I've been having trouble trying to maintain enough people in my civilization to do just about anything. I've got a rather small military of maybe 2 X4 Militia and 2 X8 Infantry and, admittedly, a large capital city infrastructure. However, just about each city is NEGATIVE in it's citizenry (not population). I've got really small outposts that haven't constructed or built ANYTHING cost me something like -200 citizens at a population of 6. When I click the citizen button in the city ledger these cities show me using something like 10-20 people, not 200.

My questions are, what is controlling citizenry usage/costs? Is it readily visible somewhere outside the city ledger? Is this a bug? Do heroes take up citizens? How much do armies cost? And, MOST OF ALL, what file regulates these costs (in a global fashion)?

Maybe something got messed up by a mod I downloaded? All I've got are some basic equipment mods, additional mounts, and the adventure modpack.

Lastly, when I conquered a neighboring empire for their food the problem just got worse. I'm thinking of just razing some cities and seeing what happens.

Appreciate any help. Thanks.

Notes: 

I disbanded the small city of 6 people and gained almost 400 population. Is there a maintenance or corruption cost for new cities? Or was this my opponents way of cursing me for taking his city?

It mentioned something about units moving to another city but I dint see any new units or anything. Are units maintained by a city by their population? This doesn't kinda really make too much sense to me... shouldn't units be an up front cost and not require population upkeep... idk.

I'm thinking maybe the main outpost building was corrupted or something to cause these huge citizen costs.

Just build a Market which says it costs 25 people. I had 2185 people, so +25 should be 2210 but it's at 2235!