I wrote this for my guide, but I am not sure it is true. Any mistakes that you can spot?
5.10 Population
Population is largely out of your hands, but it does have an effect on the economy. One of the first things that surprises people is how low the population is in most provinces. This is because the population you see refers to the people living in the capital city, and most people live in the countryside, where census are difficult to carry out. The population growth shown in the province info window (11% for example) is per decade. It is too high for the time period, but probably incorporates migration between provinces and from the countryside to the city.
The population in your provinces grows faster if you have high stability (+1% for stability -3, and +1% for each additional level of stability, up to 7%), and is possitively affected by a governor (+1%), by a manufactory (+2%), by a CoT (+5%) or by having a CoT in a neighbour province (+2%).
It is negatively affected by a harsh climate (hardcoded in some provinces outside Europe), the presence of enemy troops (-5%), the province being under siege (-5%), being occupied (-3%), and being looted (-5%). Rebels produce the same effect as the enemy.
The main benefits of a large population are increased income from production, gold, tolls, generated trade (census taxes depend on base tax value and are unaffected) and increased manpower. The main disadvantage for large population is reduced chance for conversion and increased cost for conversion.
When you are colonizing, you will gradually increase your production, gold income and generated trade that goes to the CoT from 1/10 to 10/10 (1x) when your colony changes from a level 1 to a city province. Then you will increase these incomes by 1/6 when your population goes over 5k, 10k, 20k, 40k, 80k and 200k, up to 12/6 or 2x. For gold provinces your income will also depend on the mine value, while for production it depends on the resource and your production efficiency, and for generated trade it depends on the market value of the product. A TC and a governor will increase your production and gold income.
For tolls (trade taxes) the effect of population is even bigger, because the factor increases by integers, going from 1x for a level 1 colony to 16x for a city province of population over 200k, in the same steps as above. For trade tolls your final income still depends on your trade efficiency.
The manpower of a province depends crucially on its population. Province base manpower is multiplied by zero if below 1000 pop., by 0.25 when it becomes a city, by 0.5 when over 20k and by 0.75 over 200k. You will see below that the final manpower depends also on other factors (section 6.2.1).
So what should you do regarding population? Nothing that you are not probably doing already: Keep at high stabilities as much as possible, promote officials in your provinces (except TCs in wrong culture/wrong religion provinces), build manufactories, fight wars in foreign soil, reduce your revolt risk and squash those pesky rebels. When colonizing, keep friendly natives alive. Most players would advise against sending additional colonists to a city, in most cases it is not worth it considering how expensive it is to colonize and how many virgin lands are out there. Finally, if you are going to convert, the sooner the easier and cheaper, but your monarch administrative skills are foremost here (see section 9.4).
5.10 Population
Population is largely out of your hands, but it does have an effect on the economy. One of the first things that surprises people is how low the population is in most provinces. This is because the population you see refers to the people living in the capital city, and most people live in the countryside, where census are difficult to carry out. The population growth shown in the province info window (11% for example) is per decade. It is too high for the time period, but probably incorporates migration between provinces and from the countryside to the city.
The population in your provinces grows faster if you have high stability (+1% for stability -3, and +1% for each additional level of stability, up to 7%), and is possitively affected by a governor (+1%), by a manufactory (+2%), by a CoT (+5%) or by having a CoT in a neighbour province (+2%).
It is negatively affected by a harsh climate (hardcoded in some provinces outside Europe), the presence of enemy troops (-5%), the province being under siege (-5%), being occupied (-3%), and being looted (-5%). Rebels produce the same effect as the enemy.
The main benefits of a large population are increased income from production, gold, tolls, generated trade (census taxes depend on base tax value and are unaffected) and increased manpower. The main disadvantage for large population is reduced chance for conversion and increased cost for conversion.
When you are colonizing, you will gradually increase your production, gold income and generated trade that goes to the CoT from 1/10 to 10/10 (1x) when your colony changes from a level 1 to a city province. Then you will increase these incomes by 1/6 when your population goes over 5k, 10k, 20k, 40k, 80k and 200k, up to 12/6 or 2x. For gold provinces your income will also depend on the mine value, while for production it depends on the resource and your production efficiency, and for generated trade it depends on the market value of the product. A TC and a governor will increase your production and gold income.
For tolls (trade taxes) the effect of population is even bigger, because the factor increases by integers, going from 1x for a level 1 colony to 16x for a city province of population over 200k, in the same steps as above. For trade tolls your final income still depends on your trade efficiency.
The manpower of a province depends crucially on its population. Province base manpower is multiplied by zero if below 1000 pop., by 0.25 when it becomes a city, by 0.5 when over 20k and by 0.75 over 200k. You will see below that the final manpower depends also on other factors (section 6.2.1).
So what should you do regarding population? Nothing that you are not probably doing already: Keep at high stabilities as much as possible, promote officials in your provinces (except TCs in wrong culture/wrong religion provinces), build manufactories, fight wars in foreign soil, reduce your revolt risk and squash those pesky rebels. When colonizing, keep friendly natives alive. Most players would advise against sending additional colonists to a city, in most cases it is not worth it considering how expensive it is to colonize and how many virgin lands are out there. Finally, if you are going to convert, the sooner the easier and cheaper, but your monarch administrative skills are foremost here (see section 9.4).
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