Mod: Dynamic Society! Qualifications, techs, POPs, ownership, politics... v 0.8 for 1.1.2

[TheLand]

Edit 10 Feb 2023: Current status - Testing out 1.2 beta and working out where to go next! 1.2 seem to have a bunch of cool stuff and we need time to digest it. DL is only compatible with 1.12.


Steam link here: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2913245413

Current version v0.8 for 1.1.2

Announcing the Dynamic Society mod!

This is a collection of changes, reworks and tuneups to make your POPS reach their full glorious potential!

Across literacy, qualifications, ownership, politics, birth and death rates, there is more nuance and detail. Society techs now play a role unlocking key social changes, and the impact of political choices is increased.

Plus, with literacy closer to its historical levels, and Qualifications reworked, exceptional fast growth is much more difficult - particularly for less progressive powers.

Research is slower as base innovation is reduced, and the research cap is lower. Technology spread is a more important route to gaining techs, though it is now heavily dependent on literacy and laws. In short: Low Literacy and regressive laws will really reduce your learning, high Literacy and an open society will see you tech up very quickly. Finishing the tech tree is impossible, but difficult.

Literacy is now far lower in most countries (other than Western nations and Japan). It no longer depends mainly on Standard of Living, but on the Education institution and POP types; if you are struggling to get education laws passed, then creating more Clerks helps you.

Let's look at this example of Japan at the start of the game. It has high literacy (because Japan starts both with Religious Schools in force, and an additional bonus reflecting the Japanese tradition of literacy). They could have correspondingly high tech spread! However... not only are they Isolationist - they are also Traditionalist, have Censorship, and also Hereditary Bureaucrats. Essentially, no-one in a position of power in their society wants to encourage the spread of ideas. As a result they have a huge 85% penalty to tech spread. (It can get worse, as well). Yet, when these laws are abolished, tech will start to spread very quickly.

What's more, education is now dynamic with other laws! Allowing Child Labour and poor levels of Women's Rights laws now reduce Education Access (Literacy). Even if you have very high Education institution, if children are still working and girls are expected to grow up as their husbands' property, your Literacy gains from Education will be much lower.

Universities are reworked! Because of the tech changes, spamming universities is no longer a guaranteed route to success. It's only worth building universities if you have good laws and literacy. Within the University, there is now an 'Academics' production method choice, which significantly influences Innovation output, alongside the level of your Philosophy. Religious Educators do not give much Innovation, but Secular and then - later - Scientific Academics increase output. Religious Educators do however help your Authority a bit, and a new State Academia option for communist countries increases Authority and Bureaucracy at the cost of some research.

Here is the Scientific Academia production method, which adds some engineers and machinists to the staff, reflecting the people who make scientific investigation possible once you're unlocked Philosophical Pragmatism. However, the scientific method also gives you the greatest research output.

 

[TheLand]

You have more choice over ownership production methods. Early in the game, you will now want to research Stock Exchange to get Privately Owned buildings and have Capitalists - no longer do the capitalists just appear when you start using lathes! This also fits neatly with the Qualifications changes.

(insert photo here)

Later in the game Shopkeepers stay more numerous for longer, and there is now a meaningful choice between Publicly Traded and Privately Owned. Publicly Traded means that the Capitalists now are in full control of the business, no longer sharing ownership with Shopkeepers. This increases your Investment Pool contributions under most capitalist-friendly economic systems. However your Shopkeepers will become poorer and may end up increasing the support and radicalism of the Petty Bourgeois. (In vanillla, Publicly Traded just makes your Capitalists poorer).

Qualifications are far scarcer, particularly for middle/high level POPs. You can't just go to Sudan and start building factories there without worrying about the population! You must make conscious choices about how to develop. Education investment and literacy is now vital if you want to have Machinists, Engineers and Academics (see above for what's changed on Literacy). Wealthy shopkeepers are important if you want Capitalists, and if you want Shopkeepers you need other well-off POPs, perhaps Farmers.

These changes are most binding on more backwards countries, but do also prevent winning by construction-spamming by any nation.

For instance, let's have a look at what is happening in Rio de Janeiro at the start of the game, with some Shopkeepers - who don't forget are the wealthiest of the middle classes. In vanilla there are 57,000 people waiting to be shopkeepers, probably more than you need for several decades of factory building. This includes at least 5,000 Peasants and, gulp, 3,370 slaves - who are just waiting to leap from the fields, throw off their literal shackles, and become fully fledged managers and small businessmen.

With the mod, you have a much more reasonable 3,000 or so potential Shopkeepers. Clerks are still be best source, and Farmers and Laborers. But no more slaves and peasants!

There is now more of a 'funnel'; to get a Capitalist you need someone wealthy, maybe a Shopkeeper; to get a Shopkeeper you probably want a Farmer. To end up with an Academic or Engineer, you will want a pool of literate Clerks to recruit from, and in turn need (preferably literate) Labourers to become clerks. Clergymen are literate, but are very reluctant to change profession, even for money! Slaves will not promote at all, and Serfdom is also a big drag on qualifications.

 

[TheLand]

Politics!

Interest Groups are now upset with more laws they dislike, and made less happy by Loyalists. No longer will the Rural Folk or Trade Unions happily sit there under serfdom and autocracy. Political Movements are more frequent on issues where there will be more support, and the presence of a Movement has more impact on the law passing.

POP attraction to Interest Groups is less arbitrary and depends more dynamically on the POP's situation.

Petty Bourgeois and Industrialists attraction now depend on Wealth. Petty Bourgeois will attract lower or middle class POPs with at least 10 wealth, regardless of occupation. This rate is significantly increased for Shopkeepers and increased for Farmers and Clerks. Industrialists still attract Capitalists, Shopkeepers and Engineers but this depends more on how wealthy they are - very wealthy Shopkeepers will be more Industrialist than Petty Bourgeois.
Devout: Any accepted religion pop is still attracted. However, there are more penalties for literacy - these start at a lower level and reach higher. Researching Romanticism unlocks a small wave of religious fervour, which lasts until you have researched Dialectics.
Trade Unions: This is a bit more detailed. First up, Trade Unions need Literacy, ideally at 50% or higher. A POP below 30% literacy has attraction halved or worse. You still also need to have researched Labour Movement and preferably Egalitarianism.
That said: Unions are now attractive to most middle and lower class POPs with Standard of Living less than 15 and/or who work in urban or industrial settings. Heavy Industry and Mining are most attractive, then other industry, infrastructure, and government, with only a sliver of additional attraction if you work in services. Then, Machinists get a large bonus and Labourers a smaller bonus.
Military: The weight on 'any accepted POP' attraction to Military is now less. The Military is now more reliant on the support of Aristocrats, Officers and Soldiers.

Here you can see some of these in action, late in the game. Some Shopkeepers at wealth 30 are still very Petit Bourgeois. But if they get any richer, they rapidly gain Industrialists support at the expense of Petit Bourgeoisie. Some Labourers with Wealth 12 are drawn to the Trades Unions, though only moderately, as they work in an Urban Center and their standard of living is not too appalling. If they were poorer they would be even more attracted to the Trades Unions - also, if they worked in a steel mill they would be very attracted to Trades Unionism.

There are also a few additional law-based modifiers. Censorship laws reduce Intelligentsia attraction. Traditionalism reduces Industrialists attraction, though this is usually balanced by Child Labour increasing Industrialists attraction.

 

[TheLand]

Birth, Death and Healthcare

Standard of Living now has a different impact on birth/death rates! The wealthiest countries now start with high population increases, but they are on the downward slope and will only see birth rates fall as SoL increases. While countries starting to intensivise agriculture and industrialise can see their POPs growth spike. "Empty Provinces" now have more impact on both migration and birth rates.

Healthcare System institution bonuses now affect both birthrate and mortality. Allowing Child Labour now increases birth rate, as parents have more incentive to have children if they can earn money! [This should really only apply to the lower class but there aren't the modifiers to make that work.]

Finally, France gets a penalty to birthrate, reflecting the historical fact that French birthrates were unusually low for a whole host of reasons historians love to argue about.

Let's have a look at some of these modifiers applying to the fertility of this PoP of British Labourers' wives at the start of the game:

 

[EleventhAvenue]

This mod seems to break legitimacy calculations for governments with elections, at least Wealth voting and census suffrage.

I'm not really sure if the changes to 'empty' provinces are a good idea, I get a lot of weird behavior from it. For example, playing as Sweden, I get massive immigration to Gotland, tripling its population in a decade. Why should everyone want to go there to be a sheep farmer? I don't think it makes sense. Would be nice if 'empty province' could give some kind of subsistence and farming productivity bonus instead (to represent only the most productive arable land being utilized), then the increased growth and immigration could happen naturally instead, maybe?

Overall, I really like the idea for this mod. Population growth balance felt like it made a lot more sense, and the changes to qualifications were also interesting. I'm a bit worried that the AI might not be able to play well with it though - as Sweden getting capitalists qualified seriously put a damper on my economy when I industrialized, by cutting down on investment pool contributions. I as a player can take action, I'm not sure the AI could.

 

[TheLand]

This mod seems to break legitimacy calculations for governments with elections, at least Wealth voting and census suffrage.

I'm not really sure if the changes to 'empty' provinces are a good idea, I get a lot of weird behavior from it. For example, playing as Sweden, I get massive immigration to Gotland, tripling its population in a decade. Why should everyone want to go there to be a sheep farmer? I don't think it makes sense. Would be nice if 'empty province' could give some kind of subsistence and farming productivity bonus instead (to represent only the most productive arable land being utilized), then the increased growth and immigration could happen naturally instead, maybe?

Overall, I really like the idea for this mod. Population growth balance felt like it made a lot more sense, and the changes to qualifications were also interesting. I'm a bit worried that the AI might not be able to play well with it though - as Sweden getting capitalists qualified seriously put a damper on my economy when I industrialized, by cutting down on investment pool contributions. I as a player can take action, I'm not sure the AI could.

Thank you for the feedback, @EleventhAvenue !

So the legitimacy calculation should be fixed as of the version I uploaded to Steam on 15 December - is that the version you are using? If it is, could you give more details?

The 'empty province effect' does encounter some edge cases where there is a very small province with an even smaller population, and Gotland is one of them - another is the Egyptian Desert. Probably the best answer in the long term is for me to identify those and adjust down their maximum capacities so they no longer look attractive. However, in these cases the max capacity is also quite low - tripling a population that starts at 33k is not going to have a big impact on anything. (At some stage I might also add climate effects. Sparsely-populated Arctic or desert provinces should be less attractive than sparsely-populated temperate provinces...)

Also, I do not believe the qualifications changes make the AI any stupider than it already is!

 

[TheLand]

So I have updated and relaunched this mod with the name 'Dynamic Society' - you can find it here!

Steam Workshop::Dynamic Society

steamcommunity.com

Future plans include:

Politics
POPS become upset if they have longstanding, important unmet demands - if you have Serfdom in 1902 then your Rural Folk should have more than a -2 modifier!
DONE Review Interest Group ideologies, e.g. most European Intelligentsia should not be multiculturalists given that in the mid-19th-C liberalism and nationalism were intertwined
DONE Interest Group Ideology Switching: your Devout and even Armed Forces should have a chance to become somewhat progressive on social issues late game; other IGs should gradually adapt to the status quo

Ownership
Revised agricultural ownership options - Land Reform to redistribute land away from the Aristocrats

Demographics
Migration attraction modifiers for inhospitable places

 

[WilliamAmeling]

Can Industrialists still adopt Laissez-Faire in addition to Corporatism, OR can they ONLY adopt Corporatism?

 

[TheLand]

Can Industrialists still adopt Laissez-Faire in addition to Corporatism, OR can they ONLY adopt Corporatism?

So they start with Laissez-Faire. At some point, an event may fire giving them the choice to adopt Corporatism instead.

The version I'm currently testing requires the Industrialists to not be marginalised, not be powerful, not be in government (if any of those is true then they're fine!), the country to have researched both Socialism and Rotary Valve Engine (reflecting both industrial and social precursors), and also, the nation to have one of the following: universal or census suffrage, laissez faire or free trade. So the Industrialists have either reached their initial laissez-faire goals, or the society has become democratic and the Industrialists are worried about being obsoleted.

This should all be ready to ship later in the week.

 

[TheLand]

v 0.8 is now live! Changes include:

Dynamic Ideologies
The Intelligentsia in most countries now start out as Nationalist. The exceptions, so far, are Britain, Switzerland, most British colonies and the Americas - all countries where the Intelligentsia support a social contract is based on compromise between people of different religions and/or cultures. The get Tolerant instead. (If anyone has Views on which nations should have what level of nationalism among their intelligentsia at the beginning, please let me know!)

Events will eventually fire to allow Nationalist intelligentsia to swap ideology to Tolerant, and Tolerant to Multicultural - at least if you have researched enough Society tech to enable this.

But no longer will the German liberals of Frankfurt in 1848 have similar views on multiculturalism to the US liberals of Portland, Oregon in 2023. They ... just didn't.

I also have the Industrialists able to adopt Corporatism instead of Laissez-Faire, the Devout able to adopt progressive social policies, the Armed Forces able to start to care about the fitness and productivity of the nation. The Petty Bourgeois are also able to switch from Reactionary doctrine to Strongman - where they lust for a dictator.

All of these ideology changes are unlocked by the politics aligning (often, a law that the IG disagrees with being in force)l the IG being in opposition, not being marginalized, and relevant technology being researched.

POP Attraction rework

• Landowners become more attractive to rural pops like Farmers and even Labourers, particularly in slave states and under serfdom; the rural people are all bought in to these forms of oppression
• Armed forces get more support from people who work in military industry. Even more from people who own military industry.
• Rural Folk gain more support from poor rural POPs.
• Industrialist support is broadened out from the core groups of Capitalists, Engineers and Shopkeepers (though other POPs will only have a trickle of attraction to Industrialists)

What is more the ideology changes are dynamic with pop attraction!

• PoPs of non-accepted cultures are far less likely to join the Intelligentsia if the Intelligentsia are Nationalist and hate them.
• When the Devout become Progressive, they gain extra support among poorer POPs - making them more relevant late in the game against the Trade Unions.
• The Armed Forces gain more support from people working in the arms industry when Military Industrial is adopted.

A couple of other minor tweaks that will largely sit in the background:
- Urban Centres have less input demand and less output, and no throughput bonus from scale - should reduce late game Services oversupply
- Trade Centres have lower Shopkeeper employment (it was out of scale with other buildings) but need Clerks and Labourers. Trade Center placement logic is tweaked to weight ports and population more, and adjacency less. This is meant to avoid the game auto-placing the Trade Centers in remote low-population provinces where they then get crippled by the Qualifications changes.
- Innovation cap lifted slightly
- Attempted to make AI more likely to invest in education.

 

[L-Histidine]

With this mod qualifications are actually a noticeable game mechanic, nice!

Though... I'm not proposing any changes, but I will say that the early game shopkeeper shortage is painful. Tried it in two games so far (as Venezuela and an abortive Luxembourg run), in the latter I think I didn't have any of my factories more than ~10% staffed after six or eight years.
(My fault for building factories as fast as was physically possible, I guess)

 

[TheLand]

With this mod qualifications are actually a noticeable game mechanic, nice!

Though... I'm not proposing any changes, but I will say that the early game shopkeeper shortage is painful. Tried it in two games so far (as Venezuela and an abortive Luxembourg run), in the latter I think I didn't have any of my factories more than ~10% staffed after six or eight years.
(My fault for building factories as fast as was physically possible, I guess)

Yes, if you are building factories like crazy early in the game, that will happen

You might find it helpful to broaden out your development a bit. Farmers and Clerks are both relatively likely to promote to Shopkeepers. Also, researching Banking and Postal Savings also helps - each of those techs gives a 50% increase in Shopkeepers recruitment. (Alternatively, Stock Exchange means you can switch from Shopkeeper ownership to Capitalist ownership... you might find it easier to get Capitalists than Shopkeepers, sometimes...)

 

[Caewil]

Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg should also start with tolerant at least IMO. These were all arguably more liberal states in this period.

France might be worth considering as well as it was more of a “civic nationalism” than an ethnic one which was popular there at the time.

Something should definitely be done for the Islamic countries which were multi-ethnic but autocratic and religiously discriminatory. Would have to do some reading here because things aren’t so cut and dried - nationalism increased in places like the Ottoman Empire as they tried to reform- both among the discriminated minorities and the Turks themselves.

 

[TheLand]

Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg should also start with tolerant at least IMO. These were all arguably more liberal states in this period.

France might be worth considering as well as it was more of a “civic nationalism” than an ethnic one which was popular there at the time.

Something should definitely be done for the Islamic countries which were multi-ethnic but autocratic and religiously discriminatory. Would have to do some reading here because things aren’t so cut and dried - nationalism increased in places like the Ottoman Empire as they tried to reform- both among the discriminated minorities and the Turks themselves.

These are all very interesting points, thank you!

I can see the case for Belgium and Netherlands, based on a fairly superficial knowledge of their history. I don't really know enough about Luxembourg even superficially but happy to take your word for it!

The Ottomans (and Egypt?) are another interesting case - perhaps the Intelligentsia should be more clerically-inclined in those nations but more ethnically tolerant. I actually have Britain's Intelligentsia as 'establishmentarian' meaning pro-freedom of conscience but anti total separation, maybe I should extend that to some Islamic countries where the "Intelligentsia" was historically quite religious.

 

[Caewil]

These are all very interesting points, thank you!

I can see the case for Belgium and Netherlands, based on a fairly superficial knowledge of their history. I don't really know enough about Luxembourg even superficially but happy to take your word for it!

The Ottomans (and Egypt?) are another interesting case - perhaps the Intelligentsia should be more clerically-inclined in those nations but more ethnically tolerant. I actually have Britain's Intelligentsia as 'establishmentarian' meaning pro-freedom of conscience but anti total separation, maybe I should extend that to some Islamic countries where the "Intelligentsia" was historically quite religious.

I think the intelligentsia in Islamic countries should remain anti-clerical. If you look at early 20th century reforms of Attaturk and Nasser they were very secularising.

But maybe the petit-bourgeoise could swap out their hatred of immigrants for something more supportive of state religion?

 

[Caewil]

By the way two other issues I’ve noticed is that Russia has very slow population growth - well below historical standards. I’ve noticed that the USA has very high rates (which is good) so maybe the same solution can be found for them?

Additionally it looks like some of the more advanced countries In terms of literacy rates already had compulsory primary school: https://www.sociostudies.org/almanac/articles/mass_primary_education_in_the_nineteenth_century/

Probably justifies changing the starting laws for the scandinavians and Prussia though they don’t have the tech for it.

Maybe to help boost the USA’s literacy rate as well child labourers could be restricted so their education institution can go up a bit as well.

 

[TheLand]

By the way two other issues I’ve noticed is that Russia has very slow population growth - well below historical standards. I’ve noticed that the USA has very high rates (which is good) so maybe the same solution can be found for them?

Additionally it looks like some of the more advanced countries In terms of literacy rates already had compulsory primary school: https://www.sociostudies.org/almanac/articles/mass_primary_education_in_the_nineteenth_century/

Probably justifies changing the starting laws for the scandinavians and Prussia though they don’t have the tech for it.

Maybe to help boost the USA’s literacy rate as well child labourers could be restricted so their education institution can go up a bit as well.

Interesting - thank you! Yes, will definitely implement compulsory primary school in those countries.


Russia - hmmm. The USA is benefiting a great deal from the 'empty province' bonus, which is perfect. Russia also benefits from this but to a much lesser extent because its provinces are less empty.


I don't really know what was happening in Russia, but I suspect it was a combination of there being ample food, ample land, a collective-based farming system that meant additional bodies could always be employed on the land, and a religious/social context that supported large rural families. (The average Russian woman had seven children. Seven!!)

I'm not sure I can see a nice dynamic way to model this - one might be tempted to add birth-rate increases to Traditionalism or Agrarianism or something - but then you end up boosting Egypt as well. So I am afraid I might have to put in another static modifier. Either that or go through adding more agricultural land to Russia (and maybe reducing it in Egypt)

Did other Eastern Orthodox countries have similar birth rates to Russia...?

 

[TheLand]

OK so now I'm testing Land Ownership. This is a part of the economic system that really deserves to be split out from the overall economy laws. For instance, it's possible to have an advanced capitalist economy which still has basically feudal land ownership - for instance as of now, no-one really knows who owns most of the land in Scotland, but it's widely thought that 400 landowners own about half of the country. Or it's possible to have a market economy where a large chunk of farmland is in collective hands.

Most nations start of as Traditional Ownership - with the exception of for instance the USA, which begins with Land Reform, reflecting the open access to land in settler colonies.

Naturally the Landowners love Traditional Ownership - as it results in lots of Aristocrats gaining all the rents. It also bolsters the Rural Folk. Even though the Rural Folk don't particularly like the law, the traditional communities it fosters do increase the sense of identity among the Peasants, Farmers and Laborers who make up the farming population.

Alongside the laws, the Production Methods have had a refresh. What was 'privately owned' has now been split into two: Traditional Ownership PM which is Aristocrats and Clergy, with farmers only having a small sliver of the dividends; and Smallholdings, where the number of Aristos is reduced significantly and we get a few shopkeepers involved as well. But most importantly it increases the Farmers ownership shares. Also, combined with other aspects of the mod, Smallholdings pushes the Farmers towards the Petty Bourgeoisie. In part because they're richer, and in part because the Land Reform law gives the Petty Bourgeois a boost.

Publicly Traded is now "Agricultural Capitalism" and needs the "Land Capitalism" law - most countries were pretty resistant to the idea of capitalists owning all their land, so for this ultimate triumph of capitalism you need to pass another law, as well as have sufficiently advanced tech. Of course the Industrialists love this, but everyone else utterly hates it.

What I've said so far applies to farms. But, these laws also affect plantations in a subtly different way. Essentially, plantations have the same 5 ownership PMs available. However, the Large Estates (=Traditional Ownership) PM is unlocked not only by Traditional Ownership but by having any Slavery law. So if you have slave plantations they will almost inevitably be owned by Aristocrats. Smallholdings are only available for plantation crops once slavery is abolished. (Ideally this would be based on slave states not national laws! But you don't seem to be able to trigger PMs based off state triggers like that.)

This is all going to have to iterate a bit more when 1.2 is released. But I see this fitting in very nicely with the additional building and investment work that Paradox are doing in 1.2.

And - this isn't in the live version of the mod yet - still testing it!

 

[Caewil]

Interesting - thank you! Yes, will definitely implement compulsory primary school in those countries.


Russia - hmmm. The USA is benefiting a great deal from the 'empty province' bonus, which is perfect. Russia also benefits from this but to a much lesser extent because its provinces are less empty.


I don't really know what was happening in Russia, but I suspect it was a combination of there being ample food, ample land, a collective-based farming system that meant additional bodies could always be employed on the land, and a religious/social context that supported large rural families. (The average Russian woman had seven children. Seven!!)

I'm not sure I can see a nice dynamic way to model this - one might be tempted to add birth-rate increases to Traditionalism or Agrarianism or something - but then you end up boosting Egypt as well. So I am afraid I might have to put in another static modifier. Either that or go through adding more agricultural land to Russia (and maybe reducing it in Egypt)

Did other Eastern Orthodox countries have similar birth rates to Russia...?

Not as far as I know - Russia was a bit of an exception. Think the easiest would be adding the extra agricultural land to Russia and taking some from Egypt. It may also be worth buffing the devout IG modifier that gives pop growth. Russia should have laws that keep them happy and powerful and the devout are a bit underpowered now anyway.

Something a bit more fun for Egypt would be to maybe add a disease modifier that increases mortality until antibiotics/some other tech is researched. Meaning once modern medicine and sanitation arrives they could potentially boom (like they did IRL post 1945). IIRC a lot of infant mortality in Egypt was due to waterborne diseases and parasites.

For land usage you may also want to think about a special law for cases like Portugal and Spain, which not only had large aristocratic estates but also very high levels of church ownership of land. Quite different to the rest of Europe which had confiscated monastic land earlier during the reformation and enlightenment.

Spanish confiscation - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

The process of land reform in Spain began late 18th century and continued throughout the 19th. Some way of representing this would be nice. Ie maybe a law change from church ownership to traditional ownership that the devout dislike but the landowners support.

 

[TheLand]

Not as far as I know - Russia was a bit of an exception. Think the easiest would be adding the extra agricultural land to Russia and taking some from Egypt. It may also be worth buffing the devout IG modifier that gives pop growth. Russia should have laws that keep them happy and powerful and the devout are a bit underpowered now anyway.

Something a bit more fun for Egypt would be to maybe add a disease modifier that increases mortality until antibiotics/some other tech is researched. Meaning once modern medicine and sanitation arrives they could potentially boom (like they did IRL post 1945). IIRC a lot of infant mortality in Egypt was due to waterborne diseases and parasites.

For land usage you may also want to think about a special law for cases like Portugal and Spain, which not only had large aristocratic estates but also very high levels of church ownership of land. Quite different to the rest of Europe which had confiscated monastic land earlier during the reformation and enlightenment.

Spanish confiscation - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

The process of land reform in Spain began late 18th century and continued throughout the 19th. Some way of representing this would be nice. Ie maybe a law change from church ownership to traditional ownership that the devout dislike but the landowners support.

Hmm, good ideas thank you.

I understand agricultural land and population growth are both heavily overhauled in 1.2 so don't plan on looking at this in the short term, I'm optimistic about what Paradox will do with them.

Re Egypt - do you know any sources for that being the reason it had a low population?

And clerical ownership - yes, interesting. I'm not keen on creating a law that is only used by 3 countries (though... I could, to enhance the experience for the currently under-served Theocracy players... ...). Can you think of anywhere else that might have Religious Ownership other than Spain, Portugal and Mexico?