A town in the tropical dry forest

With what grows here (millet, rice, pulses), this land can feed a town of about 9,600 people from farms less than a day's cart from its walls, about the size of York around 1377.

Build a town in the tropical dry forest

A town of 10,000 here

Its grain comes from 26 km around, 1.5 days by cart (strained). About 420 villages and 79,000 country people farm it, and the town keeps about 40 scholars. Grown to 40,000 people, its grain comes from 51 km around, 2.5 days by cart (fragile). A city of 150,000 cannot live off this land alone.

In history

In the dry forest of northern Yucatán there is no river at all: the rain sinks through the limestone and runs underground. The Maya city of Chichen Itza took its name from this, "at the mouth of the well of the Itzá", and grew around four natural sinkholes, the cenotes, which could give water all year. Between about 900 and 1050 it became the capital of north and central Yucatán. Through its small port of Isla Cerritos it brought in obsidian from central Mexico and gold from southern Central America. It declined as a regional centre by 1100, but the Spanish still found a dense population around it.

Sri Lanka's dry zone posed the opposite problem: hard granite, little groundwater, erratic monsoon rain and fierce evaporation. Its farmers answered with tanks, small reservoirs chained in cascades that caught runoff for the rice fields; an estimated 30,000 were built over the island's history. Anuradhapura, a royal capital for some fifteen centuries, could not have grown without them. King Dhatusena's Kala Wewa, built around 460, sent water to the city's Tissa Wewa through a canal that wound for more than 87 km. After the Chola invasion of 993 the city was largely deserted, and the tank system went through centuries of decline and partial abandonment.

How large a city?

Living there

Its woods spare enough to burn: about 3,500 tonnes of wood a year for its hearths and workshops. Provisional figure.

Its market sells grain, flax, cotton, sugar cane and spices, and buys iron and salt. About 27 market towns stand in its countryside.

About 25% of what its people eat does not come from the fields. Of that share: herds 50%, gardens 50%. That is some 2,800 livestock units on 41 km² of pasture. Hearth estimate.

What makes it hard

• No river crosses the plain: the rain vanishes into the limestone. A town can only stand where the rock has fallen in over the water, or where a well reaches it.
• Ponds and swamps on limestone are often marshy and undrinkable, and near the coast the fresh water is only a thin layer floating on salt water that seeps in from the sea.
• Rain comes in one season and dries off fast. Every field depends on tanks, and a tank needs its bank, channels and sluice kept up every year; once that labour is no longer owed, the tanks fall into neglect.
• On a flat coastal plain nothing breaks the wind. Hurricanes come in from the east, and short violent storms can sweep down at any time of year.

Hard years

About one year in 8, the harvest falls below four fifths of a normal one: the town is short of some 550 of the 1,900 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 790 km² of its fields idle.

What it can make

Grain, Flax, Cotton, Sugar cane, Spices, Dye plants, Orchards, Herbs, Maize, Wool, Horses (at a cost), Cattle and hides, Cheese, Pigs and bacon, Goats, Honey and wax, Silk, Ivory, Timber, Charcoal

What it lives on

Millet, Rice, 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): Activated Charcoal, African Buffalo Hide, African Buffalo Meat, Agave Leaf, Amaranth Seed, Beeswax Block, Beetle Wing, Capybara Hide

Hear it

• The town: City in the Jungle (album RPG Ambiences Vol. 8)
• The market: Medieval Village Marketplace (on Patreon, Guardian tier)
• The countryside: Walking in a Jungle (on Patreon, Guardian tier)

Tropical Dry Forest in Biomes: plants, animals, hazards and sounds

The same climate

A town in the tropical dry forest, on a river, A town in the tropical dry 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, Chichen Itza, Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 2026. en.wikipedia.org
• Wikipedia contributors, Yucatán Peninsula, Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 2026. en.wikipedia.org
• Wikipedia contributors, Yucatán dry forests, Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 2026. en.wikipedia.org
• Wikipedia contributors, Tank cascade system, Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 2026. en.wikipedia.org
• Wikipedia contributors, Kala Wewa, Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 2026. en.wikipedia.org
• Wikipedia contributors, Anuradhapura, Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 2026. en.wikipedia.org
• Wikipedia contributors, Sri Lanka dry-zone dry evergreen forests, Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 2026. en.wikipedia.org

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