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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mal Malenkirk" data-source="post: 4141733" data-attributes="member: 834">Where do you think civilization developped?Always in area where all basic ressources were available. If the immediate area can't support more than 1000, person... that's what you'll get.  If it can't even sustain that much people reliably, you'll probably end up with a ghost town before long.  If the immediate area can support ten thousand, you'll end up with a city state.  One big walled city and small communities within a range that the armed forces of the city state can protect easily.Between those points, the commerce would not consist of foods and would include very little basic ressources.  It would be mostly luxury goods.  Any community depending on commerce for food in that context would always be one disaster away from extinction and in the long run, there's always a disaster.  Ergo, they'd become a failed colony within a generation.  One day a city state could become large enough that it's able to sustain an army large enough to pacify a large area and secure trade routes to the point they become reliable.  Once it reach that point you suddenly see very rapid expansion since virtually no one in the immediate environment will be able to compete.  Then you got an empire.It'd probably be a fun campaign to help a strong city state to take the steps toward empire and civilization on a PoL style world.  The amusing thing is that it would be morally ambiguous.  Typically, to achieve your goal you'd need to exterminate or subjugate quite a few cultures.  They can't all be EVIL giants and blood thirsty orcs, can they?  Yet if you don't have free access to the dwarven mines, how will you ever have the ressources to cleanse the land from gnolls, demon cultist and whatnot?</blockquote>

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