[Award Winner] Tips for Worldbuilding

[fdyfggvdvf]

Hey HW, I like your tips. Have some rep.

Anyway, could you do a post on biomes and placing them realistically? I want to make my map(s) as realistic as possible.

[Adversary]

I love this thread! But I just wanted to add another consideration for city placement, transportation.

I am currently living in Columbus Georgia. The only reason this city exists is because it is placed as far up the Chattahoochee river as a boat can travel. It is on a fall line so rapids and waterfalls blocked river traffic going north. If you (or your goods) are heading south this is the first place you can enter the river and travel all the way to the Gulf of Mexico.

Green Bay, Wisconsin and Chicago, Illinois are also placed well for trade and transportation. They were originally trading centers between Native Americans and the French.

A village in the desert, built on an oasis may survive. But if that oasis is on a trade route, you can build a city.

A great example of the importance of trade routes on city placement involves an ancient race of Native Americans who built Cahokia. It was a major city that may have had trade routes as far north as Alaska and well south into South America. At the time Cahokia was at its peak (1100CE) population of over 40,000 people and covered over 5 square miles. Much of the city was surrounded by a wooden palisade. Except for it's mounds, the city disappeared perhaps because of disease or over farming. The location of the city was the key for its success (It lasts from ~600-1400CE). It was centrally located on the Mississippi river where the Missouri and Illinois rivers meet. It was such a good location that a new city grew almost on top of the old. Northern Saint Louis, Missouri sits on the same location. The remaining mounds on the Illinois side of the river have a great view of the St Louis Arch.

Again, I love this thread and can't wait to see more ideas.

[Azélor]

I haven't seen an explanation on how climate/temperature affect population density/crop yield. I know that higher temperatures and more water allow to grow more food but I don't have any numbers.
What I mean by climate/temperature is a mix of precipitations and temperature across the year and not just the annual mean because I suspect that using the average does not give a good idea for crop yield. Some place have harsh temperatures in winter but also a hot summer. While some other places have a short winter but the temperatures rarely go over 15 degrees in the summer. My guess is that the first place will be able to grow more food thus might have a higher population density.

Does anyone have a guide or an article about this ?

I did try do answer my own question. Feedback are welcome: medieval europe - How can I estimate how many people are living in a specific territory? - Worldbuilding Stack Exchange

[Deadshade]

I did try do answer my own question. Feedback are welcome: medieval europe - How can I estimate how many people are living in a specific territory? - Worldbuilding Stack Exchange

This is an almost impossible question because population density hardly correlates with anything.

Example :
Let's take some surface S defined for example by a kingdom. This S is rather arbitrary.
This kingdom has a population P so a density P/S. As this is an average it will fluctuate wildly in sedentary civilisations where this P/S is an average of a very high density in cities and very low density in the rest.
Then for this same surface you need a total food growth per year F so a density F/S. Only this factor which will also wildly fluctuate, will depend on biomes and climate (always keeping the same S)
Last let's have µ which is the minimum food per year and per person so that this person doesn't starve.

Now let's compare µ and F/P (notice that surface disappeared - it stays only implicitely in F because F = Sum of Fi/Si x Si where i is the climatic zone and there is a constraint Sum Si = S)

If µ<F/P all is well and your population will increase. You may suppose that it stays put when it reaches P=F/µ. We know that it won't.

If µ > F/P then theoretically some people will starve untill we get back to the magical P=F/µ.
But in reality we know that this won't happen either. In reality the lacking food will be imported from places where µ<F/P. This was already true thousands of years ago - Carthago imported grain from Sicily and Rome imported grain from Egypt. Both Carthago and Rome had a high population density so a large power and wealth but both had to import the food.

Today's Egypt with its 60 M people has a µ far above F/P so they can' export anything and about a third might theoretically starve. But they import the difference (f.ex from US or Europe where the µ is far below F/P) and continue to happily increase P farther.


So when you arrived at this point you realize that there is no correlation between P and S as soon as people invented trade. If you wanted still to have an estimate of P on a given S then you'd have to estimate the food trade happening on this particular surface.
This is an impossible task because you'd have to practically reconstruct the whole food market and import/export flows on a world scale (for very technological civilisations) or at least a regional scale (for less technological civilisations).
And it can't be reconstructed independently - to reconstruct that, you need to reconstruct the whole economy because to buy food, you need money (or a very strong army which costs money too).
So you must reconstruct who is rich and who isn't.
Incidentally there is an amusing question what is the best strategy. Coming back to my historical example, Carthago lead by merchants thought that it was cheaper to pay for food rather than for a standing army while Rome lead by aristocracy thought the opposite. The latter strategy was the winning one

Etc.

The only feasible and simple model would be the one where µ = F/P but this is the only one which is not realistic as soon as agriculture and trade are invented.

[Azélor]

It is an average and you need rather large area to use it. Looking at a valley with a city in it, you will have a large variation of population so you need to take something larger.

But, even in ancient history and medieval times, countries could trade large quantities of food?

[Deadshade]

It is an average and you need rather large area to use it. Looking at a valley with a city in it, you will have a large variation of population so you need to take something larger.

But, even in ancient history and medieval times, countries could trade large quantities of food?

Oh yes !
Even Thucidides (contemporary of Périclès) describes in his "Peloponesian war" published some 4 centuries BC that the main target of Athenes was to conquer Sicily because Sparta couldn't survive without the grain deliveries from there.
The expedition was a disaster and Sparta won.
So yes already almost 3 000 years ago the food trade flows were important enough to decide of the destiny of empires.

However the point is that a surface is not and never was correlated to population because of trade and agriculture. Of course if one takes the whole Earth for surface then one gets a tautology that there was globally always enough food for the global world's population. The problem being that what is true globally is not true locally. That's why the trade was always Paramount to equalise the playing field by transferring food from surplus regions to deficit regions.

[TKMorcambe]

Jeeeeeez I have a new respect for all those cute lil maps in games and books. You think writers are nuts? YOU GUYS are nuts.

That said, I read through the first few pages of this and something you said about cultures and going back a generation felt like it would work with characters in my modern day, non-fantasy story.

So I went back and did backstories for my characters, then their parents (so now I have 3x as many backstories (1 character + 2 parents) and then grandparents... and long story short, it revealed a MASSIVE plot hole that would have drilled through (and effectively ruined) most of the book.

So... thank you. Very much.

(And yes, I fixed it!)

-TK

[jkat718]

Yep, we're certifiably insane. I hope I speak for everyone when I say that you're welcome to any help we can give you.

[Diamondb]

I just had to pop in and say how much I really appreciate this thread. I've been a GM for 30+ years and while I've dabbled in worldbuilding, I've only just now really started to dive into it as my gaming and fiction writing start to blur together. The posts here have really been helpful and I look forward to reading more.

[nzlemming]

Jeeeeeez I have a new respect for all those cute lil maps in games and books. You think writers are nuts? YOU GUYS are nuts.

You say that like it's a bad thing