This is partly true. There’s more direct involvement by state elites in the Hegemony’s agriculture than in the most analogous time period in Europe (culturally and intellectually, the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; technologically, verging into the nineteenth century thanks to the magic system). But we should be clear that even if it survived its current crisis, the Hegemony is at least a couple of centuries away from being able to pull off a Soviet or Mao-style centralized command economy; it just doesn’t have the administrative capacity to monitor the numbers.
Certainly there’s extensive state involvement of the kind we see in China from a much earlier epoch: the state buying up regional surpluses and shipping them to granaries in areas with deficits; price stabilization through stocking “ever-normal” granaries (in the Hegemony, administered by the priesthood from farm tithes); a goal of ensuring there’s always enough in the storehouses to feed both the army and the otherwise restive peasantry and town-dwellers (though as we’ve often noted before, the Hegemony has to worry a little less about the latter than any empire in our world).
But when it comes to blood for agriculture, as I’ve said before, there’s no single central “blood budget” (and thus no central planning):
As we’ll see more in Ch2, Theurges are allowed to sell certain services, especially healing and agriculture, to the elites in the areas they serve without needing to get central sanction for it. This helps keep the Theurges prosperous and the realm healthy and fed. Theurges are also officially mandated to help the local priests keep the Tithe Barns full; if the local nobility haven’t been able or willing to pay for a Theurgically enhanced harvest, the priests may call for one, but the benefit will go entirely to the Tithe Barn rather than the landowner. (A priest who calls in a Theurge to fill their Tithe Barn for free and then personally profits by selling the surplus on the black market is at risk of Harrowing for corruption if caught.)
Trying to shift this to a more centrally managed system of both blood allocation and agricultural planning should be possible for a state-capacity-maxing player (i.e. one willing to trade off against other potential goals like scale, popularity with certain factions, retributive justice, and social equity). I won’t be sure until we get into the weeds in Games 4 and (especially) 5 quite how challenging it’s going to be for players who aspire to something other than a smaller, better-managed Thaumatarchy to develop a significantly stronger state, at scale, with a transformative agenda. But it should be pretty tough.
Anyway, none of these quibbles about the definition of “command economy” changes the fact that
and that famine on some scale will result. The question is whether the MC will be willing and able (based on past choices) to mitigate the damage enough to avoid population collapse – which is what I had in mind by “hold famine at bay” in my last post.
A couple of notes on G1 numbers while we’re at it:
The reference to “seven [grain] harvests” in G1 is hyperbolic. Later in that chapter, there’s a more accurate estimate: “I’ve often heard my Keriatou cousins boast that they ‘feed the district’ by bringing in Theurges and deploying their helots to give them four or five harvests a year.” In G2 Ch2 it’ll be made clearer that only the biggest noble houses can afford to pay for as many as five grain harvests a year, as each additional harvest requires exponentially more blood (to boost fertility without giving the land time to rest). Having seven harvests a year is possible but only economical for the highest-value crops, not staple grains.
Another number that folk have picked up on is Horion’s estimate that Shayard has 20m helots. I’d just note that this is a major underestimate. 
Nobles have an incentive to underreport the number of helots they own, leading to fewer being Harrowed and the nobles having to spend less on replacing them. This leads to the folks in the center having a skewed estimate of the total.
Sorry, but that would be about as tough as giving you a detailed list of all the possible shapes your rebellion could be in at the end of Game 1. There are going to be a lot of different possibilities for your final state, along at least a dozen different axes – that’s all I can say for now.
whistles innocently
That’s absolutely right – literacy is the most efficient way for most people to learn enough to have a chance at mastering Theurgy, but high-intellect folks can to some extent self-teach if they’re set on the right path, and most people can learn some Theurgy if they have long-term mentorship (the Seracca model).
@andreww1 is right that people like Yebben are exceptional, but the Hegemony has well over 100m helots, so even the exceptions will add up if you spread the knowledge as widely as possible. Will those exceptions add up to enough for the helotry to avoid domination by more literate classes that can make more effective use of the knowledge? Probably not, without other intentionally emancipatory policy-making on the MC’s part.
Yes, to some extent, for all of the above. (“Enlightenment” involves a lot more than publishing, but you can spread knowledge more widely.) Though the Kryptasts put a high priority on snuffing out independent presses.
A thorough breaking of the old order, opening up more radical possibilities for transformation than you could see in a system where most of your power-holders are elites from the old regime.
I expect most players will end up going mid-anarchy, rather than being Savage Goetes or Sellouts to the Nobility. Minmaxing decision-making here is likely to turn off a lot of people too much to do it consistently; some kind of middle way will feel most appealing.
Right, back to writing…