline-starvation zone. This is probably unrealistically harsh for countries with an improving mass agricultural sector... but it is an underlying AI issue, rather than a population growth modelling one.

I think these two things together argue that when the AI gets better at building its pops out of subsistence farms the "double historic level" problem will come back to bite the game. If we could get more migration, a world war, and a pandemic happening it might help a little.

I absolutely agree with this. The migration waves add some really nice background narrative to the game, but they are too localised, and much to short term to have a major impact. I'd like to see the waves twice as strong, and five times the length, and have gradual cross-market trickle.

I don't mind the current small migrations that trigger again and again (and are coded so that the same location is likely to get repeats of the same culture). Its less punishing if one happens to you, and gives you a bit of time to do something about it. Currently many of them will reverse your population growth, and Ireland is really the only spot where that sticks out for me.

I would like to have gradual cross market trickle, faster where you have common factors in culture or religion. This should be pops moving to a better life (either economically or politically).

 

[Fawr]

No, this clearly isn't AI related issue only as explained in the comments above.

In many of my games (Ottomans, Egypt) I got all of the best modifiers for population growth AND reduced peasant population to insignificant minority. HOWEVER I struggled to even get an equal population to the amount these territories had historically, while obviously I was doing better in terms of healthcare, sol, child labor rights etc.

For example, a state populated mostly ba laborers in Egypt still has way lower sol than a state in France and French state gets higher pop growth. I doubt that historically an ability to buy some luxury clothes and furniture made ppl suddenly breeding like rabbits and this is how the game portrays it currently.

As I stated in the OP - they should change the impact of sol on pop growth - biggest increase in pop growth should fall on 10-15 and not 20- god knows how much sol level. This would nicely nerf france and subsidize countries which should be subsidized such as russia.

France is a terrible example as its the massive outlier for European countries.

On average (excluding the effect of WWI) Europe's population grew significantly faster than Africa's, and I don't think your proposal would lead to that.

 

[Al-Khalidi]

France is a terrible example as its the massive outlier for European countries.

On average (excluding the effect of WWI) Europe's population grew significantly faster than Africa's, and I don't think your proposal would lead to that.

I gave other European countries as examples as well. Fastest growing population in that era wasn't western European (and they get fastest growth in vic3) but rather countries i gave several times as examples: russia, Egypt to an extent. Take other European countries such as Austria, Italy, GB. Their growth should still be MUCH slower than that of russia or Egypt while in current build it is MUCH faster. So something is clearly wrong here. And I know what. Making the direct correlation the higher the sol the bigger the growth. What I ask for is that its more nuanced.

As for Europe vs Africa example. Well, what part of Africa. As I shown earlier Egypt had much bigger growth than western Europe so in vic3 Egypt should have much bigger growth too. Congo or Zimbabwe shouldn't. This should be solved by making it much harder for such countries to develop above 10 sol (and other modifiers such as making it extremely hard for them to get any healthcare).

 

[Amorenkaire]

An idea came to mind in regards to France's atypical growth for the time period. As a result of the Napoleonic Wars, France's male population was drastically reduced, causing significant issues that contributed to its demographic stagnation compared to the rest of Europe. Combined with the hundreds of thousand of wounded, this should likely be reflected by a higher ratio of dependents at game start. Instead, France is pretty typical.

France, Great Britain, Austria: 70% Dependent population.
United States: 71% Dependent population.
Great Qing and Russia: 75% Dependent population.

At the very least, France should have a higher ratio of dependent population at game start, which would serve to weaken it despite its, on paper, high population since a lot of it will be supported by a smaller fraction of working age males, meaning pops will face a more uphill battle to accumulate wealth and grow in SoL, it might even decline from the consumption of those dependents without an adequate income source depending.

I think population growth is based off of all pops, not just working pops (otherwise women in the workforce would be a huge population growth bonus), but if it was victoria 2's that at least would also reduce its population growth.

 

[Fawr]

I gave other European countries as examples as well. Fastest growing population in that era wasn't western European (and they get fastest growth in vic3) but rather countries i gave several times as examples: russia, Egypt to an extent. Take other European countries such as Austria, Italy, GB. Their growth should still be MUCH slower than that of russia or Egypt while in current build it is MUCH faster. So something is clearly wrong here. And I know what. Making the direct correlation the higher the sol the bigger the growth. What I ask for is that its more nuanced.

As for Europe vs Africa example. Well, what part of Africa. As I shown earlier Egypt had much bigger growth than western Europe so in vic3 Egypt should have much bigger growth too. Congo or Zimbabwe shouldn't. This should be solved by making it much harder for such countries to develop above 10 sol (and other modifiers such as making it extremely hard for them to get any healthcare).

I think its unlikely you will be able to come up with a formula that works for the fastest growing African country and the slowest growing western European country without completely stuffing up the rest of Africa and Western Europe. For example my look at the numbers suggests Russia's growth was behind Germany, Netherlands, Greece and Norway (excluding WWI).

Unless you are proposing to go to vicky2 style province and country modifiers (which sounds like it would railroad history in a way the game designers don't want).

 

[Al-Khalidi]

I think its unlikely you will be able to come up with a formula that works for the fastest growing African country and the slowest growing western European country without completely stuffing up the rest of Africa and Western Europe. For example my look at the numbers suggests Russia's growth was behind Germany, Netherlands, Greece and Norway (excluding WWI).

Unless you are proposing to go to vicky2 style province and country modifiers (which sounds like it would railroad history in a way the game designers don't want).

How come German growth was faster than russian? It seems German population roughly doubled, russian population tripled. Does your number for Greece consider that this country size grew more than double in this timeframe, as well as received massive amounts of greeks expelled from Anatolia? This is growth resulting from political events. Netherlands population more than tripling also doesn't look quite right (more like doubled?).

If we have a choice between the world where other countries have a little higher growth than historically, or a world where france has typically two times larger population than russia (while should be four times smaller), I will go for the first one.

The higher the sol the bigger the growth shouldn't be the sole most important factor impacting pop growthgrowth as it simply leads to more ridiculous and ahistorical situations than if poor countries had bigger population growth (and most of them really should have it, another example from my game is Siam, they typically have like 5 millions while should have around 15 near the game's end).
Another thing that impacts ahistorical migration is pops blindly migrating to the country with highest SoL even if they leave country where they are accepted and have decent sol for a country where they will be discriminated.