How Pops May Actually Make Sense

[ImphALPHA]

The pops and their bonuses really don't make any sense with the names they are given but I recently thought of how they may make sense. Think of citizens as rich city dwellers. The rich would study philosophy and other subjects since they had money and time to so that's why they provide research points. Think of freemen as poor and middle-class urban dwellers that provide manpower because I guess maybe it's easier to recruit more people in a city since the population is dense and easy to find. Think of tribesmen as rural people such as farmers provide a small amount of tax; I don't know why. They provide a small amount of manpower because it's harder to recruit a spread out rural population. Finally, think of slaves as simply slaves or cheap labor. Slaves were not all that common in early Roman days so that is why I said you can think of them simply as cheap laborers and not necessarily slaves. The pop system can make sense if you think of the pops in this way.

Some of the pops bonuses still make no sense but it helps with the most of the things. I hope this helps to make sense of the pops. If paradox doesn't actually change their names some mod can and if not just think of them in the way I described.

 

[cools0812]

or better: consider them as tax base, manpower and production units, becuz that's what they really are.

 

[Maxim Cherepanov]

or better: consider them as tax base, manpower and production units, becuz that's what they really are.

Pretty much this! Although it's wrong to call it a copy of the development system because we have POPS that provide only income tax, POPS that provide manpower and POPs that provide both.

The POP system tries to fit itself to all the nations at the same time and as a result, ends up being wrong for pretty much everyone. IMO a simple name change for the pop types (which will depend on nation/culture) will fix most of the issues people have with the system.

For example, Roman POPS will be:
Patricians - Imperator's Citizens, providing research and commerce
Plebeians - Imperator's Freeman, providing manpower
Proles - Imperator's Tribesman, providing manpower and tax income
Slaves - Imperator's Slaves, Providing tax income

And the Greeks will have POPS like this:
Metics - Imperator's Citizens
Upper Class - Imperator's Freeman
Freedmen - Imperator's Tribesman
Slaves - Imperator's Slaves

Of course, I just made that up from my head, you'll probably find some mistakes and inconsistencies but you get the general idea!

Either that or just distance the POP system from EU4's development system and closer to Vicky's actual POP system. Personally, I'm routing towards this solution. There should be more than 4 classes of POPS to allow more flexibility.

 

[mudcrabmerchant]

They just need to rename citizens/freemen to patrician/plebeian, and the general usage of those terms in the modern world due to their importance in ancient Rome means that they can be extended to every other culture too. However, if citizens really do equal the patrician class or nobles, as they say, pop promotion should work differently. Theoretically everyone in your country can be a citizen, but you cannot have a society made up entirely (or even more than a few %) of the upper class.

 

[Sabotage13]

Pretty much this! Although it's wrong to call it a copy of the development system because we have POPS that provide only income tax, POPS that provide manpower and POPs that provide both.

The POP system tries to fit itself to all the nations at the same time and as a result, ends up being wrong for pretty much everyone. IMO a simple name change for the pop types (which will depend on nation/culture) will fix most of the issues people have with the system.

For example, Roman POPS will be:
Patricians - Imperator's Citizens, providing research and commerce
Plebeians - Imperator's Freeman, providing manpower
Proles - Imperator's Tribesman, providing manpower and tax income
Slaves - Imperator's Slaves, Providing tax income

And the Greeks will have POPS like this:
Metics - Imperator's Citizens
Upper Class - Imperator's Freeman
Freedmen - Imperator's Tribesman
Slaves - Imperator's Slaves

Of course, I just made that up from my head, you'll probably find some mistakes and inconsistencies but you get the general idea!

Either that or just distance the POP system from EU4's development system and closer to Vicky's actual POP system. Personally, I'm routing towards this solution. There should be more than 4 classes of POPS to allow more flexibility.

There was a mod for Rome Total War 2 that split every faction's population into Nobility, Citizens, Lower Class, and Foreigners. I thought that was a pretty good general representation of most classical Mediterranean political systems. Obviously that same representation wouldn't have worked for the Paradox design.

 

[Captain Frakas]

Proles - Imperator's Tribesman, providing manpower and tax income

You mean proletarians, I presume, because proles are offspring... Proletarians are those who sadly have their offspring as sole value.

 

[The Shacks]

There was a mod for Rome Total War 2 that split every faction's population into Nobility, Citizens, Lower Class, and Foreigners. I thought that was a pretty good general representation of most classical Mediterranean political systems. Obviously that same representation wouldn't have worked for the Paradox design.

That was from Europa Barbarium iirc originally, Rome 1. But yeah proles are your freemen, tribals are your rural pops. ALthough technically by roman standards all prols are tribals no? Being that roman citizens are all grouped into tribes.

 

[Cheexsta]

Also, please do not call Citizens "Patricians" and Freemen "Plebeians".

Citizens and Freemen are supposed to represent wealth classes, however for most of this period, Patricians and Plebeians were not split by wealth but by heritage. There are plenty of examples of rich Plebeians and poor Patricians.

 

[Dalos]

It is development 2.0. Would love to see this in EU4.

I hoped for something more in Rome but... Still good enough for me.

 

[Vohen]

It is development 2.0. Would love to see this in EU4.

Indeed, it would be a huge improvement over that abstraction of tax/production/manpower in EU4, which doesn't have any representation in reality.
I suppose it also isn't technically wrong to call it pops, as it does represent population, but it's very far from what we know pops in their full realization so far from Vicky2.

That said, I'm not really bothered by the system itself, what does bother me is how PDX hyped it up.
Perhaps it would've been better to say that it "will have a population system", instead of flat out saying it will have pops (nevermind how they made that announcement at PDXCON), because that automatically made us think of Vicky2, when that's clearly not what they have in mind.

 

[Denkt]

Pops is short for population and have been used since Victoria. The reason why the word is tied to Victoria is that it is the game series most famous for using pops and maybe Victoria was the first game that used the word pop. The word pop do not specifically mean Victoria style population and the developers never said that they would have Victoria style population.

Compared to EU: Rome which Imperator: Rome should be most similar to you see quite some improvements when it comes to details as pops have now their own culture, religion and happiness which was before only tied to each province. Pops also determine goods production, building limits and can be moved non of which was in EU: Rome.

There are massive difference between Imperator: Rome pops and EUIV development, the main one is that you can not simply make a random backwater into an uber province because unlike development pops are not created with monarch points, they can only be manipulated. Yes in theory you could move pops into the random backwater but this may be extremely expensive and thus completely unpractical if not impossible.

Development also do not have culture, religion or happiness.

Population system is not as developed as in Victoria but that is because Victoria main focus is the pops, they drive pretty much everything in that game series. This is not the case in Imperator: Rome in which population is relegated to mainly an economical role and the game will have other things such as characters that drive other parts of the game.

 

[XavierDarius]

Also, please do not call Citizens "Patricians" and Freemen "Plebeians".

Citizens and Freemen are supposed to represent wealth classes, however for most of this period, Patricians and Plebeians were not split by wealth but by heritage. There are plenty of examples of rich Plebeians and poor Patricians.

No. Citizens are people with full political rights while Freemen are non-enslaved men. For most of Rome's history only the inhabitants of the city itself were citizens and anyone else was a freeman (given he isn't a slave). In 212 AD an edict was passed that gave all inhabitants of the Empire citizenship.

 

[The Shacks]

No. Citizens are people with full political rights while Freemen are non-enslaved men. For most of Rome's history only the inhabitants of the city itself were citizens and anyone else was a freeman (given he isn't a slave). In 212 AD an edict was passed that gave all inhabitants of the Empire citizenship.

Whilst i largerly agree with you I think its a bit disengenous to refer to the Socii wars as late in Roma's history. Non 'Romans' were enfranchised slowly, the game runs till the 2nd Triumvirate or so neh?

 

[Maxim Cherepanov]

Also, please do not call Citizens "Patricians" and Freemen "Plebeians".

Citizens and Freemen are supposed to represent wealth classes, however for most of this period, Patricians and Plebeians were not split by wealth but by heritage. There are plenty of examples of rich Plebeians and poor Patricians.

For the sake of the game the wealth class is less relevant than the social class and job in the society. At least in my opinion.

Personally I don't compare the real life freemen, citizens but the ones that are represented in game.

 

[The Shacks]

While there were plenty of exceptions to the rule you can (for the sake of arguement) class most obscenely wealthy Plebs and (all of the) Equites into the 'Citizen' class. But it would make more sense to me to view citizens as equites and patricians /Freemen as non citizen italics and later all the rest // tribesmen are plebs really, or rather the vast useless masses of citizens that dident do much but clammour for the grain dole and cast their votes in the plebecites.

 

[Cheexsta]

No. Citizens are people with full political rights while Freemen are non-enslaved men. For most of Rome's history only the inhabitants of the city itself were citizens and anyone else was a freeman (given he isn't a slave). In 212 AD an edict was passed that gave all inhabitants of the Empire citizenship.

Well, yeah. I refer to "Citizens" and "Freemen" in the context of the Imperator: Rome, which we've already been shown. "Citizens" being the type of pop that generates research points and trade, "Freemen" being the type of pop that generates manpower.

You are obviously correct, but missed my point entirely.

 

[icedt729]

In a perfect world, pops would have both a political rank (slave, freeman or citizen) and an economic rank (proletarian, smallholder or elite), and both attributes would influence their output and behavior. With the two getting rolled together there's really no way to get the terminology exactly right.

 

[XavierDarius]

Well, yeah. I refer to "Citizens" and "Freemen" in the context of the Imperator: Rome, which we've already been shown. "Citizens" being the type of pop that generates research points and trade, "Freemen" being the type of pop that generates manpower.

You are obviously correct, but missed my point entirely.

The game is trying to reconcile between Rome and other societies, and IMO does a pretty good job. Truthfully, Plebs were for a long time the vast majority of legionnaires in the Roman army, which is why the Patricians even decided to give them political rights.

 

[Guedes]

On victoria 2, the term (and actual concept, for that matter) "POP" makes sense because on that game you can have a gazillion of different political ideologies besides the usual gazillion of different cultures on top of the different classes.

So, if you had 2 groups of people on the same country who made the same "job" (i.e. same classes of citizens), lets say soldiers, from the same culture, but with different ideologies, than it made sense to have 2 different POPs of soldiers, say one socialist german soldier POP and another facist german soldier POP.

For this game (I:R), it seems that pops are just units really, as already stated.

 

[Eldoran]

I cant see your problem. Fpr me it totally makes sense. I can even remember it. Citiziens research freemen manpower tribes a bit tax and man and slaves tax. See its easy...well we can argue what citizens or freeman represent, that means what their rl counterpart may be but thats moot. The system has to work for all nations not only rome and its clear and somewhat plausible even for rome. So it does make sense.
You being unable to make sense for yourself speaks more about you than the game. Stop whinning and either wait until there is actually st to whine about not just dd or go elsewhere.