Obviously I was having an obsessive moment last night, as I spent most of the evening trying to make a system that would represent the concepts I was espousing and still remain relatively simple to administer. I decided on using the 6 mile hex as the base size (also the minimum domain realm size)
Initially I decided that the type of agricultural subsistence and available water were the most important things for settlement patterns and came up with the following types.
Hunting / Gathering (the minimal survival default)
Grazing / Herding (Sheep / Cattle etc)
Light Agriculture (orchards, low yield grains, slash/burn)
Heavy Agriculture (intensive agricultural application)
For the benefits of local water I went with
Major River (Within 24 miles) (Equivalent to the River Nile, River Danube)
Significant River (Within 6 miles) (Equivalent to the River Thames or River Seine)
Lake (Within 6 miles) (occupying the majority of at least a 6 mile hex or bigger)
Sea Coast (Within 6 miles)
It seemed logical to factor in climate zone as that directly affects plant growth and ACKS use of Climate classifications on the demand modifier table meant precipitation was also built in from the get go: -
Arctic [Tundra]
Sub-Arctic [Taiga]
Temperate [Deciduous Forest, Grasslands, Savanna]
Sub-Tropical [Desert, Rainforest, Scrub, Steppe, Grasslands, Savanna]
Tropical [Rainforest, Savanna]
Obviously the same chart helped me to decide on the topography of the region, although I decided to become slightly more granular to take into account grades of hills and mountains.
Plains or other Flatlands (0-2000ft)
Rolling Hills (2001-3000ft)
Foot Hills (3001-4000ft)
Low Mountains (4001-7000ft)
Medium Mountains (7001-15000ft)
High Mountains (15000 +)
I then moved onto resources as they could have a significant effect on revenue value: -
Common Mining (1% plains, 5% rolling hills, 10% foothills, 20% Low Mtns, 30% med or high Mtns)
High Value Mining (1% foothills, 2% Low Mtns, 3% Medium Mountains, 4% high Mtns)
Resource Industry (2% chance) check the resources types on the demand chart for examples, -2 demand mod in that hex?)
Forestry (if in a Medium or Heavy Forest Hex [Taiga/Deciduous Forest High Precipitation/Vegetation])
That pretty much covered the effect of the land potential, however for generating NPC lands I thought the potential or optional use of the following might be helpful.
Alignment, Race, Ruler Int or Wis.
Now came the tough part … all of this had to generate a value between 3-9 for most habitable lands and cover the extremes of a typical world. In addition some degree of random effect still needed to be kept to represent chance or luck.
I decided initially to keep 1d3 for the luck aspect and roll for land usage based upon climate to generate a type of subsistence. This kept some aspect of random generation, which was plausible for the location, climate and terrain.
Here are a couple of the tables I generated for subsistence type: -
Deciduous Forest (Low Precipitation/Vegetation) 1d8
1-4 Light Agriculture
5-6 Grazing / Herding
7-8 Hunting / Gathering
Grassland (Low Precipitation/Vegetation) 1d8
1-5 Light Agriculture
6-7 Grazing / Herding
8 Hunting / Gathering
So the above two tables will determine the type of subsistence for a lot of European countryside. Most of which will result in Light Agriculture or Grazing/Herding. Occasionally in some poor areas of land (rocky etc) Hunting/Gathering still might take place.
That gave me the subsistence type, to which I then tentatively added a value (I kept the values simple and low as I only had a range of 2-6 + 1d3 to play with. I also added a category of Non-Sufficient land to handle barrens etc.
-3 Non-Sufficient
+0 Hunting / Gathering (the minimal survival default)
+1 Grazing / Herding (Sheep / Cattle etc)
+1 Light Agriculture (orchards, low yield grains, slash/burn)
+2 Heavy Agriculture (intensive agricultural application)
I then addressed Water usage and derived the following: -
+2 Major River (Within 24 miles) (Only 1 water modifier allowed) (Equivalent to the River Nile, River Danube)
+1 Significant River (Within 6 miles) (Only 1 water modifier allowed) (Equivalent to the River Thames or the River Seine)
+1 Lake (Within 6 miles) (Only 1 water modifier allowed) (occupying the majority of at least a 6 mile hex or bigger)
+1 Sea Coast (Within 6 miles) (Only 1 water modifier allowed)
I decided to limit the water modifier to only allowing a single greatest modifier, as initially it increased the testing values too much.
I continued to follow this process all the way through adding values to the categories above and tweaking things till I got the ranges I wanted. All the derived information would be too much for this post, but I wanted to show the process above so you could see how I got to final values.
I generated the subsistence type charts of ALL terrain types used in ACKS (but noticed a lack of demand modifiers for Swamps / Marshes (wetlands), must address that later). I also got carried away and created some example racial modifiers to help generate realistic results for humanoids and demi-humans. It would be a simple process to generate more as required.
You can see all the values and charts I worked on here: -
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/pub?key=0AhnirJxPphD1dGREZV9fSDlrWDNrN0V0YU5QQ0psUVE&output=html
The Terrain charts and further examples are available on the other Tabs
They generate these example values …
Paris [France], London [England], Rome [Italy]
Human
Temperate +1
Plains [Grassland] +1
Light Agriculture +1
Significant River +1
Total 4+1d3 = 5 to 7 Revenue Value
Athens [Greece]
Human
Temperate +1
Rolling Hills [Grassland] +1
Light Agriculture +1
Seacoast +1
Total 4+1d3 = 5 to 7 Revenue Value
Braemar [Scotland]
Human
Sub-arctic +0
Rolling Hills +1
Taiga [high precipitation] +0
Forestry +1
Hunter Gatherers +0
Total 2+1d3 = 3 to 5 Revenue Value
Husavik [Iceland]
Human
Arctic -1
Plains +1
Tundra -1
Sea Coast +1
Hunter Gatherers +0
Total 0+1d3 = 1 to 3 Revenue Value
(So basically only 1/3 of all hexes on the coastline would be inhabitable)
Himalayan Mountains
Human
Arctic -1
High Mountains -2
Tundra -1
Hunter Gatherers 0
Total -4+1d3 = -3 to -1 Revenue Value
(People rarely live here and the population density would be very low, it would be a rare monastery etc)
Please remember these values contain none of the optional values for culture etc, so Rome for instance might gain a +1 for lawful and +1 for high wis/int ruler … taking its value to 7-9 at its peak, decaying as the alignment alters or less capable rulers come into power.
With this information it is possible to quickly derive the land value of a hex (few variables involved) and use the information to determine the likely places for population settlement while preparing a sandbox or campaign environment.
I hope I am on the right track, I did some preliminary testing on my maps to check the results, they seemed to work ok, but as I am sure you know, if you look at anything for long enough you see what you want to see.
Please take a look and see if you can see any problems or issues or if you can think of anything to add!