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.