Population matters!

[unmerged(405910)]

Also, population could provide a handy "force limit". By recruiting from the population, you decrease the number of workers, so your income decreases. It will be up to the player to find a balance - the larger your army, the more maintenance you will pay AND you will also get less income due to a smaller number of workers.

This would be very interesting if combined with the ideas in the other thread about if the armies consist of standing professionals or raised levies. If you rely on levies your regular income would be greater, but long wars will be very costly. Professional soldiers would equal a more even budget instead.

 

[anubisfike]

As far as I know the general productivity, wealth and population of a particular province is supposed to be reflected by the base tax. If the base tax would be more fluid, for example increasing similarly to how the population of the city increases, or decreasing in the same manner when enemy armies are present or because of events or temporary modifiers (ex. droughts, famines), that could do a much better job of representing population and wealth (or as someone else pointed out earlier, urbanization and infrastructure).

 

[Autonomous]

I don't know what information exists of the population breakdown of, say, the Indonesian islands in the year 1500.

About 10.7 million total (close to Italy, for comparison), most of which would be concentrated in Sumatra (and in that, mostly in the west, in the uplands of the Barisan Mountains) and especially Java (eastern Java). I'm not sure what that would translate to in terms of city populations, but taking a stab at it; urbanisation rates in this period were something like 20-30% in settled areas, maybe a little less early on. The East was more developed, but the staple crop was rice, which AFAIK had a lower yield per unit labour. Indonesia is also heavily jungled, which I suspect would further depress urbanisation rates...? And, of course, they're island nations; plentiful cheap protein in the sea... ah, screw it. Say 20% for simplicity's sake.

Breakdowns by ethnicity and religion... probably impossible to find, yes.

 

[Grubnessul]

Population can easily be abstracted to production and manpower. They should interact a bit though.

 

[Calahir]

Population system from Viki2 is the best that Paradox has ever created. It should be implemented to EU4. I played the demo of CK2 and decided not to buy the game because of lack of the pop system. After I played Viki2 I am unable to play any other EU-like game without this pop system. It seems that EU4 won't be worth my money like CK2.

 

[WeissRaben]

Population system from Viki2 is the best that Paradox has ever created. It should be implemented to EU4. I played the demo of CK2 and decided not to buy the game because of lack of the pop system. After I played Viki2 I am unable to play any other EU-like game without this pop system. It seems that EU4 won't be worth my money like CK2.

You will be disappointed, then. They already said that POPs are and will remain Victoria's shtick - mainly because there is no way to get population numbers correct enough and broken down correctly enough to hold a POP system before 1800.

 

[Immortal Impi]

The population system would be lovely. In addition to it making wars far more interesting and costly, areas could be represented in terms of power in trade and commerce beyond simply having higher tech. Urban density could be a big multiplier of wealth and trade of that area, while large, agricultural areas would have trouble keeping pace and staying ahead.

It can be more abstract, of course, since many areas don't have concrete populations numbers before app. 1800, but it would revolutionize much of the gameplay.

 

[king of AR]

I hope population change in a territory is a bit more dynamic ,for instance say you have 500,000 dutch in territory A ,while in territory B you have 50,000 danish , but suppose a disease breaks out in the danish section and cuts the population in half , the dutch who are tired of living in the crowded territory may move to the much emptier territory and convert the primary culture to dutch.

 

[king of AR]

And not just well we all decided to be dutch now .

 

[Nunn45]

I would like to see population numbers matter more but nothing overly complex, maybe having casualties in war having an effect on it for example....big costly and bloody wars could potentialy drop the population a lot.

 

[grull]

I think that the previously stated idea regard the "Force Limit" theory would be rather intressting. That would make the limit more dynamic, instead of so strict with a number of brigades.

 

[knul]

Having production and military manpower use interact is not very historic, IMO. Armies were quite small relative to population. I've never read or heard of nations getting into economic trouble because of their armies depriving the economy of manpower: from my knowledge that is strictly a 19th-20th century thing.

Especially in the first half of the time period, money (or credit) was really the limiting factor of armies. It's not for nothing that the whole process of centralizing states and the rise of bureaucracies is in part attributed to the military revolution by some historians.

 

[BootOnFace]

My instructor gave me a B on my final for coming to that conclusion.

 

[grull]

My instructor gave me a B on my final for coming to that conclusion.

As in college?

 

[panda.zip]

One option could be substract population from your provinces everytime the manpower pool gets replenished, also make the population have more impact in economy(porducion income maybe)

 

[grull]

One option could be substract population from your provinces everytime the manpower pool gets replenished, also make the popolation have more impact in economy(porducion income maybe)

That, I think, is the most plausible and interesting proposal yet!

 

[Fawr]

Since, I've never played EU3:Rome would you mind explaining how population was modeled there?

Basically each province had a certain number of manpower points of slaves, freemen and nobles. Slaves gave you gold, freemen gave you manpower and nobles did research. Your people slowly moved up the tiers, so slaves turned into freemen, and freemen became nobles. Manpower was a pressing concern, and it looked like they took the EU3 system of manpower replenishing in 2-3 years and changed that to 20-30 years! A whole generation of young men was what maxiumum manpower represented, and if all of them die then you only get a few % of them back each year. Your population slowly grew naturally, but your pop also increased your pop size by enslaving armies after a victory.

I'd see urban and rural as the two key classes for EU3.

I don't know what information exists of the population breakdown of, say, the Indonesian islands in the year 1500.

From memory EU3:Rome just had population points (and from memory didn't say how those translated into real people), so as long as the overall picture is about right you don't need exact figures. Certainly if they could do that for Rome I can't see why EU4 is too hard.

Having production and military manpower use interact is not very historic, IMO. Armies were quite small relative to population. I've never read or heard of nations getting into economic trouble because of their armies depriving the economy of manpower: from my knowledge that is strictly a 19th-20th century thing.

Some of the accounts of the Roman wars certainly have manpower being a real issue. Manpower shortages was one of the reasons the Gracchi were interested in land reform, and it was also the driver behind the reforms that Marius did to the Roman army in the 2nd Century BC! In the EU timeframe you could also look at times like the 30 years war, where the economic effects of armies, battles and occupation had serious economic effects (or where serious economic effects sapped the manpower you could recruit).

 

[knul]

Some of the accounts of the Roman wars certainly have manpower being a real issue. Manpower shortages was one of the reasons the Gracchi were interested in land reform, and it was also the driver behind the reforms that Marius did to the Roman army in the 2nd Century BC! In the EU timeframe you could also look at times like the 30 years war, where the economic effects of armies, battles and occupation had serious economic effects (or where serious economic effects sapped the manpower you could recruit).

It's true that in Roman Republican times, manpower was an issue, but that was more than 1500 years before the EU3 period.

I've recently read a book on the Thirty Years War and not once was it mentioned that a ruler got into military problems because there weren't enough recruitable men available. It does mention, time and time again, about state bankrupcies, armies deserting because of late pay and other monetary issues. While it's true that the TYW did devastate Germany and of course had serious economic repurcussions, I'm not convinced that this means that state armies are restricted by the number of recruiteable men within the borders (i.e. manpower).

I would like to see evidence that during the Early Modern Period (before the Revolutionary Wars), nations got into military trouble because they lacked manpower or that extensive military recruitment let to economic problems. If it did happen, then of course I would like to see it incorporated into EU4. But to my knowledge, this whole manpower or "recruitment denies the economy its workpower" issue isn't historical plausible for most of the Early Modern Period.

 

[polskaGOLA]

I hope population change in a territory is a bit more dynamic ,for instance say you have 500,000 dutch in territory A ,while in territory B you have 50,000 danish , but suppose a disease breaks out in the danish section and cuts the population in half , the dutch who are tired of living in the crowded territory may move to the much emptier territory and convert the primary culture to dutch.

BTW This is basically what happened in Lusatia. The Slavic Sorbian populations had a huge famine sometime in the 1500's and were depopulated and consequently the Saxons moved in.

 

[Tornadoli]

It's true that in Roman Republican times, manpower was an issue, but that was more than 1500 years before the EU3 period.

I've recently read a book on the Thirty Years War and not once was it mentioned that a ruler got into military problems because there weren't enough recruitable men available. It does mention, time and time again, about state bankrupcies, armies deserting because of late pay and other monetary issues. While it's true that the TYW did devastate Germany and of course had serious economic repurcussions, I'm not convinced that this means that state armies are restricted by the number of recruiteable men within the borders (i.e. manpower).

I would like to see evidence that during the Early Modern Period (before the Revolutionary Wars), nations got into military trouble because they lacked manpower or that extensive military recruitment let to economic problems. If it did happen, then of course I would like to see it incorporated into EU4. But to my knowledge, this whole manpower or "recruitment denies the economy its workpower" issue isn't historical plausible for most of the Early Modern Period.

But it WOULD if they had recruited as large armies as people often do in EU3. If recruiting too many soldiers would drain the population and hence cause economic difficulties, people might just settle for army sizes more in line with history, hence not disrupting the economy.