GDP Per Capita

[Vellos]

So those that know me know my love of statistics and statistical measures.

Being bored today, I came up with a few "economic indicators" for realms. GDP per capita is fun
: get the number on realm income from the chart; that, I believe, is derived by:

SUM((Gold Stat Region A x Productivity Region A), (Gold Stat Region B x Productivity Region B)....)

Which gives you the pre-tax, total gold productivity each day for each realm. Population is also readily available. So you take that gold stat, multiple it by 84 (84 days in a year in Dwilight), and you get the C + G + I component of GDP. NX is a tricky component; without direct access to all trade records I can't really do it, but I went ahead and made some plausible estimates.

Notably, this is a list of GDP per capita: NOT income per noble. This is an estimate of how wealthy the whole nation is. And I say with some pride that the highest GDP per capita in Dwilight is in Terran. And I promise I didn't try to manipulate the data to do that; I'm not sure how it came out that way. The "number" for GDP per capita is not gold-per-peasant-per-year. I multipled gold and food numbers by a large variable to give more plausible looking numbers: the value of the whole economic output of a nation in a year probably will be more than a few hundred gold coins. You could imagine this, for "realism sake" as the annual income of a peasant if all wealth were equally distributed; maybe their income in silver coins or something. Naturally, in an unequal society, this is a number of less meaning; so I include a "bracket," wherein the low number is what a peasant might earn, and the high number what an aristocrat of some kind might earn. If I limit "aristocracy" to BM nobles, for reference, the average income of a BM noble, over an 84 day year

Without further ado, the ranking:

Realm	GDP per Capita	The 0.01%	The 99.99%
Lurida Nova	248	8,688	163
Asylon	270	9,451	177
Libero	272	9,527	179
Madina	280	9,787	184
Astrum	282	9,874	185
Morek	296	10,371	195
Pian en Luries	300	10,485	197
Summerdale	307	10,737	201
D’Hara	352	12,310	231
Corsanctum	354	12,382	232
Aurvandil	393	13,742	258
Barca	397	13,879	260
Fissoa	397	13,904	261
Iashalur	403	14,104	265
Terran	426	14,921	280

----

The income effect of trade may be slightly under stated, and reflect theoretical optimal trade patterns, not actual sup-optimal and oligopsoonistic/oligopolistic patterns. Also, the small-realm advantages are clearly in evidence. Also, I assumed universally identical costs for food. Tax rate effects are irrelevant to this, though investments are not, and do skew things; notably, Corsanctum, D'Hara, and Libero show up as wealthier than they probably should.

The primary driver of wealth is not "size of empire." It its regional productivity compared to population. Thus small, expanding realms doing a good job managing regions will fare well, while large, developed realms with worse regional maintenance will show up as very poor. Productivity compared to population is the key for these measures.

I assumed that the aristocracy represented 0.01% of the population, and took in 30% of the realm's income.

So why do I post this?
1. I was bored
2. Some of you might be bored
3. Some of you might enjoy it for RP purposes
4. If you would like to propose different measures for use

[egamma]

Why not use the realm: total income value from stats? Or income per player?

[Chenier]

For what I assume is balance reasons, small cities in BM are the way to go for wealth, and not big cities. None of the top-scoring realms have big cities.

This is contrary to what it would be irl.

[Tom]

For what I assume is balance reasons, small cities in BM are the way to go for wealth, and not big cities. None of the top-scoring realms have big cities.

This is contrary to what it would be irl.

Not really. Big cities tend to have slums and poor neighborhoods. Small cities less so.

[Gustav Kuriga]

pffff. Obviously never been to Cincinnati.

[D`Este]

Hm. The richest colonized city is in the poorest realm. Curious about your estimations regarding trade/food

[Chenier]

Not really. Big cities tend to have slums and poor neighborhoods. Small cities less so.

Small towns don't have (as many) dirt poor, but they also lack the filthy rich of the big cities, and the overall economic possibilities for everyone.

[Vaylon Kenadell]

Perhaps the bigger a city is, the more trade lost is through corruption. More minor nobles means more hands in the pie. In contrast, in smaller cities, corruption is easier to catch. It worked that way in Civ II, anyway.

[Vellos]

Why not use the realm: total income value from stats? Or income per player?

Because that is not GDP of the realm: it's an estimate of income of the realm's government. And it gives you things like GDP per capita as 0.001 gold coins per peasant. Which is kind of stupid. Big numbers are more fun and sound more realistic, and I was interested in providing something that could have some RP use.

I meant to compare to income per character, but didn't get around to it. Will do so later.

For what I assume is balance reasons, small cities in BM are the way to go for wealth, and not big cities. None of the top-scoring realms have big cities.

This is contrary to what it would be irl.

Interesting; didn't ntoice that myself. good spot.

[Psyche]

First, awesome mentioning of of one of my favorite games, civil 2.


Second, I always like the practice in BM of comparing gold to max pop of regions, and then with region types.   Usually I like to see a lot of mountains with stable food supply- they provide great wealth per pop, are much easier/cheaper to feed due to lower pop, and investments are more powerful there than in cities.  Not to mention, aside from better investment returns, the usually longer travel times help to prevent nearby enemies from damaging the investment, or at the least give you the time for early taxes so it can't be looted away.  That's one thing I always liked about central BT before the blight- rich mountains, efficient cities, and great rurals all in one place.

[Glaumring the Fox]

Yeah, well Asylon would top the happiness index if there was one!

[JPierreD]

The technology of the time should limit the maximum size before the efficiency starts lowering, but before reaching such point the larger cities should be more efficient. This said, a 20k population city should be more efficient than a 10k (of course there are a lot of other variables involved).

Nevertheless, in game terms, it would be extremely unbalanced to have large cities with high efficiency and small unproductive cities, as the realms in the small and poor cities would be pretty much condemned to eternal vassalage. Sounds fair that cities with higher potential will also have lower efficiency. It takes more effort to get there, but you keep growing when the other cannot anymore.

[Heq]

Chenier, Well, it depends on which model we're using, but the only modern model appropriate for this time period is likely some version of the Solow Model for long-cycle growth paths, which predicts that GDP per cap is a function of Capital per Cap.

As Capital can be reasonably be said to become more difficult to aquire as centres become bigger, income per cap goes does as pop goes up, (blah-blah-blah, trending towards a steady state based on capital reinvestment)

Anyways...The big issue would likely be the beurocratic overhang that comes with a low population, as it's the peasants that die out rather then the middle and upper classes.  The best recorded incident of this was probably Shizumo (sp?) province in Japan, where the warrior class essentially went to war or committed suicide as a preferable answer to starvation.

It likely happened a fair bit in the west too, but we ain't so good with the economic recordings and the numbers and the literacies.

[songqu88@gmail.com]

This talk reminds me... Spice and Wolf (the light novels, not the anime adaptation) has actually finished last month with volume 16. Oh noes, bye bye to the wolf girl and the merchant guy. I wonder sometimes whether that portrayal of "medieval not-European" economics is accurate. And then I think, meh, don't care, as long as it works.

Same with the game really. I'm not here to learn how to become a medieval merchant. Well, I suppose if I really wanted to I'd figure out how, but that won't make me CEO in the modern age. Which is too bad.

[Vellos]

As Capital can be reasonably be said to become more difficult to aquire as centres become bigger,

Err.... wut? Capital tends to accumulate with urbanization.

The most plausible explanation for lower per-capita income in realms with high urbanization is that Medieval cities did not enjoy the same economies of scale as modern ones. They existed, not out of needs for labor pooling (as in industrial cities) or land scarcity (as in contemporary times in some nations), but as judicial enclaves with different rules about mercantile practices, vassalage, slavery, religious permissions, etc, which created a legal environment where capital accumulation also occurred. But cities were not "industrial centers" in the medieval period; "industry" insofar as it existed was not specially urban. Thus, the great motivating factors that CREATE modern urbanization (population booms from rising crop efficiency and rising labor needs form industrialization) don't exist: BM has capped population and fixed technological inputs for industry and agriculture. The economic benefits of a city wherein labor pooling is not useful beyond the size of a guild workhall and capital pooling cannot occur among most of the populace (aristocracy controlling most of it) is quite limited, and thus it becomes a refuge for drifters, merchants, landless poor, escaped serfs, government officials, etc.

I haven't run the numbers recently, but I seem to recall, a while back, doing a comparison and finding that BM was significantly more urbanized than Medieval Europe ever was in terms of population; but I guess our data on food and gold doesn't reflect that urbanization as much.