Number of Buildings in a Village, Town, City, etc.

[Inzae]

wow

Wow - good thread.

As a rule of thumb anymore I use a 8 to one for the number of buildings. 80% agri for town. Cities are a little different. Just an easy quick roundig. I sused to do a lot of statistical stuff but it became laborious - though I am now getting back into it.

But here is my question. How does a fantasy environment affect this. Just consider the follwoing. One cleric in a city of 400 could cast, potentially 365 heal spelss ayear - if not more. Higher levels could do the cure disease thing. Throw into the mixed improved agri from druidic knowledge, elf knowledge etc. and you are looking at a population timebomb as death rates diminish quickly.

Then, what about master masons (dwarves) larger than life builders (friendly ginats) magic and its affect on construction and the city's lanscape changes overnight.

Look at Rome without any of that stuff. Think what it would be like if the romans could actually cast spells, move larger stones etc.

This is the real difficulty - making it all work out.

I dealt with it by limiting the number of classes in a pop. 1 cleric per 1000 or some such ( and even that is 365 heal spells and 900+ cure minor wound spells.

blah blah - just though I would throw that in.

davis

 

[David Argall]

beggers?

"just a tid-bit for you, in medieval times anywhere from 10-20% of the population in cities were beggers."

This can only be true if one takes a very loose definition of begger. We are talking about a society that was perhaps 100 times poorer than current 1st world. That simply does not leave the resources to support a large number of beggers at even a survival level.

To get to these sorts of numbers, we need to count the unemployed, the erratically employed, and those with jobs they don't want the law finding out about.

 

[jgbrowning]

Re: beggers?

"just a tid-bit for you, in medieval times anywhere from 10-20% of the population in cities were beggers."

This can only be true if one takes a very loose definition of begger. We are talking about a society that was perhaps 100 times poorer than current 1st world. That simply does not leave the resources to support a large number of beggers at even a survival level.

To get to these sorts of numbers, we need to count the unemployed, the erratically employed, and those with jobs they don't want the law finding out about.

I should preface that im talking about the late middle ages. I always forget to say that....

On the resources issue, 8-10 acres of land supports a family of 5 at a subsistance level. Of that 8-10 acres 40-60% of their product would be taken as taxes/fee/justice by their lord. The lord also usually has 1/4-1/2 of the arable land in the villiage so he's producing, from the labor of he peasants, a surplus. The lord sells the grain he makes and the grain he taxes for cash to the cities.

for a city of 20,000 around 35,000 acres is needed. To generate 35, 000 acres of grain you need around 70,000 acres under cultivation. Roughly 70,000 acres would be cultivated by a population (not just workers here, but kids, old ladies etc.) of 140,000 people.

When you're unemployed you beg to eat, when you're erratically employed and not currantly lifting heavy objects you beg to eat. Those are beggers. Concepts of unemployment, and erractic employment are modern ones. In the medieval period there isn't a separation. They are called the "poor" the "wretched" or "beggers". So these numbers do include those groups as you mention. Also most of the people in cities lived at a subsistance level, so when any economic downturn occured the numbers of poor increased. Medieval people were used to drastic fluctuations of poverty.


[from Cipolla's "Before the Industrial Revolution: European Society and Economy, 1000-1700" (excellent book, i don't know how many books i read that referenced him so i finally broke down and got it )

Louvain, late 1400's 18% beggers
Antwerp, late 1400's 12% beggers
Hamburg, late 1400's 20% beggers]

Some cities were so full of beggers they worried about the beggers rioting. Venice took measure against their beggers and against the boatmen who carried them.

In times of famine the number of poor (begger, wretched) soared dramtically in the cities because charity was more available in the cities and hopfully the wealthy had food in storage and they might give it out as charity. 1-5% of household consumption of the "wealthy" was charity.

[from cipolla again...
Pavia, italy 1555: grain reserves % breakdown

more than 20 bags grain reserve, 2% of families had 45% of reserve grain.

more than 2 less than 20 bags grain reserve, 18% of families had 45% of the reserve grain.

Up to two bags grain reserve, 20% of families had 10% of the reserve grain.

no bags at all grain reserve, 60% of the families]


joe b.

 

[Buttercup]

Here's a nifty javascript calculator which will tell you how many people, castles, guards, and various businesses your kingdom would have, based on a few attributes you provide.

 

[Storminator]

Where's the calculator Buttercup?

PS

 

[Buttercup]

Oops! Right here:

http://www.rpglibrary.org/utils/meddemog/

 

[Larry Fitz]

Re: wow

Inzae pointed out:
... here is my question. How does a fantasy environment affect this. Just consider the follwoing. One cleric in a city of 400 could cast, potentially 365 heal spelss ayear - if not more. Higher levels could do the cure disease thing. Throw into the mixed improved agri from druidic knowledge, elf knowledge etc. and you are looking at a population timebomb as death rates diminish quickly.

Yes but then consider the greater loss of life due to magic. The biggest harbinger of war and destruction the world has ever seen has been the improvement of communication. The more people can communicate, the faster they start killing each other, so magic that allowed people to communicate and travel farther and faster would lead to more wars, and a decrease in the surplus population, also you'd get an increased efficiency of killing. Fireballs can be far more devastating than even cannon, and a Meteor Swarm or Earthquake? That's some seriously efficient killing. Also, we kill each other over idealogies and differences of opinions on how to best worship the SAME god, can you imagine what kind of wars would exist if Humans shared the globe with other sentient self-aware creatures that worshipped entirely different deities? Ask not how magic would affect population increase but whether there could be any population at all in a world of magic....

 

[David Argall]

communication & magic

"The more people can communicate, the faster they start killing each other,"

False relationship. Increased communication has been only an incidental relationship with war. In fact some of the most vicious wars were fought in days of poor communication. By contrast, better communication has been very useful in increasing population in a number of ways. [Knowledge of where a famine is taking place is nearly sufficient of itself to reduce deaths to a trivial level.]

Now magic as a direct killer is another story. Our game and our stories are full of violent magic, so we might find over all that magic reduces the population. But communication magic increases it.