Although population start out consuming more then a farmer could make, city populations provide influence depending on the stability of the city (30% to 90% stability = +1 influence/pop. & +90% stability = +2 influence/pop.). Such early influence can enable empires to expand their boarders even while their populations at home are gradually consuming their food. 

In some ways, farmers not producing enough incentives depopulating early cities through forced labor and training troops when cities start getting overcrowded. Doing this will not only provide more units, infrastructures, and quarters but will also keep the city producing populations. 

Units are in integral part in keeping you slice of the world safe and also keep your cities stability up when standing within it (+5 stability per unit up to one complete stack or +20 stability in the ancient era). Such early stability can allow a city to built quarters or attach territories while keeping it's population churning out +2 influence/turn. 

Kutuzov wrote:

I don't think you're misunderstanding anything there. You may be forgetting about adjacencies and other improvements which add to the total produced by a single farmer but otherwise, having a large proportion of your citizens working the land is pretty much how it worked until we developed the technologies to enhance food production and make it more efficient. True, it's maybe realistic but that doesn't mean that it's 'fun'.

In my games I didn't have much problem building up large populations and armies as the game advanced because I made sure I produced a lot of food and converted pops to units from time to time. But it is a rather 'unexciting' progression.

Well looking at world at data, it seems only in the era the game call as contemporary ca 1900 or so that agriculture productivity really started to improve, but the improvements in contemporary have been massive. So the game probably get food production quite right.

RNGZero wrote:

Although population start out consuming more then a farmer could make, city populations provide influence depending on the stability of the city (30% to 90% stability = +1 influence/pop. & +90% stability = +2 influence/pop.). Such early influence can enable empires to expand their boarders even while their populations at home are gradually consuming their food. 

In some ways, farmers not producing enough incentives depopulating early cities through forced labor and training troops when cities start getting overcrowded. Doing this will not only provide more units, infrastructures, and quarters but will also keep the city producing populations. 

Units are in integral part in keeping you slice of the world safe and also keep your cities stability up when standing within it (+5 stability per unit up to one complete stack or +20 stability in the ancient era). Such early stability can allow a city to built quarters or attach territories while keeping it's population churning out +2 influence/turn.

I think there need to be more reason to maintain high population in cities early, like population providing stability even at start would help with both the stability issue and the fact there is no link between size of cities in terms of districts and population.

RNGZero wrote:

Although population start out consuming more then a farmer could make, city populations provide influence depending on the stability of the city (30% to 90% stability = +1 influence/pop. & +90% stability = +2 influence/pop.). Such early influence can enable empires to expand their boarders even while their populations at home are gradually consuming their food. 

In some ways, farmers not producing enough incentives depopulating early cities through forced labor and training troops when cities start getting overcrowded. Doing this will not only provide more units, infrastructures, and quarters but will also keep the city producing populations. 

Units are in integral part in keeping you slice of the world safe and also keep your cities stability up when standing within it (+5 stability per unit up to one complete stack or +20 stability in the ancient era). Such early stability can allow a city to built quarters or attach territories while keeping it's population churning out +2 influence/turn. 

Quote: "Units also keep your cities stability up when standing within it (+5 stability per unit up to one complete stack or +20 stability in the ancient era)."

does the game ever tell you that? because even after two open devs i didn't know that. if so, i probably read over it.