Here is the population and amount of butter consumed by the Kingdom of Swadia

Swadia is very similar with the Holy Roman Empire. Fielding very powerful heavy calvary and surrounded on all sides by possible enemies, the HRE became more and more decentralized before completely falling apart. Likewise, Harlaus usually has more and more of his lords hate him because their fiefs keep getting raided because of a multi-front war, which results in more feasts, which results in them being off the field so their fiefs get... you get the point. It’s bordered to the south by mountains (The Alps), to the west by hordes (Golden Horde), to the north by northmen (Scandinavians), and the only difference between Swadia and the HRE is that Swadia gets an ocean while the HRE gets France on their eastern border. Both Swadian and HRE armor were very similar - here is a Swadian Knight vs a band of Imperial Knights. Other things you should note is that I’m going to count Rome as part of the Holy Roman Empire, and I am going to assume that Swadian Knights are the same as knights in Europe in that they were members of the lower nobility.

Stadia begins the game with 20 lords, 4 towns (Praven, Dhirim, Uxhal, and Suno), 10 castles, and 24 villages. These four cities equate to the four largest cities of the Holy Roman Empire (Rome, Cologne, Aachen, Prague). The amount of troops they have in the field is 200+20x75 = 1,700 men. Their total town garrisons are 3x300+450 = 1,350 men. Their castle garrisons amount to 10x120 = 1,200 men. In total that’s 4,250 troops under arms. While the quality of their training and equipment may vary, they are all constantly on the military payroll (Instead of being seasonal levies) and thus considered a standing force.

In 1250AD, the Holy Roman Empire had a population of 8 million people. Since there are no figures on the combined armies of their princes and there was no official standing army until 1422, I’m going to have to jump to 1521, when the first official count of the Imperial army is made. In 1521 at the Diet of Worms, the army of the HRE is set to 24,000 men - 20,000 infantry and 4,000 calvary. In 1521, the population of the HRE was around 11 million people. By scaling this back, we can estimate that by proportion, the Holy Roman Empire could theoretically field a standing army of 17,454 men. This is a bit more than Barbarossa’s army when he joined the Third Crusade in 1153, so it isn’t that farfetched at all.

17,454/8,000,000 gives us a percentage of 0.21% of men serving in the standing force. If Swadia uses this same number, then it will have a population of 4,250/0.0021 = 2.024 million people, more than double the population of the Sarranid Sultanate. Using the same age pyramid as my previous post, we can determine that Swadia has 222,640 men between the ages of 18-30. Applying the same forcelimit calculations for the Sarranids (One soldier needs fifteen to support him) gives Swadia a force-limit of 14,842 men - divide this by two to account for the autonomy of lords for a value of 7,421 men. In times of emergency, you can conscript one-in-five men for a period of a month, giving Swadia a theoretical full army size of 44,528 men.

Now we will determine how many Swadian Knights are there. In England in 1100, there were around 5,000 knights for a nation of 1.8 million people. In 1200, England had a population of 2.6 million people. Assuming that the number of knights grew with the population, in 1250, England had 7,222 knights for 2.6 million people. This makes 0.27% of the Swadian population a knight - in total for 5,622 knights, 1,236 of which are fighting age. But not all knights were actively in the field; to be knighted was a title of the aristocracy, and many knights also served in administrative positions, were retired, or left military service due to injuries. So let’s divide it by 2 for 618 actively serving knights. Then remember that only 40% of the Swadian army is actively in the field at any given time, and you have 247 knights, or roughly 11-12 knights per lord.

Now for the urban calculations. Rome is paired with Praven as many mods set the seat of the Calradic Empire at Praven, and Rome was the legal capital of the Holy Roman Empire despite not being owned by it for centuries. In 1250, Rome had a population of around 30,000 people. This is roughly 0.37% of the Holy Roman Empire, which is a population of 7,590 people. Dhirim’s counterpart, Prague, was a wealthy city set to the east of the HRE and hotly contested for between Moravians, Hungarians, Poles, and later even Austrians and Hungarians. In 1250, Prague had a population of 77,000. This is 0.96% of the Imperial population, which is around 19,480 people. Next up is Uxhal. It’s counterpart, Aachen, was near the border of one of the greatest enemies of the HRE - France. Likewise, Uxhal suffers from being so close to the Rhodok-Swadian border. In 1250, Aachen had 21,000 people. This is about 0.26% of the Swadian population, which is a population of 5,313 people. Last we have Suno. It’s counterpart, Cologne, had in 1250 a population of 54,000 people. This is 0.67% of the HRE population, which gives Suno a relative population of 13,662 people. In total, 46,045 people in Swadia live in the towns, which is around 2% of the Swadian population. This makes 1,977,955 people rural dwellers. Since in central and western Europe, nobles made up 1% of the population, this gives us 19,779 nobles. Roughly 9,890 of these are noblemen, and only 4,268 of them are not Swadian Knights.

Now for the tax calculations. With each craftsman paying around 52 dinars annually by themselves, we can discern that the Swadian town of Praven will get 197,340 per year in tax revenue, with 72,300 spent for other things. In Dhirim, we have a revenue of 506,480 with 381,400 spent. In Uxhal, it’s a revenue of 138,138 dinars and around 13,100 spent. Suno gets 355,212 dinars a year with around 230,000 dinars spent. In total, around 697,000 dinars are lost. Why is this?

If my assumptions are right, a Swadian knight is granted land and it’s tax revenues in return for serving his lord and levying peasants if needed. Since one craftsman can support a household, and he pays one denar in taxes every week, we can assume that, four example, five households will pay five dinars. The number of Swadian knights eligible to collect on this is 5622-618 = 5,004 knights, since those in military service are put on royal payroll as “household calvary” and thus do not get tax revenue from their fiefs. 697,000/52 = 13,404 households that pay their taxes to Swadian knights, and this divided by the number of noncombatant knights gives us around 2-3 households per knight. This is known as the “knights fee”, and usually was the size of two ‘hides’, which was 240 acres. Since 640 acres are in a square mile, this means that 2,108 square miles of Swadian territory belong to the lesser nobility.

Now for the food calculations. According to Google, there are 3,258 calories in a pound of butter. According to Livestrong, the average Roman soldier ate 3,500 calories a day (Upper estimate is in times of battle and is thus the exception). 3,500x4,250 equals to 4,566 pounds of butter a day, or roughly 2.3 tons In Mount and Blade, the base value of butter is 150 dinars: butter is given a weight of 6.0 and so I will assume that this means six pounds. This means that butter costs 25 dinars a pound, which means that 114,150 dinars are needed to provide enough butter to feed 4,250 men for one day. In one year, one soldier will need 365x3500 = 1.277 million calories. This is 392 pounds of butter. For the entire army, this is 1.667 million pounds of butter, which costs 41.6 million dinars to supply. “But wait!”, some may say. “What if the butter isn’t bought by the King, but made from his own cows?”

One cow produces on average 8 gallons of milk a day (This might be skewed due to genetic engineering and selective breeding). On average you need 2 gallons of milk to make one pound of butter. So one Swadian cow can produce 4 pounds of butter. This means that the Swadian government has at least 1,141 milk cows to feed their army. But what about the civilian side of things?

Since the average medieval peasant usually lived to around 40-50 if he survived his childhood, and 48% of the medieval population is between 18-50. There are 988,977 rural males in Swadia. Of them, 469,962 are non-noble and between 18 and 50. Since the average medieval peasant needed around 4,500 calories a day, this means that these men will consume 649,119 pounds of butter, or 324.5 tons. Thats 118,442.5 tons of butter a year. A medieval woman ate around 2,200 calories. This is about 152,326 pounds of butter needed to feed them, or 76.2 tons. As a result, almost 400.67 tons of butter are needed to keep the peasantry fed per day, or 146,242 tons per year.

City dwellers don’t do as much physical activity as a rural farmer, so I’m going to set their caloric needs at 2,500 calories for both sexes. This means that those between ages 18-50 need about 16,960 pounds of butter a day, which is almost 8.5 tons. This comes out as 3,095 tons of butter a year. In total, the adult population of Swadia requires 149,337 tons of butter every year. Since butter is worth 25 dinars a pound, Swadians spend roughly 7,466,860,000 dinars on butter every single year. Since I’ve mentioned before that one cow produces enough milk for 4 pounds of butter a day, this comes out to 204,571 milk cows in the Kingdom of Swadia. They might as well graze their enemies to death.

Final Numbers:

Kingdom of Swadia Population: 2,024,000 people

Praven Population: 7,590

Dhirim Population: 19,481

Suno Population: 13,662

Uxhal Population: 5,313

Urban Population: 46,045 (2% of total population, making Swadia an extremely rural nation compared to the Sarranids. This can be explained by the fact that the Sarranids rule over mostly desert, while the Swadians rule over a large expanse of fertile grasslands)

Manpower: 222,640 men. 4,250 men in standing army. 14,842 men is their theoretical forcelimit, with 7,420 being their practical limit due to the autonomy afforded by the feudal system. In times of emergency, Swadia can levy 44,528 men for up to a month of campaigning, after which they must return to their farms.

Number of knights: 5,622 knights

Knights currently in military service: 618 knights (Knights served in rotations, so only half of those of fighting age would probably be in the field at any time)

Knights in field: 247 knights (40% of the Swadian army is in the field, the remaining knights are in the garrison)

Knights per party: 11-12 knights on average

Number of Nobles: 19,779

Number of Non-Knight Noblemen: 4,267 (Many of whom are landless or only have honorary titles)

Average number of households belonging to a Knight: 2-3 (Each household consists on average of about 6 people on a plot of 240 acres, and pays one denar a week to their lord. They do provide a substantial portion of their crops as well, however)

Number of households that pay taxes to a Knight: 13,403

Amount of butter consumed by standing army per day: 4,565 pounds

Amount of butter consumed by one soldier in a year: 392 pounds

Amount of butter consumed by standing army per year: 1.667 million pounds (833 tons)

Amount of money needed to feed army only-butter diet per year: 41.6 million dinars

Amount of butter consumed by peasantry annually: 146,242 tons

Amount of butter consumed by urban populations annually: 3,095 tons

Value of butter that Swadians eat in a year: 7,466,850,000 dinars

Number of cows needed to produce the butter eaten by Swadians: 204,571 cows

My calculations for the Sarranid Sultanate can be found here

Submitted July 24, 2017 at 05:46PM by aeronautically http://ift.tt/2urfgfK