Check the prestige of the cities, and post the values as that is the population growth.

He could not have trained that many troops to deplete a population that much. Usually the time it take to train a unit replaces the population it took to create it in the que. Further it is my experience that population is not charged with a loss till a unit is at the top of the que. Would you not know this being so involved with the games design kyro?

i have absolutely no troops, just champions and summons. the only thing i recruit at these cities is pioneers, which cost only 1 person and take 8 turns to train, and the 1 caravan i am allowed, which is 1 for 3 turns., so definitely recovered by then. and regardless of how it works, i never train more than one at a time. so it definitely isn't a recruiting issue, (don't think you can queue up 100 pioneers, but even if you could, thats 1000 materials... dang.

while my sovereign does have insanity(-1 prestige) my sovereign also has royalty, and i never, ever station my sovereign in town, but if i did, the worst case scenario would be a prestige wash, which couldn't explain a level 3 city(minimum 100) having only 50 people without rampant recruiting. not too mention both cities leveled at about the same, so they were rising at a comparable rate.

i should also note that my population in that city is rising normally, its just about 100 lower than it should be.

i knew you were going to ask that, and could have saved a post. sorry about that. but no, niether has pubs, theatres, or i forget what else you can build for prestige. I haven't even researched those yet. both had 2 prestige until just a few turns back when i nabbed a champion with royalty, raising both to 3. and like i said, level 3 is minimum 100, so at the very least the refugee city, barring recruitment, should have 100 citizens, right?

also before someone asks, noone destroyed the refugee camp, the city is very well isolated from enemies, and protected to boot. definitely havent had the camp destroyed/rebuilt.