Baby's and Population

Submitted by Leiela on Thu, 10/08/2009 - 04:51.

Yes sorry another question! yikes!

I've noticed you have a very very very extensive record of who lives in lothere, you seem to have info for every family in every village for which i applude you im not sure i'll ever be that dedicated.

I've also found your "life tables" which are great i did some background reading on how they worked but it made be wonder about your births. Ok im guessing you use the life table to roll up everyone each year? see who dies??

But how do you decide who is having babies and when?? Me i play the game and my people have baby's when they have baby's (i use ACR which helps randomise it abit) but i know you don't actually play it as a game so i was wondering how you do it??

Also when you started how did you work out what % of the population was baby's/child/teen/adults etc ?? i've spent ages looking all over the place for a rough idea of what % of a population would be expected to be at each life stage and i can't seem to find any info.

General Discussion

More software! am running a

Submitted by Lothere on Thu, 10/08/2009 - 05:21.

More software! am running a fertility simulation of sorts.

For the women whose reproductive status I am most interested in, I literally track them day by day, in terms of their last period, who they're sleeping with, whether they're sleeping together at all (if someone is traveling, e.g. Lady Eadgith with Leof) or how often (because they don't get along, e.g. Estrid with Brede).

Here's a behind-the-screens glimpse of my Lotherian Fertility Control Panel

For the rest of the women -- the hundreds of ordinary elves and villagers -- I just do one big automated check once a month for everybody. It uses exactly the same day-by-day technique as for the story character women, it's just all run automatically by the computer and I only see the results of who got pregnant and who gave birth or miscarried that month.

My remaining problem to solve is marriages though. I've been writing December 1085 for nearly two years, so it hasn't come up yet. But I need to write a program to take all the unmarried villagers and figure out who wants to get married that month, and find them an appropriate spouse!

As far as the population percentages, that came out naturally as a result of my life tables. When I created the population of Lothere, I made a bunch of random families starting with marriages in the range of 1050-1075 or so, as I recall. Those people lived a certain number of years and had a certain number of kids, and their kids lived a certain number of years and had a certain number of kids, and the result is what you see today: a realistic population demographic for this time period. So in that sense I did it backwards.

I will run a query for you showing the population breakdown in Lothere. That should give you a basis for guessing the percentages at different ages. I'll try to get that up later today. Right now I have to get to work!

Wow you know some people say

Submitted by Leiela on Thu, 10/08/2009 - 05:33.

Wow you know some people say my attention to detail is impressive but you leave me standing haha.

Because i play the game im playables tend to have baby's based on various factors (im tweeked a copy of ACR) and based on if thier spouse is at home or not "in story" but it's very much on a yearly basis at the moment. i do play 12 days per round (12 months) so although i could go more monthly orientated i havn't done yet but im reaching a point where i may have to decided if it's remaining a "game" or a "story" as it's becoming increasingly more difficult to have it do both/

I'm just trying to get thing's organised by giving my kingdom more of a living breathing feel, working out what villages are called, populations what services people can find there that sort of thing. (ie the behind the scene's none playable factor)

Wow, you really still PLAY

Submitted by Lothere on Thu, 10/08/2009 - 05:43.

Wow, you really still PLAY the game after all this time? I do applaud you! I got too frustrated with the whole "And then they had a kid, and then they had another kid"... that's the only thing that ever happened in my game until I started making up my own storylines and stopped playing the game!

I think it's an excellent idea to at least come up with some background notes about the villages and the shops, make maps, and so on. It has helped my storytelling a lot to know where the population centers are, and what they're like. (For instance, the ritziest part of Lothere isn't Kingsmarket, it's in front of Alred's castle. ) Also, knowing how many servants live in each castle and manor, and their names and so on! I don't know if anyone else notices, but it makes it all seem so much more real to me, and I figure that probably shows in my writing. Just little details like Shirtless K being able to tell Estrid where the jewelers are: "There's one just across the road, Princess, and another across the court. I can point them both out to you from my door." Thanks to my notes, I know he really can.

Yeah it's kinda funny

Submitted by Leiela on Thu, 10/08/2009 - 06:50.

Yeah it's kinda funny playing, it's wierd i have all these charecter personality's in my head from the storyline so when i play i do play them as i imagine them haha .. when someone has say an affair in story i have to make the sims do it do so there are the right memories etc.

Also i have this massive tax system/rule system written out using various mod's etc so how my family's are doing in game relay to how they do in the storyline. for example my peasants are only allowed certain career's and can only earn x$ per day etc.

But tbh it's becoming alot less about the game and more about the story as time go's on as you say it all becomes abit repetitive, especially now i have something like 30 odd playable family's and each storyline year takes sim days per family to play i think my last "year" in game took me 7 months of actual play time.

However at the same time i don't like the way my story was in the early days when baby's where born and suddenly there where teenagers .. i like having the story slowed down to the point it is not where i feel we can start to get to know the charecters.. not just X falls in love with y they pop out 10 kids and die!! ugh! but doing the story that way makes the game DRAG so i am debating binning the "game" element after all i kinda see the good stuff as being in my head anyway.

It would drive me crazy if I

Submitted by Lothere on Thu, 10/08/2009 - 12:28.

It would drive me crazy if I had to make my Sims have the correct memories. So many of my Sims have completely bizarre memories and relationships due to times I had to make them cuddle or kiss or do something inappropriate. Not to mention all the Sims whom I have turned into somebody else, but left all their prior relationships intact...

I made some charts of my population distribution by age. You can see them here:

Population distribution by age

Population distribution by Sim life stage

I guess I should note that my demographics are a bit skewed to lots of young couples and few old people, due to the fact that a lot of my residents are refugees from elsewhere in Northern England. That means a disproportionately large number of young people without kids showing up and starting families. As the years go by, we're seeing lots of very young kids and few teens for the same reason: the young couples are just starting families. On the first graph you can actually see a downward slope as kids age gets higher, and then a sudden jump around age 17/18. I never realized the effect was so pronounced until today.

wow thats great thank's....

Submitted by Leiela on Fri, 10/09/2009 - 01:00.

wow thats great thank's.... just trying to work out the best way of doing this atm.

My kingdom was already "populated" when my first king took over ... storyline wise it was part of a much bigger kingdom, but due to it's isolated location it was deemed too much hassle to bother with and was left abandoned to the natives for years and years.

However it was granted to my first king to "get him out to the way" as it where ... he took an inital "bunch of people" which where all "youngish couples" typical rkc style which as you've got all had baby's at the same time (im sort of on gen 2/ gen 3 of those origional familys (ive have 1 gen 4 birth ) now and all my "storyline" charecter's pretty much stem from those family's i've introduced the odd other charcter as time go's on for various reason's but i try my best to keep all storylines centered around charecters or thier decendents who stepped off the boat.

I sort of see my kingdom as a work in progress in that the inital boat load of people didn't suddenly take control of miles and miles of land, but they are slowely expanding thier "area of control" as it where wining the land back from the "natives".

All in all this means that im happy to continue my "playables as they are" at first the playables do seem to have these sudden baby booms which all seemed to grow up at the same time. Only 5 years ago i had 17 baby's born from playable couples in the same round so as you can see im still trying to work out the kink's and lessen these "baby booms" but i am slowely spacing out these birth's so im happy with the "playable" demographic's as it where and i figure it's not that unrealistic.

I've got a spreadsheet that i use to calculate the death's of playables, depending on age,sex, class and occupation which im reasonably happy with, i've been steadly making it more deadly as the years go on, (in the early days i didn't have the population of charecters to afford for it to be very deadly) just 2 days ago i really increased the infant mortality rate as i didn't feel enouugh baby's where dying most 2-3 gen woman have lost at least 1, but it's still not enough really.

Phew ... sorry for long post!

However if i want to move away from the "game side of things" and more into the "story" i'll need to make add a tab to my spread sheet with a Birth's calculator which is fine, i can manage that. I know in medieval times women on average had a baby every 2 years so using that as a base i can work something out.

Double However!!!

If i want to get a "population" i really need to calculate these things for my "natives" as well and they supposedly have been there for 100's of years so shouldn't have these spikes there, i've worked out "how many" people my villages have got but i've been looking everywhere to find some info on "in a village of 200 how many would be women? children ? elders? etc what proffession's would there be?" it just seems a really elusive subject because people didn't keep those sort of records back then and when there are records they tend to only record "the working men"

I'm also not sure to what sort of detail i should go into, i know how big each village is, what it's main "trade is" farming/mining etc. Your population background is very impressive and i can see the benefits but the thought of rolling up "3000" people is quite overwhelming. (heck i have trouble coming up with a name for a baby one at a time)

Heehee, I would never roll

Submitted by Lothere on Fri, 10/09/2009 - 04:30.

Heehee, I would never roll up 3000 people myself.. that's what computers are for!

But if you want to roll up some general information about your villages and so forth, and want to know more about medieval demographics, how many people lived in villages and households, etc., you should check out this site:

"Medieval Demographics Made Easy"

It's intended for people who play Dungeons & Dragons and other role playing games, but it is good for people like us too, since it distills a lot of realistic historical information down to something semi-realistic but easily interpreted and put into place.

Basically it helps you decide how many people live in your kingdom, how many villages there are and of what size, and how many people of each profession there are. Without going so far as actually rolling up individual people. Sounds like it might be helpful for you.

If you aren't familiar with role playing games, something like "2d4+3" means "roll a random value between 1 and 4 two times, then add 3". So in other words, a random number between 5 and 11. (i.e. d4 means a 4-sided die... but if you're familiar with random numbers in Excel then that should be no problem for you to come up with )

I actually used the information on that site to get me started building my medieval villages, especially for determining people's occupations.

Ha yes i found that site,

Submitted by Leiela on Fri, 10/09/2009 - 05:47.

Ha yes i found that site, along with this http://www.welshpiper.com/online-population-generator/

but i'm finding "kinks" haha

Firstly use the demographic's site to work out kingdom population number of villages .. all fine so far.

Then i started looking at "one of these villages" with a population 303. first question does that include children? women ? or is that just adult male? hmm good question.

Looking at the 2nd site (which uses the 1st site for it's numbers) pumping in my population of 303, it suggested

Firstly it says that there are 19 freemen (merchants), 259 citizens (peasants) which is thus far fine, if you read the documentation it tells you there is assumed to be 4.5 people per household (which falls within an expected bracket for medieval times if those figures are including children) it gives our village of 303, 39 households .. great... thus far.

However suddenly when you consider the 19 freemen, and then the 19 business’s it suggest's it gives it beg’s the question do they have children running these business’s?? Surely if the numbers include children (which the household figures suggest) then we need far less business’s, and even less again if we also assume that women running business’s was also practically unheard of.

What i've done instead is :-

Created alittle Excel sheet thing based on this (making so many tweeks it no-longer even resembles the origional)

http://www.di2.nu/pop_sim.html

To generate the number of villagers per age bracket, assuming my village of 276 (not included known playables) i got this.

Children - 47 (F = 24 , M = 23)
Teens - 119 (F = 70 , M = 49)
Adults (breeding age) – 58 (F = 25 , M = 33)
Middle Age (beyond breeding) - 33 (F = 10 , M = 23 )
Elders - 19 (F = 10, M = 9)

Then assuming Woman/children/teens and elders live within relatives households that gives me 62 Adult Males (including playables).At which point i then went back to the 2nd generator and generated my business's based on a population of 62.

I assume that merchant women will generally work in thier husbands/family's business or sometimes in someone elses. So really it's just what the men folk are upto which is important as they are going to be the only real business owners. Giving my village.

12 Merchant Households

Cobbler
Jeweler
Baker
Ostler
Potter
Tavern

Reeve,
Messor,
Constable,
Law Enforcement

Then finally of course the lord.

47 Peasant Households. (all unskilled workers, some working the land, others in the merchants business's etc)

(This estate thing also has 10 isolated population, which i've drawn up as 2 farms with resident familys/workers and one hunter)

Im now not sure if thats enough business's now but it's all very much a work in progress at the moment and thats where i'm upto haha.

I think the closest Village youve got to this sort of size is Bernwald-tún with a population of 312, and noticed you have 68 adult males so the calc i made doens't seem isn't too bad, but you do have quite a few more business's than i do.

That sounds pretty

Submitted by Lothere on Fri, 10/09/2009 - 05:57.

That sounds pretty reasonable. I have an average of about 5 people per household based on what the medieval life tables suggested for lifespans, which is reassuring because it means the number work in either direction.

If they say there is a "population of 300" it surely means including everyone -- women, children and everyone. Dividing by 4.5 you would expect to get an approximate number of healthy adult men who would be heads of these households. I assume the "number of businesses per population" figures take into account the number of people, not the number of households or adult males. Everyone needs to wear shoes after all, not just the adult men!

Your number for teens looks a little high to me (compared to the # of younger children), but that could be a result of the way your kingdom was settled. Lothere is probably going to have a disproportionately high number of teens eight or ten years from now when the huge number of babies and toddlers starts getting older.

Having a jeweler in such a small village also seems surprising to me, but then again I have two jewelers, an illuminator, and other luxury shops in a village of less than 500... because they're sitting right in front of Alred's house. So if you have a good reason it's fine. I also have some "farming villages" where almost nobody has an occupation.

That site you pointed me to is very cool. I will be playing with that later, I'm sure, if only to double-check some of my own numbers. I tried plugging in the numbers on the real-life size and population of the Isle of Man in 1085, and it wasn't very accurate, I admit. I think it assumes a region on a continent, surrounded by other kingdoms and duchies, and I don't think they take into account factors like constant raids and warfare in the way the population is distributed. But that's understandable, I suppose. It's just for games after all.

There are still a few occupations I'm missing, I see, but if I keep this up, everybody in Lothere is going to have an "occupation" and there won't be any farmers left! Does a charcoaler really spend all his time making charcoal?

There was a high % of teen's

Submitted by Leiela on Fri, 10/09/2009 - 06:27.

There was a high % of teen's i think the reason for that is because i set the "death rate" high for adolesance as it didn't have a "baby" catagory, so there was a high % that made it from being born, but didn't make it to adult, i might "tweek" that portion of the calculator to add a death rate for baby's rather than killing them just at the point they transition from teen to adult.

Thats where the "class population" bit has me stumped, the whole way though it suggested the total population 302 in my case, includes women and children.

But then it decides i have 19 Total freemen (adding up all the class's does add upto a population of 302) which is fine, but it then gives them 19 business's.

Thing is i've not got a problem per say with "either figure" .. 19 business's for a population of 302 doens't sound especially outlandish. 39 households for a pop of 302 also doens't sound wrong ... im just not sure how 19 merchants (including women and children) are expected to run all 19 business's?? That seems like an awful lot of business's for 4 men to run alone?? (based on 1 man per household of 4.5 people)

To me it would make much more sence to either have.

1) 19 adult males - running 19 business's with a total merchant population of 85 (19 x 4.5)

2) 19 total merchants inclusive of women and children 4 of which are adult males running 4 or so business's.

im i even making sence anymore??

I would read "19 freemen"

Submitted by Lothere on Fri, 10/09/2009 - 06:37.

I would read "19 freemen" and "19 businesses" as 19 households which run businesses. That means those 19 freemen, plus their families, would run the businesses. (so a merchant population of 85, like you said) The rest of the households (39 - 19 = 20 households) would be peasant farmers.

Wow. I just can't believe

Submitted by Van on Fri, 10/09/2009 - 06:47.

Wow. I just can't believe the detail

*looks at own population stats, which are comprised solely of the word "Enough"*

Exactly and that would make

Submitted by Leiela on Fri, 10/09/2009 - 06:48.

Exactly and that would make sence, but it's not it's suggesting that my 19 merchants are the entire merchant population.

the 302 population is spilt into

Nobles - 14
Officers - 6
Clergy - 3
Freeholders - 19 (Definition in the notes is : The number of artisans, craftsmen, and “skilled” workers in the community )
Citizens - 259 (Citizens: Normal folks; “unskilled” workers )
Hirelings - 1

Ohh!

Hang on Brain Wave ... if the 19 population includes just the "skilled" ie the Adult Males i guess you could assume thier family's would be made up of "citizens" so we'd have say

19 Skilled Adult Males looking Owning 19 Business's.
+ 66 citizens as "Merchant Women and Children"

THEN - 193 true unskilled workers (ie the peasant population) of which for arguments sake 42.8 are adult males.

Blah! that makes more sence.

haha van ! bless .. i'm just

Submitted by Leiela on Fri, 10/09/2009 - 06:53.

haha van ! bless .. i'm just a tweee bit OCD !! honest:P

Blah ok ... i've added an

Submitted by Leiela on Fri, 10/09/2009 - 08:08.

Blah ok ... i've added an extra column to the population Calc.

based on 302 population it now reads as.

107 Children under 10.
67 Teens
57 adults. (child baring)
45 Middle aged
26 elders.

Blah ... now the maths bit, watching trends it seems to represent.

Women during thier child baring ages giving birth to 1 baby every 2.6 years that makes it full term and though childbirth.

Of the 104 baby's born, only 67 of them are recorded as making it to age 10. (about 69%) (Most of which we know would actually die in the first 4 years) but the spreadsheet works on the basis of decades so it's not possible to be more accurate than that about when they die but hey we know they never make it to teen so i figure thats good enough)

Look better?

With this in mind referencing it to the "households" im supposed to have (39 houses + 16 lived in business's = 55 households) (128 total adults inclusive of elders)

That makes 2.3 adults per house. Which seems fairly reasonable to me .. most family's will have a mum and dad, some may have an grown up child or grandparent still living with them.

That sounds about right,

Submitted by Lothere on Fri, 10/09/2009 - 08:26.

That sounds about right, assuming you have a fairly large number of households run by "middle aged" people... I'm not sure how you're defining that. Aged 40 to 60? With only 57 adults of child-bearing age for 55 households... if you assume each one is part of a married couple with someone else of that age, it only gives you 28 couples of childbearing age, for 55 households. So there are still a lot of households that must be run be people over 40 with teenage-ish kids, or by elders. (Or you have a lot of couples where the man is over 40 and the woman is between 20 and 40... or something like that.)

My demographics are really quite different, due to the young age of my settlement. I have very few people past childbearing stage, much less at an "elder" age!

Yeah thats about right it's

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Fri, 10/09/2009 - 14:06.

Yeah thats about right it's about 20-40 for childbaring, then 40-60 is concidered middle ages
So yeah 57 child baring adults (28 couples ish) alot of the couples in the 40-60 tange i guess would also have children living with them but at the higher end of the scale so child/teens rather than baby's after all it's fairly feasable that a woman in her 40's has a 7-8 year old child just because she is "no-longer" childbaring doens't mean she hasn't got little tikes running around haha.

oops forgot to log in Tbh

Submitted by Leiela on Fri, 10/09/2009 - 14:17.

oops forgot to log in

Tbh im not 100 bothered about these figures being 100% acurate as long as they are in the ball park for starting settlements, i intend to create something maybe in Excel to do more exact calculations. After all calc's ever 10 years arn't really precise enough for my needs i need something at least yearly which also perhaps track's the business's etc in the town long term as well.

i figure these numbers will get me up and running your right though a long term settlement is much defferent to a short term one in terms of numbers the calculations on that last one was base on a small boatload of people 30 ... and taking 200 years to reach that population. Actually with the harshness of the times some years it does seem like the population is just about breaking even.

...What Van said. But to be

Submitted by maruutsu on Sun, 11/08/2009 - 22:11.

...What Van said. But to be honest, I'm just as OCD as Leiela is, so I can't say it shocks me. I'd probably do the same thing if I wasn't so lazy.

Another online generator you could use is this: http://qzil.com/kingdom/

It's also based on the "Medieval Demographics Made Easy" site that Lothere pointed out.

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