Again I believe the Roman skirmishers would be levied from Roman freemen pops, because I dont think the citizens represent all the spectre of population with Roman citizenship
I mostly agree with this. When e.g. Rome conquers tribesmen, they persist for a while until they are promoted one by one to freemen. Promotion in this case means a slow integration of tribals to the producing economy of Rome.
From the discussion in this thread, there seems to be two parts to the discussion.
1) what do the pops mechanically represent in the game
2) what should the pops represent
Number 1) is going to change slightly with 2.0 when they add levies. There might be other changes as well that we don't yet know about.
Number 2) really depends on the amount of realism people expect in the game, and if they see the pops as social classes, wealth classes, or economic roles (by economic roles I mean what job they do)
Addressing Number 1, I think that mechanically the pop classes represent the following currently
Slaves) well, slaves. They do manually labour
Freemen) They are labourers that do not own their own land or businesses. In settlements they are tenant farmers, in cities they are hired labour
Citizens) they are self employed urban residents (shop owners, craftsmen, etc.)
Nobles) wealthy landholders, own slaves and hire freemen. Could also be wealthy merchants
Tribesmen) they are kind of special. I have come to agree with other posters in this thread that they represent people who are used to a lifestyle free of state interference. They would live in relatively self-sufficient small communities and would pay nominal homage to their overlord. (Without overhauling tribes, there isn't much sense in changing them just yet)
Despite the original naming used, I don't think citizens are meant to actually be citizens (in the Roman sense). Also Nobles are a wealth class and not necessarily just patricians (in Rome's case).
The current system seems to be a mix of representing the economic role (job) of the pop and the wealth of the pop.
Nobles are both a role (landowner) and a wealth class, but citizen seems to be a role while slave and freemen are wealth classes. With the changes to the levy system, this becomes problematic, because most levy systems were based on wealth classes, but we are missing some important pops that aren't represented currently when we have this strange mix. The most important pop type missing is the small landowner who works their own land (this is what the majority of the Roman levy was made up of, even velites owned their own land).
Now in my opinion, there are two routes you could go to fill in the missing pops.
The simplest is to make all pops represent wealth classes. Everyone except citizens already fits this mould. Citizens would keep their current status as wealthy urban dwellers (craftsmen, etc.) but would now also represent small landholders. As a result, citizens would have to also be present in settlements. This would work for the levy system, although in this case freemen should no longer get levied. If the developers decide to expand the economic simulation in the future, it would make it difficult to model the dual roles of citizens as rural food producers and urban craftsmen though. One simple way would be simply to have citizens in cities represent craftsmen and citizens in settlements represent small landholders (depends how, and if, they revamp the resource system)
The other option is to vastly expand the number of pop types and have all pop types represent the economic role of the pop. For example, freemen and citizens would both be divided into a rural and urban pop. In this case though, separate population caps would be needed for rural and Urban pops in cities. It would also only make sense to go this route if they also revamp the economic system, and it wouldn't really work with the integrated culture system either.
Personally, I think having pops represent wealth classes is the best option. It makes the pops make sense and fit in with the current system, without making it too complicated. The main thing I would change would be to have citizens, freemen and slaves in settlements produce food.
Personally I would also like to see a revamp of the trade system. All settlements should only produce rural goods, and all cities should only produce urban goods. Freemen should also contribute to the resource production, and it would be neat if citizens in cities could produce a fractional percentage of random goods (like artisans in vic2? Never played Vic2, so not really sure how they work).
Edit: Just want to say, I would love a full on trade system with realistic production of goods, but I don't think it is realistic to expect something so complicated to ever be stable unless it was the heart of the game.
Last edited:
- 3