Craftworld Eldar Population

[eldargal]

Always re-read you codices:

I can't believe I missed this in the DE codex, page 20:

Sensing the end, a portion of the Eldar race combine and modify their spaceships into Craftworlds, gigantic living vessals able to accomodate an entire planet's population. One by one they begin to escape the corruption that plagued their empire. Hundreds of Craftworlds sail into the sea of stars in search of the relative safety of the untramelled void.

Obviously we have no idea what the population of an Eldar world was, but know the total was in the trillions. Even if we assume just one billion per Craftworld and only one hundred Craftworlds survive to M41 that would still be 100bn ignoring the fact they have grown by tens or hundreds of times in size. I can't find my second edition codex where I believe it mentions the tens/hundred fold increase to cite it.

Even if we took a ten fold increase that would be one thousand billion Eldar.

So, lots of Eldar. Obviously the figures are estimates, but conservative ones. We know for sure atleast thirty Craftworlds survive. Even if they started with one billion and ended with a tenfold increase that would still be 300bn Craftworlders.

You could argue that 'entire planet's population could mean a relatively sparsely populated colony, but much of the Eldar fluff states the empire was centred on a unknown number Crone worlds and the population was in the trillions.

[Hive Mind]

So much bio-mass, so little time...

[DrLove42]

The fact to also consider is three fold;

1) we know some Craftworlds are smaller than others

2) Many craftworlds are diminshed. Iyanden for instance, following the Hive Fleet is heavily diminished

3) Some craftworlds have died....if you believe a single space marine chapter, or single Nid could could a whole craftworld

[Freefall945]

Hey, that's way more than I thought. Awesome. Go Eldar! Down but not out!

[energongoodie]

Spoiler.

According to Aurelian, craftworld Zu'lasa only carried Two hundred thousand souls on board before it crashed.

[Wildeybeast]

Don't gorget all those dead people they have wandering around!

[Etra]

The hardcover 4th ed book described the Eldar as, "The Dying."

I don't think it's reasonable to assume that over time, their population has increased. Even if you changed history and presumed the following:

• They were never attacked
• They never lost troops in combat
• None of them defected to Chaos
• Nothing particularly out of the ordinary happened to them

Their population would stay constant or diminish. Think about any post-modern civilization where the birth rate declines and the aggregate population shrinks. England, France, Japan, China, America - all the native populations are decreasing as a result of contraception and a decreasing birth rate. Women stay in school or in business longer, they put off child-birth until their early to mid thirties, and have fewer children. If these country's populations increased, it's only because of immigration.

Are many non-Eldar flocking to live in Craftworlds? No.

The closest analogy to the decline of the Eldar would be Tolkien Elves, who were suffering a millennial-long decline for the same reasons.

With growth and vitality comes production. What is the age of the "youngest" Craftworld? When was the last time a new Craftworld was built? These are vital questions.

Edit *** *** *** *** *** ***

The Codex entry said hundreds... so we can pin-point that there were less than one thousand Craftworlds at any one time. One thousand is the ceiling to any estimate.

• The total number of Eldar may have been a trillion, but at a time of such upheaval where you need to evacuate all the planets, we can assume many Eldar were left behind (the old, the infirm, the sick, the young, etc.).
• We know Eldar are not as prolific as humans, so assuming one billion per planet would be appropriate for humans, but probably too much for Eldar.
• The Craftworlds supply their guests with all the food and raw material they need to produce the things they need to live. Let's talk about that...

A human needs about 0.5 hectares of space to produce via agriculture and animal husbandry the diverse diet they need to stay healthy and sire children. New persons need their own 0.5 hectares of land. This assumes there is no soil degradation from erosion or other destructive natural events, and a perfect application of fertilizer.

Because the Eldar are all-knowing space elves, we can assume they are perfect farmers. A Hectare is is 10 square kilometers. Because Eldar are frail compared to a human, let's presume their dietary needs are half that of a normal human.

• 2.5 sq km per Eldar
• 200,000 Eldar on Craftworld Zu'lasa
• The Craftworld was 500,000 square kilometers large, as a minimum, to service that size of a population. This excludes space for cities, homes, factories, vehicle depots, highways, theaters, etc. So Zu'lasa was even larger.
• Estimate that 'food' production took up 3/4 of all space, and Zu'lasa grows to about 667,000 sq km.
• Los Angeles County is 10,670 sq km.
• California is 423,970 sq km.
• The Moon is 37,900,000 sq km.

The Earth is 510,000,000 square kilometers. Working backward, we can then theorize that 382,500,000 sq km goes to food production, supporting a maximum population of 153,000,000 Eldar.

An Earth-sized Craftworld with perfect management of it's resources wouldn't support more than 200 million Eldar. And because we know that some Eldar have died from attacks, been corrupted by Chaos, and that accidents happen, there would be less.

So, again working backwards, sub-1,000 Craftworlds (999) X 153 million comes to a maximum population (of all Eldar) to be ~153 billion Eldar. That's the ceiling. We also know that no new Craftworld has been made since the original evacuation and that many Craftworlds are under-populated.

The conclusion of all this is that all the Eldar couldn't fill up a single human Forgeworld, which is what any player expects. The point of the Eldar is that there are few of them. That's what makes them special.

[Etra]

Wow, wait a minute, I was thinking about it those numbers are full of crap.

People eat twice the amount of Eldar, yet there are 7 billion of us here on Earth, and there's room for more. And most of Earth is covered in water, so there's less REAL space than I gave the Eldar credit for. I'll do some test equations and get back to ya.

I think Eldargal might be right

[eldargal]

We know the Craftworlds have grown in size tens or hundreds of times since the fall, that wouldn't occur in what is basically a planet ship without commensurate population growth. Therefore while it is not stated outright the Eldar population growth has, we can infer that is has quite solidly. As you say we have 7bn people or so on earth and it is one average planet that may or may not be filled to/beyond capacity. The Eldar had at least 16 Crone Worlds of unknown size and were post-subsistence, post-industrial top dogs of the galaxy for millions of years.

There will be negative growth factors too:

Many Craftworlds would be destroyed, many of the later ones would not be filled to capacity, some of them would have unloaded their populations onto Exodite worlds etc. BUT the fact remains there are at least 30 Craftworlds surviving with tens or hundreds of times growth, I personally consider the weight of evidence to be firmly in the 'tens to hundreds of billions' of Eldar camp.

Which is not a lot in a galaxy where the Imperium has quadrillions of humans, and there are god knows how many Orks an Tyranids and whatnot as well. Your last line is accurate to an extent, the entire Eldar population of the galaxy would only fill a a couple of dozen Hive Worlds at most. Which is another reason I consider it likely, a population in the low billions on a galactic scale is just completely implausible.

[Old_Paladin]

I think it's important to realize that just because the craftworlds have become tens times as large doesn't mean the populations have increased at all.

I think Gandolf's words in the extended edition of Return of the King discribing the fall of Gondor easily echo the Eldar.
[URL="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QzxAcIJRumU"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QzxAcIJRumU[/URL]

Their worlds are vast empty halls where Kings once sat, endless tombs for countless generations of the dead, countless chamber and observitories for their Seers, and art-houses for the great works of their past.
The Eldar are a people that value the lost glory of the days of old, thinking of little else, and waiting to die.