Does anyone have any advice on how to get 300 pop in a city? I keep running up against punishing food penalties because of overpopulation, so no matter what I do I keep starving my poor people. Let them eat cake, you say? You're so mean. Off with your head!

300 pop needs 24,300 food. ~20,000 food with Microbiology tech.  Best way is probably a mega city ~20 territories with Ankgor Wat + Kaiserdom/Ashram etc.or Mexico

You could try to cheese by having several cities grow to a certain size then merging them all at once, should push the pop high enough (Cities only lose 1 pop per turn max)

The city would be unstable on stability tho.

Thanks, guys. I'll try your suggestions. I've been focusing on agriculyural cultures, but it hasn't helped overcome the problem.

Melliores wrote:

Here is what you can do :

- Try a map with more rivers and do not build anything on the river tiles themselves. All districts should be built along the rivers for maximum output.

Do you mean build districts on rivers, but not cities and outposts? Or build farmers quarters on rivers, but not any of the other districts?

Sjru wrote:

You could try to cheese by having several cities grow to a certain size then merging them all at once, should push the pop high enough (Cities only lose 1 pop per turn max)

The city would be unstable on stability tho.

I thought of doing that,  but I'd rather see if I can meet the challenge. I think the 300 challenge may be the hardest of the 3. I was the pontifical leader in one game already. I'm sure I can do it again.

About the river tiles, I meant that the river tiles have to remain as is. Take a look here :

That is the river Nile from one of the Earth maps. The river remains free of any districts and thus river tiles grant 8 Food and 8 Production when on one river bank you have a Farmer's quarter and on the other river bank - a Maker's quarter.

I built Barays (from Khmer) to facilitate building on both sides of the river and for better yields. Barays exploit both Food and Production on their tile, so you are not losing anything by building them directly on a river.

For growing fast enough, you can 

1. merge several large cities

2. make feeder cities that produce high pop units and when you think you have enough disband them all in the Megacity

Only Sparte culture can do that!

Thanks. This makes it crystal.

Melliores wrote:

About the river tiles, I meant that the river tiles have to remain as is. Take a look here :

That is the river Nile from one of the Earth maps. The river remains free of any districts and thus river tiles grant 8 Food and 8 Production when on one river bank you have a Farmer's quarter and on the other river bank - a Maker's quarter.

I built Barays (from Khmer) to facilitate building on both sides of the river and for better yields. Barays exploit both Food and Production on their tile, so you are not losing anything by building them directly on a river.

I just don't get why they made an event with a goal like this right after nerfing food to the point it's not viable without ludicrous min-maxing on an ideal map or abusing the mechanics of the game. It's like they went out of their way to make the three goals in the event unnecessarily difficult, or just counter-productive to actual good play.

The event was probably already set to go before release. They didn't expect so many bugs and imbalances in the initial release, but because the event was developed to go November 1st we got it anyways. I feel this is something that should have been held back until the first anniversary of the release. Starting to wonder who runs the show with this game, the devs or the marketing department.

@madcookie A standard outpost can hold up to 4 population before you attach it to a territory. With the right techs and districts that can go up to 28 population per outpost if it has enough food.

It is achievable with normal play, you usually can not attach all your outposts in one turn and thus accumulate population in each.

I actually ended a game with 306 pop, and it showed that I had achieved that goal. A day or so later I checked the stats for the challenge and it said I only got 287 pop. Needless to say I was bummed and confused.

You do exploit the yield if you build on a tile…but most quarters only exploit 1 type of yield.

Tragopan wrote:

I always built on rivers because I thought I was exploiting the yield. The game certainly makes you think that building directly on a river tile is better... does this also apply to forests and their related infrastructures? What about special tiles like Game/Domesticable animals? I wish this was better conveyed in game. :< 

Isn't this what the hint suggestions encourage? They seem to always suggest that I build right on the river.

If you place a farm on a river tile that has both industry and food, you'll forfeit the industry. And vice versa. But sometimes you may need to make that choice.

At any rate, I'm glad that I can get back to playing a regular game. It really isn't any fun for me to game the system to achieve these goals.

I just realized they sort of give you a hint on how to do this with the other achievements. You can use Iron Reserves to instantly convert pop to a full army of peasants. With an army size of 6, that's 6 pop a round and the best part is that upkeep is free. In this case, it would only take 50 turns to get 300 pop worth of soldiers, assuming you've been prepping and have all your cities pumping out growth in an easy game.