Hi just wondering how population growth works in the game. Like do citizens pair of randomly. does it depend on housing space like in forest village. or can we control who pairs with who. Seeing as individual citizen have traits can we pair off certain ones to try have a child with some desired traits?(Super Soldiers)ha. also if we can attack other villages can we then capture them or assimilate them into our tribe in order to boost population.
Oisin, since it’s a survival game I don’t think putting all efforts on the combat aspects is a good thing. Mother nature has always been the deadliest opposant to man kind. But I agree with you that citizens must have traits to affect relation between them. If I remember correctly they have spoken about a family tree. So there is no point to mary with your sister or brother like on Banished.
2 Likes
Artybloc I see your point but i find with games like Banished/Forest village after you reach a certain size mother nature no longer becomes the biggest threat. I see combat/warfare as more a late game feature. As in now you have built a strong economy time to test it against another tribe. I was wondering do you get to control who pairs with who, which would give you the option, do you want a large size randomly skilled population or a smaller well tailored pop suited for farming or indeed warfare.
You are right about Banished and Forest village, once you stock enough resources there is no more challenge from nature.
However, in AC they want to setup a resource decay system. With this, mother nature will alway be a looming threat.
Severals harsh winter in a row could deplete your stock (since you can only store let say 1 year of food) and force you to migrate.
3 Likes
Louis that is a nice feature. But it probably adds the need for combat even more now. If you have several harsh winters how are you going to feed your population other then attacking someone else and raiding their supply’s. Not enough food? attack and take it, Not enough people to work the farms? attack and take the people to work your farms for you. Not strong enough to do ether of those? Migrate. Now that is if your able to take people and assimilate them. I think slavery was mentioned in a youtube comment i read i’m just not sure.
1 Like
@oisin2000 You are right, combat system is needed. I really miss that system in Banished because it had a lot of influence on how you design your city (houses packed together with walls around). However, I thing that nature will stay a major threat. Moreover a super-soldier guy is not really realistic for the time period (unlike a super-hunter or super-potery maker). Human population were small at that time, and tribe did not have too much extra resource to setup a proto army.
A good compromise could be that hunters have better fighting skill than other people. Which mean that if you want to raid without too much cost you will lose some of your food income. What do you thing about it ?
1 Like
@louis.mervoyer My super soldier idea was a little joke. Ya that is were i was going with my idea. It would be high risk high reward. do you send your hunters to raid for lots of food risk loose some. or keep them hunting and hope they find something. I assume that certain traits/attributes make you better at certain jobs. i was unable make out the names of the Attributes in the screenshots but i assume it would be like intelligence, strength, speed or similar so maybe being fast and strong made you a better hunter and in turn a better fighter. and if you have a fast women and a strong man you pair them and get a sorta strong fast person. What you think?
@oisin2000 I really like the idea of genetic trait that go through generation (after all my wife has a PhD in genetic).
However it is importante to keep the micro-management to a reasonable level.
I do not know when the cast society was invented (I doubt it was before the bronze age) but it is the spirit : keep people with natural (or taught) trait to a particuliar job.
Moreover, the dev said that people will have semi-inpendant behavior so maybe you will have a perfect hunter who want to be a fisherman.
Maybe game discoveries/tech could introduce proto-guild (mid/late game) to have specialized familly.
@louis.mervoyer yes true i imaged the breeding aspect to only be early game. when you really need good citizens in important jobs. hopefully the devs respond to some of this post and clear up some of what were talking about. be interesting to see what they have planed for how the population will grow and how it is managed
and if it was part of the game is could be extended to the animals as well like how people already do. Animals could have a grading system 1 to 5 higher the number the more meat/leather you get. you spend the early game breeding the best bull then use him and his offspring for the next couple of decades breed excellent animal stock
2 Likes
@oisin2000 Now that you mention it, it is true that animal and crop selection start at this time.
However, for the animal the historical way is not the one you thought, indeed they selected small animal in order to manage them more easily (wild auroch were bigger than our modern bull but neolithic cows were very small compare to today standard). I do not know how the dev will implement this (it is a major evolution in human history so hard to ignore).
With this discussion we are drifting from the original topic, I think animal/crop selection deserve a proper topic.
1 Like
@louis.mervoyer
very true i only mention it cause of its relation to breeding for traits. but yes it does deserve its own topic. it will be interesting to see how they do it. i don’t pretend to know anything about the time i only mean in the general sense… they did mention the transition from hunter gather to farming will be a challenging part of the game so maybe its loaded with detailed features like this.
I’m curious if how the growth of population will work? It became annoying in games like banished where you have virtually no control over it. Im I’m also wondering how you feel about the idea of angry citizens leaving your city for a rival tribe or even leaving your city because the religious or cultural beliefs didn’t fit them as a citizen? Might make it interesting? Thought?
1 Like
@Tyty763 i am curious too, population growth is not an easy thing. Most cities building game use houses (even banished : grow up kid form couple and have children only if they have an empty house to go). However, with a hunter/gatherer tribe on the move I don’t think the dev can use this system.
Anyway I do not thing we will have a huge control over population growth given the spirit of the game. About the angry citizens leaving the tribe, I read something about it (website, twiter account I do not remember) but I not sure about it (could be just a thought of the dev).
@Tyty763 Id go back to @louis.mervoyer point about the developers having to limit micro management. The idea of angry villagers and trying to make them happy would be fun in the early game when population is everything. Same with my breeding for traits idea. It would be cool if this could be than phased out in the mid/late game. Ether through technology or a job of some description. Going back to forest village and its villager assigner, Winter/Summer reassignments fun at first but become tedious after pop size of 100+.
I hope we’ll have ability to name people, i’d like to create families which would grow and you would see their (mentioned) family tree. Or people would assimilate names depending on their work/proffesion like “Hunter,Jogger,Cook, Firekeeper,Fisher,…” 
2 Likes
I really like that idea. You could give a family your surname and as you progress throughout the ages via future expansions, You can see how your dynasty does. Does your family name thrive or is it lost to the pages of history.
1 Like
Exactly, maybe there could be like royal family, like tribe leader family, and later king family,…etc. And maybe later, possible houses, like in ancient rome? Like “House of Fishers”
I love the surname Idea as well as the early game strategy. I think for me, it’s typically easy to get a civilization running smoothly for most games, where I get bored is the lack of interaction with the actual citizens. I think this gane brings a lot to the table, but I would also love to see what new concepts they can bring to the table.
I was wondering how their family tracking would work. When I was playing Banished I use to track the following:
- Birth
- Parents
- Matriarch House (if there was one)
- Adult Birthday
- Married
-To Whom
Death
-How they died. (Sickness, natural, rocks collapse, etc)
I really enjoyed tracking who married and the stats of how people died. Stats on family ratio would be very nice as well, (boys to girls, births vs deaths, etc). The default, and or, family names (where applicable) could be pulled of us that have contributed funds to AC. ACRocks, for example, wouldn’t make an awesome default name 
But something like Max (for the forename) or Klasky (surname) would. I understand historically it doesn’t make much sense, as recorded surnames were not common until ~17 cent. However, families must have been identified somehow.