Town Types 03

Towns Transplanted, Part 3.

1. The city – small 20,000, medium 100,000, large 500,000 pop.

What can be said for towns mostly applies for cities too. Old ones are often walled newer ones not. There will be a standing guard force of a few hundred and a militia of around a thousand. If the city is a capital it will have a royal guard type force that acts independently of the regular military. It may also have an army fort(s) with a standing garrison of a few hundred, able to handle 1-2 thousand.

A noticeable difference between a town and a city is the number of distinctly different districts. A town tends to have one market area, with all the shops near it and everything else is mixed residential. There may be a fancy street for the wealthy and a beggars ally for the poor, but they are not entire neighborhoods. In a city the social classes segregate more clearly, sometimes even using walls. In many cities there are multiple market squares or rows, each specializing in a field of crafts or services.

The size of ancient cities.

Memphis in lower Egypt, 1000bc was about 100,000 pop.

In Greece 400bc, Athens was 150,000. Corinth was 90,000.

Jerusalem in 400bc had 40,000 pop.

Babylon in 600bc was 125,000

Syracuse on the island of Sicily in 400bc had 300,000

Alexandria in Egypt, 100ad had some 250,000 by 600ad it was at 94,000

Arles in south of France, 400ad had 75,000

Xi’an was capital of China in 100bc, it had 400,000. In 800ad it had 800,000.

Nanjing, China in 100ad had 78,000

Byzantium in 300ad had some 300,000, its high was 500ad with 1,000,000 pop

Paris in 1100ad had 50,000 by 1300ad it had 225,000

Angkor, the Khmer capital in 900ad had some 90,000

Nara the old capital of Japan in 800ad had 100,000

Seville in Spain, 500ad had 20,000 by 900ad had 40,000

Venice in Italy in 1000ad had 60,000 by 1300ad it had 100,000

London in 200ad had 45,000 by 1000ad it was down to 10,000. 

By 1300ad it was 70,000.

Rome; 600bc 80,000. 400bc 150,000. 100bc 400,000. 100ad 1,000,000. 400ad 800,000. By 600ad it fell to 90,000 and would drop to 50,000 in 800ad then to 15,000 in 1300ad.

City Selfcenteredness.

A city is kind of a world unto itself. The surrounding countryside is often treated as if it did not even exist. Although the reality is that a city needs to import lots of resources. It draws from a sizable area by domination. The perception is that the city is all and can do all. Why, because so much money and power is concentrated in the city, especially if it is the capital of a kingdom.

As a game setting the city is very complicated. There are numerous factions with in it, providing for an endless amount of intrigue. Generally the factions do not fight each other but have infighting as individuals seek to dominate their own group, then exert influence on the leadership of the town. For players not involved in politics, the city is a wide open setting for adventure. There is very little practical way to enforce the law, so long as you don’t draw too much attention to yourself.

A transplanted city will sooner of later realize the basic problem, that there is not enough agricultural land to support the population. New farms must be built, quickly. Which brings about the second issue, skilled labor. There is likely a shortage of experienced farmers. The likely result of these factors is; 1. a grab for grain and other food supplies by the wealthy and 2. a program of land development with the wealthy somehow owning the new farms.

More so than the smaller communities, a city is likely to establish colony villages outside the transplant zone, sooner than later. These will be fortified and may act as a front line vs the unknown world. There are three ways settlement may happen; privately owned, according to the feudal style, publicly owned with a group of share holders, or state owned with an emphasis on the villages as military outposts.

Town Types 02

Towns Transplanted, Part 2.

1. The town – small 2000, medium 4000, large 8000 pop.

The amount of defenses depends on the time period, with towns taken from more recent years being less likely to have walls, because cannons made them almost useless. Most towns have a small full time guard force around 100 men, and a militia (citizen soldiers) that can be called up in emergencies. There is not usually a separate police force. Craft specialists not found in villages make their living here. Towns are almost always located next to rivers.

Here we have a fortified large village or small town.

2. Castle Towns – these are the well fortified settlements that include a castle, which often serves as regional capital in addition to private residence. The lord of the castle commands all the guards, there is usually no division between castle and town forces.

            Here we have a very well fortified medium size castle town.

3. Fort Towns – these are heavily fortified military settlements, built as state projects rather than private ones. Usually they are on the border, very far from home, so a lot of self sufficiency is planned into them. Most of the population are soldiers, with a small number of civilian craftsmen also in residence.

Here we have a Renaissance age fort town built to control the river and its valley. 

Reasons for the existence of towns.

This is an important consideration because the transplant event may destroy the reason the town had for existing. Many towns started life as castle-villages, located at a strategic geographic place, that allowed them to function as trade center and to exert military power over an area. Other towns often grew up from villages dedicated to resource exploitation, which had secondary benefits going for them. In most cases the nearby area provides a lot, but not all, the food a town needs. More than villages, towns depend on trade. This will be a serious issue in the game.

The size of some ancient towns.

The typical Greek city state was about 6000 pop. 10,000 was considered the ideal number.

Thebes in Greace had some 8000 in 1300bc, while Thebes in Egypt at the same time had 80,000.

Eridu in Mesopotamia, 3700bc, had some 7000.

Athems in 700bc had about 7000 but by 400bc it was up to 15,000

In England of 1066ad, London had 10,000 pop, Winchester 6000pop, York 5000, Lincoln had 4000.

In 1166ad when the University was founded at Oxford, the town had about 3500 pop.

Most medieval towns were less than a square mile in size.

A Square Mile is 5280 ft x 5280 ft. or 640 acres ( 1609 m x 1609 m )

As a game setting, the town offers some advantages in terms of work force and available goods. There simply is a lot more stuff in a town than in a village. From the characters point of view there is likely to be a lot more freedom, unless they are already involved in town politics. A lot will depend on the personality of the town’s leader, how tyrannical he is. The state of emergency could easily result in tight martial law, with the confiscation of all essential goods and conscription of useful people. Alternately the town may try to function as normal, with the leader wanting to avoid panic.

In terms of disadvantages to a town, we are dealing with resource supply. It is harder to feed a town than a village and much harder to feed a city. The more modern a town is the more interconnected it is, at lest with the surrounding villages. 

Side Note:

Which brings up a point of geography.  If the town takes up the central square mile of a 10 mile across area, there may well be villages / suburbs with in the zone, say 3 miles down the road. For the game we may say the powers that transplanted towns did some editing of the surrounding land so that only the one town was taken. Or we may allow towns with satellite villages. Or we may consider two villages in the same zone.