Yeah, population growth is a bit slow in the beginning. You have to attract nomads to compensate, but that only happens if there's an abundance of food, housing, jobs and security.

Later in the game you won't know where to put them!

What specifically counts as security and how critical is it?

I had clear abundance of everything else, but security was, in a sense, minimal, because it was covering my needs at the time

I don't know the "behind the scenes" calculations, if that's what you're asking.
My guess is it depends on the number of walls, towers and tower types (tier).
Probably add to that Combobulators.

But I can't be sure honestly.

Copy-paste from a post elsewhere explaining the nomad system:

"You can increase the chance of a nomad spawn event with:
Up to 200 positive desirability points (negative desirability points are ignored)
Up to 100 unoccupied housing slots
Up to 70 more jobs than villagers
Up to 50 towers and combobulators (includes recombobulator and crystal motivator)
Up to 200 more food than villagers (each type of food is considered equal here)
Up 10,000 full water buckets (or 40,000 units of water)
Unlimited amount of villagers
Every 3 ticks during dawn, morning and midday on days you don't get nomads

However there are some things that decrease the chance of a nomad spawn event:
Up to 70 less jobs than villagers
Up to 200 less food than villagers
Unlimited amount of villagers more than total housing slots

Focus on ensuring there is enough housing slots, jobs and food for every villager first (the housing penalty is massive so prioritize that)."

Thank you for answers!

I'll try to experiment a bit more with pushing those conditions further

Originally posted by ktur:

Thank you for answers!

I'll try to experiment a bit more with pushing those conditions further

Population is only an issue early in a new village. After a while as things slow down in your village, a lot more villagers will have children, and you will quickly get a lot of villagers. And you can send villagers from one region to another, so if you lack any villagers in newly established villagers after the first one, you can send villagers from previous neighboring villages to.

Quite late but well its not that active
a Good way in my experience to kickstart the first village as well is to quickly go for Markets and try to Hire Catjet guys there (or however they are called)
its not that many but its a nice addition at the start