what is "population" count info good for?

[onomastikon]

Real life aside, what does "population" matter in the game? Does it affect taxes, resources, and / or supplies to a particular degree, or dominion? Or is it just a matter for corpses?

thank you

[General Tacticus]

Population does affect taxes and supplies. Probably ressources as well, but I am not sure...

I like to play the World War scenario (not that I've ever finished it, but that's another problem), and I can tell you that conquering Etruria (north of Italy, belongs to Ermor) on turn 3 or on turn 15 makes a LOT of difference : in the first case it is a very good province; but after 15 turns under Ermor Ashen or Soul Gate, there is nothing left worth bothering : a few scattered peasants, perhaps 2 or 3 gold a turn, and no supplies worth mentioning.

As you see, it's the pop that made the province's worth. I'd say that, special site aside, both gold and supplies are proportional to the population for a given province type.

[Wauthan]

You get 1 gold of tax for every 500 population. It also affects the available supplies (More farmers means more food). If you don't need gold or supplies population means nothing.

[onomastikon]

Thank you both. 1 gold for 500 -- thank you. I suppose Terrain Type affects this (or affects population?)?

Btw: how can I quote so that I can write "originally posted by..."?

[Saber Cherry]

Originally posted by onomastikon:
Thank you both. 1 gold for 500 -- thank you. I suppose Terrain Type affects this (or affects population?)?

Btw: how can I quote so that I can write "originally posted by..."? <font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">1 gold per 200 population.

...and hit the "quote button" http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

[mlepinski]

A related Question:

It seems easy to make my population go down, but are there ways to make population go up? (Does population go up automatically over time? Are there actions that I can take to increase population?)

[Taqwus]

If you want pop growth, you should take a positive Growth scale, and it'll still be slow. Oh, and back off the taxes in provinces where unrest is an ongoing problem due to e.g. magical sites so your patrollers need to kill fewer people each turn.
I haven't checked whether magic can be used to affect this; the most likely suspects would be Gift of Nature's Bounty (for boosting agriculture), Gift of Health and Well of Misery (these two for reducing mortality rates). GoH I cast often enough to figure that it's probably not giving much of a pop growth boost if any.
If you really want to see more dramatic pop growth, you could mod the effect of the scale, IIRC; see Alex Poger's scale mod for an example. Generally speaking it's far easier to kill pop than it is to get it back.