I always was in favor of a system that allows to increase growth somehow, though. As long as it's costly and not really effective.
It sounds wonderful... as a mean to spend big amounts of gold for nothing!
Really, the thing is when you loot a region, (or is under 'local' hunger), the people would not to die in enormous amounts, but to flee to neighbour regions (or hide in the woods), and come back to their region when the situation got better. I can understand destruction of production, or even the destruction of a City, but usually the people is hard to exterminate... they usually don't wait for death but flee!
Maybe this would be a bit more realistic and better for the game.
Honestly, I can't see as realistic a region go from 3000 pop. to 20... or even 1!!!
