A town in the flooded grassland, on the coast
With what grows here (rice, pulses), this land can feed a town of about 240,000 people from farms less than a day's cart from its walls, about the size of Paris around 1292.
Build a town in the flooded grassland, on the coast
A town of 10,000 here
Its grain comes from 5 km around, 0.5 days by cart (comfortable). About 280 villages and 79,000 country people farm it, and the town keeps about 40 scholars. Grown to 40,000 people, its grain comes from 10 km around, 0.5 days by cart (comfortable). Grown to 150,000 people, its grain comes from 20 km around, 1 day by cart (comfortable). Grown to 1,000,000 people, its grain comes from 51 km around, 2.5 days by cart (fragile).
In history
On the estuaries and shell islands of southwest Florida, the Calusa built a powerful chiefdom without farming. They fished with nets of palm-fibre cord, knotted to a standard mesh with gauges of bone and shell and floated with gourds, and they turned down Spanish farm tools, saying they had no need of them. Their capital, probably on Mound Key, was an island raised from shell, fish bone and broken pottery, cut by canals and water courts. In 1566 Pedro Menéndez de Avilés found the chief's house large enough to hold 2,000 people. Thinned by epidemics, the Calusa were broken early in the eighteenth century by Creek and Yamasee slave raids.
In the marshes of the Rhône delta, people around the year 800 lived in reed huts by fishing, hunting and salt-making. In 1240 Louis IX, who wanted a Mediterranean port of his own, obtained the place from the monks of Psalmody by an exchange of lands and freed its people from the salt tax. He built a road across the marsh and two towers, and sailed from Aigues-Mortes on crusade in 1248 and again in 1270. The channel to the sea kept silting up: a new one was dug in the fifteenth century, another in 1532, another in 1752. Its Peccais salt pans long remained a main resource.
How large a city?
| People | Grain from | By cart | Villages | Scholars | By ship to fit in a day |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3,000 | 3 km around | 0.5 days (comfortable) | 83 | 12 | – |
| 10,000 | 5 km around | 0.5 days (comfortable) | 280 | 40 | – |
| 40,000 | 10 km around | 0.5 days (comfortable) | 1,100 | 160 | – |
| 150,000 | 20 km around | 1 day (comfortable) | 4,200 | 600 | – |
| 1,000,000 | 51 km around | 2.5 days (fragile) | 28,000 | 4,000 | 80% |
Living there
There are no woods to spare here. The town needs about 6,200 tonnes of wood a year for its hearths and workshops: it burns straw (about 8,000 tonnes a year), dung and brush, and buys the rest. Provisional figure.
Its market sells grain, rice, flax, cotton and sugar cane, and buys timber and iron. About 7 market towns stand in its countryside.
About 20% of what its people eat does not come from the fields. Of that share: herds 18%, fish 50%, gardens 32%. That is some 770 livestock units on 12 km² of pasture, and about 490 fishers in 120 boats. Hearth estimate.
What makes it hard
- Salt marsh gives no drinking water: a town here lives on what it brings in or stores.
- The sea channel silts up. A marsh port must keep digging, or wake one morning to find its harbour cut off from the sea.
- A town that lives on nets, not fields, has no grain store against a poor season; its wealth swims or sits in salt pans.
- Newcomers by sea bring garrisons, priests and fevers. A chiefdom strong enough to defy them for nearly two centuries can still be broken in the end by new diseases and slave raids.
Hard years
About one year in 8, the harvest falls below four fifths of a normal one: the town is short of some 660 of the 2,300 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 200 km² of its fields idle.
What it can make
Grain, Rice, Flax, Cotton, Sugar cane, Dye plants, Orchards, Herbs, Potato, Maize, Wool (at a cost), Horses (at a cost), Cattle and hides, Cheese, Pigs and bacon (at a cost), Goats, Honey and wax, Silk, Fish, Salt fish (at a cost), Pearls, Shipyards (at a cost)
What its land cannot give, a town here must buy: timber.
What it lives on
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): African Wild Rice, Wild Rice Straw, American Alligator Meat, Antelope Grass Grain, Beetle Wing, Bourgou Seeds, Bourgou Stem, Buriti Fibre
Hear it
- The town: Fantasy Medieval City (album RPG Ambiences Vol. 6)
- The market: Medieval Village Marketplace (on Patreon, Guardian tier)
- The quays: Medieval Harbor District (on Patreon, Guardian tier)
- The countryside: Farmyard with People and Animals (on Patreon, Guardian tier)
Flooded Grassland in Biomes: plants, animals, hazards and sounds
The same climate
A town in the flooded grassland, A town in the flooded grassland, on a river
By city size
1,000, 3,000, 10,000, 30,000, 100,000, 300,000, 1,000,000
Sources
- Wikipedia contributors, Calusa, Wikipedia, 2026. en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia contributors, Mound Key Archaeological State Park, Wikipedia, 2026. en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia contributors, Aigues-Mortes, Wikipedia, 2026. en.wikipedia.org
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