- Disclaimer #2: I'm aware that this guide probably belongs in FB&NI. However as it's mostly aimed at the II roleplaying community, I thought I'd post it here.
- Disclaimer #3: My suggestions are just that: Suggestions. You are not obliged to follow my ideas as if they were holy writ. While I may be a cold-hearted, tyrannical and controlling individual in real life, I try to be a little bit nicer when I'm on NS...
- Disclaimer #4: This guide is somewhat a work in process, so I may go back and change things if more ideas and thoughts come to me. Or not. Or maybe you'll have a good idea and discuss it below.
Radiatia's Short, Sharp and Kind of Painful Guide to Realistic RP Populations:
I intend for this guide to possibly become a discussion thread, and for people to answer each other's questions on these matters, in the vain of the NS Military Consultation Thread. As to how well this will play out, well.... only time will tell....
Introduction:
As much as I love Nationstates, one of my pet peeves has always been that the NS game gives you some rather ridiculous population numbers.
For example, when we start off our nation has 'only' 5 million people and is considered tiny - despite the fact that 5 million people would mean you are bigger than countries such as Norway, Ireland and New Zealand.
And indeed the game would have us believe that a country with 100 million people barely exists at all, given the fact that most countries on NS seem to hover around 1 billion or more - even though in real life there are only 11 countries with populations over 100 million.
This is a problem for those of us role-players. While many of us (including myself) have given ourselves an RP population, even then we tend to be either a) still quite unrealistic or b) pitted against nations who do use their NS stats.
And needless to say, the NS stats are probably directly responsible for the number of nations who seem to have standing armies of 50 million people - despite the fact that the largest army in history (The Soviet Army in 1945) was believed to have been 13 million people (or possibly up to 20 million according to some sources)...
These crazy statistics can make RPing difficult for those of us who like realism and fairer play.
Right, that's my rant over, let's see if I can come up with something useful...
1. Bigger isn't always better:
As I mentioned before, 5 million people makes you bigger than countries such as Norway, Ireland and New Zealand.
While these nations aren't exactly military superpowers, they DO all happen to rank amongst the 5 richest countries/highest standards of living on earth*.
*(Or at least they did before a certain North American republic decided to cause a certain global recession...)
While there are exceptions to every rule, I would say that as a rule of thumb, the smaller your nation is, the more likely you are to have higher living standards.
If you are a nation who insists on exceeding a billion people - or even exceeding 100 million - chances are your standards of living aren't particularly crash-hot. Although parts of China and India are lovely, if we were to be honest with ourselves, the first thing that pops into our heads when we think "India" isn't a picture of a cleanliness, wealth or high living standards...
My suggestion when deciding on your RP population is to remember there will likely be a trade-off - while a higher population may give you more military strength, keeping your population lower is more likely to see you become a nicer, wealthier country.
And of course there are exceptions to every rule.
2. The Billionaires and 100-Millionaires Club:
There are only two nations on earth in excess of a billion people: Chingland and Indiana.
And although both nations' economies are on the rise, in real and per capita terms it means diddly squat. There's too many people.
There are NO nations with over 1.5 billion people, NO nations with over 2 billion, NO nations with over 3 billion and indeed the only two continents with over a billion people are Africa and Asia - and both of these continents are bloody huge physically. (I mean, you'd have to get up VERY early in the morning if you wanted to walk across them.)
There are only 11 countries with populations above 100 million, and of that 11 only two of those countries (Japan and the USA) are considered nations with a high standard of living - and even the USA has a pretty shocking level of poverty.
As a trade-off however, these nations do hold the keys to military might and 4 out of the 5 most powerful nations on earth are in excess of 100 million people. (China, USA, Russia and India.) But even then you can still be powerful without being huge - the UK is usually considered the 3rd most powerful country and it "only" has 60 million people.
Nations between 20-80 million people tend to have the best of both worlds in terms of military might and quality of life - think France, Germany, UK, Australia, Canada, etc.
3. Using the USA as an example:
People often fall into the trap of using the USA as an example from which they base some of their nation stats (I myself am somewhat guilty of this).
Of course what people fail to take into account is... in terms of both population and landmass, the USA is ridiculously huge. It is surpassed only by China and India in population, and only by Canada and Russia in landmass.
Unless you're willing to put in a hell of a lot of effort, your nation probably isn't going to be that rich, or that strong - there's probably going to have to be a trade-off of some sort.
Likewise with the 300 million to 1 billion people zone. While Nationstates may have you believe your kingdom of 700 million people is a humble nation, in actuality you are excessively large.
4. Geography Matters:
While people don't often talk about landmass and geography (which is a shame because that happens to be my field of expertise), I thought I'd mention it anyway.
Realistically, if your nation is an island and you have a population of 10 billion people (nearly twice the earth's population)... it's going to be one hell of a crowded island. And it isn't going exist. Unless you're an island the size of Eurasia. And on another planet. In the future. And all your people are midgets. Who eat grass.
I'm sure you get my point.
Most heavily populated countries tend to have quite large landmasses - the exception being Japan, who I just don't know how they fit so many people into such a small space, and I personally suspect the involvement of witchcraft.
But even if you do have a large landmass, it is unlikely to stop your country from falling to some sort of poverty - there's a trade-off here too.
The more land you have, the more likely it is to be terrible. Russia, Canada, the USA, China, Australia, Greenland ... although they have their nice parts (apart from Greenland. There's a reason only 50,000 people live there...), the reason that no one seems to be after their land is because no one wants it - it's crappy, infertile stuff.
Physically smaller countries tend to have nicer, more fertile, or more tolerable landscapes - New Zealand, Scandinavia, most of Europe, etc.
Population and landmass go hand in hand (unless you're Japanese) so be prepared to take these things into account, and be prepared for there to almost always be some sort of trade-off. (I have never used the term trade-off in my life and yet I'm using it far too often for my liking in this thread.)
5. Cities:
You do not have a capital city with a population of 500 million people. Sorry. But if you're a modern tech nation... no. Just no.
The largest city proper on earth is Shanghai - with a population of 14 million people. And it has a landmass of 2505 km2 - the size of the county of Oxforshire in the UK, nearly twice the size of the State of Delaware and physically larger than the nation of Luxembourg.
The largest metropolitan area in the world is Tokyo with 30 million people - and that's comprised of 26 smaller cities, in an area that is larger than Qatar, Jamaica and Lebanon.
I would say it's very important to bear this in mind when designing cities in your nation.
Once again, people make the mistake of basing themselves off the USA, which has several cities over 1 million people. And once again I respectfully remind them that the USA is a freakishly large country.
6. Radiatia as an example:
(Or: "Me denying I'm a hypocrite despite the fact that you know as well as I do that I am.")
I gave Radiatia an RP population of 202,950,000 people, making it a very large country. (My reason was that I had based it off China, Russia and the USA when I designed it.)
Geographically I had also decided it would be a country of a similar size to Russia, because I'm oh-so-original.
However I didn't want to turn myself into someone who godmods or powerplays, so I gave my giant nation some limitations.
For example, although it is a huge country, most of it is either desert of arctic, and as a result the nation struggles to have enough food for all 202,950,000 citizens.
And although it is a relatively rich country due to its natural resources and infrastructure, I still decided to be a bit cruel and make 11% of the population be either starving or under the poverty line, and use reasons such as geographic isolation and infertile land the reasons for this divide - just as would, and does, happen in real life.
So In Conclusion...
Here are my main suggestions for making a realistic RP population:
1. Consider knocking the decimal place back a bit? If you have a gameplay population of 18 billion, consider making 1.8 billion, or perhaps just a billion. Likewise, if you're a "humble" 700 million, consider being 70 million instead.
2. If you do have a number in mind, remember the cost. There's going to be a trade-off (there's that word again). You are not going to be a clean, green, country with no poverty, an incredible military and a population of 800 million people. It's going to be one or the other.
3. Remember that landmass and population go hand in hand - and that large landmasses come with their own set of problems.
4. If you are a nation of over 100 million (Such as Radiatia), you may have a strong military, and even a strong economy, but you probably still won't be a particularly nice country to live in and some degree of poverty is inevitable.
5. If you have less than 10 million people, you won't be a military superpower of course - but you'll probably be the envy of the world in terms of quality of life.
6. If you're a nation that is a relatively nice place to live, but is still able to hold its own in a fight, then chances are your population will fall between 20-80 million people.
Thanks for reading and I hope this
Feel free to comment, debate, discuss, criticise, vent your spleen or point and laugh below.
I may edit or update this in the future. But most likely I'll just run away and try to forget this whole thing ever happened...
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