Population - Urban Crisis

[Mizushin Junzo]

Is fishing truly an urban industry? Where I come from everyone fishes, it is a major source of food.

[Grant Keeper]

Let's see, each Human female would be fertile for about 35 years, yielding a theoretical 47 offspring. Each female Elf would stay fertile for how long? 700 years, at least. Taking into account their two year gestation period, each Elf couple could produce 450 kids!

So, to get a more realistic number, let's say that each Human couple averages 4.7 children. This means the average Elven family has 45 kids by the time their mother is infertile. But, in those 700 years Humans will go through 20 generations, and there'll be about 11,227,663 Human descendents by then!

Of course, disease and limited food supply will limit their population growth long before then, but it still kind of amazes me that Elves are still around at all, particularly since they can interbreed with Humans. They probably should have been bred out of existence a long time ago.

You know, I guess Natura will never recover from the Elder Circle disaster.

[Vylle Fyrrialt]

Thanks for the numbers on that Grant, and for supplying much more accurate information than I have on the subject.

About fishing, think of it this way: If you don't live in a town or city (urban centres), nearly everyone else would produce their own food, those that don't would have more than enough, and there'd be a very small market for fish. In other words, if you were in a farming village, would you fish or farm? I think rural fishing might only come into play as a major industry in the case that the land isn't very fertile, and grows poor crops. Of course, that's just my reasoning, I've got no facts to prove it, so I could very well be wrong.

[Mizushin Junzo]

Well, since Arium isn't exactly choice cropland, I do believe that most rural population would tend to live by the sea and fish. Also, if you look at Arium's geography, the better land is northward near the sea.

Another way to help counter the apparent lack of food would be farming on the hilly and mountainous terrain. It is possible, through the use of terrace farming, It is not a very easy process, but it is doable. Especially with some Arcane aid for the construction process. One example I can call to mind are the Banaue Rice Terraces of the Philippines. While those aren't in good shape now, it is caculated that if those were kept in proper condition and used with the applicable "modern" techniques, they could be great sources of food. Correct me if I'm wrong, though I doubt I am on this latter part.

Do note that while the center of Arium is mountainous, there is real description of the mountain types and statistics. they could be low mountain ranges, plateaus, fertile valleys in them or the like. This is a double-answer, as such terrain provides not only more land area to live in, but more "convertible" farmland.

By the way, this may or may not suit this topic, but has anyone here read "Rise and Fall of the Great Powers"? I believe this book would be useful from many aspects of Alleria to certain degrees.

[Armattonos Thaud]

I think rural fishing might only come into play as a major industry in the case that the land isn't very fertile, and grows poor crops. Of course, that's just my reasoning, I've got no facts to prove it, so I could very well be wrong.

I believe you may be wrong, because Denmark is well known for a big fishing industry (too big) and quite alot of farming as well.

not sure if you would classify Denmark as a rural area though

my two crowns for the debate here, I agree with Vylle that some cities should be reduced in number, but think of ancient rome (1 million inhabitants) and then tell me how they could get so much food?

[Mizushin Junzo]

No, I don't think Denmark can be classified as such. Go take a Third World country, and you'll be more accurate to the Allerian production rates.

[Shang Zhu]

Rome was supplied by importing grain from Sicily, Egypt, Gaul, and various other food sources. This would probably be the equivilant of the total output of the Prime Province just to feed one city. Never mind the other cities and the military.

[Armattonos Thaud]

ok, thank you for your time and your pleasant answers

BTW: what would denmark be classified as?

[Mizushin Junzo]

We have to bear in mind the relative Technological level of Alleria. We do have gunpower and simple machines, and so we shouldn't be really looking at those times should we?

Oh, Vylle, I took a look at the site you made a link to. While it is useful, I think the development of the Empire is closer to the Rennaisance Period, rather than the middle ages. Even if we do have knights, etc. and they more or less disappeared during that time. So if possible, do you think we may find a population estimate of the time previous to the 17th century (when firearms really became visibly dominant), but after the 13th century?

Lastly, the population of the period which is accounted for in that site reaches the 14th century. However, I have to bear in mind also that during that time Plagues were rampant, hideous mortality rates, and multiple wars were taking a very heavy toll on the population, reducing by approximately 1/3 at least.

Alleria, I believe, does not suffer that as of the present time period. Yes there is the "Pox", but are we really going to kill off 1/4 of our population? And there is magic and a significantly more advanced level of development than compared to 14th century Europe, which would help to increase population rates through the past few generations.

I'm hoping these will help.

[Aramil H. Thamion]

The question is, "How much food could be grown?" maybe we need to step back and ask ourselves another question. I understand that none of us, can answer it. But the GD's could help out here. How big are the provinces? We just have a rough map...

The word from the big man, Juan, is that Alleria is roughly the size of Europe. Now if that is the case, and our population is lower then Europe. Enough food could be made, easily to support all life. Even in Arium, being it has alot of mountains, but it a huge area.

My 2 crowns worth...

[Vylle Fyrrialt]

The Allerian Empire is as big as Europe if the dimensions fit, else Juan is handing us all conflicting information (although conflicting data is not something as rare as I'd hoped in this game). The fact of the matter is that unless the logistics of Alleria is changed so that a square mile of arable land does not produce the same amount as that on earth in the corresponding time period that it can't support more people than can eat. And remember, not all of Alleria is arable. I'd say roughly 60% of it is, and some places more fertile than others. But that is not to say all of it is in use. Forests can be highly arable, but first they must be cultivated.

Again, I must divert our attention from the food. We shouldn't be thinking of excuses that allow us to "dust an evident problem under the rug". Indeed fishing is a great industry that many can live by, and most of the maritime provinces of Canada in the 1800s rely heavily on fishing as an industry. At one point half the population of Nova Scotia relied on the fishing industry. But it was only used because they were right on the sea, and very little of the province was arable (10%). Fishing would allow higher populations, but not by that much, and because it's an alternate source of food, but again: It would not be used to fill up a gap except during droughts, massive fires, and things that would reduce food production.

I'm not sure about the plague and wars affecting the statistics at the time, but if only 180 people could be supported off of one square mile of land, and that the percentage of arable land was only 10-60% (average: 35%) those numbers make sense, no?

For example, let's say the mythical land of "Trillyit" has an area 5000 square miles. 35% of its land is being used for farming. That means 1,750 square miles are producing enough food for 180 people each. That means it can support 315,000 people. That means its population density is 63 people per square miles. That matches the numbers the site provides.

[Grant Keeper]

According to the compendium , you can travel across the Empire in 12 days by horse, if you can somehow get your horse to travel 75 miles in a day. :eek:

That's 900 miles. Europe, by contrast, is 3000 miles across.

[Kaelon]

Firstly, I'd like to thank Vylle for raising such an important issue, but more significantly, writing about it in a very intelligence and lucid fashion. Rarely have I seen such a compelling argument accompanying passion about the conflicting "hard facts" behind the physical world of Alleria, and I agree, this is crucial to examine if, as the Player's Handbook indicates, we want to create a certain level of realism in what we do.

That being said, though I believe some figures do need to be adjusted - and Caerydd indicated rightly that the Feeble Pox is part and parcel of what we hope can be used to drive population numbers down in some localities - I also believe that the primary argument of this thread, that key urban centers, such as Alleria Prime, Medonia and Primus Gaudeo, are over-populated, deserves further consideration.

Before we get started, let us take into consideration some resources. As an historian, I have regularly studied cultures and societies stretching from the dawn of civilization to the present, but my particular focus has been the world of antiquity, to which our population models remain most comparable. Vylle's assertions regarding the use of arable land and food supplies proportional to population centers are only accurate if you consider a medieval society, specifically, post-Imperial. This information, while still highly speculative today, is based in large part off of King William the Conqueror's census and big statistics project he conducted in 1066, the Domesday Book. A resource that I have used, ever since GD Timothy recommended it in a discussion almost identical to this one in the GMC a few months back, and that I highly recommend to all of you is Medieval Demographics Made Easy, and particularly, the Domesday Book Calculator for generating fantasy world population figures based upon the medieval model.

Why the Medieval Model Doesn't Work for Alleria
The Domesday Book takes into account population figures in the Dark Ages of England, a period of history that while we ascribe a great deal of fantastic adventure and fairy tales - such as King Arthur, and so forth - was nonetheless a major low-point in the development of man-kind. The Roman Empire had collapsed in the fifth century A.D., though by most accounts, it had stopped functioning in Western Europe shortly after the Roman Emperor Constantine moved the capital from Rome to Byzantium in 330 A.D. Britannia was particularly at the fringes of the Roman Empire, and had never been developed. Its largest city, Londinium (modern day London), under Roman Rule, was hardly considered a hamlet of several dozen families.

The Allerian Empire's population models are based not off of the medieval model, because in the Medieval World, a huge collapse of an Empire left millions scattered and plunged into war, plague and famine. Europe would face the same deadly cycle of plague and famine until the birth of the nation-state, when centralized planning would emulate the efficiency of the Roman Empire. (Most notably, we see Europe getting into trouble with the Black Death in the mid-Middle Ages, wherein they lose nearly a third of their population, and never return to those population levels until the 1800s.) Instead, Alleria's real world counterpart can be seen in the Imperial Model of Antiquity.

The Ancient World, and Why It Works for Alleria
Vylle is correct; if Alleria were in medieval Europe, there would be no way that Alleria Prime could have 3,350,000 inhabitants, nor could Medonia have 1,000,000 inhabitants, nor could any city realistically have more than around 40,000 inhabitants (London was one of the largest medieval cities in Western Europe with a population around that.) This is because post-Roman society had lost the administrative bureaucracy and central planning that the Roman Empire had to mobilize different regions of vast territories to share food and resources, to make it possible for there to be large growth of cities.

However, if we take a look at the Ancient World, we see cities with huge populations unbelievable to us, especially when we look at the medieval world that followed the collapse of the Ancient World. At its height around 200 A.D., Imperial Rome had between 2 and 3 million inhabitants. To this day, Rome has yet to beat its imperial census count (liberal estimates are that Rome today has some 2 million inhabitants). Why and how was this possible? The Aqueducts that brought fresh water to Rome - an architectural triumph that the medieval world discarded, because they lacked the construction power to reproduce this wonder - certainly helped. But key was the fact that the Roman Empire was unified by roads, that stimulated trade, that when overseen by the Roman Senate and the Imperial Bureaucracy, could basically ship food from one end of the empire to the other in a matter of weeks.

The existence of large cities in the Ancient World does not stop with the example of Rome. The Achaemenian Empire, which had existed since 600 B.C., and was eventually toppled by Alexander the Great, was a sprawling civilization of thousands of tribes and peoples; it was the first "universal" empire that basically brought people of different ethnic backgrounds under a single rule, ruled from the heart of Persia. The great Achaemenian capital, Persepolis, had some 3 million inhabitants. Its second largest city, Ctesiphon, had between 1 and 2 million inhabitants. Again, like the Romans, the Achaemenians made use of their sprawling territory and powerful administrative and bureaucratic features to mobilize their natural resources. Unlike the Romans, though, the Achaemenians were not largely agrarian; they were mostly pastoralists, and it remains one of the greatest historical mysteries of the day. How did sheep-herders manage to produce enough food to feed millions?

Debunking the Farming Dependency Myth
In the Ancient World, and even later into the Medieval Ages, we look at other examples of very large cities that emerged and seemingly could not feed themselves with their own lands. The Ancient Greeks had established the polis city-state, which basically unified a city and its surrounding territory under a single central government. These city-states, most notably, Athens, Sparta, Thebes, and Corinth, became huge centers of trade that saw the exchange of goods from as far away as China. It remains amazing to realize that in the Ancient World, a person probably knew more about the world than most people in the 1700s did.

If we take a look at one considerable case study, we'd be astonished at the population and technology figures. The island of Crete was the center of the Minoan Civilization that thrived around 4500 B.C., and is believed to have possibly preceeded the river-valley civilizations of the Tigris-Euphrates, the Ganges, the Indus, and the Yhangzee. Crete had a population of over 400,000 before the Dorian Invasions came (and, ironically enough, plunged the Ancient World into a Dark Age that would last until around 900 B.C.). When a civilization has centralized planning and mobilization, their technology also tends to become more advanced. Cretans had plumbing, sewer systems, health care, and education. There is even some evidence to suggest that the Cretans had rudimentary knowledge of electricity. To this day, there are areas of modern-day Crete that haven't managed to return to the standards of living that Cretans enjoyed in Antiquity.

In the Middle Ages, places outside of the Western Roman Empire also do not correspond to the Domesday Book's agricultural population figures. Moscow, for example, had over 200,000 citizens, but the whole of the Russian Empire had less than half the food production capacity of all of France. This partly had to do with the fact that Russia's harsh climate made moving from a two-tier farming system to a three-tier farming system (where more food could be produced in shorter time), and eventually even evolve to irrigation, impossible to accomplish. The successes of the Russians in establishing thriving cities that exceeded the 100,000 mark in the 1300s, like Moscow and Kiev, remain shining examples of how just because you lived in the Middle Ages doesn't mean that you were condemned to live in a hamlet and be ignorant for the rest of your days.

The phenomenon of small villages being lorded over by greedy barons and marauding knights is largely limited to Western Europe, but geography was not the limiting factor and there is a notable exception that serves as a suitable segway into another massive empire. At the same time that the medieval village of Montaillou in Southern France had one book - the Bible - shared among all of its 87 villagers, just across the Pyrannes, the thriving cities of Cadiz (which was also an Ancient City, by the way) and Granada had tens of thousands of books and had over 80,000 inhabitants of four separate religions living in open tolerance and harmony. Again, this is possible because the Islamic Empire of the Umayyads (750 to mid 1100s) and later the Abbasids (1251 to the 1400s) brought about a huge unification of territory under a single system of administration. And food supplies were relatively unheard of in Spain (whose rivers are small), and the rest of the Muslim Nation (which was mostly shrouded in desert and mountainside). This is testament to the fact that a small amount of food, if managed wisely, could successfully feed millions across an empire. It is only when you talk about a small village, that has poor roads, little communication, and virtually non-existent trade with its neighbours, that you need self-sufficiency. In the Modern World, the need for self-sufficiency has been replaced by the same Imperial-style models of administration and bureaucracy that we saw in the ancient world; because countries are massive, much more organized, and unified.

Classifying Alleria
The Allerian Empire's History essentially takes the case of a large continent, measured in Allerian Miles (1 Mile = 1000 Paces) and not American Miles as some have guessed, and views the conquest and unification of millions of people. However, unlike the real world -- where the Roman Empire fell in the West, plunging everyone into starvation, famine, and death; where the Achaemenians were dissolved by Alexander the Great; where the Islamic Empires were besieged by the Crusades and Mongol invaders at the same time; wherein Europe was unable to form a nation-state until the late 1400s (Spain), and early 1500s (France, England)... the Medonian Continent never experienced these misfortunes. There were no great plagues, no huge calamities that resulted in the disruption of trade across the Empire that led to the wholesale slaughter of millions.

Finally, the production of food in Alleria is largely concentrated upon two arable food shelves - the Candaceburg fields, which are magically enhanced by divine blessing to create copious amounts of food, shipped throughout the entire Empire; and the heartland of Carmelyn, which produces a great deal of food in its own right. Adding the pastoral lifestyle of the Enamorians with their cosmopolitan trading practices, the massive administrative bureaucracy and commerce that is spread throughout the nine provinces, and you in essence have a system that can produce about four or five huge metropoleis - which is about in line with what Alleria has.

The Average Allerian Settlement
So, what we have left, outside of the large metropolitan centers of Alleria Prime, Medonia, Primus Gaudeo, Nexus Prime, and so on, are the standard villages and cities. In the past, we've talked here in Alleria about standardizing population figures and assigning hard core values with them. I'm not convinced that saying that a city is a city when it has "80,000 people or more", for instance, is necessarily important. In the Ancient World - the world upon which Alleria is based - city-states regularly had over 100,000 citizens, and there were about half a dozen of these cities in Ancient Greece alone. What was left were townships of around 10,000 to 40,000 inhabitants. Anything smaller than a settlement of 5000 people represented a small village.

One thing to consider is that the Ancient World's population strategy in the civilizations on the Mediterranean Basin, was based upon centralized population; people liked living in close quarters to one another, protected by huge walls, because they could better fend off threats and accomplish more commercially and socially. In the Middle Ages, because Rome had fallen and bands of warriors regularly massacred thousands daily, people lived far apart from each other and in small numbers, to make them less of a tempting target. They would seek protection from a local noble who would offer his services to save them from being slaughtered, in exchange for their taxes and resources, which were very badly managed, because nobles were notoriously greedy. The kings of the middle ages were mostly figureheads who had any real power, and served as symbolic links to tie together confederations of nobles. Because the Allerian Empire has never collapsed in the way that the Roman Empire collapsed, nor has it been conquered, nor has there been massive wholesale slaughter, or destruction of the roads, or elimination of trade... the population model of urban settlement remains unchanged, wherein people live close together because they want to for political and economic purposes.

This is essentially my take on it. If one looks at real history, and tries to avoid being overly dependent upon the middle ages of Western Europe - which I agree, supported significantly smaller populations - and instead focus on the Ancient World, the Middle East, or Asia, or even Medieval Eastern Europe - one would understand that Alleria's population figures are not unreasonable, and in fact, realistic for a fantasy world operating under a realistic paradigm. This is not to say that you cannot have settlements with figures along the lines of the Domesday Book; I gave you those links for a reason. Even in Antiquity, there were regions of the world that were isolated and disconnected from the rest of humanity, and you would find these sorts of figures right there. But because the Allerian Empire is connected, thriving and has experienced over a thousand years of prosperity and unification, the model isn't applicable for the large urban centers or even most significant cities, in which we roleplay.

Feel free to ask any questions or make any observations. This is a great thread and a great discussion. Again, kudos to Vylle for his hard research and thanks for everyone's positive contributions.

Serale,
Juan

[Faye]

Juan! *lol*

I just read that and feel like I just sit through a History and Geography lesson!

Goober.

From what I gather out of your many and ....big words, is ..uh..well..I have no stinkin' clue.

But, I think a major point was missed - because I don't recall you covering it in that book there(besides the allerian mile thing):

There isn't enough land to supply the food + the people.

I think that was the original arguement long before it became a food growing thing. The original point was - where do all those people fit? Alleria isn't that big....

....then it branched off into - if there isn't enough room for the people, then how the hell do we have enough room to grow the food for that many people - and so on and so on.

I'm sure Vylle will be able to reply much better than me. But I still don't feel we have an...answer...here. You did give me insight on a bunch of stuff ...but still really - what to do about the population problem of Alleria? Or are you saying that you don't see it as a problem based on all that historical stuff?

*brain cramp*

Okay, back to class with me.

[Pim]

I think what he's saying is that the Empire, and provinces for that matter are advanced to the point where trading, administrative control etc. has made it so that what available land there is, constitutes enough to supply the whole of the empire. Therefore, eliminating the need for every province to have the exact amount of acerage to feed its population. Also, since the fields in Candaceburg are magically enhanced, they produce more food than an average plot would, also cutting back the need for more acerage.

That help at all?