Resources VI: Industry

I realized that I had discussed iron working without really talking about how, from an economic perspective, the raw materials get pushed down the chain. Of course, this is accomplished by industries.

This leads to the question of how many industrial references are present in a place? The first consideration is the tech level of the region (not necessarily the individual settlement). Remember that Demoland is T-8.

One of the really common things to do these days is look up the Support Value (SV) of the industry in question and use that as a cut-off for whether or not it's available. I don't really like this for a few reasons. For one, it's all based on medieval France. Secondly, just because you hit the correct cutoff doesn't automatically grant you that industry.

Instead, I'll use the concept of SV as a jumping-off point. Once the population reaches SV, the industry is possible but not necessarily present. A higher population grants a higher chance to acquire it.

We can codify this using the following equation, where $P_i$ is the percent chance that an industry exists, $p$ is the population of the settlement, and $\sigma_i$ is the industry SV:
\[P_i(p, \sigma_i) = {p - \sigma_i \over p - {\sigma_i \over 2}}\cdot(p\geq\sigma_i)\]
This returns zero if $p < \sigma$. I've also structured it so that if $p = 2 \sigma_i$, then $P = 0.5$.

Assigning the support values themselves is pretty arbitrary, but should be roughly matched to the tech level it's in. Using the example of iron working:

A charcoal burner is necessary to turn wood into the charcoal used in a forge (if coal is available, that will probably be used instead, but I digress). This is a pretty low-tech industry, and it's existed for thousands of years. I'll call it T-6. This level is available from around 170-360 population/sqmi, so I'll choose 250 as the SV.

Ironworking (to refine the raw ore) and blacksmithery (to turn it into something useful) are both a bit higher up the chain, but not too much. T-7 is 360-750, so these two can have an SV of 600. This will make it uncommon, if not super rare. They're specialized skills, after all. In higher populations, though, they'll become more and more common.

Right now, the function given above just returns a chance. If we compare this to a random number, that will tell us if a reference for that industry appears. If we repeat the process for the number of times the SV will fit into the local population (so repeat $n = \lfloor{p\over\sigma_i}\rfloor$ times), this will increase the number of references.

Using that logic: Andox has a population of 1208. Therefore, $P(1208, 250) = 88.5\%$ for a charcoal burner. Since $n = 4$, we can have up to 4 references of charcoal burner here. As it turns out, there are only 2!

Running the numbers for the rest of the cities and industries: Andox has 2 charcoal burner references, 2 ironworker references, and 1 blacksmith reference. Malis and Derl each have 1 charcoal burner reference.

A few things to keep in mind: this system does not capture what people make themselves, only what is available for purchase in the local market. Secondly, this doesn't necessarily mean that there are but 5 people employed in the metallurgy business in Andox - it's merely a number to aid the system. They even might be all the same person!

Even from this, it's obvious that Andox's higher population make it the place to go if you want an item to be crafted with any level of skill. Scarcity creates conflict! Idiosyncrasies also lead to good story opportunities. The illustration here is limited because of the low population size, but Gerlin has no charcoal burners, despite being technically larger. Why is that? Why does Derl, a smaller village, get one? Food for thought.

I wish I had more to offer here. The system is starting to take shape, but I had to throw out all the commodities I'd built up, because the system wasn't nearly cohesive as the one I'm designing now. I had 73 total raw commodities, 165 products, and 42 industries. Not bad. Before diving too deeply into Demoland, I need to add a few things to the system (like currency or food) in order to let it stand on its own two feet.

On the other hand...if I wait for the system to be complete before using it, I could be here a few decades.