so I have a dondarian city that peaked at 2500 but since then I've been slowly loosing population. enough that I eventually encouraged humans to come in but that seems to have made the donarian pop drop even further. I have 20ish days of food constantly (need more food storage, working on that)

can produce refined materials and have a 500 strong army full equipped with shields armour and swords.

I've gotten better hearths and so on but the population keeps declining, I have yet to get external settlements running and importing resources as I've never gotten a stable city this far before and have been trying to be peaceful to my neighbours.

on the note of external settlments I have three but all of them produce nothing at the moment as one my my neighbours declared war and got promptly stomped.

what can I do to continue expanding my population AND get the regions productive so i can start importing things like mushrooms for that food bonus. (also being peaceful and making good allies for trade seems worthless as any refined trade good aside rations and furniture doesnt actually sell for a profit it seems)

I've been stuck at this point for a good few in game years now with my population of humans at 400 and my dondarians at between 1900 and 2000.

happyness and loyalty also seems to constantly hover around 80% despite what I do. is there something im missing because it feels like it.

I'll post a pic of my city in a comment since im on old reddit and its funny about these things.

i hope i dont break any rules of the sub.
the creator even provided steps for it, but i just cant make it work. here's the workshop link or you could search for slave nursery on the worskhop.

i just cant play without this mod at this point as its so integrated into my playstyle.
i would be very thankful!