Mapping (Am I doing this right?)

I love the idea behind ACKS built-in sandbox/kingdom development system, but I’m having a hard time wrapping my brain around things. I thought that perhaps the hive-mind here can help double check me.

Here’s what I’ve got thus far. The included map represents a small regional area of my campaign (6-mile hexes). The area was once a fairly settled borderland region featuring a large city that was destroyed in a cataclysmic event.

  1. The portion outlined in red represents the “settled” lands, while everything else is wilderness. I count 313 hexes within the red border. Plugging that into the charts in ACKS, I come up with the following:

  2. 313 hexes at 400 families per hex = 93,900 families (approx. 469,500 people). The urban population should be 9,390 families. The largest settlement is therefore a small city (1,879 families).

  3. Next, I divide the realm into 4 duchies of 23,475 families. That yields 4 small towns.

  4. Now I divide the realm into 16 counties of 5,868 families. That indicates 16 villages, which at Market Class VI do not appear on the map at this scale.

When I move on to placing dungeons and locations, the book tells me that I should already have about 15 settlements. Well…no. I’ve got 5.

Am I doing this correctly? Should I be counting more hexes (water or some of the “wilderness” lands? I’m guessing that my problem is pretty clearly that I’m not using enough of the map area, but I want to be certain before I remap things.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

edited by Thomas Weigel - no changes made, just trying to make sure it posts correctly.

Sorry, couldn’t get the graphic to load into the thread itself. Link seems to work, though.

I don’t think you’re supposed to have 15 settlements already, but the settlements you do have count toward the “settlements, towns, and castles of the humans and demihumans”.

Add a main stronghold for your realm, plus one for each duke, and you’ve got 10 pre-placed points of interest (of the 15 recommended). After that, you can add some border forts controlling realms not populous enough to have urban centers, or wizard towers not located in the cities, or some wilderness outposts maintained by NPC adventurers, or whatever to fill in the rest.

I’m also curious about this, so I’m hoping for more comments in this thread.
On page 235, it says that you should have 45 points of interest in a 30×40 six-mile hex area. I.e. about 1200 six-mile hexes.
Of those 45, 15 should be settlements, towns and castles. So I guess 313 six-mile hexes is a bit tight. Page 230 suggests 600 settled six-mile hexes, 50% of a 1200 (30×40) hex map, and 600 six-mile hexes that are unsettled and wild.