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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Gilladian" data-source="post: 4329932" data-attributes="member: 2093">I've always started with a population, say 3,000 people since you gave that number. Then I decide how densely populated I want the town to be. I figure if 20 people live in a building, that's very dense and probably very low to low class. 10 people live in an average building, that's dense population, probably lower to middle class folks. If 5 live in it, that's moderate population - maybe upper middle to upper class. If only 1 or 2 people lived in a given building space, that would be either VERY elite or nearly abandoned property.So then I figure out what percentage of the town is what class of people. Maybe 50% are low class, so you're gonna have 1,500 of them living in 75 buildings. Maybe then 25% are middle class at 10 per building, so another 750 in 75 buildings. Then you have the upper class at 20% of the population so 600 people live in 120 buildings. And the remaining 5% (150 people) live in another 75 or so buildings. That gives about 295 buildings. Call it 300 for rough estimate. If your town has a smaller population now than when it was originally founded, you could increase this by 10 -20% and still not have them rattling around.What size the buildings are, is another question altogether... I usually figure, including public buildings like government halls, forts, temples, etc... that each person needs about 100 sq ft of space to live in, medieval style or slightly more roomily. Again, you can loosen or tighten this depending on the feel you want to give. Clavis is right about how many farmers it takes to support a town's population. Even if they're getting 50% of their nutrition from the lake, they're still going to need about 15,000 farmers to support 3,000 townsfolk. So you're going to have small walled villages interspersed with mound-forts or walled manors and castle/tower/forts spreading out for a day's ride or more around the town. Otherwise everyone will have starved, long since...That, or you need to really stress how dependent the townsfolk are on their rooftop gardens, the food the clerics produce daily at all the temples, the several magic food kettles that the lord of the town owns, etc... AND still have at least some farming outside town.Or maybe wandering herds of bison and brave hunting parties who risk their lives to bring back extremely valuable meat. Or all of the above.</blockquote>

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