Awesome to already have people who want to make mods, considering i will be stuck doing the groundwork for the game first and cant do much content myself in the beginning.
NPCs will ofcourse be capped at their Food Supply, since they would starve otherwise, and there will likely be Village Size Limits too, at least for the automatic self powered growth, if someone were to make a gigantic city it would still be accepted by the NPCs even if you grow out of that size cap, including if players make buildings and streets at the border of the City (they wouldn’t like you modifying existing stuffs unless they really trust you).
Because of the Food Supply “Issue” it will also be way more likely for Coastal Villages to become bigger than the in Land Villages, since Fish is a rather plentyfull supply of food compared to Wheat.
Oh and one thing about Stuff in General: Plants, Foods, Animals and similar Nature Stuffs will likely be generated automatically and not copypaste IRL Nature. Sure people can make a Mod that adds things like “Oak Trees”, “Pigs” or “Wheat” to the Game, but the Stuff themselves from how I make it is gonna be fully random and only similar to IRL counterparts.
This is to give me more leeway and less Wikipedia research to worry about. You might end up with a Tree that grows something that looks like an Apple but is Blue instead of Red, Yellow or Green, and has way more seeds like a Watermelon would have, and those Seeds happen to be very usable to make Flour for baking some sort of Bread. It also guarantees that an Island always has at least something to trade with since the Nature has very unique Crops and Animals that can be sold.
Ofcourse I balance the traits of the Nature Stuffs in a way that each Island has everything it needs, like at least one good non-poisonous source of “Grain” (even if it’s a Blue Apple) or one good source of edible “Land Meat” (as opposed to “Fish Meat”), something along those lines. Or how about a Wheat alike Crop that grows Purple Berries instead of Seeds.
Another short Note: Islands are supposed to be large enough to fit half a dozen Villages at least without space Issues. And yes I plan to generate some sort of Road between them even if it’s a Dirt/Gravel path. Also Roads will not count as Part of a Village unless the Road is close to a Building, so it is safe for you to just build close to a Road. Though I would make sure that the Road is still considered a Road after you built there, otherwise Villagers will show up to repair the Road “somehow”. And yes again, you can make a detour aswell so they will choose another closeby Road as replacement Path once they stumble upon a broken Road, as long as its not ridiculously far away (though they might end up using the ridiculous far way, but will report to the Town that the shorter Road got broken and needs repair). And yes again again, you will be able to make Roads out of almost every decorative or “civilized” Block, its more the shape that matters than the Blocks it is made of.