Hey guys. I have trouble with my big pop town and I am not sure how to do better. I played two times with 4 ingame years each with my +3k pop town. First time, I had pretty fast growth. From 3125 to 4900 in 4 years. I don't know how many houses or families I had. It just grew and I built my stuff. I demolished churches, taverns and schools. Second time all the buildings and economy were well but I had a bad growth. From 3125 to 3800 in 4 years. I really don't know what went wrong this time. I know for sure I had a worse disease going around with over 100 infected people. On my first try these were at maximum 30-40 people. At 3k pop, I am starting with about 1000 families and 1400 houses. After 1 year there are nomads coming which I accepted both times. But nevertheless there was a difference of 1000 people in the same 4 years. How can this happen and how do I get the maximum growth? Was it just the disease killing too many people and split families?
Please post the Population Graphs for 100 Years at your Town Hall. This one.
@Trizeropz, one reason for the difference in growth (apart from the Great God RNG screwing you over on disease rolls and just being out to get you generally) might be that without schools citizens were aging up and reproducing at 10 rather than starting school at 10 and not reproducing for another 6-8 years of age. That would seem to make a difference in population growth. I could be wrong, of course.
I think thats it. I fired up every school quite instantly after starting. And a difference of close to 1000 people does have to do with more than just a more spread desease. Thanks. I think I have to go with the 1k pop more rather than 30% more food. After another 4-8 years, 1000 will bring a huge lot more growth than I reach with 30% more food and educated people. It takes me about 3 years more to reach the same population.
If you build more homes at a faster rate you can grow faster. The red line, the quantity of children, stays relatively stagnant for long periods of time.
Here is an example from doing all the achievements on one map: Link to Picture.
The first spike was due to having no schools and building a home as soon as citizens turned 10. There was a huge die off because I had no schools, no trading, no farming and I ran out of my stockpile of food. Note how at the first spike the red children graph rises very quickly.
The second spike is a more steady rise. Check how the red children graph is relatively stable. Citizens were educated at this point AND I was not constructing homes precisely as citizens became adults. Therefore the rise in population was, and the rate of children, was not as high.
The final spike was when I stored up an outrageous amount of food and produced tons of food. I turned off education and covered the small map in Wooden homes. Once again, I completed a home exactly as citizens turned 10. Check how the red children graph spikes.
More homes would currently don't make a difference. I have already +800 more homes than families.
The last spike is exactly as I had it and want it again. Do you think it was worth it to precisely build homes instead of just built 'many'?
Do you have a blog for your all-achivements-map?
The theoretical maximum population growth is having no education and having an empty home available as a citizen reaches 10 years old (adulthood). It is possible, but difficult, to approach this limit in game.
If you are going with educated citizens the age of adulthood becomes the age of completing school. If student lives directly next to their school the child's education will complete at age 15-16. A more reasonable expectation of school completion would be 18-20. If some homes are quite far from any schools the age can be much higher.
There are two possible scenarios for the lack of desired growth. I suspect both things contribute. 1) You have some homes far from schools. 2) You didn't have sufficient homes at a point in time in the past. Now it is too late to "keep up the momentum".
At the halfway point of your Population Graph your student count exceeds your children count. At this point in time either you built insufficient homes, or homes were too far from schools, or both. Either way, your rate of children stopped increasing at this point in time.
The rate of child birth should not stop rising.