fascinating link on demographics

[Karro]

If/when I had time, I'd be interested in contributing research/data. The problem is the having of that time, but it would be an interesting project to contribute to.

[Caleb]

Yes, thank you for the link. This is beyond helpful, and it really gives perspective to how the medieval era worked. Though of course, this is for "our real" world, so for me, I cannot follow this to the most strict definition. Because of magic, and other supernatural feats possible in most fantasy worlds, demographics will have a curve to them.

But anyway, this is amazingly helpful, it serves as a perfect foundation to build any medieval world.

Thanks for the link,
Caleb

[Notsonoble]

Kicking the topic back to the op:

I've been using stuff from this particular article for a while trying to build my campaign settings... but I'm having trouble getting a good idea of how to factor in stuff like magical assistance, the type of leadership the kingdom has... and some of the other things he mentions. Also, my 190K sq mi area that's had a stable ruling system for 350 years is generating a 11million population (give or take 2 mill for things like wars and such), even with really low population densities... This makes for some absolutely-freakin-huge largest settlements...

My current attempt is taking "Govt Nature", Land Quality, and Magical Influence, rating them 1-5, and using 6d4*(Events+(gov nature+land quality+magical influence/3)+(age/100) to get a pop/square mile... it seems to be generating reasonable population densities... but pop totals with all the rest come out kinda crazy...

[Midgardsormr]

11 milllion isn't unreasonable for that land area under a stable government. It's a little smaller than France, which had similar extents in the middle ages as it does today. A 1328 census estimated the population of France at 17.6 million, although "other authorities" suggest a number closer to 15 million, around 90% of which were rural.

That census followed a relatively peaceful era, about 300 years following the surcease of raids from both Vikings and Muslims.

The black death and a few wars reduced France's population thereafter to about 10 million in 1450, which is still in line with the calculator's prediction.

Data taken from the article "Population and Demography" by William Percy, jr in Medieval France: an Encyclopedia, by William W Kibler and Grover A Zinn, editors.

[Notsonoble]

Okay, so if they are reasonable, I suppose I'll just go with them... It seemed odd, since his example wasn't all that much smaller of an area, but he had something like 8 million... and a 5% urban population. I seem to be getting (based on his city/town breakdowns) 1.5% to maybe 2.5% urban populations...

[Notsonoble]

so that 11 mi number, well when you break down his stuff in more detail about distance between towns citys and such... I noticed that even just blowing concentrations away and spreading my communities out evenly in this one country... I'd get a community every 13 miles in any direction!? The pop numbers make since, but the number of communities seems to really have crapped out...

13 miles apart as an average makes since if you do the 2/3 populated 1/3 wilderness... but for that I got a community every 8 miles

Overland movement for a human in DND is 24 miles a day, this is actually pretty reasonable... I could probably (despite being in horrid shape) make 15-18 in a day pretty easy... and most military personnel can beat 24/day... so this would mean that a character could run across on average 3 communities a day on the road???

I'm thinking that it's not really the math's fault, its either something I screwed up... or simply not taking in to effect the idea that magic would have an effect of +100 years technology would... and cause a bit more concentration in places... So I'm thinking about simply halving the numbers. (not pop, but separate communities)

Also, again, on doing civilizations with lower populations (under the 5 million mark it seems so far) the distribution makes a lot more since... which is why I think I screwed up the math somewhere, and its small enough a goof that it doesn't show up on smaller populations...

[Midgardsormr]

Have you also referenced Sigurd's in depth study of Herefordshire?
http://www.cartographersguild.com/showthread.php?t=3391