populations, and growth rates

[Achiles]

I have noticed that there are several provinces in the IGC that start out with a negative or 0% growth rate. These provinces are mainly in north africa. The nations these provinces are in have no way of raising them up to a population that would give the city a positive growth rate. Not that they would colonize them further even if they could. This brings me to my second point. The AI will only raise a colonies population up 700. After they hit the 700 mark they stop sending colonists to it. The problem with this is that in many places a 700 size city has a negative or 0% growth rate even with stab+3. This is a major problem. The AI should be programed to raise the pop of the city until it would have a positive growth rate with the nations present technology and a stab of three. I find this very annoying and it seems to me that it would be very easy to fix.

 

[Achiles]

Is no one at all interested in seeing this problem fixed?

 

[AmbientOyster]

In the worst provinces the only way to get a positive growth is to get over the "city" limit of 5000 and that will never pay off unless the native population will get you very close to that limit. But in those cases when the 1000 pop limit will make the growth positive I agree with you, if its early in the game. I guess that you know that that the population won't drop under 700 once its got there. So unless the colony has a long time to grow the benefit of sending those extra colonists is doubtful.

 

[Achiles]

Yes what you say is true. But my main area of concern are the provinces that start out the game with a negative growth rate. I know that Morroco 1, Algiers 2, Nubia 2, and Ethiopia 2. There are probably others but I haven't found them yet. I haven't done a thourgh search of asia and the inca empire. The provinces that I listed all have either a nagative growth rate or 0% growth rate at the start of the game even when the countries stab is +3. I Don't know if this was simply an oversite or done on purpose but it needs to be rectified.

 

[unmerged(4949)]

Those provinces with negative growth rates below 700 or 1000 are areas without significant European (not incorporated natives) colonization before 1792.

However, it would be nice to link your infrastructure level to the ease of colonization or the growth of established colonies. Once your level passes 8, for example, your rate of growth increases by 2%.

 

[TheDS]

I like Benn's solution.

However, the reasoning behind this "problem" is that these places are not easy to colonize. back then, not only did you have to worry about the oppressive, killing heat of equatorial Africa and South America, you also had things like diseases and wild animals and insects and tribes that just refused to share their land with the oh-so-polite Europeans.

It was no easy thing to set up a colony here, and so you generally have to restrict yourself to Trading Posts; that's part of the reason they are even in the game. The only reason you set up a colony is to try and get a port, or other stronghold from which to expend or defend your holdings. Having to send a few dozen settlers to a single equatorial inland province most assuredly represents to even the most thick-skulled player the tremendous difficulties and costs associated with the folly of equatorial colonies. They didn't have nice things like trucks and air conditioning back then, nor bug or Zulu repellant.

 

[Achiles]

You people don't seem to understand. Auros, Atlas, Sahara, Massawa, and the 3 other provinces I can't remember the names of right now are NOT european colonies nor are they neutral provinces populated by natives. They are part of a number of independent, minors located in North Africa and Arabia.

On the second point of AI stupidity. In the beginning of the game I only estabelish colonies in provinces that have a large, freindly native population, Or I establish them when I need a port or a fortified position from which to defend my holdings. Later on I will begin to replace my TP's with colonies. I do this until all of my TP's have been replaced with colonies that have atleast a pop of 700 and a positive growth rate when my stab is +3. The AI builds colonies and TP's in basically this same fashion and for basically these same reasons. The problem is that whereas when I build a colony I know to keep adding to the colony until it has a positive growth rate the AI does not. It just raises them to 700 and then leaves them. This is totally unrealistic. Also if you are worried that fixing this would cause the AI to waste resources on places that require really high populations to get a positive growth rate then you really don't have much to worry about. As I have never seen a province with a location negative higher than 14 and most cities can top that at 1400. I have yet to find a place that requires a 5000 pop in order to get a positive growth rate. Of course I haven't been playing the game except for a few weeks so I could be mistaken about this.

 

[unmerged(5459)]

But what I find stupid in EU I, is that the Asians (or Africans) suffer the same population decline through disease in their own homelands! Surely they could work something out where the Europeans die of disease in these rather 'hostile' places, but Asians don't automatically do so in Asia, and sub-saharn Africans in Africa (for EU II)?

 

[el freako]

Effects due to seiges

On a related topic I think that the effects of sieges on population sould be massively increased.

Currently a city undergoing a siege will face a maximum loss of population of around 1.3% a year (-0.5% from siege, -0.5% from looting, -0.3% from enemy soldiers present) - very small when you consider that over the period of the thirty-years war certain area's of germany saw a 2/3rd's reduction in population. At present even with a continuous seige of 30 years you would only see a fall of 1/3rd in the population (whereas logic states that after 30 years of siege the population of any town would have been reduced by 90%-95% if not to zero)

Maybe a sliding scale could be introduced -0.5% for the first month's seige -1.0% for the second -1.5% for the third etc. this would mean that after a year the population would be falling by nearly 7% a year - this would cause the population to fall by 2/3rd's over 30 years if you had a continuous series of 1 year of seige followed by 1 year of peace.