I wanted to take a stab at applying the ACKS domain type stuff to 80’s Greyhawk, and ran into some issues (hopefully someone can straighten me out).
I started with Sterich: the Earldom of Sterich is listed at a population of 40k and the capital city, Istvin is 5k.
One option for modeling this in ACKS is to use the table of Villages, Towns, Cities of the Realm (page 116 of the playtest rules) and assume Istvin is really 5k people; that would mean the actual population of the realm is 40k families instead of 40k individuals (a real population of 200k people).
Alternatively, I can say the population is 40k, this becomes 8k families, and the largest urban settlement in Sterich is a large village - 1,000 or so people. (Istvin just got demoted). I realize GG wasn’t likely applying too much science or demographics back in the early 80’s, and some filing and shaving will be necessary to make things fit. If you had to make a judgment call, which way would you err - make the realms more populous, or the urban centers smaller?
The other question is then breaking Sterich down into sub realms. Let’s say we go with Sterich is 8k families (population 40k). On the Tiers by Realm Size table (page 115), tell me if I’m applying this as intended:
8k families puts Sterich at the level of Duke/Palatine (he goes by the title of Earl, but claims a realm the size of a Duke so I’ll call the ruler a Duke so it makes sense for the table). Sterich could be split up into sub-domains - perhaps 4 realms of the next size down of 2,00 families each - each ruled by a Count. Is there any hard and fast rule for sub-dividing?
I could further sub-divide each County into a Marquisate (500 families) and so on.
However, I’m then not sure how the Personal Domain column factors into this sub-division of the domain. Should the Duke have a personal domain of 1500 families, subtract that from the total, and so there are only 6,500 families left to be divided into the various Counties? The example for Exarch Lazar’s realm on page 115 doesn’t address the personal domains.
Thanks for any insight, the ACKS campaign rules are things I’m trying to work with immediately.
All I know is at 30 miles a hex and some vast place like Keoland having a pop of only 300k was pretty sparse. I always doubled or tripled the biggest cities just to actually populate the endless green void.
ETA just comparing medieval europe to GH pop numbers, the Gygax figures seem to off by a great margin. I can certainly buy borderlands like Sterich being underpopulated, or barren, rugged, infertile areas. But the breadbasket regions are ghost towns.
Very interesting question B. It will be interesting to see what the desingers answer for this, but I personally wouldn’t see any reason to rework the Grehawk stats to try to conform to the table on p. 115/6. I would treat that table as accurate for the Auran empire. My sense of it is that the demographics were based on the work of some historians for medieval France and applied to similar socioeconomies in the Auran empire. I think you can make an argument that Sterich operates under a different paradigm where there are indeed 5000 people in the capital and another 35,000 outside of Istvin. Perhaps, as was common in many pre modern urban centers, there is a fair degree of food/clothing self sufficiency within the city itself (animals and gardens in the backyard, empty lots, grazing on the city commons, fishing industries etc.), thus lessening the dependence on rural agriculture and allowing larger settlements and perhaps, as is often the case with larger urban centers, Istvan is a trading hub, or accumulates wealth for other reasons.
There would be a number of real world examples you could draw on as inspiration for the reasons behind Sterichs “odd” population distribution. For an interesting discussion of these kinds of population dynamics in Cahokia, for example, there’s this book http://books.google.com/books?id=zDaxApTvh8QC&pg=PA103&lpg=PA103&dq=cahokia+demographics&source=bl&ots=pWFc6YFMtR&sig=GI5T-QtyCsodqlshpN9eMRQQYDk&hl=en&ei=6gpHTtLENMvpgQfU3qDTBg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCYQ6AEwADgK#v=onepage&q=cahokia%20demographics&f=false
in particular Chap 6 by Tim Paukett.
Another, quicker sample would be Art Demarest’s summary of classic Mayan rural/urban demographics http://books.google.com/books?id=mqN8AK7wUG0C&pg=PA119&dq=maya+urban+rural+demographics&hl=en&ei=gxFHTuLsLIfGgAfe1_3IBg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&sqi=2&ved=0CDQQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q&f=false
Beedo -
- With regard to the size of the town, I would simply leave it as it is. There is plenty of historical precedent for 5K/40K urban/rural breakdowns. One thing I (still) need to do in ACKS is to have some flexible modifiers that can shift results on the Villages, Towns, Cities of the Realm Table. Basically, you should be able to slide up or down by 1 point on percentage of urban population, and then by up or down another 1-2 points to find the largest city, and still have quite reasonable results. I haven’t figured out if the best way to model this is based on average Land Value, age of the civilization, # of trade routes, or some sort of cultural reference.
- If you’re worried about whether the Earldom’s population is correct for ACKS purposes, check it against the size of the region in square miles. In other words, what’s the population density?
- Definitely subtract the personal domains before allocating the remainder to vassals. I’ll double check the ACKS rules to see if I made an error and bad example!
Aldarron - Interestingly enough I was just wrestling with this issue in attempting to model Attica (Athens + its surrounding environs) in ACKS so it’s on my mind.
Right now, ACKS implicitly assumes that the urban centers are distinct from the surrounding manors and farms. But, for instance, in Athens 75% of the male citizen population of the city-state were farmers in Attica. And the city consisted of the walled inner city, and then the larger city behind the long walls, and then the suburbs and farms around it.
Thanks for dropping in, Alex. As I still ponder the Tiers by Realm Size, I have a couple more clarifying questions:
Is the income/month column net or gross? If Sterich is making 7,000gp per month, would garrison and upkeep expenses still need to be deducted?
Next, is the income/month a roll-up of all the vassal realms? Meaning - I could start with the smallest domains and construct Sterich bottom-up, with the vassals passing up their 20% taxes, or just use the top-line row as an abstraction for something quick and easy?
The income is net income, ie revenue minus expenses. Garrison and upkeep are already paid.
The income per month includes a roll-up of all vassal realms below. You could start with the smallest domains and construct bottom-up, or you could just use the top-line row as an abstraction.
You can also use them in a hybrid manner. For instance, let’s say you want the player to run an Empire. You create the Emperor’s personal domain, and then you create the domain of the 5 Exarchs directly beneath him, but then for the vassals and sub-vassals beneath the Exarchs you just use the average values.
Thanks Alex - I went a bit OCD last night and built a spreadsheet to “test the model” - it’s a bit of a chore to deconstruct a top-down domain all the way down, but I can confirm the numbers roll up fairly closely (such that using the quick and dirty Tiers By Realm for abstraction works just fine). I should try and turn the spreadsheet into a template for easy re-use.
Part of the upkeep for a realm is the minimum garrison; for the spreadsheet, I calculated them manually, but I see in Domains at War, you’ve already included minimum Domain Troops that track to the Tiers by Realm Size - that is really cool. I appreciate the effort you’ve put into squaring the numbers. If a ruler wanted to have troops over the minimum, I’m assuming that would come from the Income per Month on the Tiers by Realm Size table. A militaristic realm could also skew the numbers even higher by raising taxes and pumping up the monthly income.
My own home campaign has featured a fair amount of mass combat resolved using the old Companion War Machine rules (which leave a lot to be desired) so I’m looking forward to reading Domains at War in the next few days.
Beedo - Thanks for testing the model. I’m glad someone else has verified my math. I actually used a similar spreadsheet to build the tables. You should have my email address - drop me a note and we can exchange some mathematical models.
As far as the militaristic domains, more troops can be raised using the rules in DaW, yes. Note that I haven’t included the logistical cost of fielding troops yet into DaW; suffice to say that will eat up a lot of spare cash should war break out.
Beedo - with regard to the Earldom of Sterich, the most recent version of ACKS should be able to handle it much better. If you want to build it from the ground up, you can simply model Sterich as a domain of 8,000 families with an urban settlement of 1,000 families.
Monthly:
Revenue (1,000 families): 7,000gp urban revenue per month
Costs (1,000 families): 2,000gp (garrison) + 375gp (0.5% x 75,000) + 2,100 taxes & tithes = 4,475gp costs per month
Profit: 7,000-4475=2,525gp per month
Seasonally:
Monthly Profit: 2,525 x 3 = 7,575gp profit per season
Festivals (one/3 months): 5,000gp cost per season
Seasonal Profit: 2,575gp
Effective Monthly Profit: 858gp
Aldarron - Interestingly enough I was just wrestling with this issue in attempting to model Attica (Athens + its surrounding environs) in ACKS so it’s on my mind.
Right now, ACKS implicitly assumes that the urban centers are distinct from the surrounding manors and farms. But, for instance, in Athens 75% of the male citizen population of the city-state were farmers in Attica. And the city consisted of the walled inner city, and then the larger city behind the long walls, and then the suburbs and farms around it.
Aldarron: Yeah best to make allowance for non northern european urban situations. The kind of urban sprawl Demarest talks about in the book there is common in the Classic period of MesoAmerica, for example. So much so that it makes it difficult to develop research designs and there are very real arguments about what constitutes urban and/or “site” boundaries or if that is even a meaningful distinction. Regional site catchement or area activity research is sometimes a way around that. Kind of the “greater metropolitan area” idea.