Death scale domain.

[PaoloZ]

Is the text for the Growth/Death scale in the manual under the chapter on designing a pretender mistyped?

I have just taken a Death 1 scale, thinking it would only hamper my population growth.

The game states population growth is reduced by 0.2%.

But as the game goes on my popoluation keep dying even though by a slow rate...

It seems that it's not my population growth reduced: it is my pop being reduced!
Is the death scale an effective reduction of total population, not population growth?

[calmon]

population growth is 0 with a neutral growth/death scale. So reducing the "population growth" by 0.2% means the same as reducing total population by 0.2%.

[PaoloZ]

Now I get it. Being a total newbie of the game I did not recognize population growth is null if you don't get a growth scale.

The text on the manual is a bit misleading...

Why not write Increases/Decreases population by 0.2% each turn?

[calmon]

In dom2 there was a base population growth. They changed that for dom3 but they didn't/forgotTo change the growth/death description.

[Graeme Dice]

calmon said:
In dom2 there was a base population growth.



There was no base population growth in Dom2.

[calmon]

Yep i was wrong, for some weird reason i thought there was a small base rate. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/redface.gif

[Ewierl]

Sometimes I feel like asking, "why aren't there more people over time? Aren't my 30,000 peasants having a few kids?" Then I remember that it's 12 turns per game year. Any realistic "base" growth rate would be far too slow to ever show up http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Ygorl]

Hey, it only takes 9 months to make a baby. Maybe a baby shouldn't count as population; but maybe a ten-year-old should? And whatever cutoff you use, there will be people passing it. It would be reasonable for there to be a small base rate of population increase (and it's on the edge of possibility, under maximal fertility and fecundity to see maybe even 1% growth per turn?). I wouldn't mind if base growth were .1% or .2%, and the scales played off that.
It is a truly small issue though. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

And, happy birthday!

[Amhazair]

Who's birthday is it? I want to join in the well-wishing. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

[Nick_K]

During a time of global religious war in a pseudo-mediaeval setting with presumably mediaeval concepts of warefare (ie civilians being fair game) and mediaeval levels of food supply and medical knowledge I don't think one can expect populations to tend to increase. As is, during this time of turmoil populations will tend to go down due to pillage, death scale, magic, plagues etc. This seems to me to be perfectly fitting. All it takes is for the death rate to exceed the birth rate and population will shrink. This has happened many times in history for periods of longer than my dom3 games last for, at least for areas stricken with war, famine and plague.

[Ygorl]

Yes, but pillaging, unrest, death scale, magic, and plagues all reduce population anyway. In the absence of any of those, and in the presence of magical health care (Arcoscephalean priestesses? I want one!) and an actual real incarnate divinity, people might have more than two kids per woman. Just sayin'...
It's Ewierl's birthday.

[Ewierl]

Amhazair said:
Who's birthday is it? I want to join in the well-wishing. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif



*raises his hand sheepishly*

You missed it, though! But thanks for the thought http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Amhazair]

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

/wave

[Lormax]

As a complete noob to Dom3, maybe someone can help me out here...more population means more income, right?...so the 2% income increase from Growth, along with the 0.2% increase in population...over enough time that 2% will exceed the 7% from Order...am I thinking correctly?

[PhilD]

Yeah, but over the short term the extra income will let you expand faster. So the shorter the game (like, small maps), the more important it will be to have an explosive start - on the short run, more income at the cost of death scales works better.

Me, I like to play long solo games in which growth scales work, but I think, in most MP games, they're typically not worth it unless you also get the other benefits (like influence over events and aging).