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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Bryan Vining" data-source="post: 443541" data-attributes="member: 7628">Some thoughtsExpanding a population from 7,000 to 25,000 should not be a quick enterprise unless the PCs are going to make a massive personal investment.  First off, you have to give people a reason to move there.  That is, there has to be genuine economic opportunity for them along with a means of getting there (bonded serfs, for example, won't move there no matter how attractive it is).  The economy is only so large, and the PCs are going to have to be willing to expand it personally if they want to get a population boom like that.  One thing you mentioned was a vein of gold.  That's a good way to attract people.  Getting rich quick draws them in.  The challenge then is to establish enough of a real economy (i.e., not based on gold) to support 25,000 after the gold is gone.  Now, I'm not saying this can't or shouldn't be done.  It sounds like fun, but the PCs had better be prepared to spend the vast majority of their funds on it.  Just building the structures required to house 18,000 people is going to take a lot of moola.  If each structure costs just 5 gp, which is possibly a reasonable average, you're talking abotu 90.000 gp.  However, I think that's unlikely, since you also have to have the raw resources to build 18,000 homes.  You can undoubtedly get them, but it won't be cheap.  You'll have to bring in wood from forests, often over very long distances, and there may be some elves who won't be happy about seeing that rate of deforestation.  Never mind building the larger civic structures that will be required to keep things running.  I certainly haven't worked it out in any detail, but I would guess that for any party to try to expand a city's population from 7,000 to 25,000 in four years would cost them well into the 100's of thounsands of gps, if not better than a million.  Why?  The economy of a city of 25,000 is significantly larger and different than that of a city of 7,000.  If we assume that only 1 in 5 of the population is a worker (the others being spouses, children, elderly, etc), then you have 3600 new workers.  If we go by the 1 sp per day rate for a laborer, then you need 131400 gp a year to maintain their wages.  However, that 1 sp rate assumes a certain amount of self-sufficiency, which is obtained through farming.  Since there won't be any farming going on, I'd double that amount.  The money to maintain these wages has to come from somewhere.  Anyway, I could go on about this, but hopefully I've gotten the point across about setting up a believable expansion of population.  Cheers!</blockquote>

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