Population convention

[Rowan]

A poll is a good idea,but I still don't understand why giving so importance to the number of provinces for the population.A level 3 province realm could bully against 3 allied realms of 1 province each,but with the territorial system they have less than half population.If the problem is population,we could increase to 20000,or even 30000 for level.

Number of provinces should be far more important than province level for determining population. This is because provinces represent territory. Most territory (provinces) in Cerilia are claimed and settled. Anuire in particular has been settled for 2-3,000 years. Even Dhoesone shows up on the timeline as being over 1000 years old. Settled land naturally fills to a certain density based on available arable land and amount of food imports. Land thus has a carrying capacity, dependent upon the efficiency of the populace in supporting population.

Although BR has usually provided some chart listing a population number next to a province level, it has also always been careful to explain that province level means much more than population. And those population charts were made by people who really had no clue about demographics and history.

Furthermore, the functional BR domain action rules actually only make sense if the population is pretty stable and independent of province level. I mentioned these before, but consider that:
1. Provinces can be Ruled up by 1 level every year. Yet we know historically that if that were population growth, even population growth by migration hardly ever happens that fast. Instead, populations in a settled region vary only over whole generations, and even then generally by just a percentage, not by 50% or more.
2. Provinces can lose levels by Pillaging. Do you really think Pillaging means massacring thousands, even 10 or 20,000 people? If so, must it be done in such a mathematical fashion--make sure you kill 10,000 to drop that province level by 1 and gather up 6GB.
3. Even more telling, provinces can lose levels by the deaths of Levies outside their borders. Now we're talking about the whole province losing a level when a few hundred men get killed or dispersed.

These things are much more reasonably explained by making population almost entirely independent of province level and instead acknowledging that province level is a representation of the infrastructure, organization, centralization of government, efficiency, and economic sophistication of a populace in a given territory.

Your level 3 province realm is able to take on 3 level 1 province realms not because of population, but because it is run more efficiently, its government has more control and organization over a more sophisticated people. Prussia was able to spank France all over the map not just because they had better tactics, but the Prussian army was even similarly sized (despite France being much larger) because Prussia was organized more efficiently. The U.S. today is more powerful and has more economic output than many countries that are much larger, even ones like China that are 4x as large. This is a matter of organization and better utilization of resources, not of population.

[Sorontar]

I tend to agree with Rowan.

Population size can be derived from province level, but province level does not govern population size.

Let us say that the original BR ruleset and atlas described a "stable" world where each province was equal technological and bureaucratic capability with respect to its population. Therefore, if it was a level 3 province then it would have the same size industries etc as any other level 3 province. Therefore, from that we can say that all level 3 provinces *at that moment of time* have roughly the same population. Therefore, we have our table of level vs population range, which can be used to define the populations for any province that is to be used in a campaign.

However, once the campaign starts, we can ignore the table. If a province's level goes up or down, it does not mean that the population changes. If the population changes, it does not mean that the level changes. The table is best for setting up the game, not for use in the game.

Sorontar.

[Sorontar]

Just been thinking about one thing that throughout history has rapidly increased the population size of regions - gold rushes. It happened in Australia. It happened in the US of A. I suspect it has happened all over the world. Would you agree that

gold -> population increase -> industry increase -> asset increase -> technology increase

for an area as new businesses, roads and skills spring up to meet the needs of the larger community.

This is one way that I can see that a "random event" can change a province level and its population in one season. After one year, the population may drop back down but I imagine that many of the other changes will stay, provided they are "maintained" by regents.

Sorontar

[Green Knight]

I must say I wholeheartedly disagree and restate a previous comment:

Population is the governing factor when it comes to population level. People do not live in a vacuum, but rather must be supported by all the trappings of civilization. You can't have 100.000 Anuireans living in one 'primitive' province, all huddling in little hut and doing nothing productive. The province will have to be well-settled for a long time, and will sport an array of towns and cities supported by farmlands.

Moreover, population growth is a steady inevitable process, limited only by available land and technology level. You could possibly speed this process along by investing a lot of time and energy (rule province action; although as written it is broken IMO) or have events affect it (both positively or negatively - war, famine and plague comes to mind), but by an large it is an automatic process.

So in concision; if you take two lvl 4 Anuirean provinces, chances are very high that those provinces will have a similar total population (and about the same level of 'infrastructure or whatnot). There might be some exceptions, but not very many.

[Mirviriam]

About that roman empire thing - need to check those facts for what they are qualifying in surveys...

~Pre 500 or 600 CE if not all, most of the roman survey's only counted 'citizens', those not recognized by the government or not contributing to the army did not get counted. (it's been at least 8 years since I've looked at my professors notes of his understudy in Italy).

Then there's a large discussion about if slaves were counted when the head of the household annouced how many people he claimed to have.

The other portion to consider is that in those counts they often didn't include all of their terrorities till certain periods or requirements were met.

I suggest that the population levels with small considerations be reversed engineered from the game mechanics...for the simply reason that they were ignored as being relatively unimportant in the scheme of things, when the game mechanics & world history are completely arbitrary (versus the real world where food & population with technology decided the history).

1) Find solid facts based off of data from no earlier than 1,000 CE & then the size of the armies/navies they had to determine the proportion of army to population.

2) Take the current province levels and assume basic infantry units are raised upto the max level of the province.

3) Apply the proportion decided from step 1.

OT: We shouldn't necessarily exclude the bubonic plague, as there are a number of evil wizards out there who can call it up to decimate various regions, and sadly history has proven that most churches require $$ (under what ever term they call it to hide the greed) for their help.

On topic again:

# of province versus level of provinces arguments are useless. The Jurgens took over China with less population/land ... though arguably they had better density (which doesn't show really in text books). Regardless, it would be wrong to make assumptions of densities of people always increasing when the wars during their midevil periods had the equivalent of super-nuclear weapons in play.

[Rowan]

On gold rushes: I don't think most of them resulted in immediate and lasting increases in the power and influence of a region. Seems most were chaotic affairs conducted by largely poor people who constructed temporary settlements that often later became ghost towns. And still, that population migrated from somewhere; it was not "created." A better example of "Rule Province," IMO, is the founding of Constantinople. Refugees created by war can also shift populations, but it generally takes them quite some time to become integrated and not be a nuisance and burden on the area they migrate to. And again, it's migration. If most realms in Anuire are attempting to Rule every few years, that would seem to preclude migration. Pillaging and random events can reduce organization and infrastructure in a realm, however, offsetting much of those Rule Province actions.

Population is the governing factor when it comes to population level. People do not live in a vacuum, but rather must be supported by all the trappings of civilization. You can't have 100.000 Anuireans living in one 'primitive' province, all huddling in little hut and doing nothing productive. The province will have to be well-settled for a long time, and will sport an array of towns and cities supported by farmlands.

Wherever did you get the idea that they're all "primitive?" People can use whatever farming techniques they have available and live in villages and towns and do plenty of productive things and still not be organized into a powerful nation. Many leaders, like Louis XIV, took the great unused potential of their realms and rapidly restructured it, greatly empowering centralized government, greatly expanding the ability to tax and organize the people, greatly improving the infrastructure of the realm and enabling much more mercantile activity. THAT is what Ruling is; it has very little to do with increasing population. It's just better organizing what's already there.

So yeah, Ghoere can have plains provinces with 80-90,000 people, hills with 70-80,000 people, living in various towns and farming communities. To the extent that Ghoere improves administration and efficiency, it can better utilize those people, make the country more stable and turn its productivity towards more focused goals, collect more taxes and open up opportunity for mercantile expansion and the better distribution of skills and resources. In fact, the rules as written in both the original boxed set and the BRCS speak of this. They also speak of how there are a lot of people living in the provinces who aren't necessarily well organized or under the thumb of the central government.

On the Rome statistics: Yes, I am well aware of the census irregularities and incompleteness. If you had read the sources you would have seen that they addressed these as well. You realize that if you're arguing that my numbers are just male citizens, the actual populations are much higher? And thus put in perspective, Cerilian populations are even more ridiculously low?

I suggest that the population levels with small considerations be reversed engineered from the game mechanics...for the simply reason that they were ignored as being relatively unimportant in the scheme of things, when the game mechanics & world history are completely arbitrary (versus the real world where food & population with technology decided the history).

By all means, if population isn't important to you, ignore it entirely. For many of us, Birthright holds an attraction because we would like to simulate life and rulership in a roughly historically-analogous time period with fantastical elements. We seek realistic explanations for things. If you're not interested in realism, why participate in simulationist discussions?

I reject the idea of reverse engineering from game mechanics, though. That's just bass-ackwards. Game systems are first intended to simulate something in reality, then modified for fantastical elements. Why you would first make a rule and then try to explain it is beyond me. I'd rather have as realistic a world (and interaction of fantastical elements) as can possibly be described by fairly simple rules.

1) Find solid facts based off of data from no earlier than 1,000 CE & then the size of the armies/navies they had to determine the proportion of army to population.

I gave you a bunch of those, as well. And the Rome statistics were likely weighted, if anything, conservatively.

2) Take the current province levels and assume basic infantry units are raised upto the max level of the province.

3) Apply the proportion decided from step 1.

I don't understand what you mean here.

Regardless, it would be wrong to make assumptions of densities of people always increasing when the wars during their midevil periods had the equivalent of super-nuclear weapons in play.

What "super-nuclear weapons?" Realm spells? Not if wizards are few and far between, generally low level, often easily counter-acted by clerics or hunted down if they start laying about them with Mass Destruction spells and Death Plagues (if they can even cast the latter). Have you looked at the descriptions of those spells? Hardly "nuclear." They can inflict just a few hits on a few units at VERY, VERY high RP and GB cost. I don't know how many BR games you've played, but in my experience, and from what I can see of the impacts of the rules, Wizards have a fairly minor impact on casualties in war.

That magic exists to make life easier would have a greater impact. Bless Land and similar magics can easily represent improved crops and reduced disease. I know you're down on religion, but religions in the real world freely did what they could to reduce the spread of plagues (they threatened everyone), so I reject your notion that the existence of curative magics has no effective impact on life in such a setting as this.


I really don't know why you guys are trying so hard to justify arbitrary and uninformed game mechanics (province levels and tables) when becoming informed and thus making better game interpretations is so easy and so clear. When in doubt, shouldn't you err on the side of historicity? What is so sacred to you about tiny populations and population densities so low people have no neighbors?

I think I've shown that, in light of the historical setting from which this game takes its inspiration, the populations stated in the game materials are ridiculously low, and the idea of tying population to province level creates even more problems, considering the availability of Rule Province actions and the various things that reduce province level. Why not change our description of those actions and statistics in the game just a little bit and make it much more realistic?

[vota dc]

High level provinces have already better quality troops.I don't expect to outnumber 10 to 1 (or to fight with even number against a realm with X10 my population) another province with the same population because I am more organized.Even if they cannot afford a realm army they could use peasants with forks,just like Lord of the Realms.

[Mirviriam]

Rowan -

' "YOUR PRIESTS CAN'T SAVE YOU NOW!! MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!" ' EDIT: in reference to the plagues...OT now:

Read all the pages before i posted, my point about the statistics - they're flawed naming only the number of people who could have been part of the army. What if you just say, "The population levels of the birthright setting listed are for men capable of fighting only." Just like the roman surveys? Discussion over?

According to most of the posters I've been reading...the power of the realms lies in their army mustering. Therefore, I called for preserving the power balance & not having to remake the game completely, but allowing you to insert the population levels you expect( # of units mustered TIMES ratio of people to soldiers supported ). That way all realms still create the same amount of units & the population matches what you expect.

You still have to look in to which period you're going to use for your ratio...I'd actually recommend doing based on argicultural technology. Nothing later than Dark Ages? Pre the mass cotton movements.

Also - you can't look at balance as just one level 3 province pushing 3 level 1 provinces around...gotta be by region when you run the simulations.

OFF Topic: Since you're asking about my personal views...we're talking either redesign birthright totally: history, political geography & mechanics or work within the system already existing. I'm going at the game as if it was designed for ages 12 & up. The more selective you history buffs become in the rules and settings, the more elitist and less players we have.

Which means one of two things...accept the game is dead and will limp along till most of us hit 50 or become bored of eachother or design it to be played easily by as many people as possible in as many ways as they wish.

I like the idea of historical influences, I really do. If you inflate the number of common people, then you need to inflate the number of mages and priests, thus pushing how many high level mages will exist & making magic more influential in history. How far will it go though? When does the idea of birthright making sense interfere with players laughing & having a cold soda on a saturday afternoon on their back porch with the barbeque going? Try to imagion it's people other than yourselves & they're young.

Personally I've said three times already we should have levels of Birthright play...because otherwise to keep creating new rules & ad-hoc'ing them on to the old ones is going the route of thinking which says Birthright is dead, we might as well make it exactly what we want instead of an open place for everyone.

I tried searching on it when I came back this year...was there every any official dialogue about the designing of the game, methods of play encouraged, balance issues ... beyond keep it simple(ultimately the best advice but still)?

[Birthright-L]

At 11:29 PM 8/5/2009, Green Knight wrote:

>Population is the governing factor when it comes to population level.

Since this is a bit of a quibble anyway, I`ll go ahead and quibble a bit. Population is the governing factor of...
population. Population LEVEL is a gaming quantification of the general effects of population in a particular province. It`s not a census. It`s not a rating of technological advancement. It`s open to interpretation.

>People do not live in a vacuum, but rather must be supported by all the trappings of civilization. You can`t have 100.000 Anuireans living in one `primitive` province, all huddling in little hut and doing nothing productive. The province will have to be well-settled for a long time, and will sport an array of towns and cities supported by farmlands.

Well, they`d certainly not live in a single hut and do nothing... but why couldn`t 100,000 Anuireans live in a space 30 miles by 30 miles or so in relatively primitive conditions? Let`s call 30x30 is 900 square miles, but let`s say one thousand square miles just for the sake of simple math. That`s 100 people per square mile, or 6.4 acres per person. Give me that many acres and I could drop right off the grid... arguably, contributing "nothing productive" to a regent`s demesne other than, say, some RP.

>Moreover, population growth is a steady inevitable process, limited only by available land and technology level. You could possibly speed this process along by investing a lot of time and energy (rule province action; although as written it is broken IMO) or have events affect it (both positively or negatively - war, famine and plague comes to mind), but by an large it is an automatic process.

Population growth is steady and inevitable... when viewed from the regional/national POV. At the level of a province like that described by the BR domain rules, though, it can be much more dynamic and unpredictable, and our ability to use historical demographic studies to reflect what we`re talking about in the setting becomes much more dicey. Lots of folks want to do things like cite a study on the Languedoc region of France in the 15th century, and use that as the basis for their interpretation of BR population levels. But BR does a bad job of modelling real world historical settings, and the extrapolation of one survey into the game doesn`t accurately portray the range of influences that exist in the setting, nor does it take into consideration the vagaries of the study itself, or even the simple fact that it is a much broader study than the things being described in the setting.

>So in concision; if you take two lvl 4 Anuirean provinces, chances are very high that those provinces will have a similar total population (and about the same level of `infrastructure or whatnot). There might be some exceptions, but not very many.

Let me make the following comparison, to illustrate what I think might be the issue. Consider these provinces: Moriel in Osoerde and the nearby province, Ruorven in Coeranys. Both have a population level of 4. Both are Anuirean. Both are in the Eastern Marches. Both are inhabited by humans. Both are rightfully ruled by a chaotic good regent. They have law, guild temple and source holdings within a level of each other. The domains of both lands are generally described as having horses and cattle as major resources. They have the same terrain types (though in differing amounts) in them.

Despite those many fundamental similarities, they are very different places and the population of those provinces would have very different rates of productivity.

Moriel is the capital of Osoerde. It has a city of the same name that is large enough to get a little star on the BR map. Though supposedly ruled by Jaison Raenech; the rightful ruler, William Moergan, is fighting for his throne, so the land is in a state of civil war. Most of the province is plains, though a little smidge in the corner is swampland. The central location of the province makes it a good HQ for the government seat, and it is described as being a place from which the usurper can easily affect his entire domain. The political situation makes the population "cowed" and that certainly suggests a certain lack of productivity, innovation and freedom. We can, therefore, surmise that the population of Moriel is at the high end of whatever a level 4 population level represents because it is a capital, but because of the political situation, the boring terrain and the constant threat of war, the population is less productive than it could be simply because they are unable to operate with much freedom or opportunity.

In contrast, Ruorven is half swamp, and half its borders are water (river or coast.) Its rulership is pretty benevolent and stable. We can imagine that the swamp acts as a kind of natural border with the domain`s neighbor to the south, preventing most really serious problems from easily slipping into the province. Swamps are not known for their population-friendly characteristics, since things like disease and unkind animals reside there in plenty. Plus, it`s hard to build in places where the mud sucks up buildings. However, the coast makes fishing a possibility and in combination with the river that means traffic can pass up and downstream from anywhere in the world, carrying goods that can be exploited, traded or taxed. The overall domain has its own military provinces what with the border with the Chimaeron but it`s relatively secure since that awnshegh is less expansive than others. All things considered, that province`s population numbers would probably be on the low end of what a population 4 province represents, but the advantages of the province`s political situation, location, terrain, and features make it more likely to be productive rather than densely populated.

Folks often have different ideas about how many actual people a population level represents, so I`ll not bother with actual numbers. My point is that whatever a population level is, there can certainly be a range within that level that we can assume to include a wide range of significant factors that illustrate not just a head count, but the ability of the population of a province to actually contribute.

Gary

[Rowan]

Mirviriam:

What if you just say, "The population levels of the birthright setting listed are for men capable of fighting only." Just like the roman surveys? Discussion over?

That's one explanation that would work better, yes. I think that creates the confusion of people wanting to somehow justify fielding half or more of that listed population on the battlefield (like later European Total War). I also think it leaves people who really are interested in knowing how many people live in the province and how many people you rule rather high and dry.

It also assumes a much larger population. So what's wrong with just providing some general measure of about what that population is? Like 10,000 people for each maximum terrain level in long-settled provinces?

According to most of the posters I've been reading...the power of the realms lies in their army mustering. Therefore, I called for preserving the power balance & not having to remake the game completely, but allowing you to insert the population levels you expect( # of units mustered TIMES ratio of people to soldiers supported ). That way all realms still create the same amount of units & the population matches what you expect.

What do the population numbers we've seen have to do with how many units you can raise in the game? They don't affect the game's mechanics at all, whether you say a province has a population of 1,000 or 100,000. The effect on gameplay is in how you describe things, how believable they are. That's where the historical view is far superior to the arbitrary and uninformed base population tables.

The important thing to note is that this historical view is already totally compatible with all the game mechanics in question. It's just a matter of how we're describing things, and what we say the population is (which actually has no effect on game play, per the game mechanics). So I don't see how you can have any concerns about this:

either redesign birthright totally: history, political geography & mechanics or work within the system already existing. I'm going at the game as if it was designed for ages 12 & up. The more selective you history buffs become in the rules and settings, the more elitist and less players we have.

Which means one of two things...accept the game is dead and will limp along till most of us hit 50 or become bored of eachother or design it to be played easily by as many people as possible in as many ways as they wish.

I am talking about working withing the system. I agree with keeping the system simple. In fact, in my own version of the game, it is quite a bit simpler than RAW or 3.x BRCS. But the descriptions are more historically accurate, more realistic, and less impeded by rules anomalies. This isn't about elitism or complexity or a total redesign of the system. It's about the most realistic description of the existing rules, or (in the case of warfare) minor/not appreciably more complex rules changes.

You still have to look in to which period you're going to use for your ratio...I'd actually recommend doing based on argicultural technology. Nothing later than Dark Ages? Pre the mass cotton movements.

Depending on when you place the so-called "dark ages," you might find yourself in the Medieval Warming Period with populations higher than you'll find again until the 18th century I favor 1500/1600s, as the setting has consistently spoken of Anuire, Brechtur, and Khinasi having Renaissance-level technology.

I tried searching on it when I came back this year...was there every any official dialogue about the designing of the game, methods of play encouraged, balance issues ... beyond keep it simple(ultimately the best advice but still)?

In the development of the 3.x playtest, I think so. I wasn't really around then. Some 4e discussion has gone on since, but we've got several personal versions of that going on.

I agree with your "3 levels" concept; I've been working on a system that is more scalable, intended to allow play at the intra-holding level to the traditional domain level to a greater Faction or Alliance level. These necessitate different levels of detail, which could actually be used at any level, but keep the time/effort overhead consistent if used in the appropriate level.

I plan on promoting my version of the system the good-old-fashioned way--through the marketplace of ideas. If it proves simple enough and elegant enough to be successful in PBEMs, it may get adopted and used as a major alternative version. If not, hopefully at least some of the concepts will prove useful to other people in their games.