mostly because the Russian AI can't deal with anything
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SoL impact on pop growth might not be historically correct?
- Thread starter Al-Khalidi
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Before they make to many adjustments to population growth they really need to help the major powers industrialize, make unresolving death spiral revolutions.. resolve and work on the 1900s. the Flu outbreaks are pretty devastating and I can imagine the AI cant handle the economic impact of them. Right now with how poor the AI does at developing it messes with pop growth quite a bit.
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Yes, the Russian AI will never move from traditionalism and serfdom because the landowner IG is very powerful there. So the country just stagnates. I imagine it will get country specific events in the future to give it some ability to do something other than join Qing's wars against the UK to set up the legendary fights between hundreds of thousands of Chinese vs. British on the Alaskan-Canadian Front.
Ah, I didn't play the US long enough to hit that point.
Yeah, they need to fix the revolution problem where revolutionary populations have high turmoil and create new revolutions from themselves and also when they take a majority of the army and generals but never deploy them to any fronts but have so many men in reserve that the original country doesn't dare attack on those fronts so they last forever.
As long as they have the right laws in place, they industrialize somewhat ok. Two main problems are that they don't advance laws very well and they use the profitability calculations shown in the game as a major portion of the weighting for what to build. They also overbuild their military so that when they change to more advanced military techs they bankrupt themselves. They also set ALL conscription centers to use field hospitals and advanced recon methods and love to raise all of their conscripts and completely destroy both their military strength by the goods shortages of opium, rubber, airplanes, etc. and also bankrupt themselves so badly that they decide to demolish all ports and universities and cripple their country forever.
For all peoples whining about multiculturalism emmigration is INCREDIBLY low, so the USA has zero chance. (and that's before the player passing multiculturalism.)
USA has low population mostly bcz they have pathethic sol and gdp compared to France and massive immigrations go to France instead, even though France might have less liberal laws. And those migrations are truly massive. In one of my games before 1900 France had like 4 millions of Brits and Americans.
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Probably a bigger issue that'll come with the Arable Land changes in 1.2. Free or cheap land was a massive driver of emigration out west and not just in the bursts which happen in game (there probably should be at least a slow trickle towards out of market states based off of some categories).
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After poking around details of pop growth rates... This is the real issue.
Or more specifically, it is that the AI for the peasant heavy, but less wealthy nations aren't investing in simple primary industries like farms and mines, and are being stuck with the majority of their population as peasants for most of the game.
Typically workers in factories, farms or mines are on an SoL in the 15-20 range. And SoL is the maximum birthrate zone, so countries that can move their peasants into factories (like France) shift the bulk of the population on the maximum birthrate.
Meanwhile countries like Russia have most of their population as peasants, who typically have SoL of <10. With child labour allowed, birth-rates hit zero at around Sol 8 or 9... so most of their population is stagnating.
But the AI for countries like Russia with massive peasant populations seem to try to invest in expensive textile mills and tooling workshop rather than cheap and cheerful wheat farms. It would be a much better AI strategy (and closer to historical) if they instead invested in primary industries... they would then shift their poor peasant populations into modestly wealthy (and highly fertile) farmers and labourers.
You can have a quick look at any basic farm labourer in Russia, Egypt, Qing etc, and see that they've got perfectly decent growth rates of 1.0% or so... but those countries just aren't changing enough subsistence farms to proper farms.
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The first number is from 1836, the second for 1936. The data is from Ourworldindata that uses estimations from Gapminder. I don’t know how good is the data, tbh. Is what I found with a quick search.
Edit. In any case I guess they use current borders for countries, but shouldn’t affect growth rate too much I think.
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The root historical data for ourworldindata and gapminder is from Angus Madison's research, which is the authoritative database of historic economic data (including population)... so I think it counts as reliable!
His database converts to historic borders. So for example the Russian Empire at the time of the 1897 census was record as 125,640,021 people, but that includes much of present day Ukraine, Belarus, Poland, Finland, Baltic States, Kazakhstan etc. The Maddison population estimate for the same year for present day borders is 63,201,856.
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So what are the impacts of child labour laws and education laws on birthrates?
Child Labour and lack of education should increase birthrates among relatively poor pops. Because a child who can work is an economic asset. While a child who is educated is a pure cost - and a bigger cost if the parents have to pay for education.
In short, poor POPs should have more children if children are allowed to work, and employment can be found. I think a child is more use in a Victorian-era factory or in a mine than in a field, of some limited use in services, and no use at all in anything requiring skill or training.
This should probably be modelled by Labourers having birth rate that is highest in conditions of limited wealth and low education - then Peasants, Farmers and Machinists.
Child Labour and lack of education should increase birthrates among relatively poor pops. Because a child who can work is an economic asset. While a child who is educated is a pure cost - and a bigger cost if the parents have to pay for education.
In short, poor POPs should have more children if children are allowed to work, and employment can be found. I think a child is more use in a Victorian-era factory or in a mine than in a field, of some limited use in services, and no use at all in anything requiring skill or training.
This should probably be modelled by Labourers having birth rate that is highest in conditions of limited wealth and low education - then Peasants, Farmers and Machinists.
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Just a thought on this. I think that birth control was barely a thing in the time period. So it’s not like people chose to have or not children based on economic reasons. What determined pop growth was, I think mostly child mortality that was related with disease and food availability. But it’s a thought and might be wrong.
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Those laws can actually be really impactful on growth rates, especially for poor pops... though the impact isn't immediately obvious... an example helps:
Take a SoL 11 pop. They have a default birth rate of approximately 4.6%, and a default death rate of approx 4.1%, for an overall growth rate of approx 0.5%. Take that exponential over 50 years and its 28% pop growth. Not good, but not stagnant.
But child labour adds a 5% malus to death rate. That changes the 4.1% death rate to 4.3%. That makes the overall birth rate 0.3%, and when you take that exponential over 50 years you've got 16% pop growth.
So that little 5% mortality malus roughly halves overall growth rates of poor pops. (Its not so impactful for wealthier pops, and even even more impactful for impoverished pops, so it is part of the reason why poor countries like Russia and Egypt have population stagnation).
I couldn't possibly comment on the relative value of a child in a mine vs a factory!
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In game I always use the best child labor (obligatory primary school) and best healthcare but with legal guardianship and devout pop growth bonus (maintained as long as possible) as early as I can. These laws indeed increase my pop growth significantly (child labor MUCH less than healthcare or devouts though) but this just makes it comparable to a nation that has higher SoL but little to none of these bonuses. That's another reason why I think that the current system should be fixed - SoL can't be single most important factor determining SoL AND optimal SoL level for good pop growth should be lower than it is now.
If the second is for 1936 and the numbers are given for countries in contemporary borders, it makes more sense. But such data isn't that much of use for victorian era countries.
Anyway, I'd say conclusion stays the same: historically there was no such direct correlation between SoL and pop growth as it is portrayed in vic3. This requires some fixing.
Absolutely agree with this one! While it sounds reasonable that having more money makes you CAPABLE to have more children it does not mean you are more LIKELY then. I'm quite surprised currently it's not like what was said during development: ideal SoL for pop growth would be enough food but not too much more. And indeed imo best way for pop growth increase should rather be reducing mortality - providing good food supply and preventing diseases.
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Birth control might not have been a big thing, but families (particularly mothers!) still made conscious choices about how many children to have.
It's well worth taking a look at this article - any passing devs you guys should take a look as well! It's absolutely packed with fascinating observations.
Parenthood, child-rearing and fertility in England, 1850–1914
Fertility declines across Europe and the Anglo-world have been explained as the result of reversals of intergenerational flows of wealth. According to this theory, the child was transformed from an economically-useful household asset to an emotionally-valued ...
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
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Having read this a bit more, I would like to suggest the following.Birth control might not have been a big thing, but families (particularly mothers!) still made conscious choices about how many children to have.
It's well worth taking a look at this article - any passing devs you guys should take a look as well! It's absolutely packed with fascinating observations.
Parenthood, child-rearing and fertility in England, 1850–1914
Fertility declines across Europe and the Anglo-world have been explained as the result of reversals of intergenerational flows of wealth. According to this theory, the child was transformed from an economically-useful household asset to an emotionally-valued ...
Fertility should be affected by the following factors.
1) Standard of Living impact on maternal health. Up to a certain SoL threshold (15?) there should be improvements in fertility to reflect better maternal and childhood health as POPs leave grinding poverty.
2) Health Institution impact on maternal health. The higher the level of Health Institution the better the fertility rate. Private Hospitals' effect should be more focused on wealthier POPs.
3) Child Labour effect on incentives. Permitting Child Labour should give an increase to fertility rates among Lower Class POPs.
4) Education Institution effect on incentives. The higher the Education institution, the worse the fertility rate, though this effect should be marginal.
5) Maternal life choices - Material impacts. Above a certain SoL threshold (20?) there should be a gradual decline in fertility, which should be greater when women are permitted to work. [NB: "Women in the workforce" is a weird law. Women were always in the workforce, one way or another! Also NB, this really affects earning power rather than reflecting actual standard of living).
6) Maternal life choices - Cultural impact. POPs with higher Literacy should have a lower Fertility rate, perhaps even more so after Feminism is invented.
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baseline birth and death rates should be drastically increased, increases in sol (including laws/institutions) first dramatically reduces death rates, before other factors and still higher sol will reduce birth rates (again including laws/institutions). Pop growth capping out at like 1,6% is ridiculous
Absolutely not. In all my games I've achieved wild population numbers far beyond what was achieved historically. Pop growth as a function of SoL is probably too powerful currently if anything. France currently has a population 0f 67 million, but I've had no trouble getting that number up to 100 million by 1936. Even without much immigration, the USA can easily achieve its population of 150 million in 1950.... by 1900, and I've even managed to hit the 80 million mark with the UK who even today only have 66 million. The AI just needs to learn how to actually build. They don't build gold mines for instance which would seriously help them balance their budgets and attract immigrants. The bizarre choice to make wages always increase even with peasants and unemployed in the state also directly causes the high SoL in colonies and draws immigrants away from the New World, further compounding issues. Make these changes, and the game would improve massively.
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