J. D. Lail wrote:

> >>Given human breeding patterns and rates you need something like this to
> >>partially explain why every human in Cerilia is not blooded. Actually
> >>you need a lot more than this but that is another thread. :)
>
> >From: Pieter
>
> >Do you care to explain point 1 in more detail, I'm not sure what the hell
> >you are talking about
>
> Sure ! In the 1500 years since Deismar every human inhabitant of Cerilia
> should be able able to claim a descent from blooded ancestors unless you
> postulate a change in human nature or interpose a game mechanic to explain it.
>
> The authors did not create such a rule or provide any hint that the BR human was
> in any way different from his RL counterpart. To be blunt many men like sex so
> much that they will plonk any thing female whether they are married to her
> or not.
> Without birth control babies are made. Bloodlines spread and spread. To be sure
> they get diluted but then the men continue to spread the "pollen" and reinforce
> the spreading genome.
>
> What may come as a shock is how widely it spreads. Edward III of England for
> example had 3,000,000 documented descendants as of about 1950. Undocumented
> descendants would have added quite a bit to that number. That's only 600 years
> not 1500.
>
> IMHO opinion the designers simply overlooked this. If you would like to start
> a "find a way to limit the # of bloodlines" thread I will be happy to
> contribute.

You are of course, right, but you are opening a can of worms that
might be better left closed. If you assume that a couple produces four
children which survive to adulthood and have families themselves, and
this happens every generation, you are doubling your population every
generation. Four children is not unreasonable for the medieval time
period.

Assuming 1 generation every 28-30 years, after 600 years you have
20-21 generations. 2 to the 21st power is 2,000,000,000.

But if we apply this to Birthright, we won't get the population numbers
everyone is assuming are accurate in Cerilia. In 1500 years, we can
have about 50 generations. To be a little more conservative, I will assume
that it takes 2 generations to double the population. This is something like
an average of 2.7 children per couple. 2 to the 25th power is 33 million.

If we assume that your average survivor of Deismar has descendants with
family sizes less than King Edward's descendants, he can still have 33
million who can trace lineage to him. Say there were 500 survivors or so
of Deismaar that started families. Cerilia has 16 billion blooded people,
and we have yet to take into account non-blooded.

I agree, such numbers are ridiculous. One way to explain 20-40 million
people on Cerilia after 1500 years is that birthrates were much lower, even
below replacement level at times, for long periods. This lower
birthrate has to apply to commoner and noble alike.

Another would be that in the last 1500 years, every time the population
begins growing plentiful, war and disease decimates it. The game does
say that bloodtheft was common as scions fought to increase their
bloodstrength, this would help keep offspring low, presuming that most
die before they sire children.

Dave