JoshoB: So this has been bugging me for a while: how does food work in the game, and what effect (if any?) does it have on population growth?

The amount of wares that can be stored in the storerooms in any settlement is 5 x (settlement size x wares). So a hamlet (size 1) with 18 wares has a max. storeroom capacity of 5 x 1 x 18 = 90. The amount of income (gold) generated per turn is a percentage of the wares per turn; that percentage depends on how full the storerooms are. So with a new settlement, you'll collect 18 wares in the storeroom on turn 2 after its founding. The storeroom is then 20% full, so you collect 20% of 18 wares = 3 wares (always rounded down). The amount of wares added to the storeroom in the next turn is the total wares from the tiles around the settlement minus the income (in this case 15), and so on.

So far so good.

Population size is important because this has an effect on how many wares fit in the storeroom. At village level, i.e. size 2 (= minimum population of 10), the storeroom in this example would be 5 x 2 x 18 = 180 wares. But how does the population grow? In my example, the settlement generates 7 food and starts out with 2 population. The next turn, population size is 3. Okay. The turn after that, it's 4. The next turn it isn't 5, but again 4 -- so clearly something is being rounded down, but what?

I've tried all sorts of calculations,but nothing makes sense to me. Has anyone else managed to figure out how population growth works in the game and how food factors into it? Does max. population have a role to play (max population for any settlement in the game is 100)?

I would love to know, but realize that perhaps no one does know...