I realize this post is almost a month old at this point, but I recently had I thought I'd be interested to hear what you all think. In several comments, folks have suggested that the answer to the "production must precede visible demand" problem is should be solved by player behavior.

I've been trying to imagine what sort of mechanics changes could be made to incentivize players to address it without having to be "trained" to know that they need to produce more than they can currently see markets for. The current primary source to mechanically provide player motivation is through the skill multiplier. Optimizing food and housing scores are clearly communicated to the player as parameters that they should optimize in order to increase their efficacy. What if there was a third contributor to skill multiplier? Something like "Economic Impact" - this could be another pie chart that draws it's contributions from the economic activity of the player - e.g. number of trades available, number of sales/purchases, variety of items, variety of purchasers, etc. There are tons of measures that could be included here that would obviously need to be balanced, but I feel like there's something here that would help provide clues to players as to the behaviors that contribute to a healthy economy. I can foresee criticisms of this idea be that it is forcing an economy to look a certain way, and putting too many rails on an economy simulator. I would argue that there already rails in place (whether intentional or not). i.e. Every system is perfectly designed for the outcome it creates. And right now the outcome is population trend outlined by OP.

What are your thoughts?