Wesnoth population

[Yomar]

Someone can hypothesize what is the population size of Wesnoth in numbers ?
How much is the total population ?
Like, how many humans inhabit the continent ?
How many Dwarves ?
How many Elves ?
How many Orcs ?
Goblins ?
And so on, of course it would be an very average thing, because many are born an many die in battles and from old age.
Any suppositions ?

[alexanderthegre]

Someone can hypothesize what is the population size of Wesnoth in numbers ?
How much is the total population ?
Like, how many humans inhabit the continent ?
How many Dwarves ?
How many Elves ?
How many Orcs ?
Goblins ?
And so on, of course it would be an very average thing, because many are born an many die in battles and from old age.
Any suppositions ?

I have no idea, but here are some educated guesses:

Goblins are more common than orcs, then humans, then elves, then dwarves. Given the number of large human cities (3 or 4), and their relative size, I wouldn't guess more than 2 million humans. Maybe 3 million orcs and goblins, due to their reproductive habits, and again, maybe 1.8 million elves, and 1.6 million dwarves. Those are all probably a little high.

As I said, these are just guesses.

[The_Other]

First, I'm aware that Wesnoth is not intended to be realistic. But in questions like this, one can only reasonably answer by analogy with real-world equivalents.

I would think a lot less Elves and Dwarves, especially Elves, than you have suggested. Remember that both these races are very long-lived, which means that they must maintain very low birth rates in order to keep a stable population. Given that dwarves seem to live almost entirely underground, they have very limited living space so they don't want their population to grow too much. And elves, being part-faery, presumably are very 'in tune with nature' (hence living in forests rather than conventional urban centres). Therefore they will wish to minimize their environmental impact, again resulting in a desire to maintain low population. If Wesnoth is anything like other 'traditional' fantasy worlds, I would guess less than a hundred thousand elves - possibly a lot less.

With regard to orcs and goblins, I would guess that both number less than you think. Orcs are probably less numerous than humans, for one simple reason: what is known or suggested of Orc culture, suggests that they do not practise agriculture on a large scale, but probably prefer to hunt live game or steal crops from other people. Basic ecology dictates that predators must number a lot less than the prey which supports them - assuming that they get food largely from robbing human (and possibly goblin) farms, how many highly-active and heavily-built warriors can one farm support, without the farmer starving?
Goblins, probably, are also less numerous than humans. Real-world biology suggests that, usually, physically-smaller creatures breed faster (both more often, and with more offspring each time), but also do not live as long. Since they appear to be subservient to orcs (who I suspect consider them inferior and 'sub-orcish'), it's likely that life as a goblin is pretty brutal - the weak will not survive, while the strong may well be forced into service as warriors - hence, not having time to raise a family. Also, looking at their in-game traits, there seems to be a fairly major problem with goblins' gene pool - almost every individual seems to have something 'wrong' with them. To me, this implies either extremely poor general health (hence even lower-than-expected life expectancy), or large-scale inbreeding (suggesting a very small breeding population).

Humans are hard to judge - I would think they would be the most numerous race by a large margin (orcs would overwhelm them otherwise), but actual population is impossible to tell since nobody actually knows how big Wesnoth is or how many towns/cities there are (there must surely be more than are marked on maps!).

You missed out drakes. Given that they are both large (I think it says somewhere that they stand nine foot tall, which with their heavy build makes them possibly up to double the weight of a human) and presumably predatory (their teeth are unsuited for a non-carnivorous diet), they must place a very heavy strain on any ecosystem which supports them. And given that they apparently live in caves and on isolated islands, they have limited available living space too. My guess (and it is only a guess) is that there are less drakes than dwarves, but probably more drakes than elves. And Eloh only knows about the Saurians...

[Crendgrim]

This question just cannot be answered easily. One reason is that there is no information about actual population numbers whatsoever, so giving an absolute answer is impossible. But also the speculations in this thread have no real reasoning behind them, as we first have to see when you want to look at the populations.
The following short outline includes some spoilers regarding campaigns, thus the surrounding tag.

Spoiler:

You speak about "Wesnoth population", so I assume you are only speaking of the time while the land called "Wesnoth" was inhabited by men – but also that timespan reaches from 0YW (founding by Haldric) to 1799YW when an event called "The Fall" takes places. This is about 1800 years, during which alliances, populations, civilizations, and lands changed, thus also changing the population rates.
Another question is whether you speak only of the population in the land called Wesnoth (which most of the time are mostly men, of course), or whether you refer to Irdya as a whole (which would also include e.g. the lands north and south of Wesnoth, where orcs and elves are known to have lived).
Then, if you refer to Irdya as a whole, the next question is whether you even want to have a brief overview of the population changes during all the time noted in lore (here I'm referring to both mainline and UMC, namely to UtBS and IftU) which is written down in [wiki]Timeline of Wesnoth[/wiki] and [wiki]Future History[/wiki] [warning: huge spoilers] – and that is way longer than the time which only affects Wesnoth, so it's not feasible at all.

So, giving an answer to your question implies that we first agree on a certain period of time to look at; and then one can start and think about how events (especially wars) could have influenced populations.

[johndh]

I would speculate that Wesnoth's population is relatively low for all the campaigns I've played, since it just doesn't seem to be a very developed place. There are a few cities here and there, but most of the settlements we see are small encampments. Of course, some of this is probably because the campaigns deal with a lot of invasions that start on the borders of civilization, but I get the impression that people are few and far between for the most part. There seems to be a lot of untamed wilderness throughout the continent, even within the borders of the human territory. Another reason that any one race can't be too numerous, is that there are just so darn many. There can't really be that many humans, because there would also have to be millions of goblins, orcs, dwarves, elves, nagas, saurians, merfolk, ogres, woses, drakes... I think the land just couldn't support that in a pre-industrial society, especially since humans seem to be the only one of those groups that has any concept of agriculture. Now that could be a big reason why there's so much warfare -- too many hungry mouths, not enough resources.

I would speculate that elves, dwarves, and ogres were all much more numerous in the past, before the orc/goblin population exploded, devoured their resources, destroyed their habitats, and then sort of petered out when there was no longer enough food to support them. Then humanity showed up and took their place, quickly filling the power vacuum. This could give the other species a grudging respect for humanity, because they know that they are the main group keeping the orcs (and undead) from overrunning the entire continent and ruining things for everyone. The humans breed and encroach on everyone else's territory, but at least they aren't as bad as orcs (you may not like the stray cat, but at least he eats the mice).

[A-Red]

It's also worth pointing out that goblins and orcs are the same species and are born in the same litters, according to the race descriptions. "Several" members of any litter are goblins, which suggests to me that goblins are more numerous than orcs (unless they die at an enormous rate).

[The_Other]

Based on orcs' habitual aggression and disregard for goblins specifically and their rivals in general, I suspect there may be vicious and possibly even murderous bullying within and between litters. Even if the birth rate is massively skewed toward goblins, how many of them will survive to breeding age?

OT Speculations on Orc sociology

Intriguingly, if orcs and goblins are the same species then by definition they can interbreed successfully. One wonders how this would come about, though...my guess would be that female orcs value physical power in their mates, so they probably aren't generally too attracted to goblins. I can envisage male orcs keeping a harem of goblin 'concubines', though. I imagine that infant orcs are much more valued than baby goblins, and there may well be status attached to having a high ratio of orc children compared to goblins. I see orc males quite possibly fathering as many children as possible, to ensure that they have multiple heirs of the stronger breed. But then what becomes of the goblins?

In the worst-case scenario, they may well either be killed at or soon after birth, or else used as 'practice enemies' for their stronger siblings to learn violence early. This might explain why, in spite of their physical weakness, goblins seem to be willing and able to fight quite effectively, without necessarily being forced. Possibly this is because only the strongest and most vicious survive to adulthood, having been forced to acquire the killer instinct just to survive to maturity.

[ancestral]

I’d also tend to agree with the other comments that the Wesnoth population is fairly small. Part of that goes down directly the the battles themselves, which are individual units fighting other individuals. Smaller battles, smaller factions, smaller populations. Small could be still be considered in the low millions, but at different times like Crendgrim said, it could be much bigger (or much smaller).

[alexanderthegre]

Apon doinnng some calculations, if the map of wesnoth is to scale, the great river would have to be >500 km wide to get a reasonable estimate on the population.
Don't use the map of wesnoth for your calculations or you'll hit WINR like a brick wall.

Anyway.

Orcs are, interrestingly enough, the only major race whos geographic origin is unnacounted for. They came from the Old Continent to the Green Isle, but what was life like for orcs on the Old Continent? They were probably the dominant species, and maybe only became aggressive after being ushered into the Green Isle or meeting the other races. Just a thought.

Anyway (I use that word too much ), the population density of Wesnoth is probably around <3 people per square kilometer. If we knew the approximate area of wesnoth, this would be much easier to calculate.

[The_Other]

orcs on the Old Continent...were probably the dominant species, and maybe only became aggressive after...meeting the other races.

Not necessarily. There may have been other, more powerful races on the Old Continent - the orcs could have been a minor power or even slaves or refugees, before their arrival on the Green Isle. This in itself might explain their aggression...it's hard to imagine that they would encounter another species for the first time and immediately think, "Hey, look, scrawny, squishy people! Let's go beat them up!" - but if they were already accustomed to war or oppression, they might well be paranoid enough to automatically assume that any other race was out to get them.
Who knows? Maybe the orcs on the Old Continent were highly-civilized, and the ones sent to the Green Isle were violent criminals, dangerous lunatics or even political dissidents?
*Campaign ideas swirling in head* No! Too...many...projects...already.......

[Crendgrim]

This might spoil some contents of TRoW and possibly other campaigns:

From what I get from the [wiki]Timeline of Wesnoth[/wiki], it seems that Lich Lords have made the orcs from lands far to the west attack the humans (even before they arrived at the land which should become Wesnoth later). I have no idea whether this information is to trust, or whether it is being proven in TRoW (as I never played that campaign), but this might be an easy explanation of why the humans of Wesnoth hate the orcs.
Later, the Ka'lian, which very probably hated the orcs (following all major examples of fantasy literature), seems to have tried to make orcs and humans "wipe out" each other, so further war between humans and orcs was not to be avoided.
Even later, orcs from the Green Isle (so, the ones which were already in war with the people of Wesnoth) arrive at the western borders. This will not have helped the relationship of humans and orcs to become better.

[The_Other]

...Lich Lords have made the orcs from lands far to the west attack the humans...

I wonder, how did they 'make' them attack? Pay them? Threaten them? Simply transport them by magic, and then leave them to their own (violent) devices?
Maybe the orcs were fleeing from the Lich-Lords. Or maybe the Lich-Lords ruled the orcs on the Old Continent (IIRC, Tolkien's orcs were bred as servants by Sauron). Hmmm...

It's interesting that (at least in campaigns I have played) orcs seem to be a lot less 'freaked out' by undead than most other races are - sure, they 'kill' them regularly, but they don't seem so shocked or disturbed by them, and appear to see them as 'just another enemy', rather than unnatural abominations. Possibly orcish society is, or was at one time, more accustomed to necromancy and the presence of the undead?

[enchilado]

I would think a lot less Elves and Dwarves, especially Elves, than you have suggested. Remember that both these races are very long-lived, which means that they must maintain very low birth rates in order to keep a stable population.

If the population is stable, it can be stable at any figure; the birthrate being low doesn't mean the population will be, especially since - as you stated yourself - these races live a very long time.

[alexanderthegre]

From what I get from the [wiki]Timeline of Wesnoth[/wiki], it seems that Lich Lords have made the orcs from lands far to the west attack the humans (even before they arrived at the land which should become Wesnoth later). I have no idea whether this information is to trust, or whether it is being proven in TRoW (as I never played that campaign), but this might be an easy explanation of why the humans of Wesnoth hate the orcs.

Yeah, it says that the lich-lords summoned them in one of the first scenarios in TroW.

Maybe Definately this needs a campaign.

[The_Other]

If the population is stable, it can be stable at any figure; the birthrate being low doesn't mean the population will be, especially since - as you stated yourself - these races live a very long time.

But a low birth rate makes them much more vulnerable to disease, disaster or sheer bad luck - a hypothetical plague that kills 75% of infants is much more of a problem (in strictly demographic terms) if you had less children to begin with. What if something gets into the water or food, which makes it harder than normal to conceive or skews the birthrate drastically in favour of male infants?
Also, as stated these races both have other reasons to keep their population below certain thresholds (availability of living space, possibly food supply in the case of dwarves, and minimal environmental impact)