Fixing Demographics for GURPS BANESTORM

[DrTemp]

Originally Posted by hal

[...]
Part of the problem with today's "poor" countries being compared with medieval populations stems from what I fondly refer to as "The Germ Theory". Something as simple as washing yourself before delivering a baby has profound effects on the survival rates of not only the baby, but the mother as well.

That theory is available on Yrth, too.

[hal]

So the trick then is to determine what elements are available in Yrth that modify it from being a Strictly TL 3 society. Medical knowledge that doesn't require a supporting tech base would be one thing (ie, stuff that doesn't rely upon medicine production etc). Might even be more like TL 4 or even 5?

Farming methods?

Warfare theory?

What exactly is it that the ministry of serendipty (or what ever it is called) is suppressing knowledge wise anyhow?

[Ludek]

Originally Posted by hal

You may be correct in that assumption. Problem is? What do you think would happen if instead of taking 1 in 6 population from across the board, you took the bulk of it from the most productive segment of society?

You don't take ehem all at once .. it would hapen withing generation or
more. And if you assuem steady (but lower than initial wave) flow
of colonists you will need lowerr initial population base.

Originally Posted by hal

Part of the problem with today's "poor" countries being compared with medieval populations stems from what I fondly refer to as "The Germ Theory". Something as simple as washing yourself before delivering a baby has profound effects on the survival rates of not only the baby, but the mother as well. Knowing that contaminated water is responsible for cholera and a host of other problems saves lives there as well. While these third world nations are not up to OUR standards of living - just the knowledge alone helps.

Yes it helps a lot but you have new world with it's own diseases that are
waiting to jump on humans and many otehr races with it's own diseases.
Considering that some of them live really closly wth humans their diseases will
jump on humans (and human diseases on them). Since tehy are variation on
homo sampiens form. I do not think of tehm as completly diffrent races just diffrent path o evolution, so basing on this they are much closer to humans than apes.

Originally Posted by hal

What the peasants are left with after they toil on their 15 acres of land, does leave them enough to handle their own personal requirements. The rest get consumed by the Lord or a portion shipped off to the nearby cities/towns. I can try and dig up my notes on consumption rates required by an individual to survive for a year (or you may have it yourself). The assumptions given in the book for a 15 acre holding - two field rotation system assumed I think 1 acre of peas, maybe 2 acres of wheat, and 4 of barley. Harvest yields of 10 bushels for peas, 16 bushels for wheat, and 64 bushels of barley was meant to feed a family of 5. Remove 3 bushels of peas, 4 of wheat, and 16 of barley for seedstock and that was what was left. Some of the additional income stems from the use of cattle on what lay fallow.

It's about Yrth farminig practices in 1800 AD? tehy certainly benefited form
knoledge form Earh(but they would be lagginig by 100-200 yeras) .. that
should increase their performance. And sine we are speakinig of Yrth where
tehre is very low poplation desinty on average you could assuem that
peasants could benefit from much better soil than, those stuck on our
Earth. Those two factors sugest beter harvest yeald than numbers given by
you.

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by Ludek

Yes it helps a lot but you have new world with it's own diseases that are
waiting to jump on humans and many otehr races with it's own diseases.
Considering that some of them live really closly wth humans their diseases will
jump on humans (and human diseases on them). Since tehy are variation on
homo sampiens form. I do not think of tehm as completly diffrent races just diffrent path o evolution, so basing on this they are much closer to humans than apes.

The races/species that can interbreed with humans are elves and orcs. Neither was massively urbanised, so neither could act as a breeding pool the way humans could (and in our current model, did). The species that live close to humans are goblins, halflings and kobolds. Of those, only goblins would seem to have been heavily urbanised 'at home'. Therefore the only source of 'pre-prepared' epidemic disease would be the goblins, and the need to cross a strong species boundry would slow that up (both ways).

[hal]

I'm taking this from the other thread Rupert was talking in and responding, as this is the thread that talks of demographical fixes ;)

Originally Posted by Rupert

The orcs breed like flies, and the elves mostly weren't that serious. That's my take on it anyway - that most of the elves had better things to do and only actually hunted orcs after some outrage that affected them personally. The dark elves were a very small fanatic minority that had a bee in their bonnet about something that just wasn't that important to almost everyone. that's my take, anyway, and I think it doesn't contradict Banestorm. It doesn't matter much to my game right now, as it's set (by popular request) on Araterre.

There is one question I'd have asked about the orcs breeding like flies - and the question is "what effect do you think this would have?" My take on the problem is that of land management. If you assume a 1 person per square mile density for hunter/gatherers, the only way orcs can increase in population is to increase the land they hold. Problem is, if you're the tribe whose lands are surrounded by other tribal lands, your excess population needs to push onto your neighbor's claimed lands or you have to migrate through their lands to find unoccupied hunting ranges. I can also see tribes not co-operating and even fighting each other from time to time - but never in a really LETHAL manner because the warriors of a tribe are also the hunters (ie, food providers) for the tribe. Just enough to bleed off the excess population, rarely enough to cause problems unless we're talking about a larger population displacing a smaller one.

Originally Posted by Rupert

I'd actually raise that of Megalos. I put together a very rough composite of the three maps (Caithness, West Megalos, East Megalos), and Megalos look to be about 4-6 times Caithness' area. For Megalos to have the power it's supposed to it really needs a higher population density than Caithness has (and a higher one in absolute terms).

I concur. Megalan population needs to be upgraded to match the history. Caithness occupies a territory comparable to that of France. Assuming similar conditions to France (not always a valid assumption to make!), France sustained between 6 to 14 million of its own population. If Megalos is 4 to 6 times larger - conceivably, it would need a population of roughly 56 Million to achieve a population density of about 60 people per square mile.

Originally Posted by Rupert

I forget what you said Caithness' population density was but I get roughly 10/mile^2 (ignoring the Great Forest), which halving the scale would make 40/mile^2. I could believe the latter of Caithness, but not of Megalos. Therefore, I say: Halve the scale, and double Megalos' population. This would probably require also doubling at least Al-Wazif's and Cardiel's as well, and probably Sahud's and Araterre's as well. This emphases Al-Haz's poor land compared to its neighbours, and as the Nomad Lands and Orclands are (very roughly) Caithness' size, leaving their populations as they are seems not unreasonable at a glance - they're populated by low TL nomads living on poor land.

Figures I got from one map (ORCSLAYER I think it was - and the map in BANESTORM confirmed it closely enough):
Caithness with Great Forest: 368,749 square miles
Caithness without Great Forest: 260,835

Population density: 11.50 people per square mile.

I should scan in the ORCLANDS and determine how many square miles it holds. If the country is shown on one map and to scale, I can get a surface area for it. If not, then I can't :(

[DrTemp]

Originally Posted by hal

[...]
Figures I got from one map (ORCSLAYER I think it was - and the map in BANESTORM confirmed it closely enough):
Caithness with Great Forest: 368,749 square miles
Caithness without Great Forest: 260,835

Population density: 11.50 people per square mile.
[...]

I suggest you exclude the large forests such as Deerwood from Caithness' area, and also everything southeast of the River Smoke. Plus maybe the far east of Caithness, since it is reputedly thinly settled (even by Caithness' standards).

[Christian]

And where did you get your real demographic data from?

The earliest reliable data in form of a complete population census in amodern sense is to be found in the 18th century. The swedish population census frex starts in 1749, and is one of the EARLIEST modern censuses to be found. Shouldn't England be upfront? Nope. The first english census was made in 1801, and this one is rather useless. English data can reliable be used from the 1841 or 1851 on only. Very well into industrialisation, don't you think so?

Now but there are population numbers dating back to times prior to the 1850s, right? Didn't even Augustus already let all the people of his empire be counted, including a pregnant young jewish woman?

Right, there is data. But they ain't reliable and don't give the kind of info that allows you to make more then guestimates.



Now lets take reliable data: if you know that the average population growth of our Earth is 1.9% atm, then you can easily understand that your 2.0% assumption is... weak. Severall african countries do have today a population growth of 3.5% and MORE. And this especially in countries where you don't have full access to TL 7 medicin.

So what can we assume for a colonial society with access to magical medicin? 2% growth is laughable. 3% is surely no problem. Above 4% becomes unlikely in the long run I think, though is easily feaible during periods of colonisation.

Given early pregnancies (average age of first child below 20 years) and an average of 10 fertile children per woman and an average life expectancy of 70 years we are talking about 7.3% population growth per year. Both 10+ children per family surviving and average life expectancy of 70 years is both possible with TL7 medicine, even more so with magic.

What you need for this is socio-econo-political reasons though. If life is good enough to allow for the doubling of the population in 10-20 years, its also good enough to allow for cities and polities and a resulting decline in birth rate.

So what you need on top of magical healing and magical supported agriculture is a reason why this population explosion should hold on for a prolonged period. You need an "american dream and wild west" or an "enemy and children for the Führer" or something like this.

Why do people continue to breed like mad if 8 out of 10 children have to leave their parents farm and build up their future somewhere else. Not only for two, three or four generations, but for douzens of generations?

[NineDaysDead]

Originally Posted by Christian

Why do people continue to breed like mad if 8 out of 10 children have to leave their parents farm and build up their future somewhere else. Not only for two, three or four generations, but for douzens of generations?

Lack of reliable contraception? I’m mean, you’re not seriously suggesting people would say: “Right that’s it, we’ve had our 2 children, no more need for that messy sex business now!”?

[hal]

Maybe this URL will help a little...

[Ludek]

Originally Posted by Rupert

The races/species that can interbreed with humans are elves and orcs. Neither was massively urbanised, so neither could act as a breeding pool the way humans could (and in our current model, did). The species that live close to humans are goblins, halflings and kobolds. Of those, only goblins would seem to have been heavily urbanised 'at home'. Therefore the only source of 'pre-prepared' epidemic disease would be the goblins, and the need to cross a strong species boundry would slow that up (both ways).

Well I consider Kobolds, Goblins and Halfings as very close to humans, we
may be unbale to breed with them but I think they are closerto us than apes
and if I remember corectly apes can fall victims of human diseases. On this
I'm basing my claim that tehy may be germ change betwen Humans and Kobolds, Goblins,Halfings.
Add to this pure speculation becouse I don't rember any material I read
about Yrth suprting this. I think that Halfings were brought to Yrth with
aigriculture so they had some diseases to begin with(coming from their docmesticated animals), same or even more so for Goblins. As for Kobolds ..well who cares :P .. tehy strike me as pure hunter-gatherer type still they
have oay have some 1-2 own diseases taht are relatively harmles to them
but may be lethal to humans.
As for crosing species barier there woul be some physiological difernces(still
minor thing IMO) but we are speaking about 800 hundred years of history,
and a alot of more contact than humans have with animals. Here come some
sick though that on Yrth there is new kind of perversion .. having sex with
other humanoid race. I would rate(as far as Yrth Christian are ofended) it as
better than zoophilia, but worse than homosexualizm with is on Yrth imo
bararely tolearetd (if you are important/influential and do not break openly
with social convention you could live with it (but it would be source of
inconviniece from time to time).
I don't know how muslims would treat this but i could imagine some pagan
groups in islated regions having it as part of tehir comunal rites .. ie.
higly ritualized sex betwen leader of cominities symbolizing their marriage and
thus unity.