A town in the mediterranean scrub, on the coast
With what grows here (wheat, barley and dredge, pulses), this land can feed a town of about 49,000 people from farms less than a day's cart from its walls, about the size of Bruges around 1300.
Build a town in the mediterranean scrub, on the coast
A town of 10,000 here
Its grain comes from 11 km around, 0.5 days by cart (comfortable). About 330 villages and 79,000 country people farm it, and the town keeps about 40 scholars. Grown to 40,000 people, its grain comes from 23 km around, 1 day by cart (comfortable). Grown to 150,000 people, its grain comes from 44 km around, 2 days by cart (strained). A city of 1,000,000 cannot live off this land alone.
In history
Carthage stood on a promontory on the Tunisian coast, at the narrows between Sicily and Africa that every ship crossing the Mediterranean had to pass. Inside the city its people dug two artificial harbours: a rectangular one for merchants and a round one for the navy, with slipways for up to 220 warships, stores for oars and rigging above them and an admiral's lookout on the central island. The countryside was farmed by estate owners. Mago's farming manual in 28 volumes, now known only from Latin quotations, taught olive grafting, vines, fruit trees, bees and how to handle overseers and slaves. In 146 BC Rome took the city, burned it and sold about 50,000 Carthaginians into slavery.
At the Cape of Good Hope, at least 1,070 ships stopped on their way out between 1600 and 1652, and the Khoe of Table Bay, the ǁAmmaqua, sold them meat, water, salt and timber. In 1652 the Dutch East India Company sent Jan van Riebeeck to hold a permanent station for fresh water, vegetables and meat. Farms granted to Company servants followed in 1657, and in 1658 the first large group of enslaved people, 402 of them, arrived from present-day Benin and Angola to work them. By 1754 the settlement counted 5,510 Europeans and 6,729 slaves.
How large a city?
| People | Grain from | By cart | Villages | Scholars | By ship to fit in a day |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3,000 | 6 km around | 0.5 days (comfortable) | 100 | 12 | – |
| 10,000 | 11 km around | 0.5 days (comfortable) | 330 | 40 | – |
| 40,000 | 23 km around | 1 day (comfortable) | 1,300 | 160 | – |
| 150,000 | 44 km around | 2 days (strained) | 5,000 | 600 | 70% |
| 1,000,000 | 110 km around | 5 days (not by land alone) | 33,000 | 4,000 | more than ships can bring |
Living there
Its woods spare enough to burn: about 8,800 tonnes of wood a year for its hearths and workshops. Provisional figure.
Its market sells grain, vines and wine, olives and oil, herbs and maize, and buys iron. About 34 market towns stand in its countryside.
About 30% of what its people eat does not come from the fields. Of that share: herds 25%, fish 50%, gardens 25%. That is some 1,700 livestock units on 25 km² of pasture, and about 730 fishers in 180 boats. Hearth estimate.
What makes it hard
- Rivers carry the hills into the harbour. When the farmland upstream is ploughed, silt fills the port until it is useless, and the trade moves elsewhere.
- A harbour on the great sea lanes is a prize for every navy. A city that loses a war here may lose everything: its walls, its ships and its people.
- Passing ships need water and fresh meat. Whoever holds the springs and the herds sets the price.
- Estates need many hands. Carthage's farming manual took slaves for granted, and the Cape's first farms were worked by enslaved people shipped from present-day Benin and Angola.
Hard years
About one year in 8, the harvest falls below four fifths of a normal one: the town is short of some 600 of the 2,100 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 980 km² of its fields idle.
What it can make
Grain (at a cost), Vines and wine, Olives and oil, Flax (at a cost), Dye plants (at a cost), Orchards (at a cost), Herbs, Maize, Wool, Horses (at a cost), Cattle and hides (at a cost), Cheese, Pigs and bacon, Goats, Honey and wax, Timber, Charcoal, Fish, Salt fish (at a cost), Pearls, Shipyards
What it lives on
Wheat, Barley and dredge, Pulses
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): Agave Leaf, Handful of Almonds, Amaranth Seed, Black Bear Fat, Black Bear Hide, Black Bear Meat, Beeswax Block, Beetle Wing
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 a Mediterranean Region (on Patreon, Guardian tier)
Mediterranean Scrub in Biomes: plants, animals, hazards and sounds
The same climate
A town in the mediterranean scrub, A town in the mediterranean scrub, on a river
By city size
1,000, 3,000, 10,000, 30,000, 100,000, 300,000, 1,000,000
Sources
- Wikipedia contributors, Carthage, Wikipedia, 2026. en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia contributors, Cothon, Wikipedia, 2026. en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia contributors, History of Cape Town, Wikipedia, 2026. en.wikipedia.org
Open the city builder — MGS Toolbox