Modding POPs
General notes
Original version by Guinnessmonkey
Discussion thread at Paradox forums
1 POP equals 4 people
The most important thing everyone should know, and I can't say it too many times, is that all pops represent only the working population. This is 1/4 of the real total population. 100,000 people = 25,000 pops, got it. The game will, in ledgers and various interfaces, multiply this up into the full population. Therefore when you check to see your nation's population it does show the full population. Remember: 1/4. Don't forget it... Many of the beta's have spent countless hours searching for pops that seem 4x what they should be and I'm sure there are still some that were missed.... Therefore if anyone sees an area with 4x or more population than it should post about it and people will try to get it fixed.
Laborers
Don't include laborers in pops... It's a waste of your time. The game will autoconvert farmers into laborers when needed, so it's best to call all non-industrial working-class citizens farmers... Why farmers instead of making them all laborers? Because popmaker, the program that turns pop .txt files into .csv files, will turn all leftover pops (pops that, due to percentages and decimals are rounded out) into farmers. These farmers are placed in that files "capitol".
This, of course, was something many of us only realized later... It doesn't necessarily hurt the pops to put in laborers (AFAIK), it's just a waste of your time (as a pop-coder). So don't bother.
Organizing the files
Under no circumstances should pops of different religions or cultures be placed in the same file. If you want both Catholic and Protestant Irishmen in New York City then you need two files, one for Irish Catholic and one for Irish Protestant. Many states/regions, particularly in the USA and Eastern Europe, have provinces with many, many cultures, making for many, many files. I think the record is New York in '14: 11 files for one state/region. What can I say? I can be a perfectionist at times.
The POP file
Your basic popfile, the thing you post on the forum and submit to folks, is a .txt file done like this (this being "Newyork_Irish.txt", from the '61 scenario):
Name: NEW YORK Population: 151000 Culture: Irish Religion: Catholic Capital: 583 Provinces: 583 - 65% 579 - 15% 580 - 5% 581 - 5% 606 - 5% Workforce: aristocrats - 0% officers - 3% clergymen - 4% capitalists - 2% clerks - 4% craftsmen - 17% soldiers - 10% farmers - 60% labourers - 0% slaves - 0%
This is all that should appear in the file. These things run through a compiling program (popmaker.exe, which can be found here if you don't have it on your CD) to turn them into .csv's (Popmaker will be explained later), so don't stray from the format.
Now, let's dissect this popfile:
Name: NEW YORK
This doen't do anything for the file... It's just a way to keep the names of files straight... For new files and scenarios it's equally helpful to just name the file itself something more easily remembered (such as USA_NewYork_Irish.txt, or something like that..).
Population: 151000
As stated above, this is 1/4 the real population, or 604,000 people.
Culture: Irish
Here you list the culture as defined by the list of culture tags.
Religion: Catholic
Seems self explanitory.
Capital: 583
Capital does two things. Primarily it determines where ALL of the upper class pops live (as determined file by file). This is why it's a HORRIBLE idea to have all your pops for, say, France, as one big file. That way every single aristocrat and capitalist will be in Paris. Better to split it up. Also, popmaker.exe will place a few rounded pops in this prov, so even if a file has no upper class pops (remember that we work in thousands, so if there weren't 4,000 or more capitalists in Wyoming in 1861 than it gets no capitalists, even if IRL there were 24 bankers living there.
Provinces: 583 - 65% 579 - 15% 580 - 5% 581 - 5% 606 - 5%
This, of course, is the splitup of how many pops live in the various provinces you're using in the file. Make sure you don't give percentages so low that pops get rounded out of existence (unless you don't mind... They'll just end up in the capitol anyway)
Workforce: aristocrats - 0% officers - 3% clergymen - 4% capitalists - 2% clerks - 4% craftsmen - 17% soldiers - 10% farmers - 60% labourers - 0% slaves - 0%
This is the spitup between the various types of pops. Yeah, the number of soldiers is high, but it is the ACW, after all. Remember that pops are first divided into provs and then into pops... 151000 * 5% * 4% means there will be zero (302 < 1000, and is therefore rounded out) Irish Catholic clerks in province 606 (don't remember which one that is...). There will, however, be 58890 (235560 people) Irish low class farmer/laborer pops in NYC. Perhaps the USA player should put these "fresh of the boat" immigrants to work by educating them into craftsmen?
The final bit.... Popmaker and the .csv's
After you've coded up your pop .txt files put them in a folder with your copy of popmaker.exe. Simply run the program and it will turn all your .txt files into seperate .csv files of the same name.
A .csv file looks like this on the inside:
Province;Nationality;Religion;Workforce;Ideology;Consciousness;Militancy;Size 579;Irish;Catholic;craftsmen;;;;3 579;Irish;Catholic;soldiers;;;;2 579;Irish;Catholic;farmers;;;;13 580;Irish;Catholic;craftsmen;;;;1 580;Irish;Catholic;farmers;;;;4 581;Irish;Catholic;craftsmen;;;;1 581;Irish;Catholic;farmers;;;;4 583;Irish;Catholic;officers;;;;4 583;Irish;Catholic;clergymen;;;;9 583;Irish;Catholic;capitalists;;;;3 583;Irish;Catholic;clerks;;;;3 583;Irish;Catholic;craftsmen;;;;14 583;Irish;Catholic;soldiers;;;;9 583;Irish;Catholic;farmers;;;;58 606;Irish;Catholic;craftsmen;;;;1 606;Irish;Catholic;farmers;;;;4 583;Irish;Catholic;farmers;;;;18
I believe Ideology, Militancy, and Consiousness are now working but I'm not sure (either way it wasn't when we coded the popfiles in the game.... Perhaps that will be tweaked as we go on. ).
Either way, these are the files as popmaker makes 'em.
Notice the last entry:
583;Irish;Catholic;farmers;;;;18
These are the pops that were rounded off and placed in the capital by popmaker.
Once all this is done you simply need to put the file in the your scenario folder and then add it into the .eug file for the scenario
pop = "scenarios/1861/Newyork_Irish.csv"
