Population Resets to Zero

[Mordici]

I have had this happen in three different games. When the population of a province is around 500k the game will reset that province's population to zero. Has anyone else had this happen?

[Herode]

500k ??? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/shock.gif
You mean 50k I suppose.
Anyway, never happened on my games. But I'm not sure I ever saw a province reaching 50k /threads/images/Graemlins/Cold.gif

[Edratman]

Not once. How many turns does it take to get to 500,000?

[Edi]

I'll tackle this when I come back from Italy a week from now (yes, a second trip, this time to Rome).

[Ironhawk]

Good grief, how did you get your population so high??

[Mordici]

LOL I actually mean 500k!

I enjoy long games more so than short ones usually, and on those long games I try to separate the different factions in some games so that they don't kill each other off, while at the same time keeping myself alive. It is very challenging.

[sector24]

Mordici the Peacemaker, Astral Diplomat, The Immovable Object, Defender of Righteousness, Builder of Immensely Large Cities That Overflow the Population Variable

[Jazzepi]

Your stack x-plode.

Jazzepi

[Ballbarian]

Sir, I bow to your tenacity and breeding skills.

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

[Loren]

Sure it's 500k? I would think it much more likely to be at 655,360 people.

[Sombre]

Seriously though, how many turns is that?

[llamabeast]

A _lot_.

[cleveland]

Sombre said:
Seriously though, how many turns is that?



With Growth-3 and no bad events...about 950.

[Mordici]

In the three cases I had growth 3 and was playing Skaven on two of those occasions and Pangea on the third.

I'am kinda surprised I'am the only person who has seen this?!?! My games are on maps that are never over 300 provinces and a max of 12 nations. I mean there are folks on here that play on maps with over 1000+ provinces and well over 20 nations. If they had growth 3 this should come up before the end of such a large game.

sector24: I humbly accept your titles. It makes me want to make a Pretender to go along with them.

Loren: Like I said before I don't know the exact amount that makes the game go back to zero, but its around that number. That much I'am sure of.

Sombre: In the Pangea game it happened sometime around year 34.

[thejeff]

400+ turns. Wow.
I can't imagine lasting that long. Do you just push Host for most of those, or are you actually playing them out?
By turn 50-60 it usually takes me almost an hour per turn, scripting mages, figuring out what to summon/forge, manuevering armies etc...

MP games never last that long. Gandalf plays huge SP games, but I don't think he plays them out that long. Most people either end with victory conditions or just declare victory.

[Edratman]

Mordici, I bow to your perseverance. They should name a pretender after you: Mordici, Prince of Patience, Persistance and Perseverance.

I quit playing games when my turns take about an hour and a half, which is approximately when I have 100 provinces. (Wish I could get rid of my fascination for massive maps.)

I shudder attempting to imagine the time it takes to get to turn 400.

[Loren]

Argh! I tried to run a test on this. I took the smallest map, Hinnom and plopped on a few AI's. Pretty soon I smashed all the land ones and I was working on upping the PD in all coastal provinces to 125 so I could simply keep submitting the turn.

I wasn't paying enough attention and got dominion-killed.

[Edratman]

Loren, if you want to make another stab, set up one land nation per available land province and yourself as the sole water nation.

I think that should forestall AI expansion for quite a while.

[Loren]

Edratman said:
Loren, if you want to make another stab, set up one land nation per available land province and yourself as the sole water nation.

I think that should forestall AI expansion for quite a while.



AI Expansion wasn't the problem. I didn't build many temples because I didn't want to dominion-kill the AI and I simply wasn't paying attention and let it dominion-kill me. I had all the land, there was one water nation that couldn't threaten me.

[Edratman]

That is how I understood it. My thought was that if there are many competing AI's as opposed to only one, there won't be a dominant dominion to kill you off while you try for 400+ turns.

[Loren]

The situation stated in the OP can't happen.

I just reproduced the problem, the reset occurred in the vicinity of 320000 people. I wasn't watching closely as I thought I was a long way from the reset point so I don't have the exact number. I strongly suspect 327670 is the largest possible population. It's year 36.

Note that the gems reset if you go over 32767 gems. They wrap into negative numbers, though--you can't use the gem type until you've collected another 32768 of them.

[MaxWilson]

Thanks for checking that out, Loren. The gems is also good to know about, although it's hard to conceive of hitting that limit in one of my games (doubt I've ever banked even 1000 gems).

-Max

[Loren]

It occurs to me that I ought to mention one other thing I learned in that test: Three Red Seconds can be cast on an enemy province.

The game goes very fast if you have a sufficiently powerful siege force in every enemy province. I couldn't simply take the provinces because that would have reduced his dominion and risked an unwanted dominion kill.

[Mordici]

I'am sorry but I didn't imagine my population resetting at around 500k three times. The situation stated by myself in the OP can and did happen to me on three occasions.

[Endoperez]

How sure are you about that 500 000 value? There is an overflow bug, but if it doesn't always happen at same point there's something weird going on. I doubt the pop cap would be terrain dependent, but I can't think of anything else ATM.

[sector24]

There's a really tiny chance that the variable used to keep track of the population is two unsigned chars. "Unsigned" meaning it goes from 0-512 instead of -256 to 256, then the value multiply by some constant to get the actual value displayed in the game. If that was the case then the population would overflow to 0 at 512, but a char is not the optimal data type to store this kind of value so it's not likely.

[Loren]

sector24 said:
There's a really tiny chance that the variable used to keep track of the population is two unsigned chars. "Unsigned" meaning it goes from 0-512 instead of -256 to 256, then the value multiply by some constant to get the actual value displayed in the game. If that was the case then the population would overflow to 0 at 512, but a char is not the optimal data type to store this kind of value so it's not likely.



What?!?!?!

An unsigned byte goes from 0 to 255. A signed byte goes from -127 to 127.

An unsigned word goes from 0 to 65535. A signed word goes from -32767 to 32767.

This latter is what I think they used and they are adding an extra zero for display purposes.

[sector24]

Right, but what mordici is saying is that his population is rolling over at 500k. The closest variable being 2 unsigned chars (512 x 1000), even though that would be inefficient. Hence its unlikeliness.

[Loren]

sector24 said:
Right, but what mordici is saying is that his population is rolling over at 500k. The closest variable being 2 unsigned chars (512 x 1000), even though that would be inefficient. Hence its unlikeliness.



Where are you getting this 512 from, though? Modern machines use 8-bit bytes!

[Mordici]

I just want to clarify what I said again cause sector24 said that my population was rolling over at 500k.

My population rolled over at around 500k, which means that somewhere between 400 and 500k a rollover did occur. In all three cases I didn't notice it on the turn it happened, so I have no idea exactly what amount my population was at before it happened.

Also, I don't know if this has any bearing on this, but I'll provide this anyway. I run this game on a Macintosh computer running Mac OS X 10.4.11 and it is version 3.17 of Dominions. I don't know exactly what mods were running at the time, but there are a few I know for sure where running. They were the following:

Better Independents

Better Independents Resource

Deadly Seas


I hope this information helps.

[Endoperez]

Good report, Mordici. That's exactly the kind of information that might help solve this.

[Folket]

And here I was thinking a signed byte was from -128 to 127.

I far as I'm concerned this is solved. If population growth is not controlled the pop variable overflows and all population is exterminated.

Also it is not unheard of for me to have 2000+ gems in MP. I never play game that long in SP.

[The_Reckoning]

You could just pretend it's an event where the population has reached critical mass and they all die ?

[vfb]

Exactly! The peasants were too fruitful and multiplyish, and they have ravaged the soil and water tables. Now there is no food at all and they all die.

To prevent this problem, I suggest massive blood hunting and patrolling to keep the population in check. And if that doesn't do the job, well maybe there's a use for the Implementor Axe after all!