City Stats: The Village Center of the Apfelbaum Farming Community (TL5+2)

decent black and white cameras back
then, I guess.

So the community topic rages loud and unchecked still. Today, I can kill two birds with one stone, and design a farming village using city stats, and then use it in my campaign. It's like I'm doing campaign preparation and blogging at the same time!

Research

This page right here says about 4 to 10 farms fit inside a square mile at this time. This page says it takes approximately 80 hours of labor to clear 2 acres of corn using contemporary technology of the time, and that produces 100 bushels of food, which sustains about 12 people a year. If a square mile is completely packed full of farmland, that is about 640 acres (probably slightly less, but let's round) If we think it takes about 2 months to harvest the crop, that gives us a population density of 100/sq. mile. Each square mile produces enough food for almost 4,000 people, subtract the people living and working the farms, that's 3,900 people that can live per square mile of farmland. They need to support a capital city with a population of over 300,000, so, rounding again, we need about 80 square miles of farm, which gives a population of 8,000 for our entire village. Let's crunch these totally realistic numbers into city stats specs then.

I'm told these efficiencies might be liberally high, still potentially realistic in the very best case scenario, but I don't mind.

The Numbers

Apfelbaum (1880 A.D.)
Population: 8,500 (Search -1)
Physical and Magical Environment
Terrain: Plains
Appearance: Average (+0)	Hygiene: -1
Normal Mana(Common Enchantment)
Culture and Economy
Language: Imperial	Literacy: Broken
TL: 5+2
Wealth: Struggling (x1/2)	Status: -2 to 3
Political Environment
Government: Representative Democracy and Oligarchy
CR: 3 (Corruption -1)
Military Resources: $93.5K	Defense Bonus: +0
Notes
Apfelbaum is a widely sprawling urban community. The community comprises 80 square miles around the Western border of a large capital city. Due to the thin population density, searching is more difficult than otherwise assumed by the population. The majority of the 8,500 are laborers, then farmers, then finally the logistic support such as family members, city government, the train station faculties, and those that man communications at the post and telegraph office. There is nothing remarkable to speak of in the community except for perhaps the storied monastery near the heart.

Other Thoughts and Conclusion

After making a few of these, it has become a bit rote for me. The big trick still is the population of the city, but everything else is easy peasy. Wish there was a place to find generic census data online for certain communities in certain time frames so that I could just use that number and be done with it.