A town in the grassland, on the coast

With what grows here (wheat, barley and dredge, millet), this land can feed a town of about 56,000 people from farms less than a day's cart from its walls, about the size of Ghent around 1300.

Build a town in the grassland, on the coast

A town of 10,000 here

Its grain comes from 11 km around, 0.5 days by cart (comfortable). 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 21 km around, 1 day by cart (comfortable). Grown to 150,000 people, its grain comes from 41 km around, 2 days by cart (strained). On the water, ships can bring part of the grain: for a city of 1,000,000, 95% of it keeps the haul within a day.

In history

Greek settlers from Miletus founded Olbia in the seventh century BC where the Southern Bug opens into the Black Sea, at the edge of the Scythian steppe. Its harbour shipped grain, fish and slaves to Greece and brought Attic goods to the Scythians. From the sixth century BC the town was laid out on a grid: dockyards and artisans' houses in a lower town by the water, an upper town above, and a stone wall around it all. When the town declined at the end of the third century BC, a board of food commissioners shared out the grain, and Olbia accepted the Scythian king Skilurus as overlord. The Getae of Burebista sacked it; Rome rebuilt it small, and it was abandoned in the fourth century AD.

Across the world, the pampas meet the Río de la Plata. Pedro de Mendoza founded Buenos Aires in 1536, but attacks by the peoples of the region drove the settlers out within a few years; Juan de Garay refounded it in 1580, sailing down the Paraná from Asunción. The law sent all legal trade through Seville and Lima, so goods arrived late and dear, and the port lived on tolerated smuggling, including with the Portuguese. From the seventeenth century, wandering horsemen lived off the wild cattle of the plains by selling hides.

How large a city?

PeopleGrain fromBy cartVillagesScholarsBy ship to fit in a day
3,0006 km around0.5 days (comfortable)21012–
10,00011 km around0.5 days (comfortable)69040–
40,00021 km around1 day (comfortable)2,800160–
150,00041 km around2 days (strained)10,00060065%
1,000,000110 km around4.5 days (not by land alone)69,0004,00095%

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 and iron. 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 45%, fish 50%, gardens 5%. That is some 4,500 livestock units on 67 km² of pasture, and about 1,100 fishers in 270 boats. Hearth estimate.

What makes it hard

  • A harbour on the steppe edge lives beside stronger neighbours inland. Once Olbia declined, it ended up under a Scythian king's overlordship.
  • When the law forces trade through a distant port, smuggling becomes the town's real economy, and its officials learn to look away.
  • The water takes back the waterfront. At Olbia the lower town of docks and workshops now lies largely under the river, and the sea is still eating away the site.
  • A first settlement can fail. Buenos Aires was abandoned after attacks and had to be founded a second time.
  • Cattle on open grass are easy to steal. On the pampas frontier, mounted raiders drove off herds and took them across the mountains to sell.

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, 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 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, 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

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

Grassland in Biomes: plants, animals, hazards and sounds

The same climate

A town in the grassland, A town in the grassland, 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