[Award Winner] Cartographical Economics and Demographics - A Guide to Realism

[terminal]

Yes I agree with you that class differences would also be felt in the economy of each region, hence its good because then each province is divided between being an economically important area or an area that provides better troops, as well as other factors.

I would suggest that we assume that whatever we come up with applies to a human world, because it is impossible to make something for all the potential permutations that may come out of other people worlds. Hence the importance is coming up with a system and then people can adapt them for their game world as required. I may do a test map of one province so we can start working out the variables within a specific map and hence can use that as a guide for our theories.

I like the thought of working out population growth out of variables like you mentioned in religion, health etc. Problematic ones are emmigration/immigration (because it requires a marriages of information from several kingdoms. Food production we can do by working out the percentage of land that is arable and hence work out a figure. However it becomes more complex than just regional food production figures, as food often is grown in one province and is sold in others through domestic trade, thus arable land must be taken on a national level and permeated through each specific region. Hence population growth then becomes whether nationally there is enough food.

1 sq mile of land in medieval times has been estimated to be able to support 180 people. Hence if a country had a population density of 180 people per mile then every single inch of it would be farm land, which is impossible.

Therefore because food would likely be treated nationally because of trade, we can assume again that there is no regional limit on population. However that is only in theory as I assume there would always be a limit of the flow of trade into specific regions, also food prices would be extremely high for those living in areas that are food poor. Anyway I'm liking the way your thinking its getting me thinking more. I would suggest we leave magic out of it, and when we come up with something that works, we can state that through magic, land could perhaps 1 sq mile of land could support more than 180 people per sq. mile.

[Al. I. Cuza]

Magic should be treated as just another variable (as an example: magic would modify the agricultural output by 20% through any means someone can think of, like making it rain, or fertilizing the land). Nothing fancy really. But I agree that it would be much easier to focus on a human-only world.

I would first treat regions individually, as a closed economy, no exterior trade. After we work things out like this, we can think of "opening" the region to the outside world, with trade, population movement, etc... Because these relations can also simply be simulated through static modifiers in the first stage. Then the modifiers themselves can be subjected to mathematical modelling including the whole nation/world.

As an example for emigration: If the population number of a province surpasses 90% (or any other number) of its human support factor (as in how many people can the province support if all potential resources are optimally used) people will start to consider leaving their homes. You could call it overcrowding effect.

Regarding trade: Trade should be simulated by modeling supply and demand through simple factors, much like everything else. Every bigger settlement should have a base supply (anything produced in a small enough radius will be included). Every 1000 persons of each class should have a base demand, the percentage of classes in each settlement will determine the settlements' base demand. The amount of trade between 2 settlements could then be calculated as a function of profit and travel (anything from distance to travel method: the longer the distance, the higher the travel expenses, longer time wasted on the road, is there a road, is it paved, is there a means to use the ship or even train, etc...). It shouldn't be too problematic this way.

Just some thoughts

[Gus]

Hello everybody. I hate to sound "nooby", but I have a real question to make.

You see, I am using the tips given by this guide (rep already given) to write an article for the RPG community I play. The community is great, but it follows the "freedom for the people" philosophy. That is, there are very few rules to play there (and the ones that do exist don't not go too far from "use common sense" kind of rule). This is great because it allows people to focus more on the history, but leaves us with little standards. We do have a map, though.



Just for entertainment, I started writing an article which speculates several things of this world by comparing it with several earth references, such as continent areas, distances between X and Y, how many Trips to Mordor fit in a given country, etc. etc.. And that's when everything goes downhill (or, as the poet says, "off a damn cliff"). I will go step-by-step so you guys can help me figure out what I am doing wrong.

You see, I am using the "Scaling the map" trick taught here, by creating a 2500x2500 px area (and thus setting the scale as 1px=10mi² scale). I planned to scale and distribute the countries under different scenarios (based on if the world map is so or just a piece of much more, if land is scaled or not, etc...). I started with the easiest theory: that the world map is 100% so. I scaled this map until either width or height reaches 2500px (width in this case). Then, I scaled a Mercator World Map in the same way (both cases without any distortions).



You can perceive that the fantasy world has clearly much more land area than Earth, right? Well, when I measure the total area by the "histogram -> correct calculation -> multiply by 10" way, I find out that this world is a bit more than 16 million mi² large. That may sound impressive... Until you find out that Earth has over 57 million mi² of land area. By measuring each country individually (there are not many), the results are the same.

I know I am missing something critical, but I'm failling at figuring what. Please, anyone. Help me out.

[waldronate]

Please be careful with that Earth map overlay when making comparisons, especially land area. The projection you used for the Earth map isn't equal area so the same-sized piece of land occupies more and more pixels as it moves northward (to be precise, the distortion is proportional to 1/cos(lat); the 0-area poles occupy a whole line of pixels). I would recommend an equal-area projection for comparison if possible, to make the comparisons more meaningful. If your world is flat then it's already in an equal-area projection and this discussion may not apply.

http://www.progonos.com/furuti/MapPr...cartIndex.html has some good discussions on the subject of map projections. As an aside, the Earth map projection above is called "Plate Carree" or "Equirectangular"; a Mercator projection is something else entirely and is infinite in vertical extent.

[Gus]

I forgot to mention that I am not using the Mercator projection for anything but visual impact.

I still have to find out why my world is so tiny, but seems this site has some insight. Thank you. I will check it as soon as I reach home.

[terminal]

I think your problem lies in that your scaling your map down to 2500 px, but taking the value as 100% percent of your world. When in actuality if your world is 2,500 px across in a scale of 1 px = 1 mi then your world would be 10 tens smaller than the earths rough size. Multiplying your figures by 10, I guess would give you dimensions comparable to world that is the same size as the earth.

[arsheesh]

Hey Terminal, just wanted to thank you for taking the time to write up these guides. They are really informative. Consider yourself repped, and this thread rated.

Cheers,
-Arsheesh

[Grelf]

First and foremost, thanks for this great guide! I'm so sorry for resurrecting this thread, but does anyone know of a calculator/generator that I can use along with this tutorial? It seems that the calculator given by the tutorial itself is no longer online, and I can't find one that aids with the calculation of GDP and economics variables. Any help would be very appreciated!

[terminal]

I do believe the kingdom generator that was given in the guide is now back up and running again. Although there is another one that could be used, search google and you should see that there a few more that you can use.

I may as well also announce that I am looking at this once again and will hopefully sometime in the future be releasing a better version of this guide that will have incorporation of taxation systems, trade both internal and international as well as political systems and possibly even a system for working out battle outcomes based on variable calculations.

Anyway that guide will only be ready far into the future although I have already started it, so for those who enjoyed the first guide, you should enjoy this one as well.

[Redrobes]

Ohh glad your still around and checking in. I have been doing a little work in this general area which I think you will enjoy looking at but I am still a week or two away from starting a new thread about it. Sorry to be vague at this point tho as I haven't quite got it all together yet to post but wanted you to know that were all still very much interested in your work.