Economic 'weight' of different regions - is Egypt under represented?

[Used2BRoz]

Game-wise the idea I'm getting is we need to boost the Fatimid faction with trade boosters, maybe ancillaries giving extra money ?
Or starting merchants with extra bonuses, or extra merchants
Whereas they got less money from food, so no food related income boosts for them.

Maybe a port building only they can build with extra trade fleets ?

From playing SS in the past I got the feeling they could recruit too many foot soldiers too quickly.
Maybe increase their cost and reduce the recruitment pools or increase recruitment time.

[bigdaddy1204]

Well the other thing is that the Egyptian army isn't very good compared to other factions. The Abbassids and the Zengids and the Seljuks of Rum and the Seljuks of Iran and the Moors all have a better army. The main problem is that Egypt doesn't get a citadel at the start of the game, whereas the Zengids do. So the Zengids can train Fari cavalry straight away, whereas the Fatimids can't. The Fatimids don't get any decent horse archers, nor some of the cool heavy cavalry of other factions.

I make Egyptian armies of Ahdath spearmen, African bowmen, ghulam infantry and ghulam/Arab cavalry, these are reasonably effective. But the cavalry is lacklustre. Compared to my Zengid army, which would have lots of Turkish horse archers and Fari cavalry, in addition to ranks of Turkish Archers, which I use to mow down the enemy.

[Zanze]

Egypt blooms later. They get Tabars and Mamelukes which are some of the better units around at the time. Tabars actually being one of the stronger units in the game with their high attack stat and AP modifier. Also, I haven't played as them yet in SSHIP but I was peeking at their units during my Zengid campaign and saw their African Spearmen only have like 200something in upkeep? Sure they are unarmored, but they had pretty decent stats for 200 in upkeep. Especially compared to the Arab Infantry the Zengids depend on which cost 700-800. On top of that, you have a generally safe position with a good steady income. Enough quantity is its own quality.

[Lifthrasir]

That's correct. When controlled by the AI, in most of my campaign, Fatimids got bitten by CS at the start but as soon as they can have access to better units, they took their revenge.
On the historical point of view, in 1132 AD, Fatimids weren't that powerful on the military side.

@ Used2BRoz, that's something we keep in mind

[RollingWave]

Taxes are hard coded in M2TW (well not hard coded actually, but you can't move it because they forgot to port over a command line in RTW that allowed you to change taxes.) which is unfortunate.

The income of states varied a lot depending on which state we were talking about, the composition of income for Venice vs say... Tang dynasty China, was very very different. SOME polities historically did make a lot of money out of non-agricultural taxes, however, the game engine more or less prevent us from depicting this properly without some massive scripting efforts put into it. (not to mention academic level studies required to actually figure out the economies of the different factions.)

Farming does tend to help population growth most and thus effect taxes, so in that sense it's fine. for HURB I tend to add some other helpful values for farming to sort of offset it a bit versus trade (like law bonus.)

It is correct that medieval Egypt was no longer the same economic powerhouse it use to be, regions are divided not entirely just to population (though that should be a huge consideration, and were often some of the main guidelines i used to change region in HURB.) Egypt should start with few regions but should mostly be pretty well developed / higher population. (I had consider adding regions to Egypt for HURB, but after quiet a bit of study I can't find a city / region that make real sense to add.)

[Lifthrasir]

From the source already mentioned, "Egypt and Syria in the Fatimid, Ayyubid and Mamluk eras" by U. Vermeulen and D. De Smet, it's written that the population in Egypt remained static or increased at a slow rate. For the whole medieval period that population was estimated between 4 and 5 millions inhabitants in average, fluctuating irregularly between 3 and 6 millions because of epidemics, starvation, etc...

Just to compare, below some figures given by Josiah C. Russell, "Population in Europe:, in Carlo M. Cipolla, ed., The Fontana Economic History of Europe, Vol. I: The Middle Ages, (Glasgow : Collins/Fontana, 1972), 25-71:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

No complete population censuses were taken until the 18th century, thus estimates of population levels are notoriously unreliable. Estimated levels vary as a number of "multiplier" factor often have to be taken into account - estimated population density, ages of marriage, and perhaps most importantly the number of people denoted by a "hearth" in those medieval tax surveys that do provide hard numbers. Other expansions of the few hard figures we have are frequently done by using actuarial data from modern world societies with population structures like that of medieval Europe, for instance figures derived from Indian population surveys earlier in the 20th century. Josiah Russell is the historian who has stuck his neck out and made the estimates we have. The following tables are, then, quite speculative, but not insane.

AREA	500 A.D.	650 A.D.	1000 A.D.	1340 A.D.	1450 A.D.
Greece/Balkans	5	3	5	6	4.5
Italy	4	2.5	5	10	7.3
Spain/Portugal	4	3.5	7	9	7
Total South	13	9	17	25	19
France/Low Countries	5	3	6	19	12
British Isles	0.5	0.5	2	5	3
Germany/Scandinavia	3.5	2	4	11.5	7.3
Total West/Central	9	5.5	12	35.5	22.5
Slavia	5	3	-	-	-
Russia	-	-	6	8	6
Poland/Lithuania	-	-	2	3	2
Hungary	0.5	0.5	1.5	2	1.5
Total East	5.5	3.5	9.5	13	9.3

[+Marius+]

Those numbers are outdated and underestimate certain populations in Europe.

For instance, the population of Hungary in 1100 is estimated as being around 2 million by Péter Rabb, "Natural conditions in the Carpathian Basin of the middle ages"
The populations of the Balkans is also misplaced, it is an area far bigger than Italy and had a high middle ages population of 8 million(Suraiya Faroqhi, Donald Quataert - An economic and social history of the Ottoman Empire(1997). Cambridge University).

The demographic wiki article mentions 3 million just in England(in comparison to just 2 million for the entire British isles mentioned by Russell);
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demogr...cal_population

An article about the Holy Roman Empire, mentions the "Atlas of Europe in the Middle Ages" by Ostrovski, which I cannot find anywhere, but it states a population of 5 million in comparison to the very suspiciously low 2 million for the entire HRE-Scandinavia by Russell.

I also found these tables interesting;

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mediev...graphic_tables

[Lifthrasir]

That can be true. The purpose was just to show that the population in Egypt didn't increase like in some other areas during the same period.

Actually, these numbers you posted even show a bigger difference

[MWY]

Well... Thats a cool table and all.. but what's the territory of france according to him? Whats germany? Where does for example burgundy belong to? Switzerland didn't even exist back then. I would be really interested in something more accurate.

[+Marius+]

Well... Thats a cool table and all.. but what's the territory of france according to him? Whats germany? Where does for example burgundy belong to? Switzerland didn't even exist back then. I would be really interested in something more accurate.

Well, the problem is that because it is a rather speculative section of historiography, nobody with a degree wants to touch it.
Only a bold few, therefore the sources are very, very limited and simplistic indeed.

He uses modern geographical terms btw, so Switzerland is the area you see on a modern map, just sent back in time