A town in the cold desert, on the coast

With what grows here (barley and dredge, millet), this land can feed a town of about 7,500 people from farms less than a day's cart from its walls, about the size of Winchester around 1300.

Build a town in the cold desert, on the coast

A town of 10,000 here

Its grain comes from 29 km around, 1.5 days by cart (strained). About 1,000 villages and 79,000 country people farm it, and the town keeps about 40 scholars. Grown to 40,000 people, its grain comes from 58 km around, 2.5 days by cart (fragile). A city of 150,000 cannot live off this land alone.

In history

On the dry northern shore of the Caspian, where the Ural river (then the Yaik) meets the sea, the Russian trader Gury Nazarov built a wooden fort in 1645. Yaik Cossacks plundered it, the Guryev family rebuilt it in stone between 1647 and 1662, and the rebel Stepan Razin held it in 1667 and 1668. The Yaik Cossacks lived mainly by fishing, and the tax on the fishery was a major source of friction with the state; they revolted in 1772 and followed Pugachev in 1773 and 1774. On the Caspian's eastern shore, the Mangyshlak peninsula has no rivers and no freshwater springs; its name may mean “sheep wintering ground”.

Half a world away, the dry steppe coast of Patagonia defeated Europeans who came by sea. Magellan wintered five months at San Julián in 1520, met the people Pigafetta described as giants, and put down a mutiny there; Drake wintered in the same harbour in 1578 and found the remains of Magellan's gallows. The Tehuelche lived from guanaco and rhea rather than from the sea, and later took to the horse. In 1780 Spain founded Floridablanca nearby, a colony of about 150 people meant to live by farming families. It was abandoned in 1784 because of scurvy and destroyed on purpose so that no foreign power could use it.

How large a city?

PeopleGrain fromBy cartVillagesScholarsBy ship to fit in a day
3,00016 km around1 day (comfortable)31012–
10,00029 km around1.5 days (strained)1,0004030%
40,00058 km around2.5 days (fragile)4,20016085%
150,000110 km around4.5 days (not by land alone)16,000600more than ships can bring
1,000,000290 km around12 days (not by land alone)100,0004,000more than ships can bring

Living there

Its woods spare enough to burn: about 18,000 tonnes of wood a year for its hearths and workshops. Provisional figure.

Its market sells grain, herbs, wool, horses and cheese, and buys timber and iron. About 220 market towns stand in its countryside.

About 50% of what its people eat does not come from the fields. Of that share: herds 45%, fish 50%, gardens 5%. That is some 5,000 livestock units on 75 km² of pasture, and about 1,200 fishers in 300 boats. Hearth estimate.

What makes it hard

  • Salt water everywhere and no fresh water: a dry coast may have neither river nor spring, as on the Mangyshlak peninsula, and every drop has to be found or carried.
  • A colony that cannot grow fresh food falls to scurvy. Floridablanca, planned as a farming settlement, gave up after four years.
  • The fishery is the wealth, and the tax on it is the quarrel: on the lower Ural, taxing the Cossacks' catch set them against the crown.
  • Winter stops the ships. Magellan in 1520 and Drake in 1578 both sat out the winter for months in the harbour of San Julián, and Magellan had to put down a mutiny there.
  • The neighbours live by other rules: mounted hunters who follow the herds do not need the town, and can trade with it or raid it.

Hard years

About one year in 8, the harvest falls below four fifths of a normal one: the town is short of some 410 of the 1,400 tonnes of grain its land gives it, and the water lets it bring the gap in. A plague that kills 39% of the town, as the Black Death did in Europe's towns, would leave about 6,500 km² of its fields idle.

What it can make

Grain (at a cost), Flax (at a cost), Orchards (at a cost), Herbs, Wool, Horses, Cattle and hides (at a cost), Cheese, Pigs and bacon (at a cost), Goats, Camels, Honey and wax (at a cost), Furs, Fish, Salt fish (at a cost), Whale oil, Shipyards (at a cost)

What its land cannot give, a town here must buy: timber.

What it lives on

Barley and dredge, Millet

Underground

What a city digs depends on the rock under it: Granite, Volcanic rock, Ultramafic rock (peridotite, serpentinite), Schist and gneiss, Marble, Limestone and chalk, Sandstone, shale and clay, Salt beds, River gravels and sands

Found here

Gathered (Rerum): Bactrian Camel Meat, Bactrian Camel Milk, Bactrian Camel Wool, Beetle Wing, Sagebrush Leaves, Sagebrush Seeds, Chukar Egg, Chukar Meat

Hear it

Cold Desert in Biomes: plants, animals, hazards and sounds

The same climate

A town in the cold desert, A town in the cold desert, on a river

By city size

1,000, 3,000, 10,000, 30,000, 100,000, 300,000, 1,000,000

Sources

Open the city builder — MGS Toolbox