KotS Winterhaven size? (maybe spoilers?)

I think the figures I presented are a great start and those ideas that you guys threw out there, imagining that there is cooperation between superstitious peasant farmers and exotic fey creatures, or remove-disease/create-food/plant growth spells, the sheer amount of wandering monsters..

I think it all evens out..and those numbers I presented are correct

..although, growing stuff and cattle feed-lot/containment areas in Midieval Iowa soil would definately trump growing anything in europe whatsoever...and I always figured D&D (or at least Call of Cthulhu) was set in Iowa.

jh

am181d said:

Can anyone present a preferred ratio of farmers/outliers to "inside the walls" folks? I'm working on a map for my first 4e town, and I'm trying to estimate population.

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That article I posted goes over how much food you'd have to produce to keep a particular population alive. That would be a good start. Trade alone simply does not produce commodities (as modern day economies are suddenly and rudely finding out)..but it's fantasy land so a 10%/90% city/rural ratio of most 3rd world economies (and midieval systems) may not be right for your world Afterall, elves don't eat that much and dwarves can seemingly subsist on dark-world mushrooms and barley that is made into beer..that's why they dont' ride horses afterall..you can't feed horses AND have your ale too!

jh

Let's go for a 1000 population for Winterhaven.

For the Inn, the staff and their immediate families live there, It's a large-ish Inn that sees movement, so let's say 8 people live and work there.
For buildings 4, 5, 7 and 8 have a family of (averaging) 4 living there. That's 18 people.
Valthurn probably has a couple of servants living there to do the menial work (maube even under apprenticeship). That's 3 people in building 6.
The Temple (area 10) probably has about 6 people living there, between clergy and lay servants. We're up to 35 residents, now.
The Manor (area 14) has spelled out 11 residents. 46 so far.
The Barracks (area 13) house 10 guards. 56.
That leaves us the Tenements (building 9) and the "H" homes. These are probably 2-storied buildings. The homes can fit 6-8 people before getting too crowded. Assuming 6, that's another 36 people. 92 so far.
The Tenements can hold another 60 people in 12 separate units.

That brings the population of Winterhaven proper to 152. We can round that down to 150.

This assumes the buildings are mostly two-storied. The tower is five-storied and is called out as the tallest building in town, so there's no reason why several buildings can't be three- or four-stories affairs.

That leaves us 850 people living in farmsteads outside the walls. Assuming an average of 8 people per farmstead, that's about 106 farms spread around Winterhaven.

Compare that number to the medieval village of Autoire, in France:



Even in modern days, when people don't live as packed, it boasts 312 people in 7 square kilometers (about 4 square miles, or a square 2 miles on the side). That area reaches the borders of the Lair and the Burial Site, if perfectly square. If shaped like an oblong, it can be stretched from west of Winterhaven to the east, alongside the King's Road, with some towards the south, closer to the Burial Site.

In fact, I'll be using Autoire as the look for Winterhaven's buildings:

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Emirikol,

The first "error" I see in the article is average household size, 10-12 was the norm for rural agrian famlilies well into the 20th century, when machinery finally was able to reduce the reliance on manual labour.

The estimates are very high for the acres per person needs. One cup of oats has 607 calories, one bushel is approx: 150 cups, that means at the 5bu/acre of wheat one person per acre per year as a base. Now giving each person some meat each day, generous at 1 lb per person per day and splitting that between chicken, duck and pork (cows and goats were more for the milk than the meat). Now chickens can be raised at the rate of 400 chickens per acre per year, so that is over a chicken a day at about 5 lbs per chicken, one hog will put out over 200 lbs of meat, and the rest of that pound per day per person can be made up from duck.

So the family of 10 would require approx. 15 acres per year at 5 bu per acre of wheat to have a 2000 calorie per day diet.

The number above falls in line with the agrian culture of Western China which averages about 1 acre per person per year farming the land by hand and getting a subsidy of about $300 per year per household from the government. The average household is 8 people (3 generations with the wifes moving in with the husband's families)

So the 1000 people of Winterhaven would require 1500 acres to be self sufficient given no "fantastic" sources of food generation...

Andur,

That's what I was hoping for. It's nice to have a rough idea of how big to make the countryside, because it's something that's neglected in "town design." I think surroundings can be just as interesting as the city.

Jh

Andur said:

So the family of 10 would require approx. 15 acres per year at 5 bu per acre of wheat to have a 2000 calorie per day diet.

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If we're being "realistic", most medieval peasants ate a good deal less than that. That's why they were short and prone to disease. Charlemagne may have been over 6', but most of his subjects were not.

Emirikol said:

It's nice to have a rough idea of how big to make the countryside, because it's something that's neglected in "town design."

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Country-side is heavily influenced by the means of producing mechanical force that peasants have access to. Some examples include physical labor, horses, water-wheels and steam engines. A domesticated farm-beast economy will look different than one using human labor only or steam engines. Figure out what your campaign world has and what you want it to look like; back of the envelope math will then fill in the details you're looking for.

Irda, considering the amount of work they did each day their caloric requirement was closer to 3000 calories per day for the "average" 150 pound man.

BTW, good base number is 11 calories per pound (or 25 per kg) for your resting caloric intake. (That is no aerobic activity for more than 20 minutes, walking less than 2 miles, etc.) So that 150 pound man would require 1650 calories a day just to whittle on the front porch and watch the clouds float by...

But then again that is all realistic, I'd say Winterhaven which has some decent trade going on would be able to survive with about 700 acres of total land, it would grow and flourish with anything over 1000 acres, course that is before the three red dragons come and raze the place...