Population Rebalance and Harvest Change

[Tom]

I am working on rebalancing the region system, something that I have planned for a long time.

The basic idea is that cities are way too important and way too big. The world we simulate didn't have this amount of urbanisation.

The result is fairly simple: Population of cities will be reduced, population of rural and other regions will be increased. Food and gold production will change as well, but not on a 1:1 basis. Rather the focus is to keep it stable at least on the large scale (whole-continent view). In fact, gold production will increase slightly (10-20%).

Now for food, there is a bigger change. Food will be produced daily in the future, not in weekly harvests.  This should dramatically simplify food management. Both food production and food consumption will be increased a bit (around 30%) so there are less rounding issues with daily cycles.

I am still working on the details. But I would like to send this live soon, because some improvements to region management depend on it. For example, with this new system we can give region lords a much better estimate of food production and consumption, again making managing the region easier for them.

Naturally, some regions will profit and some will be hurt by this change. There is not much I can do to avoid that, it's the nature of all change. That is why I tell you now. If your realm already runs heavy on cities and has too few rurals, or the other way around, this will affect you strongly. Though it's not simply "bad" - if you have many cities, you will suffer a decrease in gold income, but since you will have fewer citizen to feed, your food shortage may be less critical in the future.


Here are the numbers I am currently playing with. They are for informational purposes and may yet change before I send them live!

   
• Cities: 60% population, 80% food, 78% gold
• Townslands: same population, 125% food, 126% gold
• Rurals: 140% population, 180% food, 144% gold
• other regions: 120% population, 165% food, 144% gold

[vonGenf]

There are already townslands with more population than cities. What marks the difference? These changes will mark it even more: for example. Akanos will have a pop. of 5340 while Caiyun will have 12050!

Not that I'm complaining mind you; these changes would be amazing for my townsland. More of everything for me!

[fodder]

i doubt it'll be a blanket thing. small cities will likely not lose pop, much as huge rurals/towns would not gain even more pop.

[D`Este]

Wouldn't this make cities and townslands about equal? As townslands have the main benfit they can feed itself, while cities still need to import their food.

Is it intended that townsland will work far more effictive then cities?

[Anaris]

Glad to see we're finally moving forward with this.

I just want to check, Tom, that we will, in fact, be monitoring the situation for a month or three after the change, and prepared to tweak values that are no longer sane or are otherwise causing problems.

[D`Este]

With the new numbers and a rough math work...

Outer Giask will produce 44% more effectively gold and 92% more effectively food then Giask. Based on the amount of peasants that are required to produce gold/food.

[Indirik]

I think that there definitely needs to be some weighting in the values. The smaller cities should not get shrunk as much as the largest, and the smallest maybe even get a boost to pop/income, while the largest townslands might even need to shrink.

[D`Este]

I think that there definitely needs to be some weighting in the values. The smaller cities should not get shrunk as much as the largest, and the smallest maybe even get a boost to pop/income, while the largest townslands might even need to shrink.

That could destroy the entire power balance there is at this moment...

[egamma]

That could destroy the entire power balance there is at this moment...

That's the idea. Well, that and making things more realistic.

Raviel is really going to rock now.

Townslands have room to grow, since they don't have to stick all their citizens behind huge walls--think of them as suburbs for the cities. Dallas is only 1 million people, while the Metroplex is 6 million.

[D`Este]

I can understand why rurals get more population and income and cities lesser, that's a good change but I was not talking about that power balance. I meant more between realms as realms with larger regions would get a decrease and those with small regions an increase per indirik's idea.

[Indirik]

Townslands have room to grow, since they don't have to stick all their citizens behind huge walls

Yet... they can still be fortified.

[Anaris]

Yet... they can still be fortified.

But only to level 2.

[Tom]

The feedback is good.

Yes, I will change things a little, with large cities shrinking more and smaller ones less, and also large townslands gaining a bit less.


And yes, we will keep an eye out for "strange regions". With over a thousand regions to change, over all the islands, there is no way we can do it individually. So it's going to be a few formulas applied and then we can tweak a few(!!) individual cases that really make no sense at all.

[fodder]

um... i think dwilight town vs city might end up different from other islands...

said this before.. i reckon the best ducal seat (for duke+lord combo obviously) in most dwi places are the townsland rings (until the city buggers off to the next realm and lock you in)

[egamma]

um... i think dwilight town vs city might end up different from other islands...

said this before.. i reckon the best ducal seat (for duke+lord combo obviously) in most dwi places are the townsland rings (until the city buggers off to the next realm and lock you in)

I'm lord of Raviel townsland, not a duke, and I can travel to any realm I choose and align my townsland to that realm. I'm not sure what that would do, probably tons of loyalty penalties and "distance from capital" messages, but I'm pretty sure that if Port Raviel joined Astrum, I could realign Raviel to D'Hara.