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  1. #21
    Site Moderator kgauck's Avatar
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    Law has no effect on taxation, other than allowing me to go to higher tax levels without suffering loyalty effects.

    Province represents population in the rulebook, but as has already been noted, you simply can't rule provinces up if this is the case.

    So, if you are to rule up your administration of a province, and get more taxing power, you have a choice, either make the law holding the key to taxation (in which case, does Guilder Kalien tax the people of Caerwil or does Suris Enlien?)
    -OR-
    You need to seperate administration from the province rating, so you can rule something up.

    Now you can decide its easier just to abolish the rule action for provinces.

    And you can ignore the fact that by ruling up provinces you are creating people faster than Genosian cloners.

    Since I want to allow people to rule their realms up, and I want to seperate population from province levels, and I don't want to make Law holdings a super holding, I prefer Administrative holdings to represent the royal power to tax. It also reflects what gets taxed, because as the province grows, new kinds of wealth appear. An empty province has a few hundred men and herds of animals. The earliest taxation is some portion of the herd delivered to the big-man every quarter. Then farms appear, and crops are taxed. If the tax system did not adapt, then when towns grew, they would be untaxed, and as banking houses and great merchants grew up, they would be untaxed. Perhaps even mines would go untaxed. Ships entering harbors, trade goods crossing into the country, these things would have no tariff. But all the herds and crops would still be taxed. So increasing the Administrative level not only intensifies the taxing, but makes it more extensive too.

  2. #22
    Senior Member ShadowMoon's Avatar
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    "Kaminoan cloners" ^^;

    Anyway I agree with Kgauck...

    By the way; Green Knight used nice model to represent province population/progress growth in Ruins of Empire PBeM.
    "If the wizards and students who lived here centuries ago had practiced control - in their spellcasting and in their dealings with the politics of the empire - you would be studying in a tall tower made by the best dwarf stone masons, not in an old military barracks."
    Applied Thaumaturgy Lector of the Royal College of Sorcery to new generation of students.

  3. #23
    Senior Member Beruin's Avatar
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    Okay, I guess I can see your reasoning, but I'm still not really convinced. If I interpret correctly, administration represents direct control by a regent and handles taxation instead of the province rating, in effect given you another kind of holding with a large income to rule up. Law holdings then represent, well what? The amount of control local authorites, minor nobles, whoever exert on the population? The sum of the fiefs controlled by minor nobles?

    The latter might be feasible, but it still seems to me that this is a bit redundant insofar as both types of holdings exert essentially the same kind of control.

    Quote Originally Posted by kgauck View Post
    Law has no effect on taxation, other than allowing me to go to higher tax levels without suffering loyalty effects.
    This is only partially true. Law does not have a direct effect on taxation, but not controlling law is a risky business for a regent taxing provinces, making him a target of law claims/seizures. This can be particularly devastating using the BRCS rules, as seizures here aren't tied to the amount of GB generated by a province or holding. Whether this makes sense, is of course debatable.
    This also answers the question on Caerwil: Legally, the taxes belong to Suris Enlien, but Guilder Kalien can use his hold on the province to divert a sizeable amount into his own coffers.

    As a result, law holdings seem to be there to protect province taxation and this makes sense, I believe. Perhaps it would also be advisable or at least valid for a DM to enforce seizures from uncontrolled law holdings, representing bandits or just the inability of a province regent to enforce taxation. Sort of a 'un-control' level...

    Quote Originally Posted by kgauck View Post
    I don't want to make Law holdings a super holding
    I don't really see this problem, I must say. Granted, the BRCS strengthened law holdings somewhat by adding income, while lowering the income of temple and guild holdings, but overall I'd say the types of holdings are balanced.

  4. #24
    Site Moderator kgauck's Avatar
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    If Brecht guilders control the law and the guilds, or temples get control of the law, if there is no Administrative holding, and Province level only means population level, what exactly does the land lord do? Maybe he collects regency (I am inclined to say no), otherwise he sits and watches.

  5. #25
    Senior Member Beruin's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by ryancaveney View Post
    The first view you list is what a number of people, including me, have adopted as a replacement over the years because there are some serious believability problems with the rulebook's view. One is that the population of Cerilia is absurdly low -- only about 2 million instead of the 20 to 120 million it really ought to have, given its size, time since settlement, and medieval agricultural yields.
    I'd say 120 million is way too high. A few numbers:

    Estimated population:

    Europe 1340: 73.5 million
    Europe 1450: 50 million
    Europe 1500: 80-100 million (seems to be quite a leap in just 50 years, but these are estimates from different historians)

    Sweden 1570: 750,000
    Spain 1300: 6-7 million
    Spain 1500: 11 million
    England 1348: 3.8 million
    England 1377: 2.2 million

    Quote Originally Posted by kgauck View Post
    The actual population of a province should be determined geographically. People, like any other population, will expand to the holding capacity of their ecosystem very quickly. We figure out how much habitation a province will support, and that's its population.
    I belief this conclusion is debatable just from the numbers above. For a fantasy world it might be more appropriate to look at the distribution of people in thinly settled regions like Russia or Eastern Poland instead of the comparatively populous regions of West and South Europe, i.e. I picture the Cerilian population to cluster in the most advantageous spots of a province.
    In between these pockets of civilization lie stretches of more or less uninhabited land or outright wilderness. The larger the province level the more the pockets expand, reducing the distances between cultured areas.

    That said, I agree that the overall population of Cerilia is way too low, but I don't really buy the reasoning that the people are already there, but not yet controlled by the province ruler. This just doesn't fit my view of a medieval society and picturing large number of medieval peasants running around free and uncontrolled with no lord above them strains my suspension of disbelief nearly as much as creating people out of thin air.

    I find it much more feasible to tamper with the population number in relation
    to province level. My current take on this is as follows:

    Province level..........Population...........Percentage of cultured land
    0.....................up to 1,000.........................Nil
    1.....................up to 10,000.......................10%
    2......................up to 20,000......................20%
    3.............................30,000.............. .........30%
    ....
    10.........................100,000................ .......100%


    This increases the population of Cerilia significantly, as most provinces are quite low-level and here the difference to the BR numbers is greater than at higher levels. Moreover, its also a linear increase and that fits nicely with the taxation rules which otherwise make no sense at all and last-not-least it's simple. So far, I think its also believable and I have not yet found a problem here, but I'm interested to hear any comments.

    Quote Originally Posted by ryancaveney View Post
    As a simple example, consider Medoere. It consists of three plains provinces, one each of levels 2, 3 and 4. In my model, it has three plains provinces, so it has 300,000 inhabitants. In the other model, it has only 29,000. The larger number is far more consistent with historical population densities for the heart of the settled lands of the empire. The smaller number could be improved by multiplying by an overall scaling factor, but the big problem comes when Suris Enlien starts Ruling up the provinces. In my model, all she does is increase her control over the sub-BR-scale landowners; the population stays the same, which IMO is good -- the ruler should really not be able to affect that much at all.
    Well, I end up with 90,000 people, a number I still find believable, even though it is significantly lower than your take. As a sidenote, the PS of Medoere speaks of about 40,000 people living there.


    Well, that leaves the rule action to be taken into account. I think the wiki house rule on province growth is quite okay, it makes ruling up a province to the next level more difficult, but the rule action remains useful. Players will now probably focus on one or two provinces to rule up, depending on growth points already accumulated at the start of the game and on strategic considerations, but that's fine with me. There are certainly still things missing, e.g. catastrophes are left to the whim of the DM, and the price is perhaps too high (at least it takes a while before ruling up a province pays off) and it might still not be that realistic, but for now I think it's the best system we have.

  6. #26
    Senior Member Beruin's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by kgauck View Post
    About Source levels, I'll defer to magiophiles, but my own sense is that they don't. They are reduced by the actual population in the province.
    Speaking of source levels, the following older posts might be of interest for this thread:

    Quote Originally Posted by Beruin View Post
    In the latter case, that is if the demographic breakdown should describe the total population of a region, not the subject population of a realm, a category "monster" should perhaps be included. In effect, we would need two categories to describe the population of a region.

    Dhoesone might have a subject population of 95% human, 2% elven, 1% each of half-elven and halflings and 0.5 % each of dwarves and goblins. In this thinly settled realm the total population might be something like 75% human, 7% elven, 3% other demi-humans, 5% goblins and perhaps up to 10% monster (mostly other humanoids like orogs, gnolls and whatever else you use, but also a few clans of ogres, giants, etc)
    Quote Originally Posted by Birthright-L View Post
    I see the monster population of an area as a function of the source level of
    that area. In areas where there is a lot of source levels, there are a lot
    of monsters. In this way, wilderness regions actually have a higher monster
    population than human population.

    Of course, the monster population of a source-7 province is less than the
    human population of a level 7 province. Monster neen noor very little
    civilian population to form the basis of an economy. But IMC a source-7
    province can muster 7 units of monster "militia" - in every way superior to
    human militia, and sometimes as strong as an Undead Legion or such.

    I include ogres, gnolls and lizard men in the "monster" population, as well
    as primitve tribal groups of goblins and even humans or halflings. The
    important thing here is that these people are not a part of a civlized
    economy of land exploitation. Orogs and shadow world halflings are not
    monsters in this sense - IMC they live in the Shadow World and raid from
    there.

    Note that this leaves elven provinces with a sizeable population of
    monsters - just the way I like it.

    Also note that these monsters are generally very unorganized - colonizing
    such a province is unlikely to encounter any organized resistance, or
    fighting more than one such nit of monsters at a time. Only if there is some
    organizing force (usually an awishleighn) will these monsters muster for
    battle. But just knowing they are there will give the players a pause.

    Source holdings that are "wild" and unclaimed have more agressive monsters,
    while those held by source regents tent to be calmer and live more
    remotely - so land regents have a need for sourceholders to keep their
    monster populations calm.

  7. #27
    Site Moderator kgauck's Avatar
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    Is Cerilia essentially static, with a small amount of growth during a campiagn, and regent in what is basically a zero sum game just exchanging peices of the pie? Or in Cerillia essentially somewhere that is developing?

  8. #28
    Site Moderator kgauck's Avatar
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    The actual population of a province should be determined geographically. People, like any other population, will expand to the holding capacity of their ecosystem very quickly. We figure out how much habitation a province will support, and that's its population.
    Quote Originally Posted by Beruin View Post
    I belief this conclusion is debatable just from the numbers above. For a fantasy world it might be more appropriate to look at the distribution of people in thinly settled regions like Russia or Eastern Poland instead of the comparatively populous regions of West and South Europe, i.e. I picture the Cerilian population to cluster in the most advantageous spots of a province.
    Uh, so people cluster in warm, wet places instead of cold, dry places? Show me where this disagrees with what I argued. Eastern Europe had half the agricultural yield per unit labor, and when you factor out the seedgrain, that means less than half the carrying capacity. Of course Russia and Eastern Poland are thinly settled, they have poor ecosystems for dense human habitation, and comparatively low carrying capacities.

    I ask you if you think Kansas would have people in it in a medieval world. I will reply that as late as the first decades of the 19th century the American pairie was called the Great American Desert, not the breadbasket. It was the mechanization of John Deere and International Harvester that made this inhospitable place into a farmland. Rather like Eastern Poland, Kansas would be mostly empty with some settlement along the rivers.

  9. #29
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    Quote Originally Posted by Beruin View Post
    I'd say 120 million is way too high.
    The large range of variation I gave is a function of population density times total area, *both* of which are uncertain. Cerilia has 840 provinces, which are supposed to range in size from 900 to 1600 square miles each. 840 x 900 x 30 (minimum realistic population density) = 22.7 million people, and 840 x 1600 x 120 (maximum realistic population density, if almost the whole darn thing were arable) = 161.3 million people. The number I favor is 840 x 1000 x 50 (since, for example, many provinces are plains at 100, some are steppe at 36 and a few are tundra at 4) = 42 million people in total, which accords well with your historical figures.

    Quote Originally Posted by Beruin View Post
    picturing large number of medieval peasants running around free and uncontrolled with no lord above them strains my suspension of disbelief nearly as much as creating people out of thin air
    Ah, but that's not at all what I think is happening. I think they have lots of lords above them -- many of whom are working at cross-purposes. The same amount of total tax is still being collected, and the same amount of total political influence is still being generated, but as the control level drops a steadily larger percentage of it is lost to friction as the whole apparatus becomes ever more unwieldy and inefficient to operate. All the same GBs and RPs are still being collected by the same bottom-tier manorial lords, but at low control levels they and the barons (IMO, one per population level) and the counts (IMO, one per province, just like several of the official materials say) spend so much of it doing their own thing (sometimes even agitating and contesting against each other) or just keeping it themselves and not bothering to pass much of it further up the chain, that the ultimate regent has to spend almost all of what he does receive just keeping his restless and overpowerful tenants in line, leaving little left to spend at the domain scale to affect other realm regents. To me, increasing control level represents getting your own house in better order, reducing the amount of the total tax and influence which need to go to simply making the domain function at all on a day-to-day, manor-to-manor scale. These dozens or hundreds of minor lords and their sub-holdings are too small to see individually at the BR scale, so I simply abstract away the average success of the regent's dealings with them, which is precisely what I measure by the control level. I see it not as increasing gross income, but as decreasing administrative (including political) expenditure.

    Quote Originally Posted by Beruin View Post
    Well, I end up with 90,000 people, a number I still find believable, even though it is significantly lower than your take. As a sidenote, the PS of Medoere speaks of about 40,000 people living there.
    It would hardly be the first time a PS was totally out to lunch. =) I suspect they fiddled that number to make it close to the numbers from the province population table which caused the problem to begin with, so I hardly think it's independent or even terribly useful as a piece of evidence.


    Ryan
    Last edited by ryancaveney; 06-05-2007 at 04:35 AM.

  10. #30
    Site Moderator kgauck's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by ryancaveney View Post
    I think they have lots of lords above them -- many of whom are working at cross-purposes.
    We do have most of the middle ages to support this interpretation. Strong kings were the exception.

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