Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="JohnBrown" data-source="post: 761738" data-attributes="member: 2243">Edena,It may be too late (or you may not want) to change your power calculation at this point, but I was noticing some things that could perhaps be better represented.  I readily admit I know little or nothing about the Realms, but if what I read in this thread is true, then you may want to take into account a sense of nationalism and if you are going to factor population into this then perhaps population should be the base on which the other numbers are formulated.  Let me explain.The level of Nationalism – being roughly defined as how much the people living in any given area feel as if they are part of a larger whole – would be a critical factor in determining a county’s ability to project power or concentrate on a specific goal for a long period of time.  Let’s take Aglarond for example (again, I know nothing about the Realms so this example might not be accurate, but it should demonstrate what I mean).  According to William’s post, it has a population of 1, 270,080.  64% of its population is human, 30% is half-elven, 5% is elven, and 1% other.  The question is, of the population, how many consider themselves Aglarondians, and how many are just tribes or clans, or what have you, which just happen to live in a territory called Aglarond?  If you have a situation where the level of nationalism is high then a leader could count on most if not all of their population to take on monumental tasks, while a lower sense of Nationalism would mean that fewer people could be counted on (and hence be less powerful overall).If you treated Nationalism as a fraction, with 1 being 100% and .1 the lowest possible level.  You could then get a better grasp on how much actual people power you can apply to a given task.  A given territory might have a huge population, but if its citizens didn’t have much of sense of unity, then it is awfully hard for a leader to mobilize and direct those resources.  Sure, those various clans might band together effectively for a time under a strong leader when faced with a common threat, but be incapable of projecting any sustainable power.  So, continuing the example, lets say that among the humans, there is a extremely high sense of nationalism in Aglarond (say 1), but the elves of Aglarond tend to be more clannish, or they just tend to distance themselves from non-elf affairs (say a level of .2), and that half of the half-elves side with the humans, and half with the elves (a nationalism level of say .6), that gives us roughly:(810,000 x1) +  (381,000 x .6) + (63,500 x .2) = 1,051,300So out of Aglarond’s total population 1,270,080 about 83% of the population is going to answer the leader’s call (a pretty good number).  Now that we have determined that, we could use that number to determine how those resources are being spent.  Assuming that you are talking about an IR type of situation again, you could categorize it like this:Military – What percentage of your active population is assigned to the military, assuming that you wanted this to resemble anything at least remotely realistic you would want to cap this at about 50%.Taxes  -- This extremely general category would represent how much of you population is focused on trade of goods and services that are easily taxable, as well as bureaucracy.  After all, since you are speaking at country level, it is taxes that count.  Your Tax percentage would half to relate somehow to your other expenditures, especially the military.  Lets say for this sake that it can’t be lower than your Military + Infrastructure + Magical Power + Technological Research to break even.  This could surplus or you could go into deficits  Industry – Again, a general category, not only representing the ability to manufacture things (swords, armor, fortifications, etc.), but also actively search for new pockets of natural resources (can’t make steel without iron)Magical Power – Pretty self-explanatory.Technological Research – Assuming an IR situation, this number would be used to determine how fast you could advance technologically.Food – Again, pretty self explanatory, but also takes into account those members of the population that isn’t doing anything else (for example, the very old and very young).  To be anywhere near realistic, this probably shouldn’t drop below 20%.   This could also be rolled over as surplus, or go into deficits, thus causing famine and decreasing your population.  Infrastructure – This represents things like monuments, temples, parks, aqueducts, schools, police forces, fire departments, art, theaters, etc.  These types of things would be used to increase or maintain your level of nationalism.  Lets say a expenditure of 5% is needed to maintain your currently level of nationalism, anything above that accumulates until you reach a certain point, say 100, and your nationalism percentage goes up by .1.So our pretend Aglarond, might look like this (forgive me if the math is off):Military: 1% or 10,513 Taxes:  20% or 210,260 Industry: 20% or 210,260 Magical Power: 1% or 10, 513 Technological Research: 0% (No IR as of yet)Food: 50% or 525,600Infrastructure: 9% or 94,617Now, your Leadership and Political Will scores would be used as multipliers to those base numbers.  Your Leadership ability would be used for one of the categories (a person can only concentrate on so many things at a time), while your Political Will would be used for the others (since the leader is looking at something else right now, the Bureaucracy has to oversee the rest).  Using your Strong ranking in each category, and using fractions (.9 instead of 9) to get smaller numbers to work with:Military: 10,513 x .9 = 9,461 Taxes:  210,260 x .9 = 189,234 Industry: 210,260 x .9 = 189,234  Magical Power: 10,513 x .9 = 9,461 Technological Research: 0 x .9 = 0Food: 525,600 x .9 = 473,040Infrastructure: 94,617 x .9 = 85,155Divide those totals by 1000 just to make them easier to work with:Military: 9.4 Taxes:  189.2 (thus running a surplus of 85.3)Industry: 189.2  Magical Power:  9.4 Technological Research: 0Food: 473.0  (if you added up all other categories and compared this total I would be running a deficit of about –10 right now, maybe I need to recalculate my distribution just slightly, or maybe this formula just doesn’t work…. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />  )Infrastructure:  85.1For a total power level of 955.3.  I just came up with these formulas off the top of my head, and they aren’t entirely worked through (I can already see some holes myself), not to mention that it is more complicated than the original formula that Gez came up with, and there is certainly nothing wrong with Gez’s formula.  I do think that this allows you to take into account population in a slightly more realistic way, however.  Also assuming that you are using this in an IR.  It would allow you to account for captured territory more realistically.  You would get access to more resources, but their Nationalism level would initially start out very low (.1) but over time with the expenditures on Infrastructure they would eventually be brought into the fold, thus creating a greater whole.  Also, it would give you some numbers to base decisions on (Could the people of Aglarond build those fortification before the invasion force arrives?  Well, he did spend X on Industry this turn…).  Also, as people die in battle, and they are replaced, those people have to come from somewhere, meaning that that some other area must suffer (such as food production <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />  ). Or I could just be insane <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

Verification