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Thread: Demographics

  1. #21
    Site Moderator kgauck's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Retillin View Post
    As for your idea of why tech did not spreed during the middle ages I have to disagree. It is not because people wondered if a heavy steel plow was better. It was more of a communication problem. If someone in the Ghoere invents a better way to farm it will spreed much quicker to Coeranys than something traveling from Italy to Germany. As a fantasy game where it was easy and quick for players to move from one point to another it is not fair to say that ideas will not move just as fast.
    This is incorrect. Ideas moved very fast across the Alps, and throughout the whole Latin Christian area. We know (because of manorial records) that one manor would use one method, and another manor right next door a different method. Peasants and their lords could see both systems side by side, and still would not change their patterns. Sometimes there were different conditions, and it was rational to have different practices. Sometimes the various actors had no idea if conditions were different and feared the costs of trial and error. If it works, why fix it? Sometimes they were once burned and now they were twice shy. Sometimes they were conservative, and peasants are notoriously conservative.

    Even in the modern age, we find that people don't change all at once because someone is doing it better. A series of studies in the early 20th century showed that some people were eager adopters (they tended to be the wealthiest and most able to suffer the hazards of bad choices), a second group were early adopters, quick to follow what the first group did, if it seemed to work. They were successful and leaders in the community. They could afford to make changes. The next group (in the study a third of all group members) were the early majority. They closely followed the opinion leaders. The next group, the late majority (also a third in the study) were sceptical and cautious and tended only to adopt when it was economically neccesary, not when it was simply advantageous. Finally there were the laggards, who were suspicous of innovation, had limited resources to take risks, and would only bet on a sure thing. They wanted to make sure all the kinks were worked out. Switching to a new variety of seed in the 1920's could take over a decade in am Iowa community, going through each group.

    Now scale things back to a society where everyone is near subsistance, and a mistake in planting, following some unproven innovation, could mean starvation. Even the innovators (the first group) are cautious and move slowly. The last group sometimes resists change by violence.

    I do get what you are saying Kgauck, nothing makes food from a place where that food can not grow.
    I don't know where you are getting this, but its not my point. My point is that of all the changes that can be made, to processes, organization, technology, or enviroment, technology is the weakest change of the group. If we don't have a fixed social order to work with, nearly all of a societies productive capacity will be determined by how a society organizes itself, and then a tiny amount will be based on technology. America and the Soviet Union had the same technology, their top scientists were equally good. One society organized themselves along free market capitalism, one organized itself as a command economy of a Marxist variety. Both saw increases in wealth, but one grew much, much faster than the other.

    There are people in the world today who make one one-thousanth of what other people do (taking only averages for nations, say Switzerland and Mozambique) and its not because one of the people doesn't have technology. They can buy it, they often get some given to them, aid workers come and being some and teach people how to use it. But if their society is poorly organized (say, lacks a rule of law, indepenent courts, contracts, a stable currency, a banking system, a professional civil service) then it is poor and the other is rich.

    We notice technological changes because we often look at a single culture and watch the way, say the English economy and society changes with the advent of the steam engine. Wow, marvelous technology changes the English. Why does Portugal lag behind? That's the more interesting question. Why can two societies be shown the same technology, can their brightest minds both understand it and be able to repeat it, and one prospers by utilizing it, and one turns it back? This is far more powerful than creating a new axle that is 10% more effectient (which is a huge effeciency gain, BTW).

  2. #22
    Site Moderator kgauck's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Retillin View Post
    How can we explain the Imperial Capital being a level 10 when the next highest human cities are a 7 with large tracks of land around them? And the next highest overall, an 8, is a goblin realm where we tend to treat them as having much lower level of tech?
    Development tends to be uneven, and the benefits of development are even more uneven. Five provinces grow at a 3% rate, five provinces grow at a 1% rate, and one city seems to spring up and represent the whole growth of the area. Seems to, but in fact is riding the wave of their growth.

    It can sometimes make sense to raise all your 0 provinces to 1's and all your 1's to 2's and so on, but what happens in real life is that the 0's stay 0's and the level 6 province becomes a level 8.

    Growth tends to be a % of growth from the starting base line. If Birthright were a computer game, and you could have complex math represent the growth, random events would happen that would give you temporary bonuses and penalties to income and growth rates in a province, and the best provinces would have started out bigger, and gotten more positive modifiers during the course of the game.

    That's just to hard too reflect in a paper and pencil game, so we use the domain system instead.

  3. #23
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    Quote Originally Posted by kgauck View Post

    It can sometimes make sense to raise all your 0 provinces to 1's and all your 1's to 2's and so on, but what happens in real life is that the 0's stay 0's and the level 6 province becomes a level 8

    This is a great point if you used America as an example. Look at how large our cities have grown yet how rural some of our country still is. I am from a small town in Maine that just surpassed its civil war population in 1998. Meanwhile the American population has increased many times. This however is not the case with every culture. The Romans and Greeks only let cities get to a certain size before sending extra population out to become colonist. Also in was only in the 20th century that countries began seeing over 50% populations living in cities. I think that in Brect where the focus is on trade, many people would flock to the cities. Anuire, which is still a feudal type system, would be in contrast to this. These people may not care or be able to ever leave the towns they were born in. I think the cultures in question would determine how an area's population grew.
    Last edited by Dirk; 01-17-2008 at 12:33 AM.

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    "Technology" is a very fluid term and can be used to speak of organizational advancements as well. Our argumentative lines are blurred, then, because much of what you call organizational I have been calling technological (adoption rates of hard, mechanical technology, changes in crop rotation, bringing new land under cultivation, etc.). So again I'll agree with you that organizational advancements are the source of rapid change. This is in part because it also changes the adoption rate of hard tech.

    For example, you talk about the conservativeness of peasants while at the same time you say that tech is available to everyone. That just goes to show that availability of a technology does not equal adoption, not by a long shot. You state times when the plow was available, and mention trade with China, etc. Well, I've also referenced historical studies showing that the same tech you say was available was at least not adopted until the periods of medieval agricultural revolution around the 12th century, and contributed to the economic success and population recovery of that time period. I mentioned China because the seed drill was first invented and used there millennia ago; the English thought they had invented it in the 18th century. So much for the assumption of broad technological availability and adoption and the importance of the rapid spread of ideas.

    "America and the Soviet Union had the same technology, their top scientists were equally good. One society organized themselves along free market capitalism, one organized itself as a command economy of a Marxist variety. Both saw increases in wealth, but one grew much, much faster than the other."
    And so did its pace of innovation and adoption of those innovations, in part because of the disparity in overall population educational infrastructure and individual freedom and wealth/available capital.

    "There are people in the world today who make one one-thousanth of what other people do (taking only averages for nations, say Switzerland and Mozambique) and its not because one of the people doesn't have technology. They can buy it, they often get some given to them, aid workers come and being some and teach people how to use it. But if their society is poorly organized (say, lacks a rule of law, indepenent courts, contracts, a stable currency, a banking system, a professional civil service) then it is poor and the other is rich. "
    Organizational infrastructure is a type of innovation, adopted culturally and supported by the availability of capital. "Having" technology and creating it or using it widely are very different things. Sure, some people in Afghanistan have tractors, but most never will in their lifetimes. Even tractor factories will be slow starting there, and until they have something significant to export in trade for them (hopefully something other than opium), they won't be buying many, either (a condition similar, perhaps, to the Rjurik and Vos in comparison with other human tribes).


    "Heavy plows, well suited to heavy, wet, clays were in use by the Slavs in the 6th century. So, I would guess the Vos already have them. They were in widespread use througout Europe by the 9th century, or the end of the Dark Ages, so who precisely doesn't have them? The goblins?"
    At least three centuries of lag between the Slavs and widespread use illustrates my point. There are many technologies that will be widespread in some culture but not so in another, as suggested by the different tech levels attributed to the different cultures; why would all cultures, then, have the same farming techniques, but still said to be in different tech periods (High Renaissance vs. Dark Age, etc.)?

    "An iron blade only serves to extend the working life of the plow, freeing up labor. On the other hand its more expensive, requiring an investment of labor. The rate of return on this investment can be aproximated by the rate of adoption of the iron blade, which was slow, so its a marginal investment, only really useful for a few farmers. Every investment that has a positive rate of return eventually pays for itself if we extend the time line out long enough, but the slow rate of adoption tells us its not a huge winner."
    I disagree. The rate of adoption could have very little to do with the actual success and value of the technology. As you yourself show later in this thread, cultural and personal attitudes (the conservativeness of lords and peasants) heavily influences adoption, despite the value of it. So does the simple reality of communication back then, almost unimaginably slow and unreliable for all but a few scholarly and legal circles and topics. At least as important back then as it is today, though, is the availability of capital. Lack of competition and modern production methods may well keep the cost of new farm implements so unattainably high that it would take the life savings of several generations of peasants to purchase them. It took hundreds, if not thousands, of peasants to support a single knight's accoutrement on the battlefield during certain periods of history, after all. A peasant may want a heavy iron plow, may even theoretically recover the cost of it in a single year by producing a significant saleable surplus for the first time in his life, but if he can't scrape together the coin to buy one, he won't be adopting it any time soon.

    "Given the trade presumed to take place already in the basic materials, it would seem that if a new invention was useful, it would diffuse rapidly to those who found it so. Sure a waterclock is made by the Khinasi, but if a Vos had a need for one, he has one for enough coin. So I doubt very much that technological labels assigned to the various cultures are hermetic boundries past which goods do not pass."
    Answered in part above with the speed (or lack thereof) of communication and adoption. I also question, however, your presumption of trade taking place in basic materials. Trade with the Chinese was known for exotic items for the wealthy; months or years long, dangerous, low-volume, and expensive trade expeditions were not undertaken to try to make a profit buying a 10 coin plow in one place to try to sell it in another where few peasants can even scrape up enough for local 8 coin plows, much less cover the extensive markup required to cover the expedition costs and profit. (hypothetical examples of course)

    "No one, anywhere, went from scratch plows pulled by oxen, to heavy plows, with iron shod, pulled by horses. Each of these represents a change found in different eras. They also reflect changes that only make sense under certain conditions."
    As I've agreed already, tech innovations tend to have been slow in creation and slow in adoption; only minor improvements could be made during a game's time period, but adoption (your "organization advancement," I suppose) can be more easily improved. And, since I believe hard tech widely adopted can make more of an impact than you do, I think achieving that adoption is one of the many factors that goes into the development of realms during a BR game.

    I have also stated that technological innovation and even any potential source of population growth is so negligible in the time periods our games are played as to be unimportant. Establish a baseline and go from there, using province level just to reflect prosperity.

    If you want to continue the academic argument about technology and population somehow, that's great. Unless I'm missing something, though, we've long been in agreement about game effects, differing perhaps only a little in how we would describe domain expansion in story terms.
    Last edited by Rowan; 01-17-2008 at 06:59 AM.

  5. #25
    Senior Member RaspK_FOG's Avatar
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    Note that a lot more things should be taken into account when you mention adoption of a technology, and I don't just mean adding an extra group where ancient peasants simply refuse to accept new technological improvements...

    In villages around the world, you can see that people adopt technology in a mistaken manner; for example, a canister of parasiticide bears excruciating details as to how it's meant to be used, and most farmers in several countries don't give a damn about the minutae of this, which just happen to be the most important things they have to know (i.e. not emptying the whole thing in the mobile sprinkler tank, but putting the indicated dosage instead).

    It may seem odd to make such bold accusations, but understand that we are talking about the same people who, for no religious reason what so ever, continue to exhibit such practices as female infanticide when their culture deems it's best for entirely economical reasons, and even insist on saying various obviously mistaken and unscientific "facts" (e.g. that weasels kill hens by drinking their blood instead of strangling them, and even that's what they do it for - vampiric weasels?).

  6. #26
    Site Moderator kgauck's Avatar
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    Let's look at the best case scenario: England and Wales. There was a much lower population here, and because of the higher proportion of sloping land more livestock potential. France had much more flat land, and well watered, and warmer. So their starting population is higher, but they miss out and the increases found in England.

    Total agricultural production increased by a factor of 4.5 between 1300 and 1850 (well into the industrial age for some countries). 1.00275 to the power of 550 is 4.52865, so the overall growth rate is 0.275% for agriculture anually. This works out to about 5% for a 20 year period.

    Yield per acre increased by a factor of 2.4 between 1300 and 1850 for grains. That's an annual rate of 0.174%, or 3.5% over a 20 year period.

    Livestock yields increased by 4 fold. 0.2525%, also 5% for a 20 year period.

    These figures don't estimate any increase in quality of the food.

    "The rapid growth in livestock output is closely connected to an important change in agricultural land, namely a massive improvement in grassland quality. In 1300, most grass was poor quality common pasture. By 1800, 15 million acres had been enclosed and improved. Better grazing underpinned the rise in livestock production." (Allen 2005)

    Later:
    "Much of the rise in corn yields was an indirect and unanticipated consequence of the cultivation of the peas, beans, and clover that improved fertility by fixing atmospheric nitrogen. Much of the output of the new crops was fed to animals. Thus, to a significant degree, the improvements in arable farming were driven by the growth of the livestock sector."

    But, as it turns out, why did the livestock sector grow? As I have pointed out many times, livestock is labor effecient, but ineffecient per acre (you can get more food from an acre of grain, but more meat per day of labor). One of the advantages of meat, is that it will walk to slaughter. Urban populations eat more meat than rural populations do, in part because meat is relatively cheaper than grain the farther you get from the farm, and because urbanites have more money and can afford more meat. So the growth of cities, especially London, Paris, Barcelona, and so many Italian and Flemish cities.

    Also, as populations increased, wages fell throughout the country, except in the largest cities, where wages remained resiliant.

    The production of calories per head of population was very low in 1300 (1791 calories
    per person per day) and I'll skip the effects of the plague, since we have proposed no such event for Cerillia, and observe that by 1850, calorie production was at 1970 calories per person per day. Because of imports (from America, Argentina, Austrialia, and other food exporters) calorie consumption was at 2525 per day. I'm not sure how well that translates, without imports, so its quite possible that calorie consumption will remain more or less flat, and more food translates almost directly into more people.

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