MD Population Fix (For BETA version)
Brings population growth in Millennium Dawn in line with real-world demographics — most visibly for Sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and South Asia, which grow far too slowly in stock MD.
The problem: stock MD grows every country from the same 0.6%/year base, scaled mostly by GDP stage and migration. That leaves Niger growing ~1.3%/year instead of its real ~3.7%, Nigeria, Pakistan and Afghanistan similarly starved — while some rich countries actually grow faster than reality.
Every country gets a real-world target growth rate (UN World Population Prospects): a year-2000 rate and a year-2050 rate, interpolated as the game progresses. So Africa’s boom persists through the campaign while South Asia’s growth tapers off realistically (India: 1.8% in 2000 → ~0.5% by 2050).
Once a month, the mod reads each country’s current total Monthly Population modifier — GDP stage, migration, national spirits, focus effects, everything — and adds a single Demographic Trends national spirit worth exactly the gap to the real-world rate.
- Never reduces growth. Countries MD already grows at or above their real rate (Japan, China, Russia, most of Europe) get nothing and keep stock behavior.
- Self-balancing. As a country industrialises and MD’s own modifiers change, the boost recalculates monthly around them.
- Wars still hurt. The boost is capped, so heavy war emigration and collapse penalties still suppress growth below the target.
- Feeds the whole economy. Faster growth flows into MD’s GDP, workforce and manpower systems.
260+ tags: all of Africa, the Middle East, Central/South/Southeast Asia, Oceania, the Americas, high-growth European states, and regional/releasable tags (Kurdistan, Somaliland, Balochistan, and more), which inherit their region’s rates. Civil-war countries keep their nation’s rates automatically.
This is an approximation, not a census. Each country’s target is a smoothed average — a real-world rate around 2000 blended toward a projected 2050 rate — so it won’t reproduce every historical wiggle:
- One-off demographic shocks (refugee waves, epidemics, sudden baby booms or busts) aren’t in the data — in-game events have to produce those.
- Growth is country-wide: every state in a nation grows at the same rate, with no urban/rural or regional differences.
- Countries trend toward their real-world trajectory even in alt-history outcomes — a communist Nigeria still grows like Nigeria (wars and economic collapse do still suppress growth).
- For boosted countries, pro-natalist spirits and focuses are partially absorbed: the top-up shrinks to keep the total on target, so policies can’t push a country far above its historical rate.
- Gulf-state booms (Qatar, UAE) were largely migration-driven; here they’re folded into one growth number.
- Past 2050, rates hold constant at their 2050 value.
If a specific country’s rate looks off to you, report it — individual targets are trivial to adjust.
- Purely additive — no Millennium Dawn files are overwritten, so it survives MD updates.
- Save-game compatible: can be added mid-campaign (countries initialise within a month).
- Load after Millennium Dawn in your playset.
- Should be compatible with other MD submods unless they overhaul population growth.
Required items:
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Millennium Dawn: A Beta Test Mod — Steam Workshop
