I'm taking this from a note in the comment thread to a separate post of its own. What size in square miles do you consider your state to be? Approximate or exact, either way.
I was originally using the system from Henry Hyde's Battlegames article for creating Hesse-Engelburg, but used the same number of squares on my grid for it as he used for both of his fictional countries. Calculating it out based on his 5 miles to a hex and 5 hexes wide and high per grid square, my 10x7 grid at 25 miles per side on the squares would come out to 43,750 square miles. That's obviously huge, and I think would swallow all of the Hesse states and half of Saxony or more. :> So I did some recalculating. If I reduce it to 15 miles per side instead of 25, that gives 15,750 square miles. About half again as big as hanover. Reduce it to 12 miles a side and you have 10,080. At 10 miles per side it's 7000, which is just slightly larger than Hesse-Kassel.
I suppose my biggest dither is...should I make it fit into the map of "real Europe", in a corner of the Hessian region? It's going to gobble land from some real nation no matter where I put it. Or do I simply let it be larger, realizing that by the time we throw in all our states we'll have gobbled up 2/3 of Europe anyway?
I see the Bishopric of Uber Gruntshuffen is 10,220 square miles. How about the rest of you?
1 day ago
6 comments:
Its fictional - do what you are happiest with ;-)
The size of Uber Gruntshuffen was dictated by the size of army I wanted to field. With the number crunching being based on one source.
Remember though the economics, not too high a percentage of the population could be under arms as the state could not support them for very long (financially they could raise extra taxes and take on loans etc but this is not sustainable for too long). Society was far more agricultural than now, with income being unlikely to change in the short term, so any drain of resoures would affect the economy quite quickly. So, eventually, try to keep the balance between expected income and expenditure, with a generally sparse population (in people per square mile).
How large do you see the army of Hesse-Engelburg? Work from that and back track to the size of country needed to support it then adjust the scale of the hexes to give the land area you need.
Ok, the first sentence says it all really, the rest is just me, sorry.
Steve
I agree pretty much with Steve. For me, I really don't think about the "true size" of Saxe-Bearstein . . . it's whatever it needs to be.
Mind you, there's nothing wrong with being more exact . . . I'm just not personally concerned about that.
-- Jeff of Saxe-Bearstein
Well, for the population and army size aspects, I've already got those from Henry's calculations. There's a post on my blog detailing the population, income rate, and potential men under arms of Hesse-Engelburg based on Henry's system. I think I'll take the population, however, and work back to see how much land area it takes to reasonably fit them and see what that gives me. :>
Speaking for myself, the size of Alzheim is something like that of a jelly - it wobbles!
I did once ponder using Alfred the Great's Wessex as a model for a rough map, but got lazy and never really progressed the thought from there.
Suffice it to say that Alzheims' army grows at a rate not unlinked from the speed at which I paint.
The Alzheimers may yet even hire a Bavarian Regiment of Foot and one of Horse to plump out the half dozen of the former and four they posess of the latter.
Best regards,
Greg
The Bishopric is just under 3200 square miles, Hannover was 10220
Steve
(See what problems my lazy cartographers are causing!)
After consideration, I'm going to go with approximately 11,000 square miles. This combined with my other figures gives it a population density of about 130 people per square mile, which is reasonable for a state with a major university and a set of major cities, I think.
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