Ancalagon
Dusty Dragon
My players are thoroughly interested in building towns and castles. I can't wait till I show them how much that costs!
HA!
It's also interesting - if we combine it with my other thread on reward/taxes - to see what kind of castle can a population support. Let's say that 10% of the budget is the most a community can afford to spend on a castle/fort etc. It's worth doing for defensive reasons and the lord probably really wants it, so it seems like a good number.
So at 2 gp/person/year, a fortified tower requires about 4500 people to maintain, a fort about 9000 people, and a large castle would require a city of 73 000... this seems a bit high. Either a large castle is *enormous*, or cities/villages are willing to devote more than 10% of their budget to the "maintain the fort" fund...