A town in the tropical rainforest

With what grows here (yams and other tubers, rice), this land can feed a town of about 2,500 people from farms less than a day's cart from its walls.

Build a town in the tropical rainforest

A town of 10,000 here

Its grain comes from 50 km around, 2.5 days by cart (fragile). About 690 villages and 79,000 country people farm it, and the town keeps about 40 scholars. A city of 40,000 cannot live off this land alone.

In history

Tikal, in the rainforest of northern Guatemala, had no river and no spring. Its builders quarried limestone on the spot, plastered the pits so they would hold water, and sloped the stuccoed plazas so that rain ran through canals into ten reservoirs. At its height in the Late Classic, roughly AD 700 to 830, estimates of its people run from 10,000 to perhaps 90,000. Then came deforestation, soil erosion and worn-out soils, and perhaps drought. Some reservoirs fouled with algae and with mercury washed off walls painted with cinnabar, and after 950 the city was all but deserted.

In the forest of West Africa, Benin City ringed itself with ditches. The great inner moat, dug around 1460, ran for about 11 to 12 km, and in places it was 17 m from the bottom of the ditch to the top of the rampart. Around 1600 a Dutch captain found it dry and grown with tall trees. People farmed yams. The tsetse fly killed domestic animals; only over centuries did some cattle and goats grow resistant. Most of the city's wealth came from trade within the region; from the late 15th century trade with Europeans, the Portuguese first, added a smaller one in pepper, ivory, cloth and slaves.

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, rice, flax, cotton and sugar cane, and buys iron and salt. About 110 market towns stand in its countryside.

About 30% of what its people eat does not come from the fields. Of that share: herds 50%, gardens 50%. That is some 3,300 livestock units on 50 km² of pasture. Hearth estimate.

What makes it hard

• No river, no spring: the town drinks what the rainy season leaves in its reservoirs. When the rains come late, or a drought falls before the harvest, cisterns and fields fail together.
• Stored water spoils. Algae bloom in still reservoirs, mosquitoes breed there, and whatever washes off the walls and plazas ends up in the drinking water.
• Cleared forest soil wears out fast. A town that grows too large strips the hills of trees, and erosion carries away the earth that fed it.
• The tsetse fly kills domestic animals brought in from outside. Herds must be bred over generations before they survive, so a forest town has few beasts to pull or carry.

Hard years

About one year in 8, the harvest falls below four fifths of a normal one: the town is short of some 1,400 of the 4,700 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 3,100 km² of its fields idle.

What it can make

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

What it lives on

Yams and other tubers, Rice

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): Açaí Berry, Açaí Palm Heart, Activated Charcoal, African Buffalo Hide, African Buffalo Meat, Beeswax Block, Beetle Wing, Brazil Nut Pod

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 Rainforest in Biomes: plants, animals, hazards and sounds

The same climate

A town in the tropical rainforest, on a river, A town in the tropical rainforest, on the coast

By city size

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

Sources

• Wikipedia contributors, Tikal, Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 2026. en.wikipedia.org
• Wikipedia contributors, Benin Moat (Walls of Benin), Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 2026. en.wikipedia.org
• Wikipedia contributors, Kingdom of Benin, Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 2026. en.wikipedia.org
• Wikipedia contributors, Benin City, Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 2026. en.wikipedia.org
• Wikipedia contributors, Terra preta, Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 2026. en.wikipedia.org

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