On issues of dying from old age, supposed that your character is at least 30 years old and have a lifespan of living up to 70 years that's equal to 40 years of life or about 15,000 gameplay days. I don't think anyone would likely play a game up to 20,000 days or more but I could be wrong. Even if you only live for 10 years that is about more than 3,000 days I guess that's plenty of time too. But taking similar time for children to grow up to at least 16 years of age then it's also illogical to wait for them to grow up.
The option is to make the passage of time faster meaning like 20-50 days of game time increment the age to one year...but then there'll be more discussion of illogical stuff and not wanting character to die and to be replaced. Who knows until such method is implemented like in a mod for testing it might be interesting to see a simulation of a population growth over the years. Put it to the test, make a small mod with a small map of a city with several village in interaction and see if there's any significant outcome to it.
Besides if your character or any other faction members died, instead of replacing him or her with new recruits it might be better to have childrens replacing them. They could inherit a percentage of their trait/skills and may have over time, depending on your outpost installation, received special training. Imagine having a natural born swordmaster recruited into your army at an early age. Function for children could be similar to the Sims Medieval or The Guild series and even Dwarven Fortress was able to implement such thing.
I leave it to the game designer to decide the final word. Trying to implement marriage and reproduction could really make or break a game. In my own view it might be best to keep it simple. Just to assume that there is a population growth in the background where the number will increase or decrease which is affected by the world situation. Units will be spawned or de-spawned according to the world dynamics which also effect how many people would appear to populate the world.
For example a city or village would have a prosperity value (forgive me for the similarity to M&B but they do implement good game design). Being constantly raided or attacked would reduce it to a point that fewer and fewer people are spawned there until it is deserted. Over time if the neighbouring area also suffers depopulation the village would become ruins and later disappear. Make it so like a gridlike growth where high prosperity in neighbouring village would cause the next deserted village to be re-populated and over time with quest for regrowth, trade and faction patrols/guards protecting it the village would grow bigger into small towns and even cities.
In case of invasion or expansion of rival faction influence the village would change ownership or function. Like instead of village they become slaver outpost, trading post, bandit lairs or cannibal camps where patrol or raiding units would spawn out to display the level of their influence. The growth of a faction territorial influence could be better simulated in this method.
As an example a village depopulated by bandits, affected by positive growth of a nearby bandit lair would itself turn into a bandit lair and according to the value of faction wealth or kills and stuff they stole from caravans or other village, the lair will grow into a fortress that will spawn better armed units making banditry a serious threat not to be ignored.
It's simple to have it pre-scripted with place holder like the city, towns and village in M&B but also the growth is dynamic in relation to outside influence. The locations number of location could be randomized so it would fluctuate between the min and max allowable location.
There is also mention of not having any attachment to your villager or people living there. There are hints that slaves and worker would be inplemented. So give them a skill value that would slowly grow over time. For an example you lose a whole mining outpost but manage to evacuate the miners in advance and rebuilt the outpost elsewhere. I do believe the re-construction will be faster and the mining output is just as good than having to recruit new inexperienced worker AND build a new outpost. (PS slaves are expensive commodity too you know. You can't just kill any bandits and hope to easily break them into a obedient and hardworking slaves.)
To add flavour give your workers wives or husbands to increase their loyalty, moral and work efficiency. A married person would more often work hard to support his or her family. Then some of them could have random children just for flavour where later you could furnish them with daycare and schools to futher increase either their loyalty or faction influence to attract more followers in addition to the rate and quality of new recruits spawning in taverns. Talented people are surely attracted to a properous and well managed place.
With presence of auxillary population like this they would be more emphasis on food and water production to feed them too. Lose a food production center and everyone would be severely affected. All the more reason to fight to the death to protect your skilled workers...it is the people who makes the country, not the territory.
Bringing it further to the issues of the population of lords or faction leaders. As of this moment we just see small patrol units in the game. I find it pointless and annoying to fight something without any clear objective...should I just kill every soldiers to defeat a faction? In M&B there's been discussion on the dynamic of faction leaders or lords population.
A faction could have a council or a top leader either scripted to be permanent or could be changed according to the faction's inner politic dynamic. Event's would cause them to leave the faction and join you or other faction, etc...new leader/lords/generals would appear if too many died and vice versa there should be a balance according to the faction's wealth and power. It gives war option like it is better to allow a useless general to escape than murder him/her only to have a better and more dangerous replacement to be spawned by the system.
Or maybe just slaughter all the defeated elite guards so that they won't return to fight back. I've read somewhere that someone healed a captured bandit as training for new recruits to fight it when it woke up. There is mention that the bandit stats also increased with every fight. Correct me if I'm wrong.
I don't want to turn this in a M&B-ish game but just hoping to provide some suggestion and could be very wrong in my views, for that I must apologize. That and sorry for posting a looong post...I'm having too much free time during weekends...time to go and cook dinner.
