Population growth...

[Junna]

Although it is my understanding that some overhaul is intended for the future, the growth seems really absurd still and should perhaps be decreased somehow (I'm not sure by which mechanics it really works). Upon map-generation, it seems that still many towns (a majority) are rather large (2,000+), and that population growth is ridiculous even for un-served cities/towns. In 1785, a game map had a total population of 435,000, by 1799 this was 850,000 and already most of the cities on the map had merged into two megalopolis. By 1835, the map has a population of 1,153,000 and an annual growth of 31,000, and this is despite immense demolition to pave way for railway lines. I was under the impression that the extremely high growth would at least be toned down temporarily (until such a stage as nerodens revisions would be completed and integrated)?

[jamespetts]

The temporary reduction was intended for the next major release, but there have been problems with that code that have not been fixed yet, which is one of the main reasons that the next major release is not ready yet.

[Sarlock]

In the interim, you could alter these rates in the simuconf file:

# These values represent the rate at which towns grow. The raw growth number is *divided*
# by the growth factors; ergo, the lower the number, the higher the growth. Longer games
# should have less growth, whereas shorter games do better with more growth.

growthfactor_villages = 400
growthfactor_cities = 200
growthfactor_capitals = 100

--------
This should slow things down a bit.  Try doubling them and see if this improves things.

[Drewthegreat87]

Although it is my understanding that some overhaul is intended for the future, the growth seems really absurd still and should perhaps be decreased somehow (I'm not sure by which mechanics it really works). Upon map-generation, it seems that still many towns (a majority) are rather large (2,000+), and that population growth is ridiculous even for un-served cities/towns. In 1785, a game map had a total population of 435,000, by 1799 this was 850,000 and already most of the cities on the map had merged into two megalopolis. By 1835, the map has a population of 1,153,000 and an annual growth of 31,000, and this is despite immense demolition to pave way for railway lines. I was under the impression that the extremely high growth would at least be toned down temporarily (until such a stage as nerodens revisions would be completed and integrated)?

I'm glad you brought this up because I was considering starting a thread about it and ways to tweak the settings. I generated a map in Standard and then ported it over to Experimental: Basically most cities on the map started with a population of sub 200 or so. I started in 1800 and by 1802, most had an average of 800 to 1200 people. My main starting out city had grown from roughly 1000 to 14,000 within four years. I managed to slow down growth significantly by altering the growth factors for towns (sub 2500 population). I ended up setting the number from what is in standard, 400, to 2000. That seemed to work. I decreased it alittle bit to 1275 because I would like "some" growth.

I also have a hard time getting smaller towns and cities in experimental when I generate a map via the program, thus why I ported over a map from standard...

What could I possibly do to help sort these problems out? (Figured I'd offer rather than essentially complain, which I'm not, really. I like experimental and would like to see the wrinkles smoothed over...). I know it's open source and just a hobby, so if there's any thing I can assist with...

Thanks!

[jamespetts]

What could I possibly do to help sort these problems out? (Figured I'd offer rather than essentially complain, which I'm not, really. I like experimental and would like to see the wrinkles smoothed over...). I know it's open source and just a hobby, so if there's any thing I can assist with...

How much that you can help rather depends on whether you know C++; if so, there is a veritable laundry list of things with which help would be eagerly accepted. If not, then the things available to be done are more limited, but still worthwhile, largely involving testing or (if you can work with graphics) pakset work.

Thank you for the offer!