Urban Provinces

Dungeons & Dragons BRCS 3.0/3.5 Edition
21

So are you saying with the 30 province requirement that the 100,000 people for a level 10 province comes from them, without dropping th elevel of any province? It would be 3334 people per province and if its an equal distribution than it would likely drop the lower level provinces (4 and under) by a level.

And that was a main issue we ran into before, the question of where do the people come from.

Its part of a much larger rewrite of the Build action, and to be honest its not all in a very nice, postable format right now, so tell ya what. Give me a few days and Ill put some work into it and post it in a
more complete format.

Hey Gary, have you ever goten around to rewriting up the Build action that you taked about? and will ya post up your ideas now?

I like you idea for the utilities wonders, question though, could you have multiple utiliy wonders or just 1 really and it would end up having multiple functions?

22

tcharazazel writes:

> Hey Gary, have you ever goten around to rewriting up the Build action that you taked about? and will ya post up your ideas now? I like you idea for the utilities wonders, question though, could you have multiple utiliy wonders or just 1 really and it would end up having multiple functions?

Geez, I haven`t looked at that stuff in a while… Seems like all I want

to do lately is write up awn-/ersheghlien and all that malarky. I`ll take a

look when I get home to see what I`ve got written up so I can post it,

though.

Gary

23

We’ll actually I was assuming the 30 province pre-reg because I thought a regent would need to have a large realm to create a city that would stand out and be the icon of the nation.(like when I think of France I picture Paris)

Your also assuming that the settlers of the city are coming only from the regents domain. This is sort-of shortsighted. Immigrants would come from many different places to join a city that would stand out so clearly. Certainly the majority would come from the regent’s domain but enough would come from immigrating families that there would not be any decrease in province levels.

24

Not realy shortsighted as the regent has 30 provinces his capital is likely to be in the middle of the 30 provinces or near the middle so he can effectively rule over them. It gets very difficult to rule over provinces when they the capical is like 20 provinces away (if he is ruling over a long strip of provinces along the coast for example) or even 10 provinces away, as 10 provinces away the provinces are likely to be in a different region then. Thus, if he is in a radius with about 7-8 of his own provinces surrounding his capital, then its not so likely he will be getting the majority of the 100,000 people from his own provinces.

The other reason its not short sighted is the way you set it up, as it doesnt require a diplomacy action in other realms to win over those people to come join his new UP. He is only using an agitate action to get HIS OWN people riled up to join the UP not his neigbors people. Thus, expecting the extra people to come from any surrounding realms that maybe about 8 provinces away, and possibly even in a different region, is very shortsighted on your part.

Since he is getting the majority of the 100,000 people for the level 10 UP, he would need to lower the population of the surrounding provinces. Now, if you did it like i suggested, creating virtual levels (which was Osprey’s idea) then you would be able to raise the population of the province, where the UP will be located, or as you have it requiring 1 season to build up the UP wonder, then each season it gains an effective incrrease in population… however, as the UP is not yet created these people are still considered to be in the province, its just a different way of keeping track of the population.

If the populace from the surrounding area is taken slowly, ie 1 season at a time, it would then make sense that there would be no major loss in population and thus no provinces would drop in level. However, if you do it the way you originally proposed then there would be a sudden drop in population throughout the regents lands, which would likely cause a drop in the province level. So just making that little tweak would solve your problem.

25

I’d like to note that… province level is NOT directly tied to population… Its tied to your control over & the overall orginization of said population. The #'s for citizens is something of a example average to me.

26

Heh, if province level is not tied to population, then how could you have a province with only 1000 people be considered a level 10 province? Of course its tied to population! If there are not enough people then there isnt enough labor, merchants, priests, ect to have any of the development that occur in the higher level provinces. This is why in the BRCS they put the approximate number of citizen for each level of the province, pg 88.

Here is a quote from the BRCS for ya on that same page, “The difining domain-level measure of a province is not its size, but rather its level – its overall measure of its population, technology, and industrial prosperity.”

So you can see population is the Key factor in a province, as without any people, there would be not technology nor industrial prosperity!

You are mistaking Province levels for Holding levels. Holdings also depend upon population, however, the higher they get the more control over the population they have, until they reach the provinces level, then they control all of that holding. Thus, population size is important to the holdings, only in that it sets teh limit for the province level and thus the max level for the holding.. Holdings are described on the next page, pg 89.

27

Thank You Paul.
I appericiate your suggestion. What i was thinking was that people would slowly be moving into the city throughout the entire period that the building was occuring. Slowly gaining enough population for the UP. Sadly game mechanics dont always work with real life very well. I think thats part of the problem its’s hard to put what really happens in situations like this into a game perspective. I liked Osprey’s idea but thought it a bit long-winded and more complicated than it needs to be(a habit that he really gets into) :stuck_out_tongue: But it certainly has merit. I was trying to come up with something a bit more streamlined game mechanic wise. I had not spent a lot of time dealing with the real world comparison.
Any way
Thanks

28

Yeah, game mechs and real life def arent perfect.

Well, if they are moving during that time period, then they maybe instead of having the UP start at level 10, have it start at level 0 and each season he can raise it up.

It would require the wonder to be equal level with the UP level. Thus the wonder would go up 1 level a season, and could potentially go up to level 10, however, to get the people to move there it would require the reaise province action by the regent. That would account for the extra costs of creating and maintaing an UP , and the people moving there.

29


Here is a quote from the BRCS for ya on that same page, “The difining domain-level measure of a province is not its size, but rather its level – its overall measure of its population, technology, and industrial prosperity.”

The BRCS p. 88 also goes on to say that the level provides a “rough metric for determining the number of loyal taxpaying human commoners in a rural province”, which means that they aren’t really reflective of the total population of a province after all. Firstly, because not all inhabitants are loyal, and secondly because not all inhabitants pay taxes (and some aren’t human either :wink: ).

I recently made some comments about more reasonable estimates in population on another thread (http://www.birthright.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=2740), that come up with some pretty good numbers (I checked against real world equivalents and there is good correlation).

While I am against the whole concept of “urban provinces”, as IMO The imperial City of Anuire is a unique historical case (alright, if you build a continental empire that lasts a thousand years, then maybe I’ll allow you to have an urban province). But, given my numbers, if I were to allow the creation of such divisions, I would just break off the most populous urban center of the province and say: “You’re urban”. That province would then gain a level corresponding to its city’s size on the total province population chart.

For example, say I have Ilien, a level 7 province with a total population of 216, 691. I want to emancipate the city of Ilien from the province. The population of the city would be around 13,306. So that means that the population of the rural province will take a blow, going down to 203, 685, but this isn’t enough to push the province down to level six (total pop 174, 182), and would recover eventually without too much trouble. The city of Ilien however, doesn’t quite have enough people to be considered a level 1 province, so instead it is a level 0 urban province and will have to be ruled up from there. In fact, only level 10 provinces boast large enough urban populations to spawn an urban province of level 1, and only provinces of level 6 or higher should be allowed to spawn level 0 urban provinces.

A reasonable restriction would be to say that only Metropolises (these only appear at level 10 in my charts) can be spun off into urban provinces, and that this follows the natural progression of provincial developement. Once a province hits the level 10 wall (which is dictated by land availability more than anything else. Only 12 counties in the world today have more than 40% arable land, about 3/4 have 20% or less) it enters a new stage in development by spinning off a city which gains a life and character of its own, independent of later effects to the mother city. Possibly a successful rule action on a level 10 province would instead of raising the province level, create a level 1 urban province which could grow from there. Of course it would be reasonably to say that any given province could only generate one urban province(all other major centers would be the UP’s metropolitan area). Heck, I’m just throwing out ideas now, cause its getting late :).

Anyway, I realize that my charts aren’t 100% applicable to independent cities, given that they are based on agricultural developement, but it would make things easier to standardize and just assume wouldn’t it? I also realize that they are nowhere near BRCS canon, and so probably will end up being irrelevant anyway, but now that I think of it, I like the idea of level 1 urban provinces being created by a successful rule of a level 10 province. It sort of explains where the population comes from (the previous urban population, and the rule action) and it gives the player a new province that still needs growth to reach its full potential.

30

Yeah, that would also work, however, I’d say that it should start out at level 0 as you are essentially creating the UP. This would be setting up the beuracratic foundation, trade networks, ect. required to rule a UP.

When you essentially create the UP by raising up the province, would you then be raising the province to level 11, for game mech perposes. Thus, you would have a DC of 10 + 11 (for next level of the province). Also would you need to continue to follow this method for raising the UP level, or would you only use it for its first level?

Pros for making it harder to raise the UP level are that fewer regents would be able to do so, unless they are very gifted rulers (epecially if you use the house rules that Osprey set up for raising provinces above level 10, which can be seen here: Southern Alliance)

If you are just calling it a regular province after its creation, then its much easier to rule up, as the DC to rule the province wil be just 10 + 1 for level 1, which it really shouldnt be.

31

Would it not look alot more realistic, as well as make more sense to redefine the borders of the province you are creating the urban province in to include only the city, and have the lands around it become the province (0) or (1)?

In reality, people would flock to the city as it became more prosperous, and leave the fields, thus creating the equivalent of a food shortage, which would ned to be managed by the regent.

In other words, let’s not think of this as creating an ‘Urban’ province, but instead calving the farmland off of a city into its own rural province. The city holdings would not change (Temples, Law, Guilds), since they are well established and likely to be concentrated in the city anyways. the ‘room’ for all of these regents to exp[and is going to be in the rural areas.

32

To Tcharzazel:

Probably a DC of 21 to create the UP, but then afterwards the city would be ruled independently from the mother province. So there is a major effort to overcome first, then the city can be ruled more normally. The reason for this would be to divorce the fortunes of the city somewhat from the fortunes of the mother province. The only precedent that we have, after all, is the level 10 imperial city of anuire, whch is level 10, while the province of Anuire has only a level of 7(Presumably lowered by 500 years of civil wars). I think that a level one UP is more realistic, because level 0 indicates no developement whatsoever, where in fact this is a major city that has been around for a while (years even) and is being emancipated from its surroundings. Plus, the rule action creates a new province level, which becomes the base level of the UP. However, the largest a provincial city can grow is fairly small compared to how large the emancipated city can grow, which explains the small starting level.

However, it could be added as a comment to the rules that ruling an urban province adds +10 to the standard rule DC. That would divorce the fortunes of the the UP and the mother province, while still making UPs very difficult to rule.

To Athos69:

It wouldn’t really be more realistic at all. Even in the most populous medieval lands, at least 80% of the population is rural, and of the 20% that are urban, many are split amongst the province’s towns and cities. So probably only about 10% of the population live in the major city that will become the UP. In the case of my chart, about 35,000 out of 400,000 people in a level 10 province. In the standard chart, about 10,000 out of 100,000 people. Creating the urban province through the rule action means that those 35K or 10K are just now considered an independent province (whose borders, like you said, are the limits of the city), while the rule action brought enough people into the original province to replace the losses. If we used you suggestion, well the movement of 365,000 or even 90,000 people is a mass exodus the likes of which are very rarely seen, especially over the coursse of a domain turn. Not only would they all starve, since the fields would produce only enough food to supply the people that remained to work them and maybe a couple hundred or thousand others, but the infrastructure of the city would be completely unable to house the immigrants. Probably the city gates would be shut to keep them out. I know if I was a citizen of a prosperous city and I saw a mass of tens of thousands of ragged people flocking to my home I would do everything in my power to send them away.

For holding divisions, probably the best thing to do (assuming the creation of a level 1 UP, is to say that the majority holder of any given holding in the mother province gets a level 1 holding while all the other holders each get a level 0 holding. In the case of a tie in holdings level the level one holding’s owner would be randomly determined.

33

Heheh, and now we degrade into the problems we had before when coming up with a means for creating UPs…

Ok, so Athos if we were to expand upon ure idea then: current province would drop to level 1 lets say (as not everyone would want to move into the city) and the UP would begin at level 9. Why would it have to be so extreme though? If we look at Bearcat’s populatin spread, it would be more like province level 9 and UP level 3. As the urban population is the equivalent of a level 3 province.

The major problem here is that it is not equal, province level wise when it is population wise. We seem to be forgetting the important beuacratic infrastructure that it takes to run any type of province, which is created when you do the create province action and increased with every rule province action.

Now, realistically there would already be some infrastructure in the city and its likely where most of the infrastructure would be… which then leads to the opposite problem… If the city becomes a UP then how does all the infrastructure within the city suddenly go outside the UP to control the level 9 province?

Of course if we do it your way Athos, infrastucture isnt as much of a problem. However, in a level 10 province, its doubtful that the equivalent of 9 levels of infrastructure is in the city when the majority of the population is not in the city. So, that would lead us back to the starting level of the UP be 3 instead of 9. So as there isnt enough infrastructure, we can say that even though there is enough population for a level 9 province, there is only enough infrastructure for a level 7 province equivalent, or even less.

There also is one other problem that we havent addressed yet, does the maximum level for the province with the UP in it, drop when the UP is created? The reason for the question is based on the fact that the UP is obviously in the best location for a city in that province so if it suddenly is no longer apart of the province. The next city that the province would have to make to get to the higher levels would not be in the ideal location, so would it get to as high a level?

Heheh, when we try to make it more real it starts to get a lot more difficult, as there are a lot more details that the system just glosses over.

34

But the majority of the population is not in the province. I’m seeing the fallacy that people are using is directly related to a ‘true’ medieval population distribution. If you look at Anuire as being a bit later in period than that, to reflect for the rise of the middle classes (represented by the Guilders, who would not be any force at all in a ‘true’ medieval cultural setting), then you will find a much different population distribution, as the middle classes tended to migrate to where the wealth was – the cities.

35

And how much of the population was middle class? not very much, especially when compared to the serf or lower class. So, it really is the movement of the lower class that makes the big change in population shifts. As the majority of the lower class will be farming then it doesnt make sense that they would all pick up stakes and head for the city. If they are similar to serfs then they couldnt really leave the land either, as they are tied to the land.

36


But the majority of the population is not in the province. I’m seeing the fallacy that people are using is directly related to a ‘true’ medieval population distribution. If you look at Anuire as being a bit later in period than that, to reflect for the rise of the middle classes (represented by the Guilders, who would not be any force at all in a ‘true’ medieval cultural setting), then you will find a much different population distribution, as the middle classes tended to migrate to where the wealth was – the cities.

But it is also a logical fallacy to assume that people are no longer required to work in the fields. Despite technological advances that make farms more productive, you generally don’t see a reduction in the number of people required to really work the land until heavy mechanization comes into play. The only numbers that I could easily find were for the US, which in 1880 still only had about 24% of its population urbanized.

In general, 20% is a very generous urban population, in my opinion. MMS:WE cites the range as being 6.67% to 20% with an average of 8%. The average being given in the DMG is 1/10th to 1/15th (10% to 6.67%, p. 155 of the 3.0 DMG). So 20% is a very hefty urban population all things consideered.


Heheh, when we try to make it more real it starts to get a lot more difficult, as there are a lot more details that the system just glosses over.

Which is why I like my method. Its simple and fairly elegant (and its also based on my own demographic calculations, not the ones in the BRCS, so there would be no level shifts for the mother province and the UP would be level 1). One rule action creates the urban province, with 1 level, and then rule actions with a +10 DC can be used to raise it. Traderoutes and what not can probably even be ignored if we assume that the UP is a generalized food sink in the same way that a major river has a drainage basin, a little bit from everywhere in a three to four province area instead of all from one source.