How to handle children in a game system like this one is a very complicated issue. Children do work in a lot of ways such as household chores, but they do not produce many things in terms of buildings, products or military power. Children in a society live with their parents, extended family, family friends and even where they do their apprenticeships. To make it simple, we have created something we refer to as "The Child Pool". It's a raw number of the children who live in a civilization. For our purposes, keeping track of the individual ages and parents of given children is pointless. All we really need to know is how many there are, and a couple additional statistics that effect the pool size.

Mortality Rate- People in civilizations die all the time for all kinds of reasons; even children. Each month your "Child Pool" will take a loss based on how great your civilization's over all Mortality Rate is. Generally the mortality rate affecting your "child pool" is only about 50% of the general population. Children tend to be better protected and don't suffer maladies of age.

Coming of Age- Each month a portion of your "Child Pool" will grow up and become functionally adults. This number will be deducted from the "Child Pool" and added to your general population. The new young adults will begin with a "Poor" rank in a profession whose grade is 6 or less, and of whom you already have an adept level professional in your civilization. When there is a child who comes of age, there is a small percentage that they will go immediately to the "Infirm Pool". This represents a child with developmental problems who grows up unable to lead a normal independent adult lifestyle. Each month. Roughly .4% of the Child Pool will reach Coming of Age.

Orphan Rate- This score is a simple percentage of your Child Pool who are not being cared for by family or friends of family. They exist in your society without acting parents. As leader, you might want to do something about them. A neglected orphan population can be bad in many ways. A society's orphan rate begins at 0 percent, but may grow based on events like Social policy, war, plague or famine. High over all Mortality rates for a civilization are bound to result in high Orphan Rates as many who die are likely to leave un-provided for children behind.

Remember, even though children are technically cared for by their parents, you still must take steps to ensure that your civilization has the food and drink resources necessary for them to be nourished. In terms of food and drink, each child in the children pool requires 50% of the food and drink an adult would. Other items like clothing and bedding should also be remembered and provided.

At times it may be useful to have an idea of the age make up of your Child pool. This general breakdown should give you a good feel for such numeric breakdowns. The reason for the higher percentages for younger children is simple to understand; Mortality. The older portions of the population have suffered more losses then the younger by virtue of their longer exposure to the hazards of the world. There are more 2 year olds then 13 year olds for the exact same reasons there are more 20 year olds then 90 year olds.

We are also aware of many of the mathematical problems with our model. It was designed to handle a very complicated problem in as simple a manner as possible.