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I am going through the Ultimate Campaign, and made a spreadsheet with the data so I can just "make up" a settlement or what have you as needed.
I hit this and went "whoa" in classic K. Reeves fashion:
Population: A settlement’s population is approximately
equal to the number of completed lots within its districts
× 250. A grid that has all 36 lots filled with buildings has a
population of approximately 9,000.
Now, the problem I have with this is... take Falcon's Hollow as an example. It has: Sawmill, Three Inns, etc... that is enough, without houses to put it up over 1500 population... much less the three or four mansions... which add another 250 people EACH...
So yeh, I don't like the number multiplier and will probably use 25 instead (seems like it might take 25 people to keep a mansion in order, and 25 people could live in a "city block" of houses about 100x100). I mean, I guess if each person gets a 10x10 shack, the multiplier would be 100. But for comfortable housing, I will use a 4 room house, thus 25 per lot.
Anyone else use this at all? And how reasonable am I being? Given that some lots don't even have housing in them, I think I am being quite reasonable (for instance, a 4 lot Cathedral doesn't have 1000 cleric/monks in it).
The "buildings" are abstractions, and each of the lots is actually huge. (PRD: "Treat each lot as approximately 750 feet per side, so overall the district takes up about 1 square mile. ") A better term would be "district" or "quarter" or something, but those terms were already taken.
Basically, if you build an "Inn," you're actually building a Hospitality quarter, 8 acres of area bristling with inns and similar businesses to support the hospitality industry (e.g. stabling, fodder suppliers to sell food to the stables, food warehouses for the inns to buy from, and so forth), along with enough housing to support the various workers who don't live in the inns themselves. A "House" is actually "a number of mid-sized houses for citizens," not a single house of two hundred thousand square feet.
The "Mansion" is similarly huge, so while that might represent the holdings of a single family, that's still more than 70 acres of land, so it's not just the villa, but the villa and grounds, and the home farm, and the houses of all of the tenants of the Duke of Earl who work the home farm. Bear in mind that a typical -- well, ideal -- family farm in medieval England was about 20-30 acres.
So Falcon's Hollow only has about six full lots, each lot representing the primary economic activity going on there. The sawmill is, of course, a Mill. This would represent not only the mill itself, but also the other buildings related to the mill, such as workers housing, metalworkers to keep the blades in good repair, warehouses to store the logs as well as the finished lumbers, and so forth. Basically a huge swath e of town focused on the lumber industry.
And right next door might be the hospitality district, and presumably near both of those is the docks. Add a market or shop for the commercial district, a set of houses for the well-to-do housing, and a town hall for administration and you have your settlement.
(Edited to correct math errors.)
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I understood the measurements... the district was 750 feet, has 36 lots... which means each lot is about 100-125 feet per side, I took off some for paved roads (I made them wide lanes so Elaine would be happy) and ended up with 100x100 per lot. That is 10,000 square feet. If I stick 250 people in the abstraction, that is only 40 square feet per person. Or a 10x4 shack. I wasn't happy with that. I certainly wasn't happy with it when it came to shoving 250 people into a mansion or Inn. And I am astoundingly unhappy with shoving 1000 people into a Temple...
In theory (according to the map names of districts/lots) Falcon's Hollow has two markets, a mill, an inn, a shop, a church, a manor (mansion), and a cutyard (waterfront or sawmill)... 9-13 lots... And that doesn't count the two outlying lumber areas or the orphanage in the woods.
I understood the measurements... the district was 750 feet, has 36 lots
No, the LOTS are 750 feet. "Treat each lot as approximately 750 feet per side." The district is a mile across. So each lot is about 50 times larger than you realized.
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I understood the measurements... the district was 750 feet, has 36 lotsNo, the LOTS are 750 feet. "Treat each lot as approximately 750 feet per side." The district is a mile across. So each lot is about 50 times larger than you realized.
Ah, well then... yeh. Thank you muchly! Now to re-design the land I have already "built" a bit. Makes for a lot less empty lots and makes more sense now for the population density. Thanks!
In theory (according to the map names of districts/lots) Falcon's Hollow has two markets, a mill, an inn, a shop, a church, a manor (mansion), and a cutyard (waterfront or sawmill)... 9-13 lots... And that doesn't count the two outlying lumber areas or the orphanage in the woods.
Further to previous.... if we're looking at the same map, those aren't districts/lots, those are building names. To my eye, the cutyard, lumber warehouse, and paper mill are probably all part of the Mill which may extend as far northeast as the church and incorporate some of the housing between the warehouse and the church.
The Rouge Lady and the Goose n' Gander are part of the same Inn lot, with a Docks lot in between. The High Market is probably part of a market lot, with the Perch providing temporary housing for merchants trading there but it's not a separate lot of its own. Similarly , Kreed's Manor and the nearby common might be a Mansion, and then of course there's a lot of Houses north of the docks.