A town in the grassland, on a river
With what grows here (wheat, barley and dredge, millet), this land can feed a town of about 28,000 people from farms less than a day's cart from its walls, about the size of Toulouse around 1300.
Build a town in the grassland, on a river
A town of 10,000 here
Its grain comes from 15 km around, 1 day 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 30 km around, 1.5 days by cart (strained). Grown to 150,000 people, its grain comes from 58 km around, 2.5 days by cart (fragile). A city of 1,000,000 cannot live off this land alone.
In history
On the upper Missouri, the Mandan built permanent towns of round earth lodges, about 12 m across and home to 30 or 40 people each. They chose high bluffs or the meeting of two rivers, so the water served as a moat, and where nature gave no barrier they dug ditches and raised palisades. Women built and owned the lodges and the gardens, planted maize, beans, squash and sunflowers on the banks where the floods left the richest soil, and stored the harvest in pits: as early as the fifteenth century, the town of Huff could keep seventy thousand bushels of corn. In the winter of 1804, William Clark recorded thousands of Assiniboine, along with Cree and Cheyenne, arriving to trade.
On the lower Volga, the khans of the Golden Horde turned a steppe camp into a capital. Around 1254 William of Rubruck saw Batu making "Sarai, the new town". About 1332 Ibn Battuta rode from early morning until after midday to cross it. A traveller's report kept by al-Umari describes a city on salty soil, without walls, with a pond fed from the river. Its wealth drew enemies: Timur sacked and burned it in the winter of 1395 to 1396, and river pirates from Vyatka plundered it in 1471.
How large a city?
| People | Grain from | By cart | Villages | Scholars | By ship to fit in a day |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3,000 | 8 km around | 0.5 days (comfortable) | 210 | 12 | – |
| 10,000 | 15 km around | 1 day (comfortable) | 690 | 40 | – |
| 40,000 | 30 km around | 1.5 days (strained) | 2,800 | 160 | 35% |
| 150,000 | 58 km around | 2.5 days (fragile) | 10,000 | 600 | 85% |
| 1,000,000 | 150 km around | 6 days (not by land alone) | 69,000 | 4,000 | more than ships can bring |
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 59%, fish 35%, gardens 6%. That is some 5,800 livestock units on 87 km² of pasture, and about 770 fishers in 190 boats. Hearth estimate.
What makes it hard
- The best fields lie where the flood leaves its silt, sometimes miles from the walls. Every planting and harvest means sending people out where they can be caught.
- A rich river town draws raiders. Mandan towns kept to bluffs and confluences, and where the ground gave no defence they dug ditches and raised stockades; even so, enemies burned more than one of them.
- The river brings sickness with the trade. In 1837 a fur company steamboat carried smallpox up the Missouri, and about nine in ten Mandan died.
- A rich capital is a prize for every rival. When the khans quarrelled over the throne, one commander alone took Sarai four or five times in about fourteen years, losing it each time.
- Danger comes down the river as well as across the steppe: in 1471 pirates in boats from far upstream plundered the capital itself.
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, 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
- 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: Walking in the Grasslands (on Patreon, Guardian tier)
Grassland in Biomes: plants, animals, hazards and sounds
The same climate
A town in the grassland, 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, Mandan, Wikipedia, 2026. en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia contributors, Sarai (city), Wikipedia, 2026. en.wikipedia.org
Open the city builder — MGS Toolbox