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<blockquote data-quote="jgbrowning" data-source="post: 852551" data-attributes="member: 5724">The main question here is one of political will. Cities can be very large depending upon food sources (Rome with Sicily and Egypt is a good example)This is a hard question to answer because the base premise of a 1million pop city simply can't happen given the nature of western feudalism combined with medieval technology. A very large medieval city was over 100,000k.All that aside, using information about rome to determine grain needs…1,000,000 romans got aprox. 10 million bushels of grain a year. That would require 1 million acres or 1,562.5 square miles or 40X40 miles of pure farm. This of course doesn't count for feeding the people who do the farming.Now having nearby villages provide the agricultural base is going to greatly increase the amount of area you'll need for support while at the same time driving up grain prices. There's a reason why all the big cities of ancient and medieval times were port cities or on good rivers. Transporting grain by land can double its price for every 50 miles.This isn't much of an answer, I suppose, but it is definitely out of the medieval aspect of the contest. However, I'd heartily recommend The Corn Supply of Ancient Rome by Rickman if you're doing any mega-city building.I'm attaching a chart from MMS:WE that should help answer your community distribution questions.joe b.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="jgbrowning, post: 852551, member: 5724"] The main question here is one of political will. Cities can be very large depending upon food sources (Rome with Sicily and Egypt is a good example) This is a hard question to answer because the base premise of a 1million pop city simply can't happen given the nature of western feudalism combined with medieval technology. A very large medieval city was over 100,000k. All that aside, using information about rome to determine grain needs… 1,000,000 romans got aprox. 10 million bushels of grain a year. That would require 1 million acres or 1,562.5 square miles or 40X40 miles of pure farm. This of course doesn't count for feeding the people who do the farming. Now having nearby villages provide the agricultural base is going to greatly increase the amount of area you'll need for support while at the same time driving up grain prices. There's a reason why all the big cities of ancient and medieval times were port cities or on good rivers. Transporting grain by land can double its price for every 50 miles. This isn't much of an answer, I suppose, but it is definitely out of the medieval aspect of the contest. However, I'd heartily recommend The Corn Supply of Ancient Rome by Rickman if you're doing any mega-city building. I'm attaching a chart from MMS:WE that should help answer your community distribution questions. joe b. [/QUOTE]

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