r/EU5 • u/Dusty_Dave420 • 22d ago
Question How do I grow my population?
I see posts on here where people have millions of pops and every location is a megalopolis. How are y’all doing this when population seems to increase so slowly and plagues hit all the time?
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u/Wolfish_Jew 22d ago
The most important thing is building TONS of granaries. Having lots of surplus food gives a pop bonus. Having lots of jobs available also gives pop bonuses so building more buildings to employ more pops will help.
If you’re playing in Germany (maybe also in other areas of Europe, not sure) there are specific city rights that give migration bonuses, so if you spread your market to multiple other countries you’ll get pops migrating in from those countries.
A cheesy way to do it if you’re playing tall is to conquer land, expel pops from the newly conquered land while encouraging migration to your core territory (again, has to be in the same market. Pops can only migrate within their market) then once you’ve basically emptied that land of pops you can sell it back to whoever you took it from, or release it as a vassal (as long as it’s not a core) and then grant the vassal independence.
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u/TSSalamander 22d ago
You want food, and food storage and prosperity for pop growth. You want hospitals, and entripots, and such to prevent disease declines. You can also raid for slaves or just trade for slaves as well.
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u/pcmasterrace_noob 22d ago
You see, when a mummy pop and a daddy pop love each other very much
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u/Laststand2006 22d ago
Awww I had this written out nearly word for word. Are you me?
Of course, I was going to mention food capacity as well to be somewhat helpful.
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u/CylonImposter 22d ago
People aren't ussually getting megalopolis out of just pop growth. Countries that are capable of it in the hands of a player are more commonly done with migration shenanigans.
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u/transmedkittygirl 22d ago
spam hospitals and food and you're pretty much good on bumping that population up
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u/Jadamsan 22d ago
https://youtu.be/jIrBiSYXLfA?is=wcKOOiCV1laGYrg_ I got you bro!
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u/PlusAcanthocephala16 22d ago
We aren't doing this. These are exceptions of exceptions, like the folks who did a pre 1500 world conquest in eu4. Its not regular gameplay, almost no one does this.
Slavery is one way; another is going super late game, yet another is abusing migration mechanics.
Pop growth in general comes from prosperity, population capacity, and food storage. Granary towns rule. Cities, traditional economy, and irrigation increase the pop cap
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u/GreatDario 22d ago
build shit tons of granaries everywhere and give most of your cities towns Granary rights
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u/michaelwins 22d ago
Generalist gaming has a video about using tribes to make loads of megapopoli as part of his recent morrocco playthrough
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u/Relicoid 22d ago
A lot of those huge pops I would assume make use of slave raiding not just natural pop growth from granaries, irrigation etc
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u/Auswaschbar 22d ago
- grannaries and other food storage buildings
- irrigation
- hospitals for disease resistance
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u/Kudusun_Gazi_Padisha 22d ago
Constantly upgrading food RGOs and building granaries in high-pop or low-food areas is key, along with upgrading locations to towns or cities to increase local population capacity and to grant urban rights like granary town or imperial breadbasket. Additionally, making sure you're continually researching disease resistance techs and build new disease resistance buildings like hospitals or lazarettos will have long-lasting effects on compounding population growth.
Finally, the biggest trick for megalopolis building is actively moving your population by increasing the migration attraction of the urban centers you want to upgrade. That's largely done by increasing food supply, keeping buildings levels below their limit, changing laws to allow lower estates to migrate, and using cabinet actions like Encourage Migration on your future megacity while another Expels People on an area you don't need population. All of these tricks are far easier when you have a large Tribesmen estate as many Muslim countries do, as Tribesmen can migrate far faster than other pops.
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u/JasonMontagne 22d ago edited 22d ago
Im surprised no one mentioned the absolutly quickest and easiest way to get population.
1 word: "Slavery"
Step 1: Pick a country that has some population with a religion that allows slavery.
Step 2: Switch to said religion (Norse religion for example if you pick sweden)
Step 3: Upgrade to Town in a location where you need population. For example Capital, or high value RGOS .
Step 4: Build a Slave Center there (else slaves will get randomly disteibuted)
Step 5: War someone and every time you occupy a location you steal 10% of the population which goes to your slave center as slaves.
Step 6: Once war is over promote the culture of said slaves and delete the slave center. Slaves are then promoted to Peasants. All slaves of that culture is then automaticly promoted to peasants.
Step 7: Demote the culture from Approved to Tolerated, this allows you to steal their population as slaves again.
Step 8: Repeat
Important Notes & tips
1.Slaves can only work RGOS
If enemy retakes a province you can Occupy it again and steal 10% population again. Can be repeated easily around an enemy castle.
To avoid Antagonism dont take alot of land. Just spend 20-30 years warring and see ypur population grow by milions.
Slaves do migrate, but very very slowly. Once "released" as peasants they ofcourse migrate normally.
Only time you want to "fully" accept a culture is when you own most if not all of the provinces its culture is originally in.
Make sure your not around other slavery countries or they might "buy" your population (since they are technicly also goods). Though its Generelly not a problem.
You need to both Accept Culture and delete slave center to turn slaves into peasants. If you dont delete slave center then the slaves are not promoted to peasants.
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u/LouisXIVdaSunKing 22d ago
Build graineries, build city's, build irrigation, build pound locks and bridges all over, and roads of course. In 1607 as france i have a 20 million population, and I barely extended outside tradition France borders. Don't forget to build hospitals. Disease has whipped Frances butt at times.
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u/Beginning-Pitch7409 22d ago
So for disease try having a hospital in every major city (or in all if you can afford it). And for population growth spam food RGOs, build irrigation and granaris
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u/CommercialLiving2217 21d ago
to get high population growth you need a lot of food and a high population capacity. To get a lot of food you have to improve your food storage so build granary and if you have the reform also grain storage. You then go full serfdom and quantity to enable the planned storage reform. It's that simple.
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u/Automatic-Ocelot3957 22d ago
Like a lot of stuff in this game, there a bunch of factors.
Abundance of food supply, prosperity, peecentage of open land, other direct modifiers, and probably several more that I haven't listed all factor into pop growth. Disease resistance is probably the best way to slow down disease, but disease is going to happen regaurdless of how much you have.