Population and Demographics

[Mark_Everson]

Nope, supplies can be purchased locally or pillaged at least up until about 100+ years ago when it becomes more arguable because of different specs for munitions etc. Alexander made good progress in Persia because he had supply agents going out and buying supplies for the troops. Greece and Macedon didn't supply them. An army with lots of gold before the rise of nationalism could probably buy all the food it needed from the locals. Mongols were even better, all they need is enough grass for the strings of horses and they could go as far as they wanted. Took forests or mountains to slow them down

For modern warfare what you say is pretty much the case, no supplies from home or an ally and modern units get pretty useless pretty fast.

[Richard Bruns]

Labor shortages have happened in every country in every large scale modern war. After a few years, there simply are not enough people to keep fighting those huge battles. So I think it is important to show the loss of economic and military ability in the population. This is one of the best ways to stop huge wars that could probably continue forever otherwise. In most games, war doesn't really have much of an impact on the people or the economy. I want this game to show how devastating war really is. Big messy conflicts like World War 1 should not be something to be treated lightly.

As a gameplay consideration, I don't want warmongers to get away with recruiting all of the best sectors of their population to go and die in some foreign war of conquest. That kind of thing should cripple their country and hurt their chances for future success.

[Richard Bruns]

Okay, you're talking about ancient war while I'm talking about modern war. Supplies were not as much of a problem back then.

Given the timescale disparity, you would already have a certain group of soldiers roaming around for hundreds of years if they didn't have supply constraints. Alexander's campaigns took about five years, or sixty months. Assuming a five year economic turn, this means that his armies would be roaming around for 300 years by the economic clock.

Given that disparity, the population model can probably just assume that military units never age and are never replaced. Those Greek soldiers were not replaced by other Greeks and they didn't get much older. Soldiers are effectively put in stasis when they are created. By the time those Greek soldiers are ready to retire, someone could have put a man on the moon.

This could create some interesting situations. Suppose someone has an empire with a million people. They could could recruit a group of 20,000 soldiers every economic turn, as the demographics data recalculates the five year cohorts and easily replaces that 2% of the population taken away. After 100 turns or 500 years, they would have 100 military units, the oldest of which has aged about eight years.

If the player finished a war and then decided that the military units are no longer needed, that player would probably disband the troops and the soldiers would be added back to the population. At this time, the population would triple. There would be 2 million extra people instantly added to the workforce of the empire. These people would be healthier than average, so economic capacity would be multiplied by about five. Needless to say, this could seriously destabilize gameplay.

I frankly can't think of any way to work around this problem. If troops don't age, we get the situation I described. If they do age, they can go about a year's travel distance out of the empire before they all die from old age. If they age at an in-between speed, their movements are still artificially restricted and a version of the above situation is still possible.

[Mark_Everson]

"If the player finished a war and then decided that the military units are no longer needed, that player would probably disband the troops and the soldiers would be added back to the population. At this time, the population would triple."

Other game effects protect from this possibility. There are good reasons why soldiers average to a max of something like 1% of the population over much of history. Feeding the troops and paying them consume a sizeable fraction of the budget of the govt if levels get above this. I think this will work out to be ok when the other models are implemented for the reason above and others.

But it may be that soldiers at home should just be in equilibrium with the rest of the economy, and only enter 'stasis' when removed to go off and fight.

[Richard Bruns]

quote: But it may be that soldiers at home should just be in equilibrium with the rest of the economy, and only enter 'stasis' when removed to go off and fight.

That is exactly what I am talking about. When soldiers are on the campaign trail they will be pillaging food from the other country and will probably be paying themselves by looting other places. Besides, they only need one month's worth of food and pay every five years, so your economy or the enemy's territory territory can support 60 times the fighting force it could historically.

At least, that was my impression when I read about the supply system in the mil model.

When military units are created, or when they all come home and get disbanded, they start to work and get paid based on a very different time scale. That change is what causes the disturbance, and I can't figure out how to fix the population model to work around that.

[Beör]

Guys

To repeat myself: Is this really necessary at this point - Demo5-wise

May I suggest a new acronym:

YAGAYAFII

(You Are Getting Ahead of Yourselves And Forgetting the Important Issues)

I think YAGAYAFII


And BTW:
Losses of manpower during military conflict have had serious impact on society on numerous occasions historically.
Richard mentioned WWI. The massive mobilisations combined with the large demand on industrial capacity put serious drains on man-power (which was then replaced by woman-power). This has had immense impact on society.

An ancient example:
During the second punic war, romans lost approximately one third of their male population (M Rostovtzeff: The history of Rome). And they were all citizens, not just mercenaries or auxiliary troops. This completely altered Roman society, and the loss of man-power haunted Rome ever since: The three legions lost by Varus in Teutoburgerwald were mostly legionaries from Latium,and they were never rebuilt, because of lack og manpower.
[This message has been edited by Beör (edited September 29, 2000).]

[Mark_Everson]

Richard:

I have a fairly comprehensive post on how to handle the differing timescales to avoid serious wierdness.

The info on how the military and economic scales should interact is in the Military Model III thread. 2nd post in the the thread. A quote from it.

"...I think feeding and paying the troops should use up food and money at the same rate as people in the regular economy. If the troops only consumed one month of food and pay per turn, it would be very easy to maintain unrealistically large standing armies."

And I agree with Beör that we're probably going a bit far on this for this particular thread. But I don't know right now the best place for this discussion .

[Richard Bruns]

Mark, could you collect all of this kind of information we have and ask Chris to put it on the military model section of the webpage? I read what was already there but it is obviously incomplete. This probably isn't the only thing I am missing, and I don't know where in the maze of threads I an find it.

[Mark_Everson]

Will do, but I need to update the econ model page first, so it'll be a while.
[This message has been edited by Mark_Everson (edited September 29, 2000).]

[roquijad]

Richard: No, no present cultural attributes or combination sounds good to me to define a "cultural incliniation for f***ing frequency"

Please excuse this a little OT:
Mark: I checked you post in the other thread about scales and I agree we simply can't have the whole game in a realistic way regarding econ/civil-military interconnections. We have to choose "flash buildings" or absurd military activities in a given period of time (like unit movement in civ2) or, as you propose, a little of both non-senses. Of course, the player can choose to play the whole game at the one-month scale for both sides of the game and get rid of most of the absurd things. A very long game to play, of course, but that's the player's choice. My question is, Is it possible to change timescales during the game? Can a player during the game choose to switch to the "realistic" (one-month for all) game if he wants? I think that would be great. The player would be choosing what periods to play realisticly and what to play with some non-senses just for speed. At the start of what I would consider a major war for my civ, I'd love to switch to the realistic mode and at the end of it go back to the unrealistic-but-faster game. Can we do that?

BTW the conversation about pop-mil interactions above should already consider and accept that non-sense will be there if econ/civil turns aren't of one-month duration. Non-senses are something we'll have to live with for every relationship between the mil model and the rest models, so I don't think we should fight these non-senses. We only have to indentify them in every model (here you have already) and add them to the list. We'll let players know this list so they'll know what they're giving up when choosing a timescale larger than one month.
[This message has been edited by roquijad (edited September 29, 2000).]

[roquijad]

In my post above I couldn't write the f-word!! Apolyton changed it automacitally to "****". I'm outraged!! I can't believe there's censure here!

LA CENSURA ES UNA REPUTA MIERDA!


(They don't have a list of spanish bad words, do they?)
[This message has been edited by roquijad (edited September 29, 2000).]

[axi]

It is funny indeed. Imagine a topic about the famous sci fi writer Philip K. **** .

You can use spaces between letters. The censoring machine won't get you this way.

[Mark_Everson]

Rodrigo:

Your plan on the timescale thing seems quite reasonable to me.

Guys:

On the profanity filter, we are stuck with it, its a required part of being hosted here to keep the site profanity-free (at least with respect to the blocked words). Please do not subvert the blocker since I will need to waste time editing your posts to remove those words. I know you don't like it, but those are the rules.

This is from Markos and Dan, who run Apolyton:

Why do you censor certain words?
Because there are lots of people(including us) who don't like reading these kinds of words. The list of censored words may vary depending on the way people use the forums.

You can go complain at the Apolyton forum if you like...

[Richard Bruns]

bump.

René, let us know what you think. You can certainly take over this model if you want to. Welcome to the team.

[Fiera]

quote: Originally posted by roquijad on 09-29-2000 05:22 PM LA CENSURA ES UNA REPUTA MIERDA! (They don't have a list of spanish bad words, do they?)

Lol!

Sorry, guys, I just didn't expect this in the middle of the Clash Forum...