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alextroy wrote:According to the 8th Edition Codex, Catachan tithes dozens of Regiments to the Astra Mililtarum each year. If we assume low dozens (30-50 Regiments) and that a Regiment in the lower size range (say 1-2K Soldiers), Catachan is tithing maybe 50K soldiers a year.

As others have noted, 50K out of 120M is really a drop in the bucket. You can double the tithe to 100K soldiers and still not reach 1% of the population. I'm sure Catachan has a high enough birth rate between give the demands caused by death/tithe rate. Remember, Astra Militarum soldiers almost never go home, so they might as well be considered dead as far as the homeworld population is concerned.

It is 12 million, not 120 million- the relevant lore excerpt has been posted above (note it has no in-universe date).

But that can still easily generate low dozens of regiments per year and that is a reasonable baseline for Catachan.

Most of the discussion now is on reconciling this with another canon source describing Catachan as tithing > 50 million soldiers in 998.M41, which is 4 times its apparent population from another source.

Gert wrote:Sort of? I mean there's the Vitae Wombs but they're borderline illegal and presumably take a massive energy base to use, something that Catachan absolutely won't have. Krieg is seemingly the only planet that is tolerated in their use of the technology because they are a vital source of troops and munitions.
Apart from that cloning is illegal and from what can be gleaned from the Catachan Devils novel, Catachan society is just very blunt, which is a necessity of their murderous planet. If a couple wants to get together and have kids then they just go for it. It just so happens that the Catachans seem to be a bit of a rowdy bunch anyway, which again if every day could be your last, why live it any other way?

We don't have any reason to assume vitae wombs are restricted to Krieg alone. We know the use of vitae wombs is controversial, but I think it is a stretch to say they are borderline illegal any more so than all the other controversial Adeptus Mechanicus technology (which is quite a lot given how conservative some magi are). Some Biologis adepts do not agree with the use of vitae wombs, but IA volume 5 explicitly states that the program is run by other Biologis adepts who clearly do agree with the technology. I think it is highly likely other advanced worlds do use it. This is corroborated by Necromunda, where very similar "vat" technology is used to mass-produce workers.

Having said that, there is no evidence this is true for Catachan, and having to uproot and move all your settlements every few years probably precludes any particularly delicate technology.

Depends on the pragmatism.

I think it’s right that Catachans probably don’t have much time for courtship, and if two willing partners want to hop on the good foot and do the bad thing, they will.

But I don’t think that necessarily precludes semi-centralised Imperial Population Insurance.

Per annum. Holy gak. Someone at GW is smoking something. This isn't some single emergency draft, that's hive world level drafts then and can't possibly be right.

Edit: This image is massive, spoiler tag added.

I go back to my previous comment then of Catachan shipping out 1% of their population every year. That's 120,000 every year.

Jarms48 wrote:

 Haighus wrote:

Spoiler:

Per annum. Holy gak. Someone at GW is smoking something. That's hive world level drafts then and can't possibly be right.

I originally spoilered that image for a reason... It is huge on mobile.

It is set in a particular year, so we can really only infer that the tithes were that high specifically in 998.M41. it is likely several of these represent emergency tithes rather than routine tithes. For other odd examples, Attila and Kaledon are both feral worlds tithing > 50 million troopers in 998.M41. That is likely a huge chunk of their populations too.

Edit: thanks for re-spoilering

 Haighus wrote:

It is set in a particular year, so we can really only infer that the tithes were that high specifically in 998.M41. it is likely several of these represent emergency tithes rather than routine tithes. For other odd examples, Attila and Kaledon are both feral worlds tithing > 50 million troopers in 998.M41. That is likely a huge chunk of their populations too.

It shouldn't say per annum then, that implies that it's being done every year. Likely starting from 998.M41

Jarms48 wrote:

 Haighus wrote:

It is set in a particular year, so we can really only infer that the tithes were that high specifically in 998.M41. it is likely several of these represent emergency tithes rather than routine tithes. For other odd examples, Attila and Kaledon are both feral worlds tithing > 50 million troopers in 998.M41. That is likely a huge chunk of their populations too.

It shouldn't say per annum then, that implies that it's being done every year. Likely starting from 998.M41

Yeah, it is misleading. However, I don't think it would be an incorrect reading to say most of those are regular tithes (the worlds not being required to raise emergency tithes) with a few emergency tithes in there that happened to be the tithe level in that year.

Of course, we could roll back to option 1: some Administratum scribe misplaced a decimal point or swapped Catachan and Valhalla by accident. They are now known as servitor Zeta-391a...

 Haighus wrote:

alextroy wrote:According to the 8th Edition Codex, Catachan tithes dozens of Regiments to the Astra Mililtarum each year. If we assume low dozens (30-50 Regiments) and that a Regiment in the lower size range (say 1-2K Soldiers), Catachan is tithing maybe 50K soldiers a year.

As others have noted, 50K out of 120M is really a drop in the bucket. You can double the tithe to 100K soldiers and still not reach 1% of the population. I'm sure Catachan has a high enough birth rate between give the demands caused by death/tithe rate. Remember, Astra Militarum soldiers almost never go home, so they might as well be considered dead as far as the homeworld population is concerned.

It is 12 million, not 120 million- the relevant lore excerpt has been posted above (note it has no in-universe date).

My error, but the point still stands. 100,000 is 0.83% of 12 Million. So easily sustainable with a high enough birth rate to also offset along with death from disease, environment, and age. Just means that Catachan reproduce at a level more akin to a "developing world" nation than a "developed" nation.