A town in the temperate forest

With what grows here (wheat, rye and maslin, barley and dredge, oats, pulses), this land can feed a town of about 8,700 people from farms less than a day's cart from its walls, about the size of Winchester around 1300.

Build a town in the temperate forest

A town of 10,000 here

Its grain comes from 27 km around, 1.5 days by cart (strained). About 550 villages and 79,000 country people farm it, and the town keeps about 40 scholars. Grown to 40,000 people, its grain comes from 54 km around, 2.5 days by cart (fragile). A city of 150,000 cannot live off this land alone. Its farming is worked out on England, c. 1300.

In history

In the forests of southern Ontario, the Wendat (Huron) built farming towns of 900 to 1,600 people in 30 or 40 longhouses covered with bark. Most stood behind palisades of wood, in double and sometimes triple rows. Women grew maize, squash and beans; men did the heaviest clearing and built the defences. About every ten years the whole town moved, because the soil grew less fertile and the nearby forest, which gave the firewood, grew thin. One such town, now called the Mantle site, was lived in from about 1587 to 1623: more than 70 longhouses and perhaps 1,500 to 2,000 people.

Heijō-kyō (Nara), Japan's capital from 710, was modelled on Chang'an in China, had no walls and could be reached only by land. At its height it held somewhere between 50,000 and 100,000 people, and its wells and its sewage were a problem. In 784 Emperor Kanmu moved the court to Nagaoka-kyō, where three rivers met and goods could come by boat. Almost every house there had its own well, and water running beside the roads was led into the houses to carry the waste away.

How large a city?

Living there

Its woods spare enough to burn: about 18,000 tonnes of wood a year for its hearths and workshops. Provisional figure.

Its market sells grain, flax, dye plants, orchards and herbs, and buys iron and salt. About 30 market towns stand in its countryside.

About 27% of what its people eat does not come from the fields. Of that share: herds 80%, gardens 20%. That is some 4,800 livestock units on 71 km² of pasture. Hearth estimate.

What makes it hard

• Firewood runs out before the fields do. Each year the woodcutters walk farther for fuel, until moving the whole town is easier than hauling.
• Cleared land tires. As the soil loses its strength the harvests sink, and the town must choose between hunger and a move.
• Wells and cesspits share the same ground. A town with no running water to flush it fights both problems at once, and may lose.
• Everything comes by land: every load of grain, timber and tribute is paid for in days of carting.
• A new sickness can empty a town. After 1634, epidemics killed between half and two-thirds of the Wendat, who had to abandon many villages and fields.

Hard years

About one year in 8, the harvest falls below four fifths of a normal one: the town is short of some 720 of the 2,500 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 880 km² of its fields idle.

What it can make

Grain, Flax, Dye plants, Orchards, Herbs, Potato, Maize, Wool, Horses (at a cost), Cattle and hides, Cheese, Pigs and bacon, Goats, Honey and wax, Furs, Timber, Charcoal

What it lives on

Wheat, Rye and maslin, Barley and dredge, Oats, 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): Aconite Branch, Activated Charcoal, Alder Bark, Alder Wood, Handful of Almonds, American Bison Meat, Black Bear Fat, Black Bear Hide

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 a Forest (on Patreon, Guardian tier)

Temperate Forest in Biomes: plants, animals, hazards and sounds

The same climate

A town in the temperate forest, on a river, A town in the temperate forest, on the coast

By city size

1,000, 3,000, 10,000, 30,000, 100,000, 300,000, 1,000,000

Sources

• Wikipedia contributors, Wendat, Wikipedia, accessed 2026. en.wikipedia.org
• Wikipedia contributors, Heijō-kyō, Wikipedia, accessed 2026. en.wikipedia.org
• Wikipedia contributors, Nagaoka-kyō, Wikipedia, accessed 2026. en.wikipedia.org
• Tegel W., Elburg R., Hakelberg D., Stäuble H., Büntgen U., Early Neolithic Water Wells Reveal the World's Oldest Wood Architecture, PLoS ONE 7(12): e51374, 2012. doi.org

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