Low-Tech Kingdom Population Density?

[rust]

Originally Posted by malloyd

And anyway, he doesn't even touch what are probably the two biggest distinguishing innovations of TL4 - guns and printing. Nobody is going to give up guns ...

I am not so sure, mainly because there is the historical example of Japan, a
culture which did give up almost all of a well developed firearms technology.
As for printing, this depends a lot on the degree of literacy and the size of
the population, with too few people able to read there is simply no sufficient
market for printed books to keep the craft alive. Overall I think that an iso-
lated, low population society of TL 4 would become far more "rural" than our
world's historical examples of this technology level, with a technology deve-
lopment and slow progress focussed mostly on fields like for example agricul-
ture, mining and the basic crafts and little change from previous technology
levels in its culture and in the theoretical sciences - more a kind of slow im-
provement of the late Middle Ages than a Renaissance.

[Sunrunners_Fire]

Originally Posted by tjbuege

Unless, of course, you are looking for earth-like realism.

Originally Posted by Terwin

Especially using magic.

I prefer to have a reasonable baseline (a realistic flavoring, say) that I can deviate from, while detailing the consequences of and reasoning for said deviations. Also, its' easier to get information about our world, its' workings and its' history than it is to get people to work out the details of a theoretical example for me. ;)

A few million people appears to be sufficient; giving a population density of 865~ per square mile of arable land. This buffs their economic volume, even absent trade, which increases the funding available to field and maintain military/police forces. Thats' a lot of people though! ... somewhere between modern Japan (at 873) and the modern Philippines (at 846).

Originally Posted by rust

Overall I think that an isolated, low population society of TL 4 would become far more "rural" than our world's historical examples of this technology level, with a technology development and slow progress focussed mostly on fields like for example agriculture, mining and the basic crafts and little change from previous technology levels in its culture and in the theoretical sciences - more a kind of slow improvement of the late Middle Ages than a Renaissance.

This specific kingdom doesn't have measurable technological progress. They inherited a large body of knowledge and decayed infrastructure, were instructed in its' use and maintenance and then were mostly abandoned to their own devices. They've spent their history since arrival (about eight hundred years ago) in the struggle to survive, adapting their broken magic to the new realities and fighting off monstrous incursions. A mostly "rural" population that further develops its' inherited technology at a glacial pace sounds fine to me!

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Polydamas

This is one of the questions where justifying my professional opinion would take more time and work than I have space for in a forum post. The basic problem is that the technologies of travel and trade and overseas war, and the materials and goods and ideas and workers imported, tend to be key to a society's most advanced and specialized technology.

Advanced and specialized aren't the same thing. In a lot of ways my point is this is the same as the classic "Dark Ages" argument. There is no question Britain without trade is poorer, and stuff that depends on heavy capital investment is hurt by that, just as Dark Age Europe doesn't engage in the kind of huge projects the Roman Empire supported, but that doesn't actually mean its technology is more primitive, it's just different. Prior to the industrial revolution trade is expensive - less so for Britain than most places perhaps, because it has so much coastline with good harbors - but still very little that mattered to ordinary life comes from really far away.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by rust

I am not so sure, mainly because there is the historical example of Japan, a
culture which did give up almost all of a well developed firearms technology.

That's heavily mythologized though. Some Japanese continued to use, make, and to a limited degree even import guns. What they gave up were serious wars. Guns became hunting toys. I suppose an isolated Britain that gave up internal fighting could marginalize guns. That's going to happen.

Overall I think that an isolated, low population society of TL 4 would become far more "rural" than our world's historical examples of this technology level, with a technology development and slow progress focussed mostly on fields like for example agriculture, mining and the basic crafts

Probably, though defining "low population" is one of the points under debate here. But sure, change the situation and different technologies become the really important ones. Though some guesses how that goes tend to be way off. For example there is quite a stretch of European history in which rural villagers were more literate than urban populations - probably a function of a distributed literate priesthood with a teaching mission and children with free time during the agricultural slack season.

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by Polydamas

I personally suspect that the population required to maintain TL 4 in isolation is in the tens of millions (see: Hellenistic/Roman Mediterranean, Tokugawa Japan). You can have towns and muskets with a much smaller population, but not amazing art and huge libraries and cities with hundreds of thousands of people and pocket multitools and large amounts of good steel armour and all kinds of specialists and ships of a thousand tuns burden. So you will need much more land, or a lower TL.

One reason why TL2 Rome was so freakin' huge was because it owned Egypt, a ginormous granary, and was able to move insane amounts of grain by sea.

As GURPS Low-Tech explains, moving stuff on rivers is about 5 times cheaper than moving stuff over land, and moving stuff over the sea is about 25 times cheaper than moving it over land.

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by Turhan's Bey Company

I suspect you'd need a population of several millions, if not tens of millions, to do TL4. In addition to encompassing a great many craft industries, those industries imply a lot of specialized extraction and processing industries, which in turn imply the need to cover a lot of space and to be supported by a vastly larger population. Moreover, without a large and well-populated setting, some of the hallmarks of TL4 civilizations (elaborate architecture, various navigational developments) won't be practice, and since these are things which are generally transmitted by what amounts to oral tradition rather than by reference books, they'll vanish if they don't get used.

But you don't necessarily need a single kingdom or single empire that large. Multiple smaller ones ought to be able to achive or maintain TL4, provided there's stable and reasonably free trade between them, as long as the total population is the required millions or tens of millions. It just needs to function, trade-wise and intellectually, as a single realm. And a lot of things can interfere with that functioning, including religious intolerance, greedy barbarians (e.g. Vikings) or even language barriers.

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by Sunrunners_Fire

TL 4 is noted as starting in the 1450s. Europe had around 50 million people at that point in time and the British Isles around 3 million people. If we cut the British Isles of the 1450s off from the rest of the world, you are saying that the Isles wouldn't be able to maintain their technology base but would instead revert down to ... TL 2 or so?

Over time, yes. I don't know how quickly Matt thinks it'll happen. If it'll drop 1 TL in 5 years and a 2nd TL after another 10-15 years, or if it'll take hundreds of years, or something in between...

[Polydamas]

Originally Posted by malloyd

Advanced and specialized aren't the same thing. In a lot of ways my point is this is the same as the classic "Dark Ages" argument. There is no question Britain without trade is poorer, and stuff that depends on heavy capital investment is hurt by that, just as Dark Age Europe doesn't engage in the kind of huge projects the Roman Empire supported, but that doesn't actually mean its technology is more primitive, it's just different. Prior to the industrial revolution trade is expensive - less so for Britain than most places perhaps, because it has so much coastline with good harbors - but still very little that mattered to ordinary life comes from really far away.

M.A., I am completely comfortable with saying that anywhere in western Europe in 600 CE was less technologically capable than Italy in 200 CE. This is especially true from a gaming perspective, since there were far fewer and less cool toys for adventurers in 600 than in 200.

A Romanist whose name escapes me (edit: Bryan Ward-Perkins, The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization) uses the example of kitchenware and roof tiles. Lots of ordinary people had attractive, durable, easy-to-clean kitchenware, and roofs which lasted a long time without leaking or rotting, under the empire. Then quite suddenly in Late Antiquity this vanishes, and people go back to thatched roofs and more expensive, harder-to-clean, uglier pots made by their neighbours.

Can you give an area of material culture which you think saw changes between equally good systems?

[Whyte]

Originally Posted by Peter Knutsen

But you don't necessarily need a single kingdom or single empire that large.

OP did specify an isolated kingdom, though, isolated from the rest of the world. Hence, for this thread, you'd really need that single kingdom to be big enough.

A valid point for a more general case, though.

[Polydamas]

Originally Posted by Sunrunners_Fire

A few million people appears to be sufficient; giving a population density of 865~ per square mile of arable land. This buffs their economic volume, even absent trade, which increases the funding available to field and maintain military/police forces. Thats' a lot of people though! ... somewhere between modern Japan (at 873) and the modern Philippines (at 846).

Would it not be easier to give them more land area than to force the desired population into a fixed area? That also gives you an excuse for them to have all the key ores and minerals. A few thousand square miles of farmland is not much ... something like the arable parts of mainland Greece south of Thermopylae. More land is also more fun for adventuring purposes, since it introduces the possibility of travel, multiple polities and subcultures, isolated forts and villas, and so on.