Why no pop system for CK3?

[ray243]

Slightly similar to the other thread, but I figured the discussion is different enough that we should have a dedicated thread to discuss the pop system in CK3. Is there a reason why we didn't get a pop system in CK2, and is there any news from the devs about a pop system in CK3? If there isn't, has they given an explanation as to why they do not wish to implement a pop system for CK3?

 

[Blackwhitecavias]

Because a pop system would not make sense for most of the time period (there weren't that many big population movements, (taxable) economic output was generally not directly related to the population size and the size of armies was also not directly related to population size) and game systems.

 

[ray243]

Because a pop system would not make sense for most of the time period (there weren't that many big population movements, (taxable) economic output was generally not directly related to the population size and the size of armies was also not directly related to population size) and game systems.

Wait what? Taxable economic output was tied to population size because the bulk of economic wealth for most places in the pre-modern period comes from agriculture. Size of armies is also tied to population size, as you are raising armies directly from your population via levies.

As for big population movement, what about the movement of population from the North down to the South? The movement of the vikings in establishing new colonies and increase in population in most places in the world?

 

[ArVass]

No big population movements? Just think of the myriads of nomads!

 

[Kazanov]

Bolghars, Turkic peoples, Islam, Frankish/Norman/Crusaders, Magyars, "Northern Iberians"...maybe im forgetting other groups that migrated in this time period, but there are movements of people.

 

[ray243]

No big population movements? Just think of the myriads of nomads!

Or the Normans! The Turks. The Mongols. The Vikings.

 

[Tschobo]

I am not going the route of saying that there are no population movements in this Era. There were enough in this time but I would say it could make CK3 more complicated than the devs want it to be in more than one way. First of all how to compare the densely populated regions of the ERE, Cairo and other cities to the sparsely realms in Scandinavia, modern day Russia (pretty much all of Scandinavia, Russia and even the Slavic provinces would have 1 or 2 pops compared to Constantinople with 50 or more) and the steppes. How to handle the nomadic people and the clans. In CK you cannot have colonizable territory and there is also the issue that while the areas were sparsely populated, the nomads were moving around in the steppes and then settled for some time, and then moved around for a while, how do you catch up that. So nomads would be an even bigger problem in CK3 than in other games. The importance there is what to tie into the pop system and how can it be sustainable.

I would say that they would try to implement a pop-system in EU5 before they are going to pull it of in CK3 as they are going to implement the more to EU4 similar development-route, which is not exactly what a pop-system is, but for a game like CK3 sufficient.

 

[Kainser]

Because the focus of the game is on other areas. You might as well ask "why does HOI not have family trees?" or "why does Victoria not simulate Queen Victoria's health and fertility?".

Paradox simply thinks there are more important things to focus on in the CK series.

 

[Farfour]

Because a pop system would not make sense for most of the time period (there weren't that many big population movements, (taxable) economic output was generally not directly related to the population size and the size of armies was also not directly related to population size) and game systems.

Not necessarily. What do you think lords do when they have too many serfs to manage? They free them. German, Italian, and French peasants are known to have migrated to Eastern Europe and other "frontier" regions of (European) Christendom in Iberia and for a time the Holy Land. Heck, the German eastward migration happened during this period.

Taxes would be levied and come in the form of tolls, duties, customs, etc. Bridge tolls, market fees, and imports, for example.

Obviously, this would add another layer to the game, so I'm not expecting it in any form at all.

 

[LordofLight]

Really just a basic population number fits the game a lot more than pops. And even then not for much?

Land was a bigger focus for feudal lords than pops. If you have land you have income after all. Sure you need people to work it, but a POP system is a bit overkill and doesn't fit the theme of the setting.

I'm not entirely sure what a POP system would add to CK3, just... really detract from the RP and the whole dynasty gameplay? You're managing a dynasty a lot more than a "nation".

 

[mudcrabmerchant]

Because a pop system would not make sense for most of the time period (there weren't that many big population movements, (taxable) economic output was generally not directly related to the population size and the size of armies was also not directly related to population size) and game systems.

Pop systems make sense for all periods, because demographics matter for society and economy and government in literally all times and places. A country is its people, an economy is driven by people, and a government's resources are either people or derived from the people.

Government, cultural, religious, and other modifiers should greatly affect things, but the population is the foundation of the economy and military. We can't even speak sensibly of those modifiers, or start to model them in an engaging and plausible way, unless we have some sense of the base that they are operating on, and that base is population. In agrarian economies (read: every economy in this period), theoretical taxable income is largely a function of population (big cities and trade centers can complicate this, which is why dedicated urbanization and trade mechanics are necessary), as is theoretical maximum manpower (duh).

And this isn't even getting into how Malthusian dynamics can fundamentally affect the economy and the stability of society. What happens when your peasants run out of arable land for their second sons to cultivate? What happens when there start being too many people for the land to sustain? How does spiraling inequality affect the commoners and the nobility and the state? How interesting could all of that be to experience and manage as a nobleman or ruler?

The biggest weakness of CKIII will be how it completely ignores meaningful population mechanics, because ignoring that is a critical weakness for any historical grand strategy game. Even one focused on roleplaying, because our experience roleplaying as a ruler is enhanced by having to deal with the problems and dynamics that real life rulers had to deal with.

 

[Farfour]

Really just a basic population number fits the game a lot more than pops. And even then not for much?

Land was a bigger focus for feudal lords than pops. If you have land you have income after all. Sure you need people to work it, but a POP system is a bit overkill and doesn't fit the theme of the setting.

Land would only be valuable if you had people to work it. Without those people, you have no serfdom, no feudalism, little need for manorialism (since the nobility/aristocracy is miniscule compared to a vast majority of the population), and thus no game made centuries later depicting any of it. Having people to work the land was so important, you had tenant-farmers and free peasants drawn into serfdom to guarantee a source of labor.

 

[LordofLight]

While a POP system makes sense for all periods does a POP system make sense for all games?

CK3 has more of an RPG and Dynasty focus, and even the management of your realm boils down to interacting with other nobles. If anything you could say POP management is done by some lower ranking NPCs rather than your character. It would really only detract from the main focus of the game?

I mean don't get me wrong I like POPs. But I cant really see what it would add to the game. And this is coming from someone who prefers super heavy simulations and thinks Dwarf Fortress doesn't go far enough. A character in the position of ours, in the case of a monarch or ruler of somekind, mostly delegates that kind of stuff.

Land would only be valuable if you had people to work it.

Obvious enough, hence why I said a population number fits better than POPs.

EDIT:
Look at Dev Diary #0 - The Vision. How do POPs fit into that?

 

[Farfour]

a population number fits better than POPs.

This doesn't cover those outside of serfdom, or areas where serfdom doesn't exist (most of the world). This is just peasant rabble levies doing something when not raised from garrisons. If the economy(, taxation, and trade) is ever fleshed out, you have to go beyond that. The mercantile class would be responsible for most long-distance trade, while skilled artisans and craftsmen would sell their wares or barter in cities and towns.

Again, taxation would be levied on economic activity since you can't really tax most of the population in feudal society.

CK3 has more of an RPG and Dynasty focus, and even the management of your realm boils down to interacting with other nobles. If anything you could say POP management is done by some lower ranking NPCs rather than your character. It would really only detract from the main focus of the game?

The main focus of the game is managing your realm and expanding. RPG and Dynasties is flavor that influences how you go about doing it. Management boils down to central bureaucracy, even if rudimentary, it's who has authority and jurisdiction over the rights to govern territory that matters.

 

[LordofLight]

All I can really say to that is it sounds great for a medieval sim. But that sort of medieval sim seems like a completely different game from CK3? That level of economic detail has never been a focus of CK2 heck its economic detail is incredibly limited. There aren't even trade goods.

This sort of thing you want, while cool, fits in more with... Vic2? And as much as I do think it's a masterpiece of a game, it looks boring. But everyone has their own tastes.

Unless all you want different POP types to be responsible for is... just tax? In which case it seems rather overkill for the purpose at least to me.

Going by the 4 pillars of vision that they have: Character Focus, Player Freedom and Progression, Player Stories, Approachability
The thing you describe falls into none of those. While all the features they've shown off seem to feed directly into that.

Honestly a strong vision and focus for the game is great, I:R has had a critical lack of it. And hey it has POPs. I'm not sure what they add to the game though as due to having so little detail and little time put into them they are... kind of pointless.

 

[ray243]

While a POP system makes sense for all periods does a POP system make sense for all games?

CK3 has more of an RPG and Dynasty focus, and even the management of your realm boils down to interacting with other nobles. If anything you could say POP management is done by some lower ranking NPCs rather than your character. It would really only detract from the main focus of the game?

I mean don't get me wrong I like POPs. But I cant really see what it would add to the game. And this is coming from someone who prefers super heavy simulations and thinks Dwarf Fortress doesn't go far enough. A character in the position of ours, in the case of a monarch or ruler of somekind, mostly delegates that kind of stuff.

Obvious enough, hence why I said a population number fits better than POPs.

EDIT:
Look at Dev Diary #0 - The Vision. How do POPs fit into that?

It affects your productivity of your land and your ability to muster troops. It also affects the overall interaction with your nobles. You can have a smaller land, but if your land has more people than other counties, you are in a stronger position. And if you as the ruler manage to break hold of the feudal nobility control over the population, you can radically reshape your realm into something more centralised like an empire.

 

[Farfour]

"CK is not a medieval sim" seems to be half of the playerbase.

Which is... unfortunate. You can't properly represent the strength of a ruler without representing a variety of intertwining mechanisms outside of warfare. Medieval Europe was not just about warfare, and it was in fact more relevant to apply the rule of law (and attack heathens, but that's a different case, we're talking about Christendom).

To see people so averse to the notion of this makes me speechless. The goal doesn't always need to be world conquest, screenshot, post to Reddit.

(Months later, and this is still bewildering.)

 

[ray243]

All I can really say to that is it sounds great for a medieval sim. But that sort of medieval sim seems like a completely different game from CK3? That level of economic detail has never been a focus of CK2 heck its economic detail is incredibly limited. There aren't even trade goods.

This sort of thing you want, while cool, fits in more with... Vic2? And as much as I do think it's a masterpiece of a game, it looks boring. But everyone has their own tastes.

Unless all you want different POP types to be responsible for is... just tax? In which case it seems rather overkill for the purpose at least to me.

Going by the 4 pillars of vision that they have: Character Focus, Player Freedom and Progression, Player Stories, Approachability
The thing you describe falls into none of those. While all the features they've shown off seem to feed directly into that.

Honestly a strong vision and focus for the game is great, I:R has had a critical lack of it. And hey it has POPs. I'm not sure what they add to the game though as due to having so little detail and little time put into them they are... kind of pointless.

You don't have to have a detailed pop system. Just one that represent the importance of having a big population in the middle ages. You shouldn't just want more land and nobles under you. You want land with people and nobles with a large population under you. You want to gain access to counties with a massive population and agriculture base, because it allows you to do a lot more things.

Have spare manpower? Well you can build bigger churches! You can build bigger walls and castles!

 

[Farfour]

EDIT:
Look at Dev Diary #0 - The Vision. How do POPs fit into that?

"Crusader Kings III should be user friendly without compromising its general level of complexity and historical flavor."

 

[LordofLight]

The main focus of the game is managing your realm and expanding. RPG and Dynasties is flavor that influences how you go about doing it. Management boils down to central bureaucracy, even if rudimentary, it's who has authority and jurisdiction over the rights to govern territory that matters.

See I can't agree with this because in their own post about the primary goals and vision of the game, they never even mention the word realm. But they do speak about dynasties. If anything its the opposite of what you said.

RPG and Dynasty aspects of the game are the main focus and managing your realm and expanding are the flavour.

The main design goals with Crusader Kings III were:

• Character Focus: Crusader Kings is clearly and unequivocally about individual characters, unlike our other games. This makes CK most suited for memorable emergent stories, and we wanted to bring characters into all important gameplay mechanics (where possible.)
• Player Freedom and Progression: We want to cater to all player fantasies we can reasonably accommodate, allowing players to shape their ruler, heirs, dynasty and even religion to their liking - though there should of course be appropriate challenges to overcome.
• Player Stories: All events and scripted content should feel relevant, impactful and immersive in relation to the underlying simulation. That way, players will perceive and remember stories - their own stories, not the developers’ stories.
• Approachability: Crusader Kings III should be user friendly without compromising its general level of complexity and historical flavor. It’s nice if it’s easier to get into, but more than that, it should be clear what everything in the game is, what you might want to be doing, and how to go about it.

"CK is not a medieval sim" seems to be half of the playerbase.

It is sad. But at the same time the reason it got so popular was the sheer insanity of interaction between characters. Which was massively aided by the sim aspects in the background.

It's why I bought CK2. (Well I bought CK2 because Elder Kings. And that's it.) And most the folk I watch play or talk about it see this as the primary appeal of the game. Heck I wonder how many people play CK2 because of Sseth. The yoda death sound on the steam workshop is thanks to that. Which probably says a lot about how much they care for simulation.

Its no surprise a huge part of the CK playerbase doesn't care for simulation. They didn't come to Ck with that expectation.

Just one that represent the importance of having a big population in the middle ages

See I don't disagree with this. Because personally I do think that for example a super costly war in terms of manpower should result in you being... in kind of a bad place. It would even drastically effect your ability to fight further wars due to having less people you can throw into the meat grinder. It does add a good amount of depth.

Even adds some strategy like "Should I go to war against this huge kingdom? I know I can win, but many people will die. Which means I'll have less people to make tax money. Maybe I should hire mercs to die for me? Costly now but I wont lose tax payers."

But I also think just a general population number covers that well enough as an abstraction. Without the need for POPs.

"Crusader Kings III should be user friendly without compromising its general level of complexity and historical flavor."

The level of complexity you speak of was never in CK2 to begin with.