Population

A province's Population is… well… its population. It isn't absolutely everyone in the province, merely the portion of peasant civilians. It is from the mass of people that Income, Supplies, and Recruitment Points are derived.

Every 100 people in a province provides a base of 1 lb. Gold of Income through taxation, rounded down. This is then added to or subtracted from by certain Magic Sites and random events, and modified by Fort Administration, Scales, and Unrest.

Only Population pays tax, of course, and units do not. Not even your righteous Prophet, who has no Upkeep, pays tax. In addition, the tax money of peoples in a fort-less exclave doesn't reach your Treasury, unless there's a Tax Collector within it.

• There are some exceptions to this, however. Sailing nations typically "trace income across oceans", for instance, so exclaves that can reach a fort through sailing still get their taxes to the treasury.

Recruitment Points roughly represent the availability of men for open positions in the army. These are from the small portion of men who don't really pay taxes, such as the vagabonds, lesser nobles, or warrior tribes, so recruiting a unit does not deduct from the Population.

In previous games, a province with zero people living in it had zero Recruitment Points. In this game, every province has a base of 20. This scruff group of survivors can always be drawn from, amounting to around two mundane soldiers per turn (if Resources allow), though a Population-less province will not provide the Gold for hiring them. Atop that twenty, added portions of Population provide extra Recruitment Points with somewhat-diminishing returns:

Fortunately, Forts (representing a city, or a colony of the faction, or both) provide a significant multiplier for Recruitment Points. For instance, mere Palisades increase Recruitment Points by 50%. Scales and Unrest modify Recruitment Points, too.

Much of the Population (if not all of it) farms. Whether Supplies are bought from the populace or seized is abstracted out, though the Population is left with at least enough to stay alive. Supply yield from the Population is also in tiers:

Forts that aren't under siege also provide Supplies; their Administration value, times 6, divided by the distance from the fort (in provinces) plus 1. For example, Palisades (15 Administration) provides 30 Supplies to armies two provinces away, calculated by [(6 x 15) / (2 + 1)]. Fort Supplies are not modified by Scales, but Supplies from the Population are!

The smallest unit of Population in this game is 10. That corresponds with 1 point of Unrest (a "filthy brigand or troublemaker"), and with 1 level of Province Defense. You don't get these immediately upon acquiring the province; rather, both maximum Unrest and maximum Province Defense are equal to the local Population divided by 10. There are hard caps for each, however; 100 Province Defense at 1,000 Population, and 500 Unrest at 5,000.

A capital province starts with a Population of around 40,000, unless it's one of the "popkill" nations formed of a great disaster (such as Therodos starting with 20,000). Other provinces have far lower populations, lacking the great demographic force to form mighty states that would stake claims. The typical value in the Middle Ages is around 12,000, or 6,000 if it's a small province. Some medium-sized or large provinces may have higher populations of around 18,000, often depending on circumstances such as the quality of the location.

A province's terrain has a less-consistent impact on its starting population than in previous games. However, provinces other than capitals have two-to-four thousand more people in the Late Ages, and one-to-two thousand fewer people in the Early Ages.

Populations naturally grow or shrink over the course of a game, in most provinces. The base Population Growth of a province is 0.2% per month, thus, a province with a Population of 10,000 will gain 20 after a turn. The base Population Growth of all provinces is new to Dominions 6, by the way.

Since all bonuses or maluses to population growth are added together (even within their categories), it may be more helpful to visualize them as points, with each province having a base growth score of 2.

Certain Scales have always had an impact on Population growth.

Scale	Growth Change (x0.1%)
A point of Growth	+2
A point of Death	-2
Your first Temperature point beyond what's livable	-4
Your second Temperature point beyond what's livable	-6

What's "livable" and what's "comfortable" are different things. For all off-fort provinces, 3 and 3 are the upper and lower bounds of what's "livable", respectively. Some nations' forts pull the window of livability in one direction or the other, however, such as Early Abysian forts protecting their inhabitants from 5 but making 1 the lower limit. This poses the question of whether or not forts represent the colonization of a province, and whether or not they are merely climate-controlled.

Also new to Dominions 6, each terrain in a province affects its Population growth.

Terrain	Growth Change (x0.1%)
Farms	+6
Forests in Caves (Cave Forests)*	+4
Forests in Seas (Kelp Forests)*	+4
Swamps in Caves (Drip Caves)*	+2
Fresh Water (All River provinces have this)	+2
Mountains	-1
Forests (Surface)	-2
Highlands (Surface)	-2
Seas*	-2
Caves*	-2
Highlands in Caves (Crystal Caves)*	-2
Swamps (Surface)	-4
Deep Seas & Gorges	-4
Wastes	-6

• Since terrain effects on Population Growth stack, a Cave Forest province and a Kelp Forest province both have +0.2% Population Growth from terrain, while a Drip Cave has no change from terrain and a Crystal Cave has -0.4%. A Gorge is technically Highlands terrain in a Deep Sea, but does not provide any additional decrease in Population growth over what a Deep Sea provides.

A province's state at the beginning of the game determines what amount of people is comfortable for it. A small province is fit for 5,000, a "standard" province is fit for 10,000, a large province is fit for 15,000, and a capital is fit for 25,000. These soft caps do not change with the ages, and certain Population thresholds relative to them provide additional Growth bonuses or maluses:

These add up as well, so having twice the comfy population results in -0.4% Population Growth from crowding. Notably, the formula entails that most nations' capitals will have neutral Population growth in neutral Scales, unless they start on a beneficial or (more-likely) hostile terrain.