Population and demographics: kingdom building rules

[blargney the second]

I'm currently tweaking bits of the kingdom building rules for an upcoming Kingmaker campaign. The particular component I'm fleshing out right now is the population and demographics. I would like to tie the kingdom/city building into sensible army recruiting as well as Pathfinder's rules for constructing settlements.

By default, the KM army building rules let you make almost arbitrary decisions about the number and hit dice of the soldiers that comprise a unit. As someone who got into DMing seriously with 3.5, I'm not convinced a kingdom of 20,000 people should be able to field an army of 1,000 9th level fighters. So here's what I've got so far.


1) Adding population. A claimed hex adds 250 population to the kingdom. An occupied city square adds 250 population to the city. Every new group will have 90+% of its class breakdowns generated identically. I'll be adding categories to each building, and they will determine the remaining demographics. For instance:

2) Determining levels. I took the 3.5 DMG's demographics info as well as structure from modern and historical armies to put this chart together.

Level breakdown:
1st: 66%
2nd: 22%
3rd: 7%
4th: 4%
5th: 0.75%
7th: 0.2%
9th: 0.05%


These are just the first couple of steps, and I'm trying to get my numbers and distributions to work out sensibly. They'll have ramifications for army building down the line, but I'm not at that stage just yet.
-blarg

 

[Cerebral Paladin]

I don't understand how to read your chart. Can you explain it, please?

 

[Evilhalfling]

I don't think you should use the same level distributions for urban and rural areas. Your graph is fine for rural populations, but doesn't work for cities.
I would suggest you wait until they recruit armies from cities then recalculate appropriate demographics.

It really will be a long time before you get to the army building stage.
Its 4 books in, and most of the fun starts in book 2.

You might look at the resources generating steps from kingmaker. I converted some of it to 4e and came up with lesser magic items have a 1 in 6 chance of generating 1 building point (BP) and medium items generating 1d8-2 BP per month. Basing this on the number of BP generated by rolling up a random item then converting its price to BP. I didn't bother with major items, as I didn't expect to get that far. If the PCs are willing to exploit the current rules then kingdom building becomes trivial. I don't know if my system allows for enough wealth to maintain/build armies as my group is level 6 and I only tested the system for 2-3 years of growth.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

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[blargney the second]

I don't understand how to read your chart. Can you explain it, please?

Yep, sure thing! I'll show you how to read it based on three scenarios:
1) Claiming a hex. Take the amounts per class from the line for 'base population', then add the amounts listed on the line called 'agri/resident'. It adds up to 250 citizens of varying classes.
2) Building a black market in a city. Take the base population again, and this time add the numbers from the 'criminal' line. Again, it adds up to 250 people.
3) Building a castle in a city. Take the base population once more, and add the line for 'military'. That represents just one of the four squares required to build a castle. You'll wind up with a total of 1,000 people of various classes, including 100 warriors, and a mix of 40 fighters, barbarians, paladins, rangers, etc.

Once again, for ease of surfing:

I don't think you should use the same level distributions for urban and rural areas. Your graph is fine for rural populations, but doesn't work for cities.

I'm curious about your reasoning for this statement. Does the info I just gave Cerebral Paladin change anything for you?

I would suggest you wait until they recruit armies from cities then recalculate appropriate demographics.

It really will be a long time before you get to the army building stage. Its 4 books in, and most of the fun starts in book 2.

That's pretty much what I was planning on doing. The demographics only really matters at the moment you decide to assemble a fighting force. There will be a secondary use for calculating the settlement modifiers for Corruption, Crime, Law, Society, and Lore, but I haven't started up that path just yet.

Fwiw, I'm hoping to use mass combat as early as the end of book 2, and continue using them sporadically through until the end of the campaign.

You might look at the resources generating steps from kingmaker. I converted some of it to 4e and came up with lesser magic items have a 1 in 6 chance of generating 1 building point (BP) and medium items generating 1d8-2 BP per month. Basing this on the number of BP generated by rolling up a random item then converting its price to BP. I didn't bother with major items, as I didn't expect to get that far. If the PCs are willing to exploit the current rules then kingdom building becomes trivial. I don't know if my system allows for enough wealth to maintain/build armies as my group is level 6 and I only tested the system for 2-3 years of growth.

I'm reworking the economy as well. So far, I'm planning on attaching the taxation edict to the percent you get as build points from the sale of magic items. ie Light taxation = 10% of magic item value, overwhelming taxes = 40% but causes continual unrest).

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

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[Cerebral Paladin]

Why not just make the lines directly? For example, under your system, an arcane city block would have 200 commoners, 15 warriors, 13 experts, 4 adepts, 1 aristocrat, 4 fighters, 8 mages, 2 priests, and 3 thieves (=250 total). That seems kinda odd to me--too many priests, fighters, warriors, and thieves, not enough experts and adepts--mages could go either way. Put another way, it seems odd that a majority of the people with PC classes (9 out of 17) aren't mages, and just under half of the people with non-commoner NPC classes are warrior types, not magic/skill types (16 warriors+aristocrats out of 33 non-commoner NPC classes). These effects are basically baked into the fact that 230/250=92% of the population of each block is always the same (from the top line).

It seems like it would be easier and more flexible to just fill in the entire 250 distribution for each line of the chart:
Agri/resident: 210, 15, 9, 2, 1, 4, 2, 3, 4= 250
But then you can customize things more, so you could choose to make arcane look like:
Arcane 200, 5, 15, 12, 1, 2, 10, 3, 2=250--a distribution that feels right to me, but that is impossible under an additive system like yours (without negative numbers).

Obviously, you may disagree about what sorts of distributions are reasonable, but I think it's easier to see and weigh if you don't start with 92% the same.

 

[blargney the second]

Good call on the totals for the chart. I'll definitely do that for the final one that will actually be used. Much easier to read. The reason I have it laid out as presented is so I can see both the difference between the building types as well as what is added with every single hex/square.

I neglected to mention that a building in a city occupies a square 750'x750'. It's huge. For example, take "Caster’s Tower (30 BP): The home and laboratory for a spellcaster. 3 minor items, 2 medium items; Economy +1, Loyalty +1." I figure that will come with the main mage, his assistant, 2-3 apprentices, a bodyguard, and some servants with specific skill sets. Then other people will be attracted to the block for networking effects: some more mages, some wannabe mages, and some shopkeepers. That's the direct and indirect effect of adding an arcane building to this massive block. There's still a whole lot of empty space that would get filled up with base population.

To generate the base population, I took the 3.5 DMG's demographics section and erred on the side of generosity with regards to being able to assemble armies. Everything the PCs build will be even more populated with useful classes than the DMG suggests.

This is really helping me out, btw! Thanks!
-blarg

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

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[haakon1]

Population rules in 3.5e

Vaguely related topic.

In the 3.5e DMG, in creating a town, you roll for higher levels in each class, with the remainder being divided up 91% Commoners, 5% Warriors, 3% Experts, etc.

A page away, it says the standing military should be 1 per 100 (1%) plus the militia/people that could be impressed is 1 per 20 (5%).

I'm following those rules for a large town with a population of 4807.
-- So I decided on 2 Officers, 2 Sergeants, 8 Corporals, and 40 privates as the Town Guard. (52 as opposed to the 48 norm.)
-- And the rules say I should have 240 who are "an able-bodied member of the local militia or a conscript soldier can be brought into service in a few hours". I decided these were the remaining F3 (a lieutenant), 20 Aristocrat 1's (pretty good with a lance and sword), 194 Warrior 1's who were not already Town Guards, and 25 Expert 1's (light armor and simple weapons, so light crossbowmen)

My question is, what do all those Militia Warriors --- and the adventuring classes, for that matter -- do for a living in a city if they don't work for the Town Guard? I'm guessing the Warrior work as guards for merchants, but the ratio of 48 for the government versus 194 in private service seems odd.

Should some of them being working for the Baron full time but not in the "Guard" somehow, or what?

My population by class is as follows:

Non-Adventurer Classes: 24 above 1st level, 4678 1st level
-- Aristocrats (3+21): 1 5th level (Baron), 2 3rd level, 21 1st level (20 in militia)
-- Warriors (3+234): 1 5th level (2nd in Command of Town Guard), 5 2nd level (Sergeant of the main town gate, 4 Veteran Guard Corporals), 234 1st level (40 Town Guards, 194 Militia)
-- Adepts (3+21): 1 6th level, 2 3rd level, 21 1st level
-- Experts (7+141): 1 9th level, 2 4th level, 4 2nd level, 141 1st level (25 are in the militia)
-- Commoners (7+4261): 1 13th level (Smith/Armorer), 2 6th level, 4 3rd level, 4261 1st level

Adventurer Classes: 105
-- Barbarian (7): 1 4th level, 2 2nd level, 4 1st level
-- Bard (7): 1 7th level, 2 3rd level, 4 1st level
-- Cleric (27): 1 9th level (Bishop of Pelor), 2 4th level (St. Cuthbert, Rao), 8 2nd level, 16 1st level
-- Druid (7): 1 4th level (Obad-Hai), 2 2nd level, 4 1st level
-- Fighter (7): 1 6th level (Captain of the Guard), 1 3rd level (Militia Commander), 1 2nd level (Sergeant of the Baron's Keep), 4 1st level (Elite Guard Corporals)
-- Monk (7): 1 7th level, 2 3rd level, 4 1st level
-- Paladin (7): 1 4th level, 2 2nd level, 4 1st level
-- Ranger (7): 1 5th level, 2 2nd level, 4 1st level
-- Rogue (15): 1 11th level, 2 5th level, 4 3rd level, 8 1st level
-- Sorcerer (7): 1 4th level, 2 2nd level, 4 1st level
-- Wizard (7): 1 4th level, 2 2nd level, 4 1st level