Greetings, emperors!

Last time I explained why I rescaled the entire population system, mobilisation had crept up to 32.8% by year 10, and cities were stalling out at an average of 2,411 citizens. Today I want to tell you what happened when I actually put the rescaled version through a proper test run, because a change this size never survives contact with real gameplay without a few surprises.

The first thing the test run caught was a material penalty deadlock in automatic workshop assignment, the logic that decides what AI empires, and any settlement under governor control, build in their workshops each month. The original logic checked material stock levels to decide whether a workshop should be penalised for shortages. Once population and everything downstream of it got bigger, that stock-based check started locking up in certain empires, effectively freezing their workshop output entirely. The fix was to switch the check from stock-based to income-based instead, looking at what’s actually flowing in rather than what happens to be sitting in reserve at that exact moment. This is purely an improvement to how the AI and your governors manage settlements on your behalf, manual workshop assignment was never affected. Much more stable, and honestly a better way to measure it regardless of the rescale.

Second, the horses modifier turned out to be punishing developed empires far more harshly than intended once the new numbers were in play. An empire that had actually built itself up properly was being penalised almost as if it had done something wrong. That needed retuning so that growth is rewarded rather than quietly taxed.

Third, and this one genuinely surprised me: AI empires that fought even a minor war would sometimes get permanently stuck without civilian work parties afterwards. A one-way switch in their play style logic meant they never flipped back to a civilian footing once a war ended, even a small one. Left alone, that would have meant AI empires slowly grinding to a halt after any conflict at all, which is about as bad a bug as this kind of rebalance could produce.

Fourth, I caught a genuine “generating something from nothing” problem. The disband population return factor, how many citizens a settlement gets back when troops are disbanded there, was set to 0.65. Against the new 0.50 population cost per manpower, that would have let players farm population by recruiting and disbanding troops in a loop. Dropped to 0.35, and that loophole is closed.

One more small thing worth mentioning, purely because it shows how these numbers get refined even after the main decision is made: I’d assumed a straight ×3 on starting city population, but the correct numbers turned out to be 500 and 750 rather than what a mechanical triple would have given. Small detail, but exactly the kind of thing that only surfaces when you go through it properly rather than just applying a multiplier and hoping for the best.

All of this, along with a full set of documentation updates across the population mechanics, the main game document, and the modding manual, is now built and tested.

I have to be honest with you, I’m very pleased with how this turned out. This is one of the biggest changes I’ve made to Imperium Sine Fine, and I genuinely believe it’s a major improvement to the game. An empire that can field an army without being three-quarters soldiers, and cities that actually feel like they’re growing into something, that’s a much better foundation for everything else I’ve built on top of it this year.

If you haven’t already, please wishlist Imperium Sine Fine on Steam, it makes a real difference as I get closer to launch.

If you’ve been playing the demo, I’d love to hear how population and mobilisation feel to you now. Send your thoughts to ap**@*****rg.one, good or bad, all of it helps.

Cheers!