I have noticed that there has been a fair amount of argument about the Demographics screen, both with how they get the numbers and what they mean. So I decided to do a little digging through the code and do some experiments to see how it all worked to see if the Demographics can be of any use.
This has been updated for Beyond the Sword 3.17, Warlord 2.13 and Vanilla 1.74.
For sections that are the same for both Vanilla 1.74 and Warlords 2.13 and BTS 3.17 there will be no notation. For sections where there are differences there will be a notation whether it’s for Vanilla 1.74, Warlords 2.13 or BTS 3.17.
1. Graphs
There are 6 graphs that are displayed.
Game Score –The accumulated score on each turn
GNP– The GNP produced on each turn (this takes in account all the improvements)
Mfg. Goods– The Mfg. Goods produced on each turn
Crop Yield– The Crop Yield produced on each turn
Power– The amount of Soldiers on each turn
Culture– The total culture of all your cities on each turn
(BTS only)
Espionage– The total amount of Espionage Points produced.
Note: In BTS rival graphs only become visible after you have the required amount of EP’s against that rival.
2. Demographics Screen
GNP– (Vanilla 1.74 and Warlords 2.13)
The GNP (Gross National Product) is the total of the raw commerce you produce on each turn minus your expenses (city, civic, unit maintenance etc.) Your raw commerce is the gold coins you get from all your worked tiles, the palace, specialists and trade routes. It does not include commerce gained from holy cities and city improvements like markets and banks. When you look at the F2 screen it shows your commerce and income after all the improvements. The commerce figure (left column) also has science commerce which includes the effects of universities etc. However on the F1 screen in the coins column it shows the raw commerce value each city is producing, add these up and subtract you cost and you will get your GNP figure. Therefore it is entirely possible to have a negative GNP but run a profit and continue research at a good pace.
(BTS 3.17)
In BTS the GNP is not just about the commerce. The GNP also includes the beakers, culture and espionage points produced in each turn. All these are calculated with the effects of improvements taken into account. Therefore the GNP calculation is;
Total commerce + total culture + total espionage + (total research * research bonus) – expenses.
The research bonus is what you get from knowing the prerequisite and other nations you have met who know the tech you are researching, so your GNP can increase by your neighbour discovering the tech you’re currently researching. If you look at the F2 screen it gives you the totals in the left hand column and the expenses in the right column, however the research figure doesn’t take into account the research bonus.
Mfg. Goods– The Manufactured Goods is the total of the production you produce on each turn. The raw production is the total hammers you get from each worked tile and specialists, however unlike commerce this does include the effects from city improvements like forges and factories etc. The hammer column on the F1 screen reflects this number.
Crop Yield– Crop Yield is the total amount of food you produce each turn from your worked tiles.
Soldiers– This has been the most intensive and by far the longest to research, as there are many factors that contribute to this number. Firstly it has no bearing on the total units you have in fact you could have zero units but show 100000+ soldiers in the demo screen, you will see how in a second.
Factor 1– Population points. For every two population points from all your cities you get 1000 soldiers. So;
1pop = 0 soldiers
2pop= 1000
3pop= 1000
4pop= 2000
5pop= 2000
6pop= 3000 and so on.
Factor 2– Technologies. Discovering some technologies (mostly military but not exclusively) gives you extra soldiers. I have to say some of them struck me as a little strange, like Military tradition gives you zero but hunting gives you 2000, but I’m not here to argue about that. Here is the list of techs that give you soldiers. If they are not listed then they give zero soldiers.
(For Vanilla 1.74 and Warlords 2.13)
2000 soldiers – Sailing, Hunting, Mining, Animal Husbandry
4000 soldiers- Wheel, Alphabet, Astronomy, Metal Casting, Compass, Construction, Steel, Radio, Satellites
6000 soldiers- Mathematics, Chemistry, Combustion, Archery
8000 soldiers- Guilds, Fission, Flight, Bronze Working, Machinery, Assembly Line
10000 soldiers- Horseback Riding, Iron Working, Artillery, Industrialism, Rocketry
12000 soldiers- Gunpowder, Rifling
(For BTS 3.17)
2000 soldiers – Sailing, Hunting, Mining, Animal Husbandry
4000 soldiers- Wheel, Alphabet, Astronomy, Metal Casting, Compass, Construction, Steel, Radio, Satellites
5000 soldiers- Composites, Stealth
6000 soldiers- Mathematics, Chemistry, Combustion, Archery
8000 soldiers- Guilds, Fission, Flight, Bronze Working, Machinery, Assembly Line
10000 soldiers- Horseback Riding, Iron Working, Artillery, Industrialism, Rocketry, Advanced Flight, Laser
12000 soldiers- Gunpowder, Rifling, Military Science
Differences in brief- Composites goes from 0 to 5000 and new BTS techs Laser, Stealth, Advanced Flight and Military Science
Factor 3– City Improvement/Wonders. Like discovering some technologies, build certain improvements and wonders will increase the amount of soldiers you have on the demo screen. In this case you amount added for each improvement. For example you get 2000 soldiers for each wall you build, so if you have 5 walls, you have an extra 10000 soldiers. With wonders that give you soldiers, you can only build one so you only get that bonus once. Here is the list of what you get for each improvement. Improvements that don’t give soldiers are not listed.
(For Vanilla 1.74)
2000 soldiers- Walls, Castles, Dry dock, Forge, Factory
4000 soldiers- Barracks, Mt. Rushmore, Red Cross, Iron works
8000 soldiers- Heroic Epic, Chichen Itza, Scotland Yard, West Point
(For Warlords 2.13)
1000 soldiers- Trading Post, Shale Plant
2000 soldiers- Walls, Dry Dock, Forge, Factory, Stable, Mint, Assembly Plant
3000 soldiers- Dun, Barracks, Ikhanda, Citadel
4000 soldiers- Mt. Rushmore, Red Cross, Iron works, Ger
6000 soldiers- Military Acadamy
8000 soldiers- Heroic Epic, Chichen Itza, Scotland Yard, West Point
10000 soldiers- Great Wall
(For BTS 3.17)
1000 soldiers- Trading Post, Shale Plant, Totem Pole
2000 soldiers- Walls, Dry Dock, Forge, Factory, Stable, Mint, Assembly Plant, Industrial Park, Levee, Dike
3000 soldiers- Dun, Barracks, Ikhanda, Citadel
4000 soldiers- Mt. Rushmore, Red Cross, Iron works, Ger, Statue of Zeus
6000 soldiers- Military Acadamy
8000 soldiers- Heroic Epic, Chichen Itza, Scotland Yard, West Point
10000 soldiers- Great Wall, Cristor Redentor, Moai Statues
Differences in Brief – Between Vanilla and Warlords Castle go from 2000 to 0 and Barracks from 4000 to 3000. No changes to existing building between Warlords and BTS. Warlords and BTS add new buildings.
Factor 4– Units. Finally each unit type has a different amount of soldiers attached to it, so a warrior contributes 1000 soldiers, while a Swordsman is 3000 soldiers. Interestingly enough a units experience points has no bearing on the amount of soldiers it equates to. Units such as scouts, workers missionaries and spies contribute zero soldiers to the demo screen. Here is the full list of what you get for each unit;
(For Vanilla 1.74)
1000 soldiers – Warrior, Quechua
2000 soldiers – Axeman, Spearman, Archer, Chariot, Galley
3000 soldiers – Swordsman, Phalanx, Skimisher, War Chariot, Immortal, Horse Archer, Catapult, Caravel
4000 soldiers – Jaguar Warrior, Praetorian, Pikeman, Longbowman, Crossbowman, Keshik, War Elephant, Galleon
5000 soldiers – Cho-Ko-Nu, Maceman
6000 soldiers – Samurai, Musketman, Knight, Frigate, Ironclad, Transport,
8000 soldiers – Musketeer, Camel Archer, Conquistador, Cannon, Destroyer, Submarine
10000 soldiers – Rifleman, Grenadier, Machine Gun, Carrier
12000 soldiers – Redcoat, Cavalry, Battleship
15000 soldiers – Cossack, Fighter, Jet Fighter, Bomber
16000 soldiers – Infantry
18000 soldiers – Marine
20000 soldiers – SAM Infantry, Gunship, Artillery, Stealth Bomber
22000 soldiers – Navy SEAL
25000 soldiers – Tank
30000 soldiers – Panzer, Mechanized Infantry
40000 soldiers – Modern Armor, ICBM
(For Warlords 2.13)
1000 soldiers – Warrior, Quechua
2000 soldiers – Spearman, Archer, Chariot, Galley
3000 soldiers – Axeman, Swordsman, Jaguar Warrior, Gallic Warrior, Phalanx, Skimisher, Impi, War Chariot, Immortal, Horse Archer, Catapult, Trireme, Caravel
4000 soldiers – Praetorian, Pikeman, Longbowman, Crossbowman, Keshik, War Elephant, Galleon, Numidian Cavalry, Hwacha, Trebuchet
5000 soldiers – Cho-Ko-Nu, Maceman
6000 soldiers – Samurai, Musketman, Knight, Frigate, Ironclad, Transport
7000 soldiers – Berserker
8000 soldiers – Musketeer, Camel Archer, Conquistador, Cannon, Destroyer, Submarine, Janissary
10000 soldiers – Rifleman, Grenadier, Machine Gun, Carrier
12000 soldiers – Redcoat, Cavalry, Battleship
15000 soldiers – Cossack, Fighter, Jet Fighter, Bomber
16000 soldiers – Infantry
18000 soldiers – Marine
20000 soldiers – SAM Infantry, Gunship, Artillery, Stealth Bomber
22000 soldiers – Navy SEAL
25000 soldiers – Tank
30000 soldiers – Panzer, Mechanized Infantry
40000 soldiers – Modern Armor, ICBM
(For BTS 3.17)
2000 soldiers – Warrior, Quechua, Galley
3000 soldiers – Archer, Trireme, Caravel, Carrack
4000 soldiers – Spearman, Impi, Holkan, Skirmisher, Bowman, Chariot, War Chariot, Immortal, Galleon, Airship
5000 soldiers – Catapult, Hwacha
6000 soldiers – Swordsman, Juguar Warrior, Gallic Warrior, Axeman, Dog Soldier, Phalanx, Vulture, Pikeman, Landsknecht, Longbowman, Horse Archer, Numidian Cavalry, Keslik, East Indiaman, Privateer, Guided Missle
7000 soldiers – Cho-Ko-Nu, Crossbow
8000 soldiers – Praetorian, War Elephant, Ballista Elephant, trebuchet, Frigate
9000 soldiers – Maceman, Samurai, Musketman, Musketeer, Janissary, Oromo Warrior
10000 soldiers – Berserker, knight, Camel Archer, Ship of the Line
12000 soldiers – Grenadier, Cataphract, Cuirassier, Conquistador, Cannon, Ironclad, Fighter
14000 soldiers – Missile Cruiser, Rifleman, Redcoat, Anti Tank, Machine Gun
15000 soldiers – Cossack, Cavalry
16000 soldiers – Transport, Carrier, Bomber
18000 soldiers – SAM Infantry, Artillary
20000 soldiers – Infantry, Stealth Bomber
22000 soldiers – Mobile SAM
24000 soldiers – Jet Fighter
26000 soldiers – Gunship, Mobile Artillary
28000 soldiers – Marine, Navy SEAL, Submarine
30000 soldiers – Paratrooper, Tank, Panzer, Destroyer, Stealth Destroyer, Attack Submarine, Tactical Nuke
32000 soldiers – Mechanized Infantry
40000 soldiers – Modern Armour, Battleship, ICBM
Differences in Brief – Between Vanilla and Warlords, Axeman go from 2000 to 3000 and Jaguar Warrior go from 4000 to 3000. Between Warlords and BTS, , too many to mention since 3.17 patch. Most units went up, some stayed the same and a few went down. Biggest moves up are Melee units and Modern Naval units
Land Area– The total number of land squares within your borders * 1000. Coast and Ocean tiles are not counted.
Population– The population of all your cities. You can see in the city screen when you run the mouse cursor over the city name. This equals floor(PoP^2.8)*1000. For example a city with 1 pop point = 1000 people, with 2 pop points = 6000, 3 pop points = 21000. All these population scores are added up to give you the result.
Approval Rate– Is the percentage of happy faces your cities generate divided by the total number of happy and unhappy faces produced. The formula is happy / happy + unhappy. At the beginning of the game when there are no happy or unhappy faces the game defaults to a rating is 50%. You can see the total of unhappy and happy faces for each city in the f1 screen.
Life Expectancy– Works on the same principle as the approval rate except it deals with health and sickness. The formula is health / health + sickness. At the beginning of the game the default is 30 years. You can see the total for health and sickness of each city in the F1 screen.
Imports/Exports– (Vanilla and Warlords) The amount of commerce you get from trade routes to your cities is the Imports, the total amount of commerce other nations cities get from your cities is the Exports. In effect its counter intuitive, since you would expect that the money you get from other cities is from your Exports and the money other cities get is from your Imports, however it works the other way around, again this does seem strange but as I said before I’m not here to argue about it. Trade routes between cities in your nation are not counted. The Imports/Export are ranked by formula using the imports divided by the exports to get a ratio. If either or both are zero then it is treated as 1. That’s why you see a nation with a Imp/Exp ratio of 12/2 ranked better than a nation with a ratio of 155/35, because the ratio of Imports to Exports is higher (6 compared to 4.4). Personally I’d take the second one any day of the week because I would be getting a lot more money out of it.
(BTS) While the whole Import/Export calculation is the same its no longer ranked on ratio but an absolute number; Imports – Exports. So a negative number means other nations are making more money from trade route to you the you are from them.
It is important to note that all of these figures are NOT standardized to the difficulty level, so if you’re playing against the AI at Deity and you have equal production, then the AI is building its units and city improvements faster than you since the AI only need 2/3 of the hammers to make something. The opposite applies for lower levels where the AI gets a production penalty.
3. So what does it all mean?
Each figure on its own does tell you much at all as to how you empire is going compared to everyone else, but if you look at them all together you can get a pretty good picture of what’s going on and use it to your advantage. Obviously the stats alone wont tell you exactly what’s happening with your rivals nor should they, but they can give you a rough idea of what’s happening in their nations.
GNP– (Vanilla and Warlords) The GNP may seem useless, especially when you see you have a negative GNP but are still doing well. The GNP by itself doesn’t say how well your economy is going, however it does show how vulnerable an economy is to sabotage. If the GNP is low or negative then someone pillaging some towns or taking a key economic city can send the economic structure into ruins very quickly. Therefore if you see a nation that a low GNP compared to food and production, even if they are big and powerful a short concentrated campaign on the financial infrastructure could bring them to their knees.
(BTS) With BTS the GNP takes on a different meaning. In fact it becomes an indicator to the overall prosperity of a nation rather than just an indication of how much commerce tiles are being worked. This makes it more useful in judging how well a nation is off, because to get a high GNP you need to have improvement in all areas to generating extra commerce, research, culture and espionage. However since the research bonus is added into the figure it is more sensitive to changes in research level then the other three. The only problem with it measuring 4 factors instead of 1 is that you don’t know the proportion of the contribution of each to the value, but i guess that is what your spies are for.
Mfg. Goods and Crop Yield– The Food Yield and Production can be very useful early on in the game when there is only a few cities, because it can clearly show whether an opponent is concentrating on building military units or population growth. This can be very useful in fast paced Multiplayer games as it lets you anticipate an imminent attack from an opponent near by. Even later in the game you can see these trends will show up, however they are less noticeable. One thing is will give you a good idea of later in the game is what the land of different nations might be like without being able to see it, by comparing the output levels to other nations. A nation ranked high in Goods by low in Food probably has a lot of hills in its territory, if Food is high and Goods are low then there a good chance a lot of the territory is grassland and flood plains.
Approval Rate and Life Expectancy– The approval rate and life expectance show you the potential nations have for future population growth in their cites, as high numbers in both these categories means that there is plenty of room to added pop points to cities without having unhappy or unhealthy people. This is especially true in the early part of the game. Numbers around 50% mean they have reached the limit, while numbers below 50% show that they have overstretched their resources and could be vulnerable. Also if you look at the at the food yield along with the happiness and healthiness of a nation and find all three are high, especially in the later part of the game then it’s a good bet they are focusing on having specialists in their cities.
Soldiers– The Soldiers/Power can be a little deceptive when gauging an opponent as its not based entirely on the units. It seems to be a combination of actual power and potential power put together, so you have to do a bit of investigating as to why an opponent is rated as powerful as they are, because it could be mainly from techs and city improvement or it could be mainly from lots of older units, or from a few modern ones, or it could be from an even combination of all of them. This can be very difficult to read in the early part of the game as one change can make a big difference. The best way to find out is getting an open borders agreement and poking around a bit, from there you can see how there power stacks up to your and if you can win. This can be used to your advantage, because a rival could suddenly jump up in the power stakes, but not have the units yet, in this case a quick strike can stop them becoming a headache in the future. It should also be noted that the soldier values for units in the BtS 3.17 patch changed, generally going up, therefore lessening the percentage of soldiers coming from technologies and city improvements
Imports/Exports– This one is not very important when it comes to measuring the strength or prosperity of a nation but it still gives you some useful information, because to have trade routes, you need to have open border agreements with other nations, and therefore how many potential friends they may have in future conflicts. This is nullified when the UN resolution for open trade is passed because trade takes place in if borders are closed. The ratio of Imports to Exports gives you an idea of how much a nation has invested in infrastructure like harbours etc. which give trade bonuses.
All in all the demographics screen can be a very useful tool when you understand how it works and the information it provides. When you look at all the different areas as a whole you can get picture of a nation’s strengths and weakness, all of which can be used to your advantage. I hope all that I have found can be useful to everyone in their future civving endeavours.