The older your population the less births you will have.

Venus gives you a baby boom with her blessing.

Thats all I know

GK
Sorry but paultheo is incorrect.Venus has no effect on births and aging population only after about 30 years and it goes the other way when somone dies there is a birth.
Births only occur in housing which has vacancies, i.e. is evolving. You get three births every new year in pleb housing irrespective of size, and 4 in palaces.
Click on an evolving house late December and again in Jan after the population jump and you will see what I mean.
To keep the birth rate low make sure your houses are full in December.

[This message has been edited by Theo (edited 09-02-2000).]

Great info (again) theo

I pretty certain Venus gives you a baby boom though

well paultheo i have never encounted that. my only experence here is that people retire! ive never stuck around long enough to see births or deaths. all i know is that you should always have a little unemployment since some people will retire each year and this mite handicap your city.

After a venus blessing you will see a big column of people at age O.

Have you ever had the blessing of Venus?

Negative paultheo I did a test where I never built a temple to Venus and another where she was exalted all the time. There was no difference in births.

sorry paultheo, i did a test myself and it turned out negitive. i first had a hitch as all the outher gods blessed me but her then she finaly did and it was in jun, ok well no difference. i thought "well ill give paultheo one more shot, since everyone is born in the game in january than ill wait till then……nop. sorry. must have been a quinkidink (as bullwinkle j. moose would have said).

Did any of you get the ACTUAL BLESSING? I am almost 100% sure...

Ave all,

I must support paultheo here. I have indeed had a baby boom after a blessing from Venus several times.

Maybe its a version/patch thing.

Luck

Todays quick test - conclusion - Venus makes no difference.
Test 1 - 290pop in small tents all full , Venus exalted and blessing from Venus, no births.
Test 2 - 290 pop in large tents, Venus exalted and blessing from Venus, 22 births.
Test 3 - 320 pop in small tents all full , Venus angry , no births.
Test 4 - 320 pop in large tents just evolved, Venus angry , 23 births.

[This message has been edited by Theo (edited 09-03-2000).]

Theo, I think we are misunderstanding.

Venus will NOT increase your population.

She will REVIVE your workforce.

MarcusMaximus
If you play the game normally you will always get a large birth rate in the first few years because your housing is evolving. You will also get a blessing from Venus because you have built a temple. The two are not related.
paultheo
The question I was answering was your statement :-

After a venus blessing you will see a big column of people at age O.

At age zero this is births. What do you mean by reviving my workforce?

[This message has been edited by Theo (edited 09-03-2000).]

Every time I get the blessing of Venus I see a large column of births.

What would the blessing of Venus be then?!

Venus's blessing is that she increases the mood of your people, vary helpful if they are uhappy with you but otherwise not to useful. theo's test seems to show that she will give you a small baby boom on every outher blessing! so you may be onto somthing . perhaps all the gods have these bi-blessing secret advantages .

I have to agree that Venus's blessing is just a rise in city mood. I'm not that concerned about city mood near the start of the game as long as it stays above average, and consequently Venus's blessing hasn't helped me much. In the first years of the game I prefer Mars's and Neptune's blessings.

Gentlemen, would one of you please check the C3 manual? I'd do it myself, but it's packed in a box somewhere.

I seem to recall the manual claiming that Venus has an effect on the birth rate (i.e. she raises it when she's feeling loved). This could be one of the things Impressions threw into the documentation to maintain the conversational tone and sense of verisimlitude, but it's worth a look.

Good idea Olivia (BTW, nice to have you back)

Couldn't find it anywhere in the manual!

[This message has been edited by paultheo (edited 09-04-2000).]

According to the manual (p. 84):

"Venus is the goddess of love. When Venus is unhappy, she is apt to share the feeling with your citizens, noticably depressing the mood of the city. She has also been known to play with citizens' health."

Interpret that as you wish.

~Dave

No where does it say she increases births. I just thought that because everyone kept saying so...

my manual says the same thing DaveG. maby the health thing has to do with just that, if you get her blessing after finding rats in your water system it will boost the health rating?

Governor Simulus, what is meant by that (she will play with peoples health) is that she may spread plagues.

Ave All
Playing a game yesterday, I happened to check with the population advisor, and I noticed a peak of one-year-olds. Nothing much had happene the previous year - except a blessing from Venus. There was some room in my houses, but not much, and overall city mood was very good. It was the second time in the game that I got Venus' blessing.

AFAIK, it has always been the conventional wisdom of the forums that Venus' blessing gives a baby boom, so if it turns out that it doesn't, that is certainly an important discovery.

Could someone test this further, for instance, which conditions might influence how the blessing works?
What do the angels have to say?

Happy building
TEP

[This message has been edited by TEP (edited 09-05-2000).]

For at least a year and a half, there have been frequent posts from people claiming that Venus's blessing causes a birth boom followed by other posts denying the claim. As far as I know, there hasn't been any definite information. I have no opinion.

I'm quite sure that births and deaths are calculated only by health. The better the health the older people die. In a city of full houses people have to die, then new children are born.
I don't know whether Venus' blessings have an effect on health, but it seems obvious.

For the last 3 days I have been making tests about births. After a search I found this old thread wich is about this issue and I will post the results here.

Births and Deads
Actually anytime citizens wich are in suitable ages try to make children but they wont do so when there is no room in houses. If houses arent fully occupied there will be room, this is clear. But also when there are deads, births will happen.
When deads start citizens capacity of making children will be higher than the number of deads therefore you wont realise anything (except there will be more kids wanting schools) unless looking at the graphs on population advisor screen. When time goes by your citizens will grow older and old people can make less children and they wont be able to fill the rooms, so you will see new immigrants coming in year ends.
Deads depend on census and city health. As it is said in an above post the better city health the longer your citizens live. It would be better keeping city health low since old people get retired.
Births too depend on census and city health. Though the factors are the same the mechanism behind births is much more complicated.
I had to count population in each column on census graphics for many maps and thats the formula I have found:

Births capacity = 0.16* #of 19-28 aged citizens + 0.08* 29-38's +0.02* 39-48's.
Also birth capacity depends on city health. On perfect level its maximum and thats what the formula shows.

If there is room in enough houses you will see all the births in the year end and your population will rise. Each house can have 2 or 3 births so there needs to be many houses for a serious rise. The most I could get was a little above 10% of population.

The interesting thing is that all 19 and 20 aged youths go to academy but still some of them can have children.

I'm still curious about the actual REALITY of it all. Even if you don't have room in your housing, the births would occur anyway, wouldn't they? And if you have no immigration/emigration, wouldn't your population DROP if there were no births (due to the deaths)? Even if your housing is full, your citizens would still reproduce. If you have no immigration/emigration and you run the game for some 70 odd years (game time of course), wouldn't your population die out?

BTW: When your population dies (due to old age), do you gain vacant housing and therefore are able to have births?

Aww, come on... It's just a game.

Anyway, I assume that when people die of old age, the Romans start making babies to fill up the vacancies. The temporary vacancy isn't displayed though. That is, people who die are immediately replaced by new citizens of age 0 (or 1?). Instant replacement.

Hi maximus_webb,
there are 3 options for births to occur,
1.some houses are not fully occupied,
2.some citizens die,
3.some citizens die and some houses arent fully occupied.

So if all houses are fully occupied and there are no deads no births will occur.

Birth capacity can be calculated with the formula above. In earlier years this capacity is close or a little higher than 10% of population depending on city health and census. Since there is a limit for each house to have babies not all capacity will occur if there arent enough houses with room.

If you run a city for too long your oldest citizens will start dying. At first there will be no immigration since births can replace the losts. If you keep on playing population will drop on december's and you will see immigration in January's since the birth capacity wont be enough. The new immigrants coming to fill the rooms will have a wide census so at the same time your birth capacity will rise.
If you still keep on playing there will a time come when again the birth capacity can replace deads and so on.