A growing society

I just started a new game and I decided to start off with a Greek civilization. As I began expanding and growing my civilization I noticed that a number of transitions accrued in my civilization. My civilization transition from a band society to tribe society, and then to a chiefdom society.

As you start the game, you begin with a band society, in which the your society is free to wander instead of being settled. But once your society is settled, which happens mighty quickly, you society automatically transitions to a tribe society.

After many turns, I have expanded my civilization, developed new technologies, and established a political rule over my empire. This told me that my society has finally transitioned to chiefdom society.

Now Diamond argues that the main reason for these transitions in societies is because of a growing population and he makes some valid point regarding his claim. However, this game rather ignores the aspect of accurately displaying the population of your civilization. Because even though I felt that my civilization has finally transitioned to a chiefdom society, my population was only the size of a band society.

Of course this game is not perfect, and it was made to entertain people and not to provide a realistic simulation of economical context. But it's interesting to see how the game fails sometimes in capturing some of most crucial points of economics, like population. Nevertheless, I was able to recognize that my society has transitioned by other means instead of the size of my population. For cultural, political, and religious aspects of a society can be analyzed to see if a given civilization has transitioned to next stage.