POPs is one of the most beautiful things to ever grace a PDS game

[lukesilveira]

Why didn't they use it in the newer games (CK 2, MotE, EU4)? CPU limits? Migration issues? The info perhaps isn't as relevant to the player as it is in Vic time period but it still is relevant. It could contain at least basic spheres as quantity, culture and religion, and tie that to manpower, possible revolts/factions et cetera.

I fell in love with Vic 2 mainly because of it, to know what the people, your people, wanted, to know what they are. And to manipulate them. It is a great immersive tool and if implemented in other titles would make pds games even better.

 

[Barkingdragon13]

+1
I know it would take away from the unique character of Vicky, but it's just such a great system it deserves to be at least in EU4 (the same way some people want CK2 "family tree" features in EU4 for the rulers)

 

[Mauer]

IMHO it would add a huge layer of complexity for too little gain. In Vic it makes sense because the POPs are a core mechanic that affect everything, from economy, politics, manpower, migration, etc. In EU4 all those mechanics have their own systems and some are not fit for the time period like ideology, political parties, factories, migration (there was migration but I think the peasants were mostly restricted to their localities or at least their own country).

I would be all for an expansion of cultures, I don't like them going extinct just because they are not accepted in a country.

 

[Sarius1997]

+1
This would be a huge gain. espacially for the EU series. I was already hoping for it to be introduced with EUIV, but maybe it is to early for it. Colonisation could benefit so much from it. You´d also need it to make migrations (and therefore a dark ages game) actually work.

 

[smeggy]

POPs?

 

[Sarius1997]

POPs?

The detailed population system in VicII. The detailed population groups (or a group of people in VicII) are often shortend as POPs.

 

[Teije]

I just started playing VicII, after much time with both EUIV and CKII and agree it is very deep and strong aspect. Keeping all these groups of people happy (or deciding who to piss off less) is very engaging, and adds great depth to the internal game. This is something I miss in EUIV as the internal peace-time management game is quite shallow and frankly, is boring. CKII has a similarly deep character game analogous to managing your POPs in VicII that makes peace-time pretty interesting.

 

[Polarisan]

The thing is that It's the key aspect of victoria, the same way CK2 has it's dynasties.

IF and IF Pops and families made their ways to the other games, we might as well just buy the game of the century from pds.

Make it happen Johan

 

[LeeDub]

POPs are rigid and inflexible. They could use some serious work going into V3 and even then, they should stay there. Other, simpler abstractions of population could find their way into other games, but "population" is actually one the things that have been cut from EU4 compared to EU3.

 

[TheBoozehammer]

Never played Vic 2, but the system sounds like it would be cool. However, I don't think there are enough historical records of the EU and especially CK time periods to make accurate population statistics.

 

[icedt729]

I absolutely love the POPs system but I don't think it would work very well outside of Vicky's imperialism-industrialization setting. In EUIV your social classes are mostly static and even the most advanced countries shouldn't see very big changes in literacy, ideology, productivity or needs until very late in the game, so for the most part they'd be there but they wouldn't be doing anything. Something like EU:Rome's more abstract population system might be useful but there's no need at all to model every single group of peasants in the world.

Another thing to point out would be that Vicky only has two start dates because of how labor-intensive it is to define all the millions of pops in the game. EUIV and CK2 have thousands of potential start dates because the information included is a lot shorter and simpler.

 

[Raph]

POPs are rigid and inflexible. They could use some serious work going into V3 and even then, they should stay there. Other, simpler abstractions of population could find their way into other games, but "population" is actually one the things that have been cut from EU4 compared to EU3.

Rigid and inflexible? In what way? They change all the time, dynamically!

And yes. I love POPs. Though I agree they make more sense in Vicky than in earlier-era games. They could make sense in later games though. HoI is too centered around warfare but otherwise you could easily have fit POPs into it, EvW ought to have some sort of POP system. And if PDS ever makes the space game I'm dreaming of, POPs would certainly fit!

 

[LeeDub]

Rigid and inflexible? In what way? They change all the time, dynamically!

50,000 artisans, every single one of them producing furniture, every single one of them getting 20% of his needs, every single one of them getting pissed.

 

[Orko80]

50,000 artisans, every single one of them producing furniture, every single one of them getting 20% of his needs, every single one of them getting pissed.

Besides the producing one product this is not how the system works in game. The militancy, needs and every other stat are a % of the whole POP group.
It is like a sample group not every one of them is the same. Meaning if they are 5% liberal doesn't mean every one of the member of that group is 5% liberal. It means that 5% of that group a re liberal. The same with rebels.

I could see a one POP per province system for EU4. Would be similar to the previous population system EU had. But i think a 3 POP per province would more sense. Nobles, burger and peasants.

I love the POP system. I think every game every should have a similar system in place =)

 

[Teije]

And if PDS ever makes the space game I'm dreaming of, POPs would certainly fit!

I have dreams of that that perfect grand strategy space game too

 

[LeeDub]

Besides the producing one product this is not how the system works in game. The militancy, needs and every other stat are a % of the whole POP group.
It is like a sample group not every one of them is the same. Meaning if they are 5% liberal doesn't mean every one of the member of that group is 5% liberal. It means that 5% of that group a re liberal. The same with rebels.

A POP gets 40% of it's needs == every single one of those 50k gets his needs 40% fulfilled. Which means they all get pissed off. And yes, the militancy is a scale, but it is not capped. The entire POP becomes a potential revolter, even though logic dictates there should be at least some artisans who are doing good for themselves. Then again every single one of them produces exactly the same product, so who knows. And if you butcher them when they rise up, it doesn't actually matter, because those rebels weren't the ones worst off in the group - because there AREN'T any worse off people in this POP.

There are other problems as well, of course, for example your country can have millions of soldiers while not having a single military unit, utterly mind-boggling province population make-ups (40% clergy, 30% soldiers etc ), the fact that people outside of the of the POP categories don't exist (where is the entire services sector, for example? ), the weird chicked/egg dilemma in case of capitalists and factories, the overall weirdness going on in the colonies etc etc.

Many of those problems are small ones, at worst requiring a balance patch, otherwise hurting perhaps the immersion factor only, sure. But POPs ARE rigid and inflexible, and I hope PDS finds a way to improve them in time for Vicky3. They certainly DID improve the concept from V1 to V2.

 

[delra]

CK or EU - hell yea. Rome - SURE.

But Hearts of Iron?

 

[LeeDub]

CK or EU - hell yea. Rome - SURE.

But Hearts of Iron?

Ironically enough, Hearts of Iron is the only game for which this data could be plausibly gathered.

 

[Orko80]

Ironically enough, Hearts of Iron is the only game for which this data could be plausibly gathered.

Well you could be vague how many there are. To have representation you don't need a number to represent the population. Could use sparsely populated, populated, largely populated, very populated and very dense populated. mix in some sort of tax base modifiers and bam you have your more plausible source of rebel units.

 

[FOARP]

POPs are rigid and inflexible. They could use some serious work going into V3 and even then, they should stay there. Other, simpler abstractions of population could find their way into other games, but "population" is actually one the things that have been cut from EU4 compared to EU3.

Yup. POPs are no more than a kludge for simulating national populations that gives weird results like:

1) Soldiers apparently dying along with their families in combat.

2) Having pops which sum to many thousands, but since individually none of them exceeds a much lower figure, you cannot build units.

3) Micro-pops of ~10 people, normally immigrating randomly from somewhere.

It works, but its not ideal, and it can certainly be improved on.

Never played Vic 2, but the system sounds like it would be cool. However, I don't think there are enough historical records of the EU and especially CK time periods to make accurate population statistics.

Lack of records isn't really any more of an issue for CK and EU than it is for Vicky, since a lot of the figures used in Vicky are straight-up guesstimates (what was the population of Kampala in 1836?)