Okay tg. My players are gonna start a worldbuilding game...

If anything I’d make it so that creatures have a short growth period and high Intelligence.

But whatever have your freaky harems.

Well there you go, this civilization should act more like lions.

One of my players is going for a long lived race of slowly reproducing, slowly growing ubermensch. The player above is planning on breeding him out with waves of grunts.

Population growth isn't limited by reproduction rates in low tech cultures. The real limitation is food production, with medical and safety playing a part as well.

So the real question for your player that wants higher population growth is 'will having more females increase or decrease food production'.

Would it be realistic to say that increased birth rate on this scale might starve them to death?

You're forgetting the concept of investment. The fact is, a baby is far more of an investment for a woman than a man. Pregnancy hurts survival unless the woman had support - for a dude all he needs to do is get his sperm out there. A woman has to carry the baby to term and usually take a major role in raising it.

(for an interesting comparison I believe the most children a woman ever had was somewhere around 20. The most children a man ever had was somewhere around 800)

This is why females tend to be picky towards males and why there is sexual competition. A woman needs to know that she can have a mate she can rely on who won't abandon her.

the great ratio of females does lead to an interesting adjustment to this dynamic. It actually gives the women a significant level of power - if you partner up with another woman, say, to help you out during your pregnancy and provide for you raising the kid, you aren't as worried about the guy being a good mate since you have someone to cover your back.

Another interesting point is such sexual dichotomies DO arise in real life due to stressors on a population. Lots of animals (not sure on mammals, would need to check) show a significantly greater number of females born during periods of stress on the population. So its very likely this race is in some sort of a shitty position - it lives in a place with scare resources, or something is always trying to wipe it out. Females are the "bottleneck" in population growth in many animals - they have to wait for the pregnancy to come to term while the males can get more pregnancies going.

All things to consider.

>Depends on other factors than simply gender ratio.
The gender ratio would allow for the population to grow with a resource boom much more quickly. Same process would also aggravate crashes though, so... probably a net loss. You could achieve the same thing with a higher maturation rate (and probably shorter lifespan).

Bottom line - it's not like the naturally occurring gender ratio in humans is an accident. Like everything else about us, it's the model that proved the most successful at perpetuating itself (in combination with all the other things about what we do). A different ratio is, de facto, weaker... unless you're also changing a lot of other things to take advantage of it.

Somebody remind me when american teenagers go back to school again? This summertime shit feels like it's been going a little long this year.

Before you get too far into messing with him, I'd ask yourself what the point of this game and course of action are. Is there a point to punishing him for inserting his shitty fetishes into your game? Does it make the game better?

I'm all for calling him out on his bullshit, but you might be better served talking to him about it than lolololing his plans at the table.

>If your player is hoping for an incel's wet dream world where a man can look forward to 2+ female partners begging to ride, he's not likely to get that.
There's no such thing as a free lunch in general, but there's ways to get a meal on sale.

For instance, suppose men are significantly more productive and expensive to produce than females (presumably larger, quite possibly smarter etc as well). Well, now it makes some sense to have an imbalance in both breeding and pairing up: Men are more of an investment but enjoy an obvious reproductive advantage, which could balance out, and are similarly going to want a handful of less productive females to even out their end of the relationship.

Sounds like a valid strategy, though he's going about it ass-backwards. As mentions, "more females" is not how you population growth. I'm also curious why he thinks "faster cultural advancement" is a beneficial or likely trait for a goblin horde.

>It actually gives the women a significant level of power - if you partner up with another woman, say, to help you out during your pregnancy and provide for you raising the kid, you aren't as worried about the guy being a good mate since you have someone to cover your back.
That's not really a net gain though, because if each one giving birth is a net loss you're just piling a bunch of debt together or requiring them to stagger their investments. The latter can work, but at that point it's really hard to justify just not producing more males from either an evolutionary or social perspective. Well, acquiring outside males on the social side, but you know what I mean.

>Lots of animals (not sure on mammals, would need to check) show a significantly greater number of females born during periods of stress on the population
It's relatively slight (few percentage points, IIRC), but even humans show this.

Now that I think about it, don't prairie dogs achieve a harem structure via the females only becoming fertile for a few minutes each year? I don't recall what the purpose of that arrangement was, though.

See that’s what the skaven are for.
>smart
>evil
>clever
>disposable

Very likely, if he kept the females pregnant at all times. Which seems to be his intent. However, it would be likely that such a race would simply not reproduce at the highest possible rate.

Many societies do this, although some fail as well.

So would it be realistic to give his race a lower birth rate at first, with a much higher one during times of plenty?

My little pony

is this thread /pol/ now?
are we about to talk about how women need to stay out of politics and do as their told?

>ask pol related question
>get pol related answer
>cry

I agree, if you remarry, kill her offspring and make your own.

humans would morph into technicolor horses?

Women do need to be quiet and do as they're told.

t. moron that need to be quiet do as he is told

Asanagi, please

This marks you as a liberal. You can't help but lash out, but you do it in a signature way that isn't clever or funny, and draws no one to your side.

You should have responded with something like
>that's what I would do if I had one!
which at least has a smidgen of thought behind it

We were having a fascinating discussion, but then you faggots had to come in and had to invoke identity politics.

Don't feed the troll.

>How so?
Female lions are the primary breadwinners in the lion hierarchy. Guys just fight each other for the right to mate.

This marks you as a butthurt kid that lives with his mom. You can't help but lash out at women, but you do it in a way isn't clever or funny, and draws no one to your side.

no, just refering to their skewed gender ratio and the kind of situation it lead to.

Veeky Forums has always had identitiy politics, speeking of which
>thats what I would do
not seeing how this is a better come back. it sounds more like giving in,

speaking of identity politics, the real question is if any of you sexist fucktards are the same autists who run a no female at the game table ruling.

female lions are still submissive to the male lion. Generally speaking, if its a pairbonding or communal species, the females are submissive, if it isn't, females out monster men in order to BTFO anyone that fucks with their offspring.

you just did it again
social ostracization only works on other liberals

Male lions also look after the offspring while females are hunting. Having a good mate is a solid investment for lioness, because he keeps another male killing off her cubs.

There would be very few males who were fantastic protectors and providers who could support what is effectively several families. The rest of the males would be outcast and shunned or gelded and used as labor. There's no evidence in the animal kingdom where this sort of thing is a bonus to population growth or cultural advancement. The outcasts would dream of a magical realm in which they were able to actually come in contact with a girl. The worst and most delusional ones would fantasize that they somehow magically were able to have their own harem.

Your player just made a culture where the majority of males are eunuch beasts of burden. If (or rather, when) he gets weird about it just play up the ladyboi laborer losers who make up most of the male population as uneducated second-class citizens who don't contribute to cultural advancement. Maybe remind him not to project his inadequacies into the game.

Maybe it's time for you to go outside your home and see how the world works kid.

>If (or rather, when) he gets weird about it just play up the ladyboi laborer losers who make up most of the male population as uneducated second-class citizens who don't contribute to cultural advancement
But what if that's also his fetish?

could you two focus on the subject and actually bring up evidence if you have a problem with someone elses opinion on women in society instead of just pointing your asses at eachother and firing away? I'd honestly prefer you both leave but I get the feeling you wouldn't so this seems like a worthwhile compromise.

Then you give his culture a penalty to advancement and he can sit in the corner drooling over his private thoughts of eunuchs forming mock-families while furiously trying and failing to get their lack of social power to manifest.

^jesus fuck this

Short answer; no, long answer; maybe.

If it's a species anything like humans, multiple females for each male is terribly inefficient as female humans have evolved to be primarily useful via pregnancy. Where a human male can impregnate a female, go off to war or ice crab fishing, or exploring, or whatever and die without the jeopardizing the next generation. Females should ideally be pregnant for at least three quarters of the year depending on climate. A pregnant woman who dies during a high-risk activity wastes not only her life and any potential generations she can birth in the future, but the child she is pregnant with and the resources that went into maintaining her and her baby.

If a species had significantly different gender dimorphism, it's more a question of the species, rather than its male to female ratio.

The most efficient solution, however, would be to have a 1-10 ratio with 75% of one being sterile. 1 male, 2-3 females, 6-7 sterile drones would maximize the amount of workers per breeding pair and result in a caste that exists only to provide labor and advance culture.

Even better is a species that can reproduce asexually or create new individuals ex-nihilo.

>And since men would probably be considered too valuable to be on the front lines, this leads to battle-scarred buff ladies.
Nah, men being only 25% of the population wouldn't be enough of a rarity to do that. Men would still be the disposable gender and dominant in dangerous and military work. The frmale majority probably woukd mean female warriors aren't as rare though. 1 man is potentially capable of impregnating literally hundreds women in the time it takes a woman to have 1 maybe 2 children if shes lucky. Unless we start approaching such an unbalanced gender ratio men will remain the disposable gender.

The largest change would be as OP posited, polygamy as the norm likely even the end of long term relationships with child rearing becoming a more communal affair. As wel, as an advantage in population growth, resources willing.

Most likely not, a scarcity of food will cause an increase in the rate of infertility, miscarriage amd infant mortality. Effectively limiting and then reversing population growth. likely before thjngs get to out of hand.

Dowsing is used in prospecting, though. But mainly for water.

With a 3:1 ratio of females to males, women are gonna have a lot more social and cultural power. Men will be pressured to fill military and labor intensive (mining, lumber, etc.) roles. I'd expect to still see men at the top level of government, organized religion, etc., but mid-level in these organizations will be mostly female. Will this give you more culture? I dunno, at best I think this would give you different culture. Will it give more population growth? Doubtful, see .

I find this highly dubious. The women at the top level of society will want to monopolize the most alpha men. The women lower down on the totem pole will be left to pick over the common laborers.

Not usefully. It appears to work sometimes simply because of random chance. But is no more effective.

This thread is gold btw. Tg gets shit done even now.

It would be fair to do that with any race. You would link reproduction directly to food production, with perhaps an upper limit based on physical ability to reproduce.

For your majority female race, assuming you want to be somewhat realistic, he is going to want/need to define his females as the primary food producers of his race or failing that just say that his race produces a huge abundance of food (one food laborer can feed hundreds rather than two or three as might be more common for the assumed tech level) a lesser possibility might be to say his race requires far less food than other races for whatever reason.

But, in general, there is a reason that most RTS games that address food production use it as an upper limit to population. You should follow that model and use food production to set a hard limit to total population with a huge penalty to everything that race does if it goes above that hard limit.

>The largest change would be as OP posited, polygamy as the norm likely even the end of long term relationships with child rearing becoming a more communal affair. As wel, as an advantage in population growth, resources willing.

I think you are not accounting for the assumed increase in female political power. An user pointed out that females in power would desire to monopolize the most 'alpha' of males. This is a likely outcome if females hold political power, those at the top (male, female, whatever) always attempt to advantage themselves.

You would likely see 'lesser' females seen as disposable by the dominant females. We see behavior not unlike this in other species that are what we might consider a matriarchy like structure.

I would expect the same to result here.

We would likely see females tightly controlling which females may reproduce as well.

surplus of one sex or the other has a lot of effect on how human mating works see mating market theory
more men than women results in men being more committed and women less promiscuous
and more women then men results men being less committed and women more promiscuous
assuming 1 on 1 pair bonding but with polygamy you have other problems
you don't have an even distributions of women per men so the high status men will have multiple women
and the low status none which results in a lot of disaffected men.
which in turn create social problems like delinquency and seclusion of society
or recruited by armies or gang for the promise of women(or status which leads to women)
which is reflected in a lot of war being started by countries with a male surplus

so unless they have 1 on 2-3 bonding instituted by law and culture you get the polygamy problems.

>is this thread /pol/ now?

Well, it's on Veeky Forums and it's December of 2017.

So yes.

Even under those circumstances men would make up the majority of the army. This is a pre gun civilisation where size and strength counts in a fight

There's a species of aphid that does this. During most of the growing season, they reproduce madly to take advantage of abundant food.

Doing this means cutting out the middle man wherever possible. Finding, selecting, and fertilizing a mate is hard and time-consuming, and half your young don't even lay eggs. So first, they all develop as females. Second, they all reproduce asexually via parthenogenesis. Third, and I shit you not, they're born pregnant.

At the end of the season, as food supplies decline, the new generation is born sexually dimorphic again and reproduces sexually. Eggs are laid and go dormant until spring.

This let's them breed like bacteria to rapidly expand their numbers, and yet still gain the advantages of mixing and selecting their genes via sexual reproduction.

>The most efficient solution, however, would be to have a 1-10 ratio with 75% of one being sterile. 1 male, 2-3 females, 6-7 sterile drones would maximize the amount of workers per breeding pair and result in a caste that exists only to provide labor and advance culture.

That's how societies with polygamy work. A small number of high-status males have multiple mates. The man's genes are desirable enough to be worth the woman getting less attention (and he has plenty of wealth/power for caregiving). Most men are monogamous even in societies like these: the man trades more personal caregiving for her letting him pass on his good-but-not-best genes. Usually the women aren't choice picks either. Then there's an underclass of unattached men desperate to gain enough status to attract a mate. They turn to violence, soldiering, crime, or terrorism.

FLDS kicks them out of the compound, officially for not obeying. Shamed, penniless, and alone in an alien world, they often turn to crime. Arabs turn to crime/terrorism. The feudal Japanese fought lots of wars and killed men on any pretext. Many societies had systems where lots of men died in war or whatever, with the survivors having more women.

The advantage of monogamy is that every male gets a better deal except for the very best men at the top. Every woman gets a slightly worse deal genetically but better care for her family. And such societies are stable and able to focus on productivity.

In practice, many officially monogamous societies have a little bit of "polygamy" in the form of mistresses. A married woman picks up a few super genes but mostly those of her husband, and until recently nobody was the wiser and he raised them all. Of course, only the very highest-status males can get away with this without being killed.