Posted By Athorias at

I was thinking, what will influence settlements and their population internally after launch?

We don't have a specific list of influences. There will probably be several, and players will be able to build and grow their characters to increase character influence.

What will affect the amount of children that NPC's wil get? Will it just be the amount of food and general wealth in a settlement?

Amounts of food and general wealth will probably have influence, but there may be other factors as well, such as taxation level, space in and for buildings, and political stability especially as regards crime and warfare in the area. I do not expect that the designers will publish a table of effects complete with numerical values, the better to provide sufficient challenge to the metagamers.

Can I encourage NPC's to get more children by adding empty plots to my settlement and assigning those parcells to become 'housing'?

I would expect that to help. Of course, other influences will matter as well.

Wil NPC's build homes theirselves after I do this, or do I as mayor/Count need to manually give premission for a building to be build?

I think it will be up to you, although it may be that NPCs will be too passive to take advantage of situations that mayors and landowners have control over.

This would also tie in with: what exactly is automated in the city management and what is not, or rather can we automate these things by giving NPC's premissions or changing laws?

I don't know the details yet.

Would love to hear some opinions or info on this! <3

good questions. What level of automation is there for the city growing on its own when it has free parcels etc..

like how does it work, never been described afaik

I assume it will happen on its own slowly if the in game requirements are met. Things like having enough food, a good economy and plenty of building materials. Obviously players will be able to speed this up by providing infrastructure, improving trade, researching building techniques etc.

Posted By Azmodeth at 4:36 PM - Wed Apr 17 2019

good questions. What level of automation is there for the city growing on its own when it has free parcels etc..

like how does it work, never been described afaik

I'd assume it would happen as the result of an npc or PC following their list of needs. If you have enough food and opportunity available to support more characters and your city is safe to live in the npcs will work down their lists past food and safety to procreation and acquisition of more land and wealth, thus expanding the size of the town.

While I agree with you all that this is most likely what SBS will do, I think it’s counter to how our world functions. Population grow can be seen to be a negative feedback cycle where more war and poverty actually encourages the population to have more children because a lot of them die at a young age, and wealthy societies tend to have fewer as the parents are sure they will live to adulthood. Would be interesting to see if SBS has take this into account.

Posted By Arjuna at 09:32 AM - Thu Apr 18 2019

While I agree with you all that this is most likely what SBS will do, I think it’s counter to how our world functions. Population grow can be seen to be a negative feedback cycle where more war and poverty actually encourages the population to have more children because a lot of them die at a young age, and wealthy societies tend to have fewer as the parents are sure they will live to adulthood. Would be interesting to see if SBS has take this into account.

Irl even in wealthy societies it was common for people to die, a large number of people didn’t even make it to age 5, not in ancient history, but about 3 or 4 generations ago. Vaccinations and antibiotics changed everything.