History Main / RidiculouslyFastPopulationGrowth

* ''VideoGame/SimEarth'': The populations of cities will almost always surpass one million, even on lower TechnologyLevels. This is even the case in the pre-built "Stag Nation" scenario, where the people are trapped in their Stone Age and, in the [[UsefulNotes/PCEngine Turbografx-CD]] version, are [[InformedAttribute explicitly said to have a population too small to get any farther]].[[note]]For comparison, the first RealLife city with over one million people was [[UsefulNotes/TheRomanRepublic Rome, in the late Second Century BCE]] -- which, needless to say, was well after the Stone Age.[[/note]]

In FourX games, population growth rates of a billion per year are not uncommon. While it's true that in newly settled areas people tend to have more children a new colony, doubling in population every year should be physically impossible. Sometimes, the game handwaves this by claiming growth is due more to immigration than birthrates, but in some cases one has to wonder where exactly all these people are immigrating from.

* Creator/ParadoxInteractive: Many games that track population use abstract units called "[=POPs=]" but you can still see populations double in a few years without resorting to [[VideoGame/ImperatorRome slave raids]] or [[VideoGame/{{Stellaris}} cloning.]]

[[folder:4X]]

In FourX games population growth rates of a billion per year are not uncommon. While it's true that in newly settled areas people tend to have more children a new colony doubling in population every year should be physically impossible. Sometimes the game handwaves this by claiming growth is due more to immigration than birthrates, but in some cases one has to wonder where exactly all these people are immigrating from.
In addition population growth almost always halts entirely once the [[ArbitraryHeadcountLimit capacity]] is reached.

[[folder:Examples outside of gameplay]]

[[AC: 4X]]
* ''VideoGame/SwordOfTheStars'': Depending on planetary environment, racial bonuses, and technologies, it can take anywhere from 15 to 30 years for a planetary population to grow from a couple hundred to about 700 million. Though Imperial population growth is capped at 50 million per turn and civilian at 20 million.

* {{VideoGame/Actraiser}}, {{VideoGame/Terranigma}}: in both, the hero rescues people to repopulate barren lands, but the population will also increase on its own. Both also halt the growth when it reaches capacity.
* ''VideoGame/MasterOfOrion III''. Particularly in mid-to-end game, once the player terraformed a planet (also ridiculously fast), the population would mushroom to full capacity in a matter of a few years.
* Averted in ''VideoGame/DwarfFortress''. The population grows almost completely from migration rather than reproduction, usually a slow trickle of 6-20 dwarves, and you will have near-useless, uncontrollable children running amok. There is also a hard population cap to prevent the game from murdering your CPU.

[[AC: Real-time Strategy]]
* In the ''VideoGame/AgeOfEmpires'' series new villagers and warriors simply pop out of their training buildings. The third game could have justified it as new settlers arriving from the homeland but that's a separate mechanic.
* Many Creator/ParadoxInteractive games that track population use abstract units called "[=POPs=]" but you can still see populations double in a few years without resorting to [[VideoGame/ImperatorRome slave raids]] or [[VideoGame/{{Stellaris}} cloning.]]

[[AC: Sims]]
* In ''VideoGame/SimEarth'', the populations of cities will almost always surpass one million, even on lower TechnologyLevels. This is even the case in the pre-built "Stag Nation" scenario, where the people are trapped in their Stone Age and, in the [[UsefulNotes/PCEngine Turbografx-CD]] version, are [[InformedAttribute explicitly said to have a population too small to get any farther]].[[note]]For comparison, the first RealLife city with over one million people was [[UsefulNotes/TheRomanRepublic Rome, in the late Second Century BCE]] -- which, needless to say, was well after the Stone Age.[[/note]]

[[AC:Other]]
* In the play by mail game ''The Tribes of Crane'', tribes could grow by up to 10% per month. As pointed out in ''The Space Gamer'' magazine's "Murphy's Rules" ComicStrip, this would require every female member of the tribe to be constantly pregnant with triplets.

[[AC: Examples outside of gameplay]]

* In ''WesternAnimation/TransformersPrime'', much is made of the fact that the war has been so terrible that there are very few Cybertronians left. Cybertron itself is a devastated wasteland. While Optimus Prime restores the living core in the finale at the cost of [[HeroicSacrifice his own life]], during the sequel series ''WesternAnimation/TransformersRobotsInDisguise2015'' Cybertron is a fully developed world with towering skyscrapers and a booming population. While the restoration of the core was punctuated by numerous [[OurSoulsAreDifferent Sparks]] leaving the core to repopulate Cybertron, it's difficult to buy the whole planet being rebuilt so quickly. The only wiggle room is the fact the writers deliberately played down connections between ''RID2015'' and ''Prime'' [[note]] They were noted to answer fan questions like, "What happened to (insert Prime character)?" with non-commital responses bordering on "Don't know, don't care." [[/note]], so it's entirely possible a long time has passed. However, implications are that it hasn't been ''that'' long between series [[note]] Among other things, a prototype vehicle that appeared in ''Prime'' apparently made it into mass-production, and human technology doesn't seem to have advanced since ''Prime'' much, if at all [[/note]].
* Early ''TabletopGame/{{Shadowrun}}'' game supplements depicted several of the Native American Nations with populations in the millions or tens of millions, ''vastly'' out-stripping the number of genuine Native Americans that could feasibly exist by the dates when they were set. Later writers for the tabletop game frantically justified this with a combination of non-Natives being adopted into various tribes, poseurs only ''claiming'' Native ancestry, and/or inflated demographic statistics released by NAN propagandists.
* In the Macross universe, humanity rebounded from (IIRC) around a million survivors of the first war to an interstellar civilization with dozens of colonies and huge fleets within 30 years (Macross Plus era). Possibly justified by adding captured zentradi cloning technology into the mix, but that'd do some pretty weird things to demographics.
* ''VideoGame/{{StarCraft}}'s'' backstory has the Koprulu Sector's Terran expatriate population grow from 32,000 survivors of the three UPL colony ships to twelve billion by the time of the first game. This explosive growth takes 240 years. [[http://sclegacy.com/forums/showthread.php?p=6756 A little math]] shows that this would require the population to at least ''double'' every decade, for 24 decades. And that's before you consider the deaths due to the Terrans' infighting.
* In the ''VideoGame/{{Homeworld}}'' series the population of Hiigara went from 650,000 Exiles to 350 million Hiigarans in the century between the first and last game. Though it is possible that many of those people are descendants of Taiidan rebels (who may or may not be the same species)