[ACKS] Adventurer Conqueror King System

[aldarron]

Since the First Fantasy Campaign undervalued the value of a peasant, the First Fantasy Campaign had to set its population densities vastly in excess of historical standards, which was necessary to provide sufficient funds for the players to field appropriate sized armies.

I wonder if this in fact was a mistake from Dave, or if it rather could be a setting statement. Life in the Northern Marches was harsh and farming there with shifting weather, swamplands and harsh winters would in fact make those farmers so inefficient...?

-Havard

I should take the time to look at that a bit more, but it will take some digging and calculating. Thing is I'm not sure about Alex's figures regarding population density and I should ask him how he calculated that. Part of the issue is the size of the area, and who lives where, and what time period we're talking about. Since the costs and so forth of peasants and soldiers are early FFC material it makes sense to look at the FFC Blackmoor data too for what Dave had in mind. The FFC FACTS ABOUT BLACKMOOR: gives 4,346 sq miles and lists the population as 1000 peasants, 100 nobles and soldiers, 4 wizards, 100 elves and some monsters.

Being generous and rounding that up to 1300 people, that gives a pop density of 30 persons per square mile. That's a reasonable figure. If you compare to medieval Ireland, which is estimated to have had a population of around 500,000 in the early medieval period and around 900,000 in the high medieval period, at 32599 sq mi., you have pop density there at between 25 to 28 people per sq mi.


So, without really trying to dig into the other figures given or other calculations from later maps and so forth, Dave's population figures seem fine to me.

Blackmoor in the army list is said to have an annual income of 35,000. That's a good bit more than one could get from just farming.

It's possible Alex didn't calculate the pop density but was just working off the value of a peasant and assuming that was the major sorce of funding for nobles, etc., but that would be a serious mistake since there should have been addditional sources of income Dave intended (his list of improvements, for ex) and its also possible the nobles were intended to be recieving imperial support. I dunno.