A town in the grassland
With what grows here (wheat, barley and dredge, millet), this land can feed a town of about 8,800 people from farms less than a day's cart from its walls, about the size of Winchester around 1300.
A town of 10,000 here
Its grain comes from 27 km around, 1.5 days by cart (strained). About 690 villages and 79,000 country people farm it, and the town keeps about 40 scholars. Grown to 40,000 people, its grain comes from 53 km around, 2.5 days by cart (fragile). A city of 150,000 cannot live off this land alone.
In history
On the dry forest steppe of what is now Ukraine, farmers of the Cucuteni-Trypillia culture built the largest settlements of their time in Europe. Talianki, on a bluff above a small stream, covered about 335 hectares around 3850 to 3700 BC; estimates of its people run from about 6,300 to more than 15,000. They grew wheat, barley, millet, peas and beans, kept mostly cattle, and pastured the herds so that their manure fed the pulse fields. Salt was the weak point: a mega-site may have needed 36 to 100 tonnes a year, and none was found nearby. It came from the Black Sea coast or the Carpathians.
On the Great Plains of North America, maize was grown from about AD 900 without any irrigation. The farmers bred short-season, drought-resistant varieties and sited their fields to catch what rain fell. On the southern Plains, villagers such as the ancestors of the Wichita and Pawnee planted in spring, left to hunt bison in summer, came back for the harvest and left again in winter, trading corn to the nomads for dried meat. Then came the horse. The Comanche, first noticed by the Spanish in New Mexico in 1706, drove most of the Apache, who farmed as well as hunted, off the plains and ruled the south by the 1730s.
How large a city?
| People | Grain from | By cart | Villages | Scholars |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3,000 | 15 km around | 1 day (comfortable) | 210 | 12 |
| 10,000 | 27 km around | 1.5 days (strained) | 690 | 40 |
| 40,000 | 53 km around | 2.5 days (fragile) | 2,800 | 160 |
| 150,000 | 100 km around | 4.5 days (not by land alone) | 10,000 | 600 |
| 1,000,000 | 270 km around | 11 days (not by land alone) | 69,000 | 4,000 |
Living there
There are no woods to spare here. The town needs about 18,000 tonnes of wood a year for its hearths and workshops: it burns straw (about 6,500 tonnes a year), dung and brush, and buys the rest. Provisional figure.
Its market sells grain, herbs, maize, wool and horses, and buys timber, iron and salt. About 30 market towns stand in its countryside.
About 45% of what its people eat does not come from the fields. Of that share: herds 90%, gardens 10%. That is some 9,000 livestock units on 130 km² of pasture. Hearth estimate.
What makes it hard
- No wood to burn. On the open steppe, herders dry sheep and goat dung into blocks that serve as winter fuel and as windbreak walls for the flocks; builders' timber comes from far away.
- Salt has to travel. A large farming town and its cattle need tonnes of it every year, carried from distant springs or the coast: cut that road and both people and herds go short.
- Winter kills herds. A thaw followed by a hard freeze leaves an ice crust the animals cannot break, and deep snow hides the grass; in Mongolia a bad winter can kill more than a million head.
- Rain is the only water for the fields. With no irrigation, farmers sow quick, drought-hardy varieties and place each field where the little rain does the most good.
- Horses make raiders fast. Once a mounted people learns to live off the herds, as the Comanche did in the early eighteenth century, farming villages on open ground can be pushed off the land.
Hard years
About one year in 8, the harvest falls below four fifths of a normal one: the town is short of some 440 of the 1,500 tonnes of grain its land gives it, with no water to bring the gap in. A plague that kills 39% of the town, as the Black Death did in Europe's towns, would leave about 870 km² of its fields idle.
What it can make
Grain (at a cost), Flax (at a cost), Dye plants (at a cost), Orchards (at a cost), Herbs, Maize, Wool, Horses, Cattle and hides (at a cost), Cheese, Pigs and bacon (at a cost), Goats, Honey and wax
What its land cannot give, a town here must buy: timber.
What it lives on
Wheat, 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): Amaranth Seed, American Bison Meat, Bactrian Camel Meat, Bactrian Camel Milk, Bactrian Camel Wool, Beeswax Block, Beetle Wing, Sagebrush Leaves
Hear it
- The town: Fantasy Medieval City (album RPG Ambiences Vol. 6)
- The market: Medieval Village Marketplace (on Patreon, Guardian tier)
- The countryside: Walking in the Grasslands (on Patreon, Guardian tier)
Grassland in Biomes: plants, animals, hazards and sounds
The same climate
A town in the grassland, on a river, A town in the grassland, on the coast
By city size
1,000, 3,000, 10,000, 30,000, 100,000, 300,000, 1,000,000
Sources
- Wikipedia contributors, Cucuteni–Trypillia culture, Wikipedia, 2026. en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia contributors, Talianki (archaeological site), Wikipedia, 2026. en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia contributors, Plains Indians, Wikipedia, 2026. en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia contributors, Dzud, Wikipedia, 2026. en.wikipedia.org
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