Quote:
Originally Posted by Reaver
What non-combat stuff?
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Well, take a quick look at the list of technologies in Low-Tech (p. 6). At TL 2, it suggests common developments are "Riding horses and mounted herdsmen; concrete; large glass objects; arches, vaults, and domes; early water mills; theoretical mathematics; humoral medicine. ... Multiethnic empires; founding of universal religions; philosophy; historical scholarship; coinage.", while at TL 3, you've got "Three-field rotation; moldboard plow; heavy horses; flying buttress; windmills and widely used water mills; distillation; compasses; numerals with zero... Universal religions; monasticism."
So, your TL 2 setting might lack some stuff people associate with the medieval period, even if only unconsciously: the moldboard plow, for example, is generally considered to have allowed the heavier soils in Northern Europe to be effectively tilled for intensive agriculture. So if you're earlier than that, regions that we think of as major medieval centers, like England, Germany, and northern France, will be much less important and heavily settled. Or consider distillation! Without that, everybody, from peasants to the nobility, will be drinking beer, wine, and mead, but not whiskey, brandy, vodka, etc.