Is there a death rate hidden in the population growth rate?

[eleaza]

I've trying to see how far I can grow a city's population, but on my way to 3 million milestone, I ran into some strange phenomena regarding population growth rate.

Natural population growth issue.jpg (330.32 KiB) Viewed 1640 times

In the screenshot, the population growth rate is 1.10% which the description said is the true percentage of population changes compare from last year. But in the middle left graph, it says the "Natural Population Growth" rate is 1.22%. And since there's no emigration what so ever, does this imply there's some sort of "natural death rate" = 1.22% - 1.10% = 0.12% (this doesn't even count the immigration)? Or is there some bug? Some error in the display of percentage? Or the description of natural growth rate isn't what it said it supposed to be?

[foomanchu89]

Interesting stuff, never even considered the idea of their being a death rate. If there is, why is there no mechanism for us to make money off it? This is CapitalismLab btw.

Also, how many years did it take you to grow such a large population or is this not survival mode?

[eleaza]

Interesting stuff, never even considered the idea of their being a death rate. If there is, why is there no mechanism for us to make money off it? This is CapitalismLab btw.

Also, how many years did it take you to grow such a large population or is this not survival mode?

I'm not sure if it's a real "natural death rate", or simply a bug, or display issue. In older version, there's a bug relating to immigration number not matching the real population change. Perhaps that bug isn't fully patched.

As to growing the population, it matters little if it's in survival mode or not. It's mostly affecting the profitability of player's corporation. For growing the first 1 million, it should take about 10 to 12 years to grow from 0 to 500k, about another 10 years or less to grow from 500k to 1 million. For growing from 1 million to 2 million, it only took me 14 years. And all the way, my city has very high immigration rate, due to always have job-opening.

Assume the unemployment is always kept at the lowest 2%, and highest possible quality of life, and industries' competitiveness is always leading global average with full university funding to different product classes, then in the first few years, the actual immigration number will jump from like 10k a year and quickly reach near the cap 50k a year, before reaching 500k (so it would take a couple of years more than 10 years to reach 500k). After that the population growth will be limited to 10% of the current population a year, but since the cap can now pass 50k a year, the number of years to grow from 500k to 1m will be less than 10 years (for me it took only 9 years or so). And the actual immigrants per year will increases after 1 million population, the highest record I got is 91k per year, but the actual population growth percentage, start to drop slowly from near 10% to less than 3%. The real issue start to show after 2 millions, I think I sort of running out of local jobs and unemployment rate start to appear above 2%. And the population growth rate drops significantly to the current situation. By my estimation, if the "death rate" is just a miscalculation, and only keep about 1% of real population growth. I'll need about another 35 to 40 years to reach from 2 million to 3 million. Hence in total if a city is start afresh, it would take about 35 to 40 years to grow from 0 to 2 million. For a 500k starting city, if my party get elected in the first election, it would be about 5 years (non mayor) + 25 years or so to 2 million.

I reached 2 million in 2019, start at 1990, get elected in this city in 1995, so 24 years from 500k to 2 million, the screenshot is taken at the beginning of 2022. In other city my party get elected later, adding delays like +5 years, or +10 years, even +15 years, hence much less current population, and some of them were run very poorly by AI mayors during AI's reign (even dropping population).

[David]

This issue has been fixed in the patch v4.2.12.