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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Hussar" data-source="post: 6393934" data-attributes="member: 22779">There's a danger here though of getting too tied up in historical analogues.  Europe by the Middle Ages didn't have any "frontier" to speak of and really hadn't had any frontiers for centuries.  The land had been thoroughly pacified and the nomadic tribes (barring Mongols of course, but, that's a different issue) had been dealt with.  A better analogue might be, as mentioned, the American West or Australia, or even early Chinese history where the Chinese kingdoms expanded through military force first, creating largely self sufficient military garrisons which were then used as the base for civilian expansion.And, let's not forget, we're not limited to real world farming either.  Why are our fantasy farmers limited to European farming techniques, which were generally very poor?  Perhaps our farmers use Native American farming techniques - planting in rows and planting multiple crops on the same plot - granting much higher food yields and thus allowing much more concentrated populations for safety.  Or rice farming which, again, has much greater yields.  And, in a fantasy setting, we could get even more exotic.  Maybe we don't herd sheep but giant fire beetles, which are good eating, dispose of waste quite effectively, and are somewhat capable of defending themselves.Or maybe we've planted/enslaved/traded with the local Treant population so that our hedges become mobile defences against raiders.  We've cut a deal with those dryads to help us against the humanoids in return for us not burning down the forest and being a lot more ecologically friendly.  Heck, I could see farming communities having a tame ogre on hand for the heavy lifting stuff.  Keep him well fed and whatnot and you could quite possibly see relationships starting up for mutual benefit.  Sure, that ogre eats to much, but, he sure keeps the riff raft away.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" />It's not a good idea to imagine a fantasy world that is just like medieval England and ignore all the other fantasy bits.  The analogs just aren't there.</blockquote>

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