Low-Tech Kingdom Population Density?

[Sunrunners_Fire]

Originally Posted by Brett

What about climate? Wet rice agriculture will produce more than three crops per year, indefinitely, given a year-round growing season. But if there is a winter cold enough that plants stop growing you get only two, and if the winter is at all long and cold, only one.

She wishes mild winters, hot summers and much rain. I've placed them in a pocket of land on the windward side of a coastal mountain range, just south of the sub-tropical climate band. They don't have a dry season, only seasons of "lots" and "enough" precipitation. Average surface temperature for that area of the world is roughly 60 F, with winters averaging 40 F and summers 100 F.

Short, mild winters and long, hot summers with many storms and showers.

Originally Posted by Brett

Also, what about landform? Rice fields have to be level and edged by bunds so that they can be flooded, and have drains so that they can be drained. And they need water supplies with catchments and tanks and aqueducts: if the rains are seasonal water storage has to be huge. The kind of landscape actually prepared to grow three crops of rice per year has had a lot of work done on it, and is distinctive.

Imagine, if you will, the remains of a explosive volcanic caldera large enough that Toba looked like a poprock in comparison. The caldera is being tilted so that its' westmost section is submerged with its' eastmost section being above sea-level due to a plate collision which improbably had both plates buckle upwards rather than one going underneath the other. Its' broken, eroded, bumpy, is rather resource-rich, has plentiful flat patches near the coast, rolling hills near the mountains and a sharp climb in altitude over a relatively short distance nearest the rim where it blurs into into the World's Teeth Mountains.