was trying to calculate how to have the highest population in Caesar3 befor hitting the sprite limits. since Amphipolis has a population over 54,000 i wanted to know how that could be done and have come up with the following calculation:
the sprite limits on the Mac version are 1000 walkers and 2000 buildings. useing the most efecient blocks (15by15 inverse and 9by, both all large insulae) aproximatly 1/4 of all buildings could be made houses, or 500 housing units on the map. since houses dont send out walkers (well, pleblian ones dont) and you could make it so that many more do not either (no getting granaries or warehouses. roads, plazas, gardens, aquaducts and walls ect) that you could probly aviod, or minimize, the walker limit befor htting the building limit. the most efecient housing pleb is large insulae and for patrician houses it is luxury palaces. then, given vary high efecientcy blocks like those mentioned above, you can have vary high levels of un employment (for me an average of 60-70%) witch will allow you to have 25% of the population living as patricians (and thus placing them in more spirite-efecient housing) (and since 40% of the populace is working: about 67% of the employed workforce could be patricians) or about 375 large insulae and 125 luxury palaces. the reason for large vs. grand insulae is two fold:
- more entertainment means having a coloseum in each block; expencive, undesirable and concumes to many workers, as well as being one less housing "glyph" on the map.
- and becouase two food types requires "inefecient" farms, leading to less housing glyphs still.
thus 375x84=31,500 pleblians (or 12,600 workers: 37,800dn anual salary at 30 sestercies) and 125x200=25,000 paying patricians (or 400,000dn anualy in taxes at a reasonable 8%) makes 31,500+25,000=56,500 citizens! this must all be taken with good sized fudg factors but it shows how to make a city of at least about 50,000 people; VARY BIG.here are my list on "settlment sizes" and what would be a good name for them:
- hamlet:up to 300 people. below this level doctors or temples are unnessesary to prevent disease or curses. generaly this level seems apropriate.
- village: 300-1,000 people. larger than a hamlet but able to achive the highest ratings, fend off the largest armies and generaly able to do just about anything. a core group of 1,000 is what is nessesary to truly "run" a new settlment.
- town: 1,000-5,000 people. larger than a village but still able to not need either patricians or taxes to servive these settlemts are still fairly small.
- city: 5,000-15,000 people. needing patricians and high-class pleblians to servive and generaly taking up much more of a area than a town, a city is more sophisticated and able to acomate higher ratings as well as have enough excess workers and cash to procure what ever it needs to maintain operations.
- metropolis: 15,000-30,000 people. a vary large city that dominates its soroundings and has everything, in one form or another. above 30,000 people city design takes substancial skill in order not to hit the spirite limit unexpectedly. once at this level of planning vary large quanities are needed: from workers to denarii, to food and goods. the city's largness tends to ware off as you become acustemed to it at this level.
- megaopolis: 30,000 and up. if you are luck enough to build such a city than you will be dealing in huge sums of everything and your grandest creation will span from one side of the enourmos map to the other. vary few such places are ever seen and all who visit are awed by its size.