Progress: Coming to Life

The barony that I chose to start with in Ukarea (TM) is starting to take shape and I thought I would share, for those who care, and to make a log of what I have done so I can do it again if it works out well. I have the memory of a nat so hopefully I can convey what I have done so I can recreate it if necessary later.

First question, how many inhabitants are there in the barony? I decided a general question could have a general answer; 16 six mile hexes (total livable area) each have 31sq miles of space, or (16x31=) 496sq miles total. This is comforting because it is on par with the 498sq miles of a default dominion (One 24mile hex) in BECMI or RC. OCD sated. So based on the random Population Demographics formula; 4d6xC where "C" is the number of centuries the barony had been around (2 full centuries in this case, see older posts). I multiplied the random population density by the number of square miles in my barony for a total of 19,530 people. That sounds about right, I guess.

Second question, how much arable (farmland) is needed to support 19,530 people in a medieval society? Using the figures provided, 1 square mile will sustain 180 people. 19530/180=108.5 sq miles of arable land. I should have probably just said 108 or 109 one mile hexes, but I didn't. A one mile hex is not equal to one square mile, based on the .9306049 squared figure provided. A one mile hex is, based on that figure, .866 square miles. Multiplying .866 by the 108.5 square miles needed I discovered I needed 125 one mile hexes of productive arable land (farmland) to support the populace.

Oh, Hexographer...

Third question, how was the land dispersed and how much of the total population lived in the arable regions? I placed the 125 one mile farm hexes to taste, creating twelve separate arable regions. I decided that each of these regions needed farmers and families to work the productive lands. But how many? I decided to do the same thing that I did for the barony as a whole. I counted the number of hexes for each region and multiplied that by .866 (the square miles to a single mile hex) for a total square mileage for each of the twelve regions. I am kind of thinking of them as mini-dominions, which I think is a fair assessment. So as an example, farmlands covering 6 one mile hexes has a total square mileage of 5.196. I dropped that area into the Kingdom Population Calculator under Land Size, entered 229 years (figured earlier) for Kingdom Age, and rolled 4d6x2 for Specific Desired Density then hit calculate. Which gave me some key information; Total Population, Rural Population, and Urban Population. The key for me was Total Population.

Note: I could have used the same random (4d6xC) that I had generated for the barony for each of the arable regions, but chose not to so that I would get better randomization. If two arable regions had the same number of one mile hexes, it would have the same number of inhabitants. Which I didn't want. With this, a second 6 mile hex arable region will more than likely have a higher or lower population (perhaps it was founded earlier or later than the first one I did).

Note: I disregarded Rural and Urban results, as they felt wrong to me for the small villages, hamlets, and thorpe that I was creating. In retrospect, I think I could have inverted the corresponding results for the two fields to get a fair assessment of how many of the population lived in the settlement, and how many lived out of it, perhaps on a distant farm.

Lastly, I took the number of people in the arable region and used it into the Population Center Demographics Calculator to find out what types of services were present, and noted it down for the dominion writeup that will come later. I have completed eight of the twelve farm regions thus far and hope to have the remaining four done tonight. Once I have all them done, I will total their populace and subtract it from the dominion total population. Once I have the figure, I can use the steps provided to determine the largest settlement and all subsequent settlements per the Medieval Demographics Made Easy site.

This all sounds rather difficult I am sure, but once I figured out how I wanted to do it, it went rather quickly.

Happy Gaming,
TB