Actually, in 0.951, I've really started to see the impact of population in my games. No longer is it a 'bottomless void' to be filled. The growth has been capped really well. In addition, the additional population you receive from combats accelerates your cities expansion and further caps your population. you need to consider growth strategy now.

Taxes definately need a tweak though. Having them directly tied to production isn't the way to deal, imo. I'm fine with that being the end penalty of unrest, but there should be incrementing penalty per turn for too high of taxes. There should also be incremental benefit per turn for too low taxes. Thus, if you wanted or needed to run your country a certain way, there would be trailing consequences.

For taxes too low: maybe improvements 'downgrading' or roads falling apart, or population growth too quick (which can cause a disease event to occur), etc

For taxes too high: increasing unrest, workshortages, outright rebellion, population decrease.

Taxes should also not be hit/miss. Each level of tax rate should have pros and cons; and it should be up to you as the player to weigh and consider what consequences you are wanting to deal with.

perhaps as Magnar, you like you taxes high, cause anyone who rebels...you just turn into slaves?
perhaps as  Tarth, if you have enough 'over population' you have a chance at producing a free pioneer?

Stuff like that...

Maybe unrest buildings should keep X people happy and X people content (with the happy people being fairly low).  Happy people remain productive despite taxation. Content people are affected by the tax rate normally, with a percentage being unproductive.  The population that is not content is affected double (or triple) by taxation.  Each city starts with a base number of content and happy people.  As the city grows and more of the population falls into the content or unhappy categories, the relative quantity of productive population decreases.  Build more unrest buildings to make more people happy or content.  This seems to make more real world sense.  Keeping 10 people happy is easy, keeping 100 people happy is not as easy.

Of course, this penalizes large population cities with increased unrest and lower output, which is kind of a step in the right direction, but alone is not exactly what we want to achieve.  A large, happy city should vastly outproduce a smaller or less happy city with the same production buildings.  That would require both having taxation and overpopulation affect the productivity of the population, and have productive population (ProdPop) increase all types of output.  Neither is happening now, and population is relatively meaningless.

Output should be calculated as output per 100 productive population, with buildings adding to the per population bonus, much like food per grain does now.  The system works and scales well, it just needs different variables.  Make all the production per material buildings into production per 100 ProdPop , and +gildar buildings into +gildar per 100 ProdPop. Unrest buildings become +X happy population or +X content population or both.  The city screen can calculate and show the ProdPop for the city and calculate the various outputs like production, research, gildar, etc. from that.

Presto!  Population means something.

It sounds like you are talking specifically about Magnar, with their ability to capture population.  Even at that, I don't see how capping growth affects anything other than your access to level up buildings, or how population accelerates your expansion.  Building buildings expands your cities regardless of the population.  That is the problem we want to address.

Wow!!!! That's it!!! Require a city to have x population for each outpost. Spam solved! If you drop beloe the requirements,  you lose control of the last outpost(s) built.  For example, if each outpost required 50 population, it would take a more reasonable amount of time to spread out. Add to this a more costly start to cities (it takes longer for them to get out if the red), and both city and outpost spam would be alleviated.

Nice discussion but I'm loving the way population is implemented. It's clear cut, it works and it's NOT overly complicated like so many other games try to achieve.

Sadly yes. Turns out I was talking about Magnar.

Very disappointing.

In one way, it's very interesting that these VERY unique abilities are given out to sovereigns....on the other hand, some of these abilities seem almost necessary for the game to operate properly.

Would be nice if everyone had access the the abilties and that the specific sovereign simply had greater chance or more of the ability in question....

OK, Let me take another shot at this and see if this is simple enough and will work within the current design with only a few additions.

•     There are three types of people in your cities: Happy, Content and Unhappy.
•     Each city starts off with a base fixed number of content people (e.g. 80 people) and 0 Happy people.
•     The number of content people is reduced by a percentage based on tax level, so if you had low taxes, then the number of content people would be reduced by 20% (80 content - 20% = 64 content).  The number of Happy people is unaffected by taxation.
•     Unrest buildings add to the number of happy and/or content people. (e.g. +10 happy people, +80 content people)  Unrest buildings could also directly counteract the taxation penalty (e.g.  +5% content people) allowing for higher taxes without penalty.
•     All population over the total of happy and content people are Unhappy.
•     Only happy and content people work.  The total number of happy and content people is your productive population (ProdPop)  In order to make numbers that are based on ProdPop more readable, they are based on 100 ProdPop  (e.g. +0.05 research per ProdPop = +5 research per 100 ProdPop)
•     Everyone pays taxes, so taxes are based on total population (500 pop. * 5% tax rate = 25 gildar)
•     Buildings that generate gildar (markets, etc.) , production (workshops, etc.), or research (studies) do so in part as the result of the work of the population.  Their output is determined by a combination of fixed and population based bonuses.  (e.g.  +2 production, +2 Production / 100 ProdPop)
•     Fixed bonuses can be arbitrary or based on the resources of the city location  (e.g. +2 Production   or  +2 Production per Material, or +(Materials) production / 100ProdPop)

Most of the requirements for this to work is already in place.  All that would be required is the addition of variables for the max number of happy and content citizens in a city, and granting new cities a base value for content citizens.  The rest is just changes to the XML (which would not be insignificant).

What does this allow that we don't currently have?

1. Unrest increases as population increases above the Happy/Content threshold.  The current system has unrest as a fixed amount based on tax rate, and population does not figure into it at all.  A small village and a massive metropolis with no buildings have the same unrest.
2. The current system has the ability to base output on population, it just doesn't.  But it should.
3. Another added benefit is that you can have output that is affected by unrest (+2 production per 100ProdPop), and output that is not (+2 production).  The existing system lumps it all together and then reduces it by a percentage.  This allows you to moderate the effect of unrest better.
4. Happy people are a fixed number of productive population, content is variable.  This allows for a greater degree of fine tuning.  You could drop happy people altogether and just add more content, but then the effect of taxation would be more extreme.  If your pop. was all happy, it would be completely unaffected by taxation.  If it was all just content, it would be unaffected to the threshold point, and then the effect would be extreme.  A balance of both factors allows for a more moderate effect.
5. If Population affects production, then Pioneers can be made more expensive so their production early on is more significant.  Later, when you have larger cities with greater population, Pioneer production can be more commonplace.  In the current system, production that is based mostly on location materials does not increase much over the course of the game.  The relatively constant production requires Pioneers to have a lower cost to be available early on, encouraging spamming.
6. This has some interesting game play possibilities.  Like if your unhappy population exceeds X%, there is a chance per turn of parties of rioters spawning next to the city, destroying outposts and resources.

Dex, I think you are looking at the wrong end of the stick, to bring population back to being important is not about making population control the production speed, since that would just make materials unimportant and we will be standing with the same problem, but with another resource.

I think to make population important you should rebalance the +gildar buildings, and rebalance the benefits of levelling. Working within the current boundaries could make population very important, and also not being too big a bite to change for the current game as is.

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

DexCisco is making a few good points, whether or not it's 'the' idea to pursue.

Fact is, with unrest linear, there is no incentive to queue buildings that decrease that unrest. If you are comfortable with a 22% production penalty...which actaully isn't that bad all considering, then there are a whole string of buildings that never need to be built.

If unrest increased with population, there would be a drive to consider buildings to reduce that unrest.

I never liked the balance in population increasing unrest, and buildings decreasing it, mostly because population can be infinite, (you cant stop growth) and the buildings have a limit somewhere.

I never run low taxes, low taxes are worthless unless you have the buildings that reduce unrest by 20% in each city, then I can run low taxes, its either full, medium, or none.
I think its a problem you can switch from no tax to maximum tax in a split second, makes gaming the tax system very easy and usually the best way to power.

A tax per city would be nice though.
And higher tax should give lower growth IMO

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

This is not true.  I am not suggesting having population be the only factor in output, but that it be at least included in the equation.  You could have buildings that add fixed production (+production), buildings that add by population (+production / ProdPop), buildings that add fixed production by materials (+production / material), buildings that add by population and materials (+(materials*X) production  / ProdPop), or a combination of all of the above.  This is not exchanging one variable for another, it is really just making an existing variable more useful.  Right now, materials are basically all that is important and that needs to change.

This is also not entirely true.  There is a limit to population right now, that being food, which is limited by +food/grain buildings and available grain in the location.  To say that you can't keep a soft limited number of people content with an unknown set of bonuses is a little rash.  If all of the available unrest buildings combined could keep at least 800 people happy or content (and late game buildings should be both expensive and very effective), then I don't see the problem.  There are also spells that permanently affect the unrest level.

I have in some games (Where I tried, right, don't care for city levels much ATM) hit way beyond 800 population, why? more gildar income, I don't like being punished for raising population in a city to increase gildar, punished by using the current population mechanics.
(5 essence city, cast +5 grain, and +125% food = tons of population).

But I said before, we might just not agree cause we want different things

Sincerely
~ Kongdej