Population of every faction on Rifts Earth

[DD The Shmey]

Population Census of every faction on Rifts Earth

I've been working on a big spreadsheet listing the population of every single kingdom, empire, and independent town on Rifts Earth, along with a citation of where the population numbers came from. Hard numbers in Palladium are often contradictory, and I know there have been heated debates about some population statistics and whether the settings listed population numbers make sense or fits the setting. Despite this I am looking for feedback on what you guys think of my work when you look over the list. Are there any surprises? Do you think I've got something wrong? Do you think this is a dumb endeavor and I'll never be able to get the time back that I spent on this? Let me know what you think. Below you can find a link to the Google Document with a copy of my spread sheet Census.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1w-DE1TDOs3ZLal5Y6Rv_lPzSPWImlEhS/view

My list is definitely a work in progress, and there are many instances where I needed to make rough estimates based on imprecise language like "one or two dozen towns of 1d6x1000 people". In such cases I tried to take the middle road using numerical averages and assume 18 towns of 3500 people 18*3500 = 63,000. In a few other cases, like the number of Oni in Japan, size of Milu & Davey Jones Empire, or number of Black-Winged Monster-Men, I pulled the numbers out of my butt based on my best guess and text in the book involving the nations position relative to its neighbors. For clarity I highlighted the cells in yellow where I made such dubious calculations and estimates, and tried to explain my reasoning in the citation even if it was simply "Conjecture".

The factions that were the most difficult and time consuming to determine their population numbers (and who I suspect will be the most controversial) included the Coalition States, Diablo Island, the Gargoyle Empire, the Lemurians, and Archie 3/Shemarrian Nation/Titan Robotics.

I also should mention that I do not own a copy of World Books 26-30, the adventure sourcebooks, Merc Town, or Merc Ops, and only have 21 of the Rifters. This means that I am definitely still missing things, so if you happen to see something is missing and can give me a citation and page number I can add it to the list.

I found this project very interesting and discovered that I learned a lot about the various kingdoms, empires, and independent towns while pouring through the various books, and piecing together the details. Even the population numbers themselves speak volumes on the relative sizes of nations. While the size of population does not translate directly to the military strength of an empire, it is certainly one of the factors that influence how many armies a nation can support. So if you want to know if Kingsdale could hold its own in a fight with the Australian City Melbourne, the answer is probably not, look at the numbers (144,000 vs 3,381,345).

Looking at this list also sheds light on factions that could use more attention from the authors due to their size, like the Poznan Collective in Poland with its 5.6 million people. The Poznan Collective outnumbers all of the various Russian warlords combined, but it always seems like a foot note next to the NGR with only a few paragraphs to describe it.

Finally I offer a preview of the top 10 factions for those of you who are afraid to click links

Spoiler:

1. Yama Kings of China - 136,449,030; WB24 China 1 Yama Kings pg12,16,20,25,29,34,37,41,44,47,49; a breakout of each of the 11 Hells is found in the spreadsheet
2. Phoenix Empire - 120,100,000; WB4 Africa pg131
3. New German Republic - 92,400,000; WB31 Triax 2, pg 42
4. Atlantis - 86,063,205; WB2 Atlantis pg19
5. Xiticic Hives - 50,000,000; WB23 Xiticix Invasion pg85, CS estimate for 110PA
6. Silver River Republics (combined) - 21,300,000; WB9 South America 2 pg152,122,183,126,138,159; a breakout of each of the Republics is found in the spreadsheet
7. Coalition States - 17,835,000; Aftermath pg137-145, RUE pg25-28, Rifts Sourcebook One pg12-13, WB13 Lonestar, SB4 Coalition Navy pg20, Hero's of Humanity pg8; I break it out by state and region.
8. Chinese Geofront - 17,600,000; WB25 Mystic China pg121
9. Republic of Japan - 14,820,000; WB8 Japan pg70
10. Naut'Yll Empire - 11,700,000; WB7 Underseas pg144

[narcissus]

This is really great!

Do you think this is a dumb endeavor and I'll never be able to get the time back that I spent on this?

That is entirely possible. But it's still a great reference point to have available. Nice work.

I also think that early authors were much more conservative with population numbers, so there's some skewing that takes place over time. Either that or the Earth's population started breeding like rabbits between 102 and 109 PA

[DD The Shmey]

When I started this project I had the same inclination as you, nercissus, regarding population creep as Palladium published more books over the years, but after going through everything I really don't think that is the case now. Heck 7 of the top 10 factions I listed were established within the timeline of the publication of the first 10 world books. C.J. Carella may have contributed to power creep but I can't blame him for population creep as none of his civilizations in South America is individually larger than the Polish Tarnow Kingdom.

At the same time, it's hard to say that the numbers have been consistent book to book. Look at England, King Arthur's kingdom was tiny, and as much as the books have played up the Blood Druids of France and the Millennium Druids of England as significant power blocks, I have yet to see the numbers to back it up. The numbers for the Vampire Kingdoms of Mexico were also tame, and seem to undermine the picture that the text of the books have painted of the Vampires being an existential threat to the humans of North America. Between those books we have Atlantis and the Phoenix Empire of Africa, which are both "Wholly Crap" nations in terms of populations. If anything, what I have seen is that the population numbers in the newer published books have been either more moderate with less highs and lows, or they have been related to smaller factions, since most of the big boys in North America and Europe have already been flushed out.

[jaymz]

"Do you think this is a dumb endeavor and I'll never be able to get the time back that I spent on this?"

Honestly no more so than the time I spent sorting chitowns interior and in both of our cases are, imo, things that should have been done a long time ago...

[Borast]

Looking across your spreadsheet, personally, I had always considered Chi-Town having a population in the hundreds of thousands, not millions.
Just considering the slow rise out of the dark, I would have put the population of Rifts North America in the low to mid millions - including sentient D-Bees.

The numbers look rediculously high is some areas...especially when most of the planet still live in little more than agrarian societies.

Oh, well.

[glitterboy2098]

i remember when triax2 came out and someone crunched the numbers and found out that the NGR had over 90 million people, and there was a huge uproar as people started complaining they were bigger then the coalition.

especially when one person used real world military statistics and showed that if the NGR was using mandatory military service they could conceivably have more people enlisted in their military than the CS had population.

though i think that was using older CS population data.

[DD The Shmey]

There have been lots of debates here on the forums over whether the population numbers presented make sense (are too big) given the numerous depictions of the world as being mostly uninhabited wilderness with only a few small pockets of population here and there.

I never really found it all that hard to reconcile. I picture lots of people huddled together in cities, towns, and civilized territories segregating themselves from the vast sprawls of uninhabited or lightly habited wilderness.

- On the Population of Germany -
Oh I had always known that the NGR was several times larger in size than the Coalition States. The original World Book 5 Triax & the NGR gave population numbers for some of the NGR's major cities and they added up to 25 million. It really wasn't a stretch to say that the total population of the NGR should be two to three times this number. Back in 2002-3 we had a campaign where Gargoyles were invading the NGR with armies of millions. The GM had used a 65-80 million estimate for the population of the NGR and a 36 million estimate for the Gargoyle Empire.

I'll put more details in a spoiler

Spoiler:

I put this in a spoiler because I realized I was rambling on and went off topic a bit.

We had a campaign back in 2002-3 where the gargoyles had invaded the NGR and pushed all the way to Frankfurt trying to cut Germany in half. Our GM did some calculations and figured that if the NGR has 25 million just in cities that adding the rural population they should have roughly 70-80 million, and then if Germany has 65-80 million, add in Tarnow, Poznan, and assume a few other smaller human groups the human population of Europe should be around 100 million at least. Plugging that into the population breakdown on WB5 pg215 and he found that Europe as a whole should have roughly 450 million intelligent life forms, and if 8% Europe is Gargoyles, then the Gargoyle empire must somewhere around 36 million. He actually wrote the numbers in the book in pencil right next to the breakdown on pg215.

I remember the GM making a mini game out of the war to be a background setting for our game, and we'd play out major in-between our regular games. He'd say that there's an army of 5 million gargoyles invading from the west, and that the NGR managed to mobilize a counter force of 3 million to try to hold the city. Then we rolled a series of percentile dice to figure out who won the battle, and the winning side would lose 1d20 % of their army, and the loosing side would lose 1d100 % of their army and need to fall back, and the sizes of the armies were part of the calculation, I forget the exact math.

When I worked on the Gargoyle Empire this time, I started with that preconceived notion originally. I went and added up the number of humans found in all of the European factions and found that the number was probably closer to 110 million, and therefore all of Europe should have 500 million, which is where I got the figure 40 million gargoyles.

Then reading through WB31 Triax 2 I found they actually gave the current numbers of Gargoyles remaining in Zersturn's empire as 850,000-1.3 million (pg 27). Of course these were his loyal remanence after several rounds of the empire getting cut apart. So I went through a series of calculations to back track how many he must have originally before the losses and came to a number 5.6-8.7 million. You can find the calculations details in the spread sheet.

This is a lot different than my original calculation, so I assume there must be many other large pockets of Gargoyles spread across Europe that are not aligned with the Gargoyle Empire. The books mentioned independent tribes in Paris and France, as well as Gargoyles living in the Carpathian mountains who hunted vampires, so I listed them as potential other factions, but didn't assign any numbers to them.

[DD The Shmey]

Alright, it’s been three weeks, and nobody has called me out on my numbers for Diablo Island, which I consider my biggest stretch. I have calculated that the population of Diablo Island to be 10,652,733.

This includes:
2 million sub-demons known as The Host
1.7 million Lesser Deevils
300,000 Greater Deevils
100,000 Other Monsters/Supernatural’s/Demons
200,000 Mortals (D-Bee’s, Humans, spell casters)
6.3 million Slaves (D-Bee and Humans)

This puts Diablo Island head and shoulders ahead of factions such as the Vampire Kingdoms of Mexico, Calgary Monster Kingdom, or anything in North America besides the Coalition States. And all this is concentrated on just one of the six islands that make up Rifts Cuba. I want to hear your guy’s thoughts on this.

Now I should point out that you will not find the 10.6 million figure printed in World Book 35 Megaverse in Flames. At first glance it might seem like Diablo Island should have a much smaller total population by adding up all of the numbers given in the breakdown of “The Army of Lord Shard” on the right column of page 151 (which would give you a meager 127,000), however, towards the bottom of the left column on that page 151 the author gives a statistic Diablo Island’s “Demon Population” to be

“Demon Population: Approximately 2 million Infernals from Dyval, plus the Sub-Demon-like beings known as the Host, slaves, henchmen, and associated pirates who visit the island.”

I wanted to find out the total population of Diablo Island for this spreadsheet, but unfortunately the book didn’t give numbers for the island’s Host, Henchmen, Pirates, and Slaves except for those listed as a portion of the breakdown of the Army of Lord Shard’s. Two million is a lot more Infernals than the army breakdown given for “The Army of Lord Shard” which only includes around 24,000 infernals (Lesser Deevils plus Greater Deevils), however that 24,000 infernals make up a little under 20% of the total numbers for the “The Army of Lord Shard” if you include the slave numbers at the bottom of the page. Making the assumption that the population breakdown of the island matches the composition breakdown of The Army of Lord Shard and extrapolating this ratio to fill in all of the other numbers for the population of the island is what lead me to the 10.6 million statistic.

I recognize that this number is rather large considering the small area of Diablo Island which is only a portion of the Cuban Isles. I just looked up population statistics on modern Cuba(2010-18) on Wikipedia; adding up the population of the Cuban Province of Artemisa, Mayabeque, and La Habana (which roughly correspond to the area of Diablo Island) I get a population of 5,751,920. The population I calculated for Rifts Earth gives Diablo Island almost twice this number, which means it’s a fairly urbanized and population dense island. This doesn’t quite jive with the description of the interior of the island dominated by jungles with some small mountainous terrain, but maybe all the population is centered in the big city Ciudad de Diablo.

[Borast]

DD, I didn't even look at that!

Seems heavy to me, but then I'm not all that familiar with that part of the setting.

I'm heading in for a twelve in less than 9 hours, and I'm exhausted for assorted reasons... Have to look into the area where I can find info in my book(s), later.

[Blackwater Sniper]

Palladium Rifts is an enigma that will give you headaches for years if you try to figure things out logically. At its core, it is a game that involves magic, dragons, aliens, on a post-apocalyptic Earth which can be inhabited by every monster in cinema history.
I really enjoy reading when someone compiles lists from throughout the entire run of books. The real question is: "How did the authors come up with their numbers?"
I research a lot. For Rifts, I like those TV series that speculate how our infrastructure would deteriorate without constant human intervention. Or how society breaks down when there is no active law enforcement.
The US would turn into a third-world hell hole within a few short months; no power, no food, no water. Major cities would depopulate the quickest while small farming communities would last the longest.
The smaller the community, the more likely they are used to working together and growing a minimal amount of food and hunting; an agrarian society fit to sustain no more than a thousand people.
I would reduce the actual human numbers by 90% and the aliens by 50%.
Humans would regroup in a few years and stabilize around areas that can provide food and security.
To keep it simple, I look to Nature and Maslow's Hierarchy for a barebones look at resettling the globe. Nature follows the balance of where to find food/shelter, while Maslow sets a gridwork of how fast a society can bounce back from a catastrophic event.

[Killer Cyborg]

CS estimate of xiticix is WAY low.
My estimate is more like 1.2 billion, IIRC.
I did some lengthy posts about it way back, which I’d link to, but I’m on my phone at the moment.