On population

I would also like to have the huge, sprawling cities which come from long, very long games.  A huge city with slums, parks, citadels, markets, palaces, meatpacking plants, fancy neighborhoods, theives guilds, competing religions, dockworkers unions, corrupt politicians...

Basically New York City, I guess.

I'd like to emphasize one particular part of your post: rivers. They've recently been mentioned in some other threads, too in a different capacity as well.

Rivers should be Important! In my opinion, only cities near rivers should be able to grow to 'maximum' size. They should also provide bonuses to trade, food, and maybe some other things. Additionally, 'caravans' should be able to deliver resources via rivers (although they'd be boat caravans in this case) if applicable. I'm skeptical about whether this last thing is doable, though, considering rivers run between map tiles, and caravans travel on tiles...

I think we should keep in mind that the game is about an almost destroyed world getting back on it's feet. A city with more than a hundred thousand people in it should be very rare I think. I've been trying to find some exact numbers about city population in our medieval times, but can't seem to find many conclusive numbers but...

By the early 12th century the population of London was about 18,000 (compare this to the 45,000 estimated at the height of Roman Britain).

And...

It is difficult to evaluate the population in Paris, in the Middle-ages. Around 80.000 inhabitants in the XIVth century the number increased to 300.000 in 1475

I did find an interesting website from someone who seems to have done some research for this, and made a site about population density, city density and so on for Medieval Fantasy Worlds. For those interested, you can find it here. Some numbers from that site:

Big Cities range from 12,000-100,000 people, with some exceptional cities exceeding this scale. Some historical examples include London (25,000-40,000), Paris (50,000-80,000), Genoa (75,000-100,000), and Venice (100,000+). Moscow in the 15th century had a population in excess of 200,000!

So, as I said at the start of this post, really big cities should be very rare and should require a big investment to get / keep them happy.

Which is why I think that there should be only a few "super-cities" per map... however there should be a few.  They would have to suck in food from the entire empire via water (like Rome did from Egypt and then Africa and Constantinople did from Egypt... forcing Rome to begin to be supplied from Africa).  I'm not saying this type of city should be a common occurance, but a lot of RPG settings are in cities, however most of them require sizeable cities to have good adventures.  Groups of heros can already adventure in dungeons and the countryside... why not your own cities (much like the first response put forth)?

Thanks for the link Scorpiana, bookmarked it for later reference. for you!

I agree with Iwarmonger, it would be nice if a few cities eventually grew to enormous size. But i hope this will happen only to a few cities even on huge maps. I realy wouldn't like it if every settlement that you build eventually grows into a city. Most settlements should be villages, somewhat fewer towns and a limited number of cities.

To get a huge city you would have to invest a lot in it. I don't having to invest extra essence is the way to go (the land has allready been made habitable by the initial essence investment). But if a substancial investment of gold and resources should be nessecary.

So how would you restrict kingdoms to level only a few cities to a metropolis? The dumbest idea would be to set a fixed number of cities, which could attain such status. I think about a system where it would be done like this:

1. Your civilization reaches 20,000 citizens.
2. The game takes the biggest city and makes it a metropolis.
3. After you reach 40,000, you get another metro (we exclude the previous metropolis from the list).
4. The last metro you gain when you reach 80,000.
5. If the number of kingdom's citizens fall under 80k/40k/20k, the least populated metropolis downgrades.
6. Another scenario: if you have 95k citizens (ie. 3 metro.), and one of your metropolis has been razed or a lot of citizens died (it's not the biggest city anymore, but still we have 80k+ citizens), than after - let's say - 20 turns, the biggest non-metropolis takes the title.
7. Max. number of metro. (in case someone may have questions): 3.

Why treat metropolises different from any other city? Because they are just that, cities, just a lot larger than most. Their value should come from the fact that they are big cities, not from some label that says that this particular city is a metropolis.

Which is why I think food supply is the way to go.  A megacity has to have a large number of highly productive agricultural lands feeding it directly to become such because there is no way that a Rome or Constantinople at their ancient peak can survive from local resources.  Which is why massive imports of grain are necessary to keep that population hovering around a million.

exactly ... you would have to invest an enourmous amount of food to gain enough people in one place to be deemed a super city. Also, supply of food should be less effective at great distance, so you can't have a border super city, but it needs to be at a true cross-roads within the empire.

Initial first megacity to reach 20-30,000 should be doable with just the surplus food from all cities + a small investment, while getting a city near 100% would require at least 70% food from all cities ... or 90% from about 10-20 super-farm villages, or something. Basically it should be possible but should weaken somewhat the available food for other cities.

If we plan on using prestige throughout the entire game, then I think people moving from city to city, or immigration from empire to empire, should be based upon prestige and available food. Perhaps only one city can grow beyond a certain prestige value, or maybe its all relative and after some time other cities have to "donate prestige" to a super-city.

Either way, it should be a huge investment on part of the country. It said at one point Moscow was 200,000 people. At this time Russia was a trade based nation, primarily, with land and sea trade. Especially sea. Moscow was by far the largest gathering of people, probably the only city to come close was St Petersburg. If you want a Moscow sized super city, you will need a Ukrainian bread-basket to supply you, as well as high prestige/ merchant prestige, or something.