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This tool lets you generate figures for populating low-fantasy kingdoms and settlements. ..
The article is interesting as well.
But for high fantasy - I expect populations, architecture, and services to be on par with the 19th Century. Low tech + High magic should skew the world in freakish ways.
High monster populations, Active gods, frequent destructive events, magic plagues, undead, outsiders, magic accidents, magic attacks, should keep the populations down.
It would be like living on an active fault line in a bushfire prone invasion route with the occasional tsunami and reactor meltdown. Next door to an academy for homicidal axe wielding maniacs.
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Nothing wrong in having just adepts in a village/hamlet, not every place is blessed with the presence of an oracle, cleric or wizard. Unless you really need a lot of details...the information about settlements from paizo are actually simple enough.
I mean yeah a Metropolis have someone who can cast 8th level spell and even offers it as services, but I mean if a player needs an 8th level spellcasting service, it should be an event of meeting someone who is that high level of a caster.
The way I see it, now just my opinion:
Meeting high level Druids is the least likely in most urban environments, even if there are of course exception, like Urban Druid archetype or could see Druids in typical elven fantasy settlement.
High level clerics are the most likely high level spellcasters you can meet, since many devote their works to their deities and benevolent deities or cultists would generally be busy to increase the influence of their gods somewhere in the world.
High Level Wizards and Sorcerers, guess toss in Arcanist and Witch, while the typical wizard tower is fun story...Arcane casters in general are the most likely to go to another plane, for high level adventures.
Of course...it varies depending on campaign settings, In forgotten realms, you always bump into people at level 20+ just sitting in hamlet or wherever. In Eberron, nobody is higher than level 10, except the monsters and probably eventually the PCs. In Krynn (Dragonlance) , at one point of history, after the gods got disrespected by a wizard (kicking the ass of an evil goddess), they simply literally kick out anybody who is about to hit level 19 and send them somewhere else, to never suffer such an humiliation again, I believe during the 5th age or something. Golarion has a bit of everything and some places even for those rare mythic characters who wants a challenge.
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Dracovar
I guess that is what I am trying to do. For now i am going to use my stats and lets see what a small kingdom would look like.
We have population 3 million folks. The land is fertile but monster lurk about so we go with a population density of 40 per square miles. This will cover an area of about 75,000 square miles. This is about the size of South Dakota.
We are looking at maybe 1 Metropolis or maybe not.
2-3 large cities
7-10 small cities
10-15 large towns
15-20 small towns
That is total of 30 to 50 urban centers
The generator I use defines a village as up to 1000, Towns as 1-8K, cities as 8-12K, and big cities as 12K+. Based on that there can be far more small towns. It came up with 1 big and 7 small cities and 36 towns with an average population of 5K. There are near 6K villages with an average 450 folks.<snip>
Very much enjoying this discussion, Mathius.
To answer of few of the questions you posed from that post. And some observations...
Some things can be regulated not by the stats but by the environment as you define it. For example, even if there are just a few druids, their plant growth spells can really skew food production, which in turn would promote more population growth, more urbanization because the land can support larger settlements, etc. My answer to that issue is not to reduce the number of Druids, but to simply define their religious tenants (and that of their God) to be very disinclined to help civilization overrun their natural world by helping produce food for the very towns and cities that lead to deforestation, etc. Druids that go against this tend to suddenly find themselves without spells. In times of famine, the more sympathetic among them might cast a few plant growths, but others might actively work to keep towns and cities, etc, from getting out of hand. By defining my Druidism a certain way, I try to take most of them out of the picture of abusing magic in a Tippyverse kind of way.
Perhaps the gods whose portfolios involve magic also have certain tenants that even non-divine casters have to follow, lest they risk finding themselves without spells, or targets of a pogrom, etc. Perhaps there are "unspoken rules" that are taught to every generation of spellcaster which say "don't abuse the privledge" with the equally unspoken threat of "OR ELSE".
Also, while the caster's themselves can be limited in numbers, the bigger dangers in my mind are the items they can craft. Craft Wondrous is especially dangerous if one allows custom crafting rules (which, I do at least). Imagine a Kingdom that invests in a use activated Wall of Stone device (no daily limits). And maybe a few Earth Elemental simulacrums for moving around dirt and stone. Just need a single caster of sufficient level and boom, you've got a construction company that is going to do amazing things.
Low numbers and levels of casters is going to lead to some pretty impressive agency once your PC's hit a certain level. They get to 10th they are pretty much the God Casters. How do you handle that? Worse, what if they tend towards murder-hoboism? How do you stop them? And, logically, how do you deal with the logical rise of other, NPC adventuring parties that should be out there and what they might do?
Your Elves sound like the Aztecs or Egyptians. A revolution that won't be quenched by blood will make for a great adventure path.