@@hunterkoons2008 It was his father, Philip, and by that time Sparta had become so weak and ineffectual that they weren't a threat. So Philip spitefully refused to conquer them, knowing how much it would annoy them.
For instance Johannesburg in SA was built in the middle of nowhere because gold was found there. It then became a trade center but first it was for the gold mines. In general Africa breaks placement rules.
Mainly inland Africa. You generally see the city on the coasts following the rules as that and the Nile being historically the places where cities developed up.
That's 1800's for you. Water transportation was supplanted by railroads in certain circumstances so major river nearby was nice to have, but not as essential as in the preceding eras
Hormuz is an interesting example of a city location. The island has no sources of fresh water (except a modern day water pipe from the mainland) and very few things can grow there. The city relied entirely on imports of everything, but since it was a major trading hub it managed to do this successfully. Funnily enough, the reason the city appeared on the island is because the mainland city of Hormuz kept getting bothered by Mongols so they moved to the island, quite similar to how Venice moved out to sea to avoid a land based enemy.
I feel like you forgot to include the actual reason that city’s have almost always existed near rivers, and it has nothing to do with trade and everything to do with people not enjoying dying of dehydration.
@@lennysmileyface Heck, even cities on rivers still built complex water transport systems. Rome may have been on the Tiber river, but they built a hell of an aqueduct system.
There are such things as lakes, that for some reason don't form big cities around them, even the biggest of them. Rivers are convenient because they combine transport, trade, resources and not dying of dehydration
@@loonardtheloonard That! In addition I'd like to mention that most sizeable cities grew in valleys, where Rivers are likely to flow, transportation of goods is easy to handle and new buildings can easily be added.
@@loonardtheloonard Really? Because I could name dozens of lakes that have big cities around them. Perhaps you've heard of a tiny city called Chicago? Or maybe a little known place called Las Vegas? Lakes provide essentially all the benefits a river does. Perhaps you miss out on powering water wheels, but for trade, transport, and resource purposes they're nearly identical. I wasn't trying to say that trade and the like aren't factors, especially in time periods where trade is more vital and fast land transport isn't easy, but the real reason you see cities on waterfront more often than not is because access to fresh water is absolutely the most vital thing to existing. Trade is great. It might make a city thrive and grow large, but it isn't the main reason for cities to be on rivers.
Fun fact: until the LATE NINETEENTH CENTURY (yes really!), natural population growth in cities was negative. More people died from disease, starvation, etc. in cities than were born, and the population was only sustained by more people constantly coming in from the countryside to seek their fortune. Their fortune usually being to die of cholera. It wasn't until modern medicine and the vastly under-discussed sanitary revolution (THEY RAISED THE ENTIRE CITY OF CHICAGO ON JACKSCREWS. ENTIRE BUILDINGS - WEIGHING TENS OF THOUSANDS OF TONS APIECE - WERE *LIFTED*. How do we not talk about this more often?) that cities ceased to be squalid death traps. This is around the same era the timekeeping as we know it was invented. But I digress. Also, it's worth noting that Paris is not a great example of urban geography because it has some weird features. Most notably, skyscrapers can't be constructed in the center of the city because the old catacombs make the ground too unstable to support such weight.
This is a great story, glad you posted it. The Internet has brought back to light a lot of lost knowledge. We think we are an advanced society, but we keep losing criticial information in the recent past. The 1800s had a lot of things happen that were completely forgotten by mid-to-late 1900s. When I was in school the nuclear cold war was raging, we even had nuclear air raid drills in school. Our desks were modern open ones, so we would stand in the halls with our faces against metal lockers for protection. Nuclear Winter was a new idea that was popularized in the 1980s, but they struggled with models not agreeing that the explosions could cause this. However, in the 1880s the world experienced this more than once from volcanic eruptions. About 15 years ago I stumbled on it in a local town entry while doing genealogical research. They were called the Years without a Summer. In the U.S. snow was still falling in June and returned by September. Very poor crops were of course a result. U.S. census records started tracking deaths in households and their causes. That was short lived in census taking, but I wondered if it was due to high death rates due to these volcanic winters or the civil war deaths. And this is from a volcanic eruption in Polynesia, the opposite side of the world. So we've had proof that these winters can occur at any time, even without nuclear bombs. And they are guaranteed to happen, we're probably overdue since it has been 120+ years since the last significant one. Another fun unknown fact--the Mercury levels in the air spike with big volcanic eruptions. They did with the eruptions in 1880s, and there was another around 1810-1815. But there was a larger sustained plateau of high mercury in the air that was far larger than any volcano. It was sustained for a few decades. And the mercury level would not reach that high again until the world industrialized into the 1900s. The cause of this planetary wide increase was the U.S. gold rush. Most people don't realize how many poisons and chemicals are used to extact metals from their ore. But gold/silver ores are mixed with liquid mercury--which absorbs them (amalgamates). The mercury amalgamate is then separated and burned/evaporated into the air, leaving pure gold and silver. So we have seen man's activity in just the U.S. alter the atmosphere of the planet. Thankfully mercury doesn't stay aloft in the atmosphere the way other chemicals can. So they decrease after the source is eliminated.
We' don't talk about sanitation because they like to say it's vaccines that have made us healthier not that we learned to bath and not walk in our own feces..
With regards to population... in fantasy, writers often overestimate how much their cities can realistically hold (I'm guilty of this myself) but in sci-fi writers often vastly underestimate the capacity of cities. If you have fusion power, or some other technology that allows for basically unlimited electricity, heat becomes your restricting factor and not space or food. Isaac Arthur made a good video on this, explaining how even if you gave each person a house's worth of room and even left over a lot of space for nature reserves, you could comfortably house 5 trillion people on Earth before the heat that all those humans and their food creates would roast the planet. That's the population often given to whole interplanetary empires in sci-fi.
@@kingdomofhaskaria3769 from what I’ve read it seems like it hit 1 million in about the time of Caesar with its population remaining between 1 and 1.5 million until the Third century, followed by a collapse in population during the fifth century which it never recovered from until modern times.
@@kingdomofhaskaria3769 it probably reached its highest population during the reign of the Nerva-Antonine dynasty in the second century until Commodus started screwing things up. That’s just a pure guess though with no evidence.
Just thought I'd mention: City population in the Medieval Era can reach over a million. Many cities in Ming and Yuan China were larger than a million at times. The problem is, at this time it was unstable. Bad governments or the collapse of the dynasty or even something as small as a minor famine could cause the total population to drop drastically. In some cases, in just a few years, Beijing went from over a million to less than 200,000
I'm gonna guess you hate the idea of Mega-City One, a conurbation that stretches from Florida into Canada yet can still support itself after everything around it is nuclear wasteland
@Gideon Chan I didn't know that. Still, there must be massive, industrial level farms to support a city like that. It's not the image that comes to mind when I think of the Cursed Earth
@@GoroScornshard More ppl live in cities than anywhere else nowadays so if urbanisation is to continue there will be a need for cities to make more of there own food. Nowadays there are new types of farms that are built vertically with the aid of hydroponics and uv lamps that are being set up like skyscrapers. Its on utube just search "vertical farming". Believe me there is no limit to the ingenuity of Man
Well, I guess it depends on what you define as "self-supporting". In truth Mega City One is simply so massive that the whole damn thing is in a constant state of collapse and has been for decades, but because of the aggressively capitalistic society every time some sector of life collapses it is instantly replaced by a commercial competitor. A fitting analogy I read somewhere is that the whole thing is in free fall so to speak, but the ground is also falling out underneath it, so as long as there are still people willing to pay for the shit the system offers them Mega City One will never suffer a fatal crash.
I just want to point out that cities don't always form in convenient places. Tenochtitlan was built on swampy islands because all the better lands were already taken. Ingenuity, luck and a good strategic location allowed it to boom into a vast metropolis that could sustain itself by artificial fields in the lake. The only thing they didn't have was a source of drinkable water. And became their downfall.
stable cities need those reliably available resources, humans can and have built basically everywhere that they physically could but just because you can doesn't mean you should, the salton sea was a more recent reminder of that
Great point about cities being along waterways. One, kind of, exception to this is building them like 5 to 10 miles away from the water. The reason could include flooding, but mainly is as a precaution against piracy. There's also a historical precedent in Ancient Greece. Oh, but the cities often have harbors built on the waterways that can often become quasi cities in their own right.
Esp water filled ones. Like, yeah let’s just build a super complex system for this giant ditch we just made to remain filled with water. What’s that about it just being deep and filled with spikes? *kicks the person who suggested waterless moats out the window* Real talk, yeah moats were pretty rare esp on a large scale. The only times they were actually reasonable to build was typically for castles, which were small enough that a moat could be built without it being a massive infrastructure project. And those castles were typically at strategic points (cliffs and hills, namely), so not always (read: rarely) close enough to water for it to make sense to have water in the moats.
"citadels also included things like castles and moats" A citadel does not contain a castle. Castles contain (and are sometimes called) citadels and had moats whenever possible, but citadels are not the 'parent' structure, the castle is the 'parent' structure. Citadels are the most fortified location of a defensive work or structure. As for Venice, I can totally see a 6th-3rd rate ship-of-the-line sailing into some of the larger canals. Getting out again might be a problem, but the gunners couldn't miss at quite literally point-blank range. I don't hate the video, but I do appreciate the proper terms being used, mostly because the words used have specific meanings and were used incorrectly.
I could imagine that a fighting vessel moving into the tight canals would be suicide, and it would be doubtful for captain or crew to take it on. While they couldn't miss with cannos, neither could anyone throwing molotov cocktails from roofs or from the safety of inside windows. It would put them in as much danger, almost eliminating the benefit of being on a boat rather compared to soldiers on land.
@@rfrazier9231 True, but if the cannon isn't rendered incapable of firing (breech blowing out, dismounted from it's carriage, lack of powder, spiked, etc) or decrewed permanently, it's considered to be capable of firing back at you. Additionally, ships often had a company or two of marines or equivalent onboard to help protect the ship from enemy grenadiers, or to help in capturing other ships. Besides, the ship wouldn't move into the canal alone, it would either be acting as fire support for troops ashore, or as a mobile bridge to move troops from one side of the canal to the other without using bridges, which are natural chokepoints. You are correct, however, in saying that no (sane) admiral would consider doing so. Ships are expensive to build, arm, and crew, and their officers (at least in the Royal Navy,) were of higher quality than their Army counterparts, on account of the Royal Navy not allowing the purchase of commissions.
while im by no means an expert on naval warfare, after being to venice i can defintely say that there are enough stone bridges over those canals that attempting to ram a wooden ship through them seems like a distinctly bad idea
James Tanzer I am pretty sure tour definition of citadel is wrong. Google just told me that a citadel is a fortress, usually in or near a city. A castle is a fortified structure that someone lives in, according to shadiversity’s pretty good videos on medieval castles. I think you might have been thinking of “the keep”, which is the fortified place in a castle someone might retreat to. There is some debate whether the outer walls of a fortress are actually considered part of the castle. If you are going to be nitpicky with definitions, I recommend sticking to things that are clearly defined.
A downside to coastal cities is the likelihood of raids though. A city at a river and the trade "outsourced" to ports are the way to go. Like Rome and Ostia.
Enjoyed watching this. Way back in college I studied ancient architecture, you will not most European cities, the main or most important buildings were made of stone (castles, keeps, barracks, cathedrals, churches, coleseum or other such structures). Outside of thaht there was little to no city planning as we know it today, and the rest of the buildings, housing, shops and markets, bath houses, etc might be built of wood and straw, etc. These deteriorated rapidly due to seasonal weather changes, fires etc, which only meant other structures would be built. That's another reason why those old cities are like mazes, with seemingly no reason for how streets or walkways or alleys are laid out.
Something you might want to consider if you're making a city is that (at least in parts of Europe) a Town/city was more of a legal statement (with certain privileges) than anything connected to its size.
@@oskarileikos you say you dont need to read marx to understand marx, I presume? Well by that logic, I can say Jesus was a polygamist communist because i dont need to read the bible to understand it.
I was hoping you would explain how cities would get fresh water from rivers, rains etc. How would their freshwater plumbing systems work? And how can they support the population? How do they separate sewage and freshwater to prevent diseases like cholera and tuberculosis? Perhaps you could explore these topics in another video (unless it was already talked about before, in which case feel free to link me to the video). Nevertheless, this is a very informative video!
Probably late for this but if we are going by before industrial revolution standards, the the answer to the first question is a series of wells reaching the groundwater throughout the city that are considerably away from the river at then major streets/intersections form around as everyone uses the wells if you're not close enough to the water (even then you won't drink straight out of the river unless you are poor and had no other option). if you needed more water than the existing water table provided (which is considerably rare giving the population sizes and how expensive it would be) then you had either trade or build new ways for water to travel into the city (canals aqueducts, you get the picture) As for sustainability, yeah it pretty much wasn't as stable population in cities relied on people immigrating to them to offset the rate of deaths in the cities. To answer sanitation... Are you joking? Except for the sorta wealthy being generally upriver and on higher places with private water sources (shit rolls downhill after all), or the really wealthy people having estates on the outskirts where they could ride into the city in carriages if they had to, sanitation was almost nonexistent with open sewers and sewage dumped straight into the river. Other then not going near sick people and carting them off to the really poor parts, there was no real way to combat plagues as they didn't have the understanding of microorganisms back then.
Great video! Could we get something to help with drawing city maps? A breakdown on demographics (eg. what peasant to noble ratio would be sustainable) as well as land usage (how many houses were inside walls, how many people lived in each house, how far could farmers bring their food from to the markets etc.) would help a lot.
I have to disagree, cities arise where humans settle and where the infrastructure allows for high levels of commerce. Human settlements arise where there is water, mainly because we need water to live and it can be a good source of food via fishing. Trade comes later. You should start with human settlements, see where the logical place for a town would be, see which of the nearest towns would be the logical place to expand and make that into a city. As for how you decide which village should become a town, and which town should become a city, that's where rivers - as water ways - come in. You are unlikely to find a big city near the spring of a river, but you might find a village there since it's a nice, clean source of water. Since water flows downhill that means that most towns will be in mountainous depressions of valleys. Not only won't most people be willing to go up a mountain to reach the nearest town, but most traders will have an easier time going down the mountain to sale their wares then going up one. A river only adds an even simpler and easier means to transport goods. So where should cities go? Somewhere where they can be fed resources by multiple smaller settlements, be they villages or towns. Good places for rivers are near the mouth of rivers that don't have deltas, at the intersection of two smaller rivers or a larger river and a smaller tributary or where you find an oasis in desert regions. Also, regarding the defense of cities, cities were rarely built atop hills, mainly because you have a harder time accessing water from atop the hill then you would from the valley bellow. That being said, a lot of villages, town and cities had at least part of their population living on top of a large hill while the farms where in the depressions bellow. Good example include the greek city states where a city controlled the villages and towns in a region and which usually had double fortifications. They had an out wall protecting the city and an inner wall around a large hill, protecting a highly fortified position that was the place the populous was supposed to retreat in cases where the city was lost. Similarly, castles in medieval times would have a role similar to that of the greek acropolis by allowing the people of the villages around the castle to retreat within it's walls if the region was under attack.
@@comradebear9477 Et l'amphi gallo-romain il est sur la presque il peut être ? Lyon was two cities, one on the hill and the other on the slopes of the second hill of the city
I challenge you to gather all of the common and sometimes uncommon reasons why many cities are build somewhere, and include them in such a short video. You could of course extend each of his chapters into a several hours long video.
"men and horses can't charge against you from a harbor" There's some French Hussars and Dutch sailors from January of 1795 who would probably disagree with you. I don't care how extenuating the circumstances are...it happened.
Just as an aside (don't think it got mentioned in the video) - by definition all civilisations are based on cities, because the word civilisation means 'city-based' - civilians are 'people of the city' (policeman also means 'man of the city' as in metropolis), civic = city.
An anecdote about cities being built by rivers: The city I live in, which is Louisville, Kentucky, was built by the Ohio River, and sometimes is referred to as River City. I always thought that was a stupid name because many cities are built by rivers, so the fact that Louisville is next to a river is in no way a distinctive thing about it. Well, one day, my business took me to Henderson, Kentucky, which is also built by the Ohio River, and there were a lot of businesses which had the words "River City" in their name, and I kept seeing them and forgetting I wasn't in Louisville, which I felt reinforced my opinion that River City was a stupid name because here we had another city, in the same state, along the same river, not much more than a 2 hour drive away from Louisville which claimed the same informal moniker as Louisville.
What would some medieval structures look like if they had to support the weight of a horse or a centaur like alien? What different engineering styles would they use to account for their unique biology?
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Dude, I've been learning so much with your channel! I'm revising all my world with your hints and I am sure it's getting better, thanks to you. Keep the great job, you're killing it!
People say to me that "fantasy cities don't need to be realistic" but I feel that making a city using real world logic makes everything else easier. Like in a DND campaign if you build a city like a real life one then when the players arrive there they can make the same assumptions about your city that they would a real life city "goods to trade routes to travel on ect" and you don't have to come up with convoluted ways of explaining shit later because a logically built city comes with a bunch of implied lore which you can develop later
I disagree with your take on the location of Caemlyn. If I were to take a look at the map of westlands with without cities marked and chose the best place for a city my choices would be; Tar Valon, Arnigill, Whitebridge and Caemlyn. This is because all four a located on the most important trades routes in the westlands; The Manetherendrelle/Arinelle, The River Erinin and the roads between Caemlyn and Tar Valon. Caemlyn is also located roughly in the population center of Andor and the whole of the Westlands.
I'm not trying to imply that you suggested cities were limited to the size of ye olde Paris but ROME CARTHAGE ALEXANDRIA BABYLON just for any author unaware when building their world ancient cities COULD get into the 100K to Million range. They also required and DID have solutions to the issues James mentioned. Just don't think technological ERA puts a hard cap on population, manpower in construction and architecture has historically been able to accomplish things which technology now makes easy.
@@jam8539 Ignoring the question of Rome's usefulness to... history? Carthage had a population of 200,000-400,000 prior to its destruction and reached nearly half a million again as a Roman colony post rebuilding. Alexandria's population was around 500,000 in the early imperial-late republic period. Babylon is rather famous for being one of the first truly enormous cities with a population over 200,000. How have you been picturing these places?
And unless I'm mistaken there were some TRULY gigantic cities in Japan and China, at least later on in the Medieval to Post-Reformation period (Edo having like a million, IIRC?)
@@MrBrachiatingApe Yes but to my mind the total populations of those regions compared to the European/Mediterranean and, in China at least, the river valley/floodplains geography makes their numbers somewhat less impressive (purely in the sense of their importance to the region and engineering) while RELATIVE political cohesion meant outside of civil wars they were at less risk of being sacked and sustained large "outside the walls" areas. That said, to my knowledge even in the Early Empire phase of Roman history a dozen or so Chinese cities had populations in the several hundred thousand range. I don't know very much about the ways they addressed their sewage and infrastructure challenges.
@@scoutobrien3406 All good points. My comment was simply to expand the convo to include all relevant examples. Though I wouldn't say China was entirely free from outside menace, so while it was very much at risk of rebellion and civil war, it was, unlike Japan, also at risk of invasion. Manchu Dynasty, Mongols, etc.
So in short, a city needs four things: resources, defenses, infrastructure, and obviously a population. I've got a project I started on recently - a somewhat secluded island, with four tribes living on it. They're not much on city building, but there is one major city on a cliff near the center of the island, with a name that roughly translates to Cinnamon Falls - because it's by a waterfall, and the bark of the trees that grow there is used as a spice, like cinnamon. The waterfall provides water, the cliff face means opportunities for mining, the bark and fruit of the trees are in high demand, so all that takes care of resources. The fact that it's on a cliff makes it fairly easy to defend, not only from potential invaders but also from floods or earthquakes, both of which are fairly common on a volcanic island. The city's location makes it a perfect place for trade, since the ledge it's on is a choke point on one of the few roads between the north and south of the island.
Could be interesting to look at the sustainability of this bark trade. Are the trees easy to grow in large quantities and farmed? How long do they take to grow? How sustainable is the trade. Are people just pulling bark off of any of the trees and selling it? How sustainable is that? I'd think if it were profitable then loads of people would try their hand at taking bark and selling it. That could cause massive issues. Are there laws against that? Does any one group with military force have a monopoly over the bark? When do the fruits come? Is there a process for readying the bark for sale? Why is it so valuable? I find asking and being asked questions is the best way to formulate answers and thus a better world. If that doesn't work for you then that's cool. But this world intrigues me. One last one though. Don't forget about human's natural curiosity. Has anyone tried to leave the island and find external trade or new lands and resources and if not, why not?
Another interesting thing: maybe look at some architecture from Japan. I don't know much about it but apparently large stacks of rock foundation were used to make them essentially earthquake-proof. If earthquakes are common maybe similar structures would be used
@@19IRGB I feel like you've already put more thought into some aspects of this project than I have ^^;;; I haven't really thought about the long-term economics, but there is at least one point in there that I can address: the island natives wouldn't dare travel out of sight of land, because the seas are inhabited by dragons, who are fiercely territorial and can cause massive storms. The island natives are afraid of the dragons, for good reason, and some see them as incarnations of the plague god (I'll come back to that in a moment). There are other lands nearby though, just out of sight of land, including a society on a continent to the northeast, based in part on medieval Scandinavia, and one of the tribes on the island came from that society. They see the dragons as a blessing, because they're from a place where there's plenty of high ground, so to them floods mean fertile soil, plus they're far enough north that sub-arctic blubber-fish, an excellent source of food and oil, gather around the dragons looking for food, kind of like how remoras cling to sharks - so the center tribe and the mainlanders they came from see the dragons as fertility gods. I said I'd come back to the plague god thing, and here's where I do that: on an active volcanic island, storms, earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions are fairly common events, generally accepted as a normal part of life. The island is peaceful, at least for the time being, and isolated enough that they don't generally have to worry about being invaded (not that it's out of the question, it just isn't a concern right now). Also volcanic ash is constantly providing new fertile soil, and the fact that most of the island is rock means that it doesn't have the drainage a larger land mass would, so in its current state a drought or famine is virtually impossible. All of that in mind, there's really only one thing the natives could meaningfully associate with destruction, and that is disease. Secluded islands tend to be breeding grounds for particularly nasty fungal and bacterial infections, and in such an isolated environment, any disease is going to spread through the population like wildfire. The plague god plays a similar role in the natives' mythology to Sutekh in Egyptian myth or Angra Mainyu in Zoroastrianism. There are wild cats on the island, something similar to tigers or leopards but much better at imitating human speech (although they don't understand it and still have the intelligence of a four year old), and some natives see them as avatars of the plague god. I already mentioned that some natives see dragons as incarnations of the plague god. The one thing the natives fear more than anything, the one thing they have reason to fear more than anything, is breakouts of wasting diseases. Also, I feel like I should clarify that lopakwi is in high demand *on the island,* not necessarily in the world at large.
@@notoriouswhitemoth perhaps part of their calendar and date system could be based upon the last great plague and stuff as it seems to be the really big 'event' that occurs every once in a while. That'd give it some distinction from most world's that exclusively use the seasons/sun/moon.
Venice wasn't as well defended as Tenochtitlan, since you couldn't just sail a ship to Tenochtitlan. You would have to cross land and then get across the lake at the centre of an endorheic basin, building ships on-site, or bringing them over 100 mi inland.
You should have maybe included, that suburbs as we know them nowadays are only possible because of fast and far reaching transport and an overproduction of food. If a limited area has to support the city, fertile land is more valued, and therefor cities tend to densify.
Great points. Just when I think I've learned everything I need to know about world building, I find out more. Just a thought though (feel free to ignore): have you thought of a different outro moniker?
Something you really should've added to the placement/infrastructure segment is drinking water. I know you brought up cities being built on or near water for trade, but if all of it's saltwater or heavily polluted water, everyone's going to die of thirst before they can strike it rich on the stock market. Most of the earliest cities sprung up because they were on or near areas that were rich in both fertile farmland and drinking water and later cities followed suit. It really wasn't until the industrial and modern ages that technology allowed the transportation of water across great distances to desert cities like Las Vegas. If you built a city in your fictional world that wasn't near a water source, much of its economy would be centered around trading for daily water imports; if one shipment failed to to come in, it would be in crisis.
In all likelihood, the places most suited to space commerce will be low-gravity worlds where landing and takeoff take less fuel. Aside from that, it would have some sophisticated orbital infrastructure.
Also, all of the large cities with staggering traffic flow issues are adjacent to a large body of water... and it is a large contributing factor of the traffic congestion. LA, Chicago, and NYC.... all one less egress point by land and a large population. More people and fewer ways to leave [on land].
Not even a stone wall, wooden palisade and a moat, even dry one. That's the most basic stuff you can do to defend your city. It's also very effective against enemies that don't use siege equipment.
this is paramount info, especially as I play dungeons and dragons, a lot of this can help me make a convincingly realistic setting for my next adventure I have planned. thank you for your time. can you recommend a good book series for me? big LOTR Shannara, Star Wars, Lovecraftian fan edit at the end of video: I subbed my dude
Don't need to be an author to enjoy your videos I love the history involved. However it is a great notebook to world creators or creative thinkers which I think everybody is at some degree and level during there meditation throughout the day
Ok, so if I'm understanding, the first thing about world building is, well, building the world, after the world itself is set up, y'know, resources, wind and air-flows, that kind of thing, After that, you can begin designing things like magic systems, if your world has them, who has control of them, and how hard they are to control, Once you know that information, you start on mounts, what they consist of and what their capabilities and limitations are, this helps you decide where people can go, And once you know the limitations of where people can get to from any given location, you can then start deciding where cities would be, picking strategic points that allow for the city to evolve in the way that civilization should, A warlord would pick places to make travel nearby dangerous for opposition, if possible, preventing any supplies from getting between two allies, and even using cities to try to encroach on someone else's land, their cities will have various walls to protect from outside attacks, or, with a cheap wall, to defend the construction of the next wall while they move forward (I've done that at least a few times in various Civ-style games), this city's population in general is likely to be highly trained, prepared to defend or attack at a moment's notice, An economist would pick places people travel frequently, preferably near valuable commodities that people would treasure (delicacies, jewels, metals, that kind of thing), that way they can attract new customers, or just sell to those who happen to be taking this route anyway, the population, being mostly merchants, is not combat oriented, HOWEVER, merchant republics also tend to attract mercenaries, places where you can buy an army rather than training new recruits,
Only a minute and a half in so this might be mentioned later lol, but...and I am admittedly being a smart ass here, though correct, the reason why cities tend to be on water, primarily rivers, is because water literally equals life. It's where you can grow food, feed your livestock and get...wait for it...water...lol to drink. Coastlines were also crucial but not so much for trade, but for the seafood. It's more about being able to survive than trade is all I'm saying. Easier trade is just a bonus.
5:07 fortifications was very importent even in the age of gunpowder. Sure you can reduse them using siege artillery, but then your army louse its speed, becuse the need to haul the siege artillery around, and it will take time to reduse a fortifcation. Hence you waste lots of time. You can bypass the fortification, but fortification is normaly construct at a strategic postion, like beside importent river or a road junction, so bypass them threaten your logistics. No fortress is impregnable, its all about how mutch time and resources the attacker is willing to "waste" Time for the defender to assemble there army, call in there allieds etc Its not untill the industrial age, a army can bypass a fortification, becuse technology allow suplie to a army far away from traditional logistic hubs.
2:42 If there are anyone in NASA watching this video, if you build a city or a settlement in Mars, please call it Bruno! Lets turn the first off-world settlement into a meme!
Why tf were we not taught this in school?? This is way more useful than "what is the capital of Bangladesh". How about WHY is the capital of Bangladesh?
Funny enough, Ancient Sparta didn't have walls. They had a famous saying: "Our shields are our walls, and our spears are our borders."
yeah, but they were Spartans.
So that's why Alexander the Great thought they weren't worth his time.
@@hunterkoons2008 It was his father, Philip, and by that time Sparta had become so weak and ineffectual that they weren't a threat. So Philip spitefully refused to conquer them, knowing how much it would annoy them.
They also had a permanent slave class to do all their labor.
Sparta was also surrounded by mountains, which are a lot cheaper than walls.
For instance Johannesburg in SA was built in the middle of nowhere because gold was found there. It then became a trade center but first it was for the gold mines.
In general Africa breaks placement rules.
Also Kimberly.
@SpacePotato The mutapan cities dont really follow that pattern though.
Mainly inland Africa. You generally see the city on the coasts following the rules as that and the Nile being historically the places where cities developed up.
That's a one of. Just look to the nile for nice placement-compliant cities.
That's 1800's for you. Water transportation was supplanted by railroads in certain circumstances so major river nearby was nice to have, but not as essential as in the preceding eras
Hormuz is an interesting example of a city location. The island has no sources of fresh water (except a modern day water pipe from the mainland) and very few things can grow there. The city relied entirely on imports of everything, but since it was a major trading hub it managed to do this successfully. Funnily enough, the reason the city appeared on the island is because the mainland city of Hormuz kept getting bothered by Mongols so they moved to the island, quite similar to how Venice moved out to sea to avoid a land based enemy.
Here is a tip for scifi cities: Build them on the equators of planets as it it easier to leave.
I did not expect to find you here
Why is that?
Jason Ports
gravity is weaker around equators
@@rizalplayingtheflute3825 By a very small amount; It is to abuse rotational energy to get to orbit
Jason Ports It’s cheaper to get into orbit from the equator.
I feel like you forgot to include the actual reason that city’s have almost always existed near rivers, and it has nothing to do with trade and everything to do with people not enjoying dying of dehydration.
Yeah that's why cities not near rivers had to either import it or build complex water transport systems.
@@lennysmileyface Heck, even cities on rivers still built complex water transport systems. Rome may have been on the Tiber river, but they built a hell of an aqueduct system.
There are such things as lakes, that for some reason don't form big cities around them, even the biggest of them. Rivers are convenient because they combine transport, trade, resources and not dying of dehydration
@@loonardtheloonard That! In addition I'd like to mention that most sizeable cities grew in valleys, where Rivers are likely to flow, transportation of goods is easy to handle and new buildings can easily be added.
@@loonardtheloonard Really? Because I could name dozens of lakes that have big cities around them. Perhaps you've heard of a tiny city called Chicago? Or maybe a little known place called Las Vegas? Lakes provide essentially all the benefits a river does. Perhaps you miss out on powering water wheels, but for trade, transport, and resource purposes they're nearly identical. I wasn't trying to say that trade and the like aren't factors, especially in time periods where trade is more vital and fast land transport isn't easy, but the real reason you see cities on waterfront more often than not is because access to fresh water is absolutely the most vital thing to existing. Trade is great. It might make a city thrive and grow large, but it isn't the main reason for cities to be on rivers.
Fun fact: until the LATE NINETEENTH CENTURY (yes really!), natural population growth in cities was negative. More people died from disease, starvation, etc. in cities than were born, and the population was only sustained by more people constantly coming in from the countryside to seek their fortune. Their fortune usually being to die of cholera. It wasn't until modern medicine and the vastly under-discussed sanitary revolution (THEY RAISED THE ENTIRE CITY OF CHICAGO ON JACKSCREWS. ENTIRE BUILDINGS - WEIGHING TENS OF THOUSANDS OF TONS APIECE - WERE *LIFTED*. How do we not talk about this more often?) that cities ceased to be squalid death traps. This is around the same era the timekeeping as we know it was invented. But I digress.
Also, it's worth noting that Paris is not a great example of urban geography because it has some weird features. Most notably, skyscrapers can't be constructed in the center of the city because the old catacombs make the ground too unstable to support such weight.
This is a great story, glad you posted it. The Internet has brought back to light a lot of lost knowledge. We think we are an advanced society, but we keep losing criticial information in the recent past. The 1800s had a lot of things happen that were completely forgotten by mid-to-late 1900s. When I was in school the nuclear cold war was raging, we even had nuclear air raid drills in school. Our desks were modern open ones, so we would stand in the halls with our faces against metal lockers for protection. Nuclear Winter was a new idea that was popularized in the 1980s, but they struggled with models not agreeing that the explosions could cause this. However, in the 1880s the world experienced this more than once from volcanic eruptions. About 15 years ago I stumbled on it in a local town entry while doing genealogical research. They were called the Years without a Summer. In the U.S. snow was still falling in June and returned by September. Very poor crops were of course a result. U.S. census records started tracking deaths in households and their causes. That was short lived in census taking, but I wondered if it was due to high death rates due to these volcanic winters or the civil war deaths. And this is from a volcanic eruption in Polynesia, the opposite side of the world. So we've had proof that these winters can occur at any time, even without nuclear bombs. And they are guaranteed to happen, we're probably overdue since it has been 120+ years since the last significant one.
Another fun unknown fact--the Mercury levels in the air spike with big volcanic eruptions. They did with the eruptions in 1880s, and there was another around 1810-1815. But there was a larger sustained plateau of high mercury in the air that was far larger than any volcano. It was sustained for a few decades. And the mercury level would not reach that high again until the world industrialized into the 1900s. The cause of this planetary wide increase was the U.S. gold rush. Most people don't realize how many poisons and chemicals are used to extact metals from their ore. But gold/silver ores are mixed with liquid mercury--which absorbs them (amalgamates). The mercury amalgamate is then separated and burned/evaporated into the air, leaving pure gold and silver. So we have seen man's activity in just the U.S. alter the atmosphere of the planet. Thankfully mercury doesn't stay aloft in the atmosphere the way other chemicals can. So they decrease after the source is eliminated.
Well thats interesting
Hey, Extra Credits History fan?
We' don't talk about sanitation because they like to say it's vaccines that have made us healthier not that we learned to bath and not walk in our own feces..
@@twotoned1000 ...it's both. People died of polio and measles lung after people improved sanitation. Can't kill viruses so easily.
With regards to population... in fantasy, writers often overestimate how much their cities can realistically hold (I'm guilty of this myself) but in sci-fi writers often vastly underestimate the capacity of cities. If you have fusion power, or some other technology that allows for basically unlimited electricity, heat becomes your restricting factor and not space or food.
Isaac Arthur made a good video on this, explaining how even if you gave each person a house's worth of room and even left over a lot of space for nature reserves, you could comfortably house 5 trillion people on Earth before the heat that all those humans and their food creates would roast the planet. That's the population often given to whole interplanetary empires in sci-fi.
Fantacy cities with magic healing could probably contain 500k-2Mil
@@BallsRollProjects Rome in the year 100 AD was a city of over 1 million.
@@MrAstrojensen was that the hight of Rome?
@@kingdomofhaskaria3769 from what I’ve read it seems like it hit 1 million in about the time of Caesar with its population remaining between 1 and 1.5 million until the Third century, followed by a collapse in population during the fifth century which it never recovered from until modern times.
@@kingdomofhaskaria3769 it probably reached its highest population during the reign of the Nerva-Antonine dynasty in the second century until Commodus started screwing things up. That’s just a pure guess though with no evidence.
Just thought I'd mention: City population in the Medieval Era can reach over a million. Many cities in Ming and Yuan China were larger than a million at times. The problem is, at this time it was unstable. Bad governments or the collapse of the dynasty or even something as small as a minor famine could cause the total population to drop drastically. In some cases, in just a few years, Beijing went from over a million to less than 200,000
A really underappreciated channel, thank you for this video
I'm gonna guess you hate the idea of Mega-City One, a conurbation that stretches from Florida into Canada yet can still support itself after everything around it is nuclear wasteland
@Gideon Chan I didn't know that. Still, there must be massive, industrial level farms to support a city like that. It's not the image that comes to mind when I think of the Cursed Earth
Future food is artificial.
"Eat recycled food, it's good for the enviroment and okay for you."
@@GoroScornshard More ppl live in cities than anywhere else nowadays so if urbanisation is to continue there will be a need for cities to make more of there own food. Nowadays there are new types of farms that are built vertically with the aid of hydroponics and uv lamps that are being set up like skyscrapers. Its on utube just search "vertical farming". Believe me there is no limit to the ingenuity of Man
Well, I guess it depends on what you define as "self-supporting". In truth Mega City One is simply so massive that the whole damn thing is in a constant state of collapse and has been for decades, but because of the aggressively capitalistic society every time some sector of life collapses it is instantly replaced by a commercial competitor.
A fitting analogy I read somewhere is that the whole thing is in free fall so to speak, but the ground is also falling out underneath it, so as long as there are still people willing to pay for the shit the system offers them Mega City One will never suffer a fatal crash.
I love your channel, but I really enjoy your world building series. It helps me with my stories with world building. Keep it up 👍🏻
Same
I dont think you know how to use the word "but"
@@gunjfur8633 i agree, but i think ur right
Before the first city map was even shown in the vid I said aloud to myself “it’s a river”
Drax the Warlock Titan same
Not always though. other sources of water can be sufficient. Jerusalem for example is shown in the video and has not river.
I just want to point out that cities don't always form in convenient places. Tenochtitlan was built on swampy islands because all the better lands were already taken. Ingenuity, luck and a good strategic location allowed it to boom into a vast metropolis that could sustain itself by artificial fields in the lake. The only thing they didn't have was a source of drinkable water. And became their downfall.
stable cities need those reliably available resources, humans can and have built basically everywhere that they physically could
but just because you can doesn't mean you should, the salton sea was a more recent reminder of that
Great point about cities being along waterways. One, kind of, exception to this is building them like 5 to 10 miles away from the water. The reason could include flooding, but mainly is as a precaution against piracy. There's also a historical precedent in Ancient Greece.
Oh, but the cities often have harbors built on the waterways that can often become quasi cities in their own right.
Great video!
Didn't expect to see you here!
Hey nice to see you here
Corrretion: Contrary to popular belief, moats were pretty rare
Esp water filled ones. Like, yeah let’s just build a super complex system for this giant ditch we just made to remain filled with water. What’s that about it just being deep and filled with spikes? *kicks the person who suggested waterless moats out the window*
Real talk, yeah moats were pretty rare esp on a large scale. The only times they were actually reasonable to build was typically for castles, which were small enough that a moat could be built without it being a massive infrastructure project. And those castles were typically at strategic points (cliffs and hills, namely), so not always (read: rarely) close enough to water for it to make sense to have water in the moats.
"citadels also included things like castles and moats" A citadel does not contain a castle. Castles contain (and are sometimes called) citadels and had moats whenever possible, but citadels are not the 'parent' structure, the castle is the 'parent' structure. Citadels are the most fortified location of a defensive work or structure. As for Venice, I can totally see a 6th-3rd rate ship-of-the-line sailing into some of the larger canals. Getting out again might be a problem, but the gunners couldn't miss at quite literally point-blank range.
I don't hate the video, but I do appreciate the proper terms being used, mostly because the words used have specific meanings and were used incorrectly.
I could imagine that a fighting vessel moving into the tight canals would be suicide, and it would be doubtful for captain or crew to take it on. While they couldn't miss with cannos, neither could anyone throwing molotov cocktails from roofs or from the safety of inside windows. It would put them in as much danger, almost eliminating the benefit of being on a boat rather compared to soldiers on land.
@@rfrazier9231 True, but if the cannon isn't rendered incapable of firing (breech blowing out, dismounted from it's carriage, lack of powder, spiked, etc) or decrewed permanently, it's considered to be capable of firing back at you. Additionally, ships often had a company or two of marines or equivalent onboard to help protect the ship from enemy grenadiers, or to help in capturing other ships.
Besides, the ship wouldn't move into the canal alone, it would either be acting as fire support for troops ashore, or as a mobile bridge to move troops from one side of the canal to the other without using bridges, which are natural chokepoints.
You are correct, however, in saying that no (sane) admiral would consider doing so. Ships are expensive to build, arm, and crew, and their officers (at least in the Royal Navy,) were of higher quality than their Army counterparts, on account of the Royal Navy not allowing the purchase of commissions.
while im by no means an expert on naval warfare, after being to venice i can defintely say that there are enough stone bridges over those canals that attempting to ram a wooden ship through them seems like a distinctly bad idea
James Tanzer
I am pretty sure tour definition of citadel is wrong. Google just told me that a citadel is a fortress, usually in or near a city.
A castle is a fortified structure that someone lives in, according to shadiversity’s pretty good videos on medieval castles.
I think you might have been thinking of “the keep”, which is the fortified place in a castle someone might retreat to.
There is some debate whether the outer walls of a fortress are actually considered part of the castle.
If you are going to be nitpicky with definitions, I recommend sticking to things that are clearly defined.
"We all need food to eat." WHAAAAT??? I had no idea!!!!
How are you still living.
Who da fook is that food guy and why do i need him?
A downside to coastal cities is the likelihood of raids though. A city at a river and the trade "outsourced" to ports are the way to go. Like Rome and Ostia.
Or Paris, which the vikings raided. The only reason they never raided rome was because the Tiber drains to the mediterranian.
Enjoyed watching this. Way back in college I studied ancient architecture, you will not most European cities, the main or most important buildings were made of stone (castles, keeps, barracks, cathedrals, churches, coleseum or other such structures). Outside of thaht there was little to no city planning as we know it today, and the rest of the buildings, housing, shops and markets, bath houses, etc might be built of wood and straw, etc. These deteriorated rapidly due to seasonal weather changes, fires etc, which only meant other structures would be built. That's another reason why those old cities are like mazes, with seemingly no reason for how streets or walkways or alleys are laid out.
Something you might want to consider if you're making a city is that (at least in parts of Europe) a Town/city was more of a legal statement (with certain privileges) than anything connected to its size.
6 libertarians were triggered by the need for bureaucrats
Anarchists can still have bureaucracy
If not by the title, than certainly by your comment xD
@@jasonports8517 it really seems like anarchists can have anything that contradicts their own ideology because as it turns out, anarchism doesn't work
@@oskarileikos Or maybe you just don't understand the ideologies ;)
@@oskarileikos you say you dont need to read marx to understand marx, I presume? Well by that logic, I can say Jesus was a polygamist communist because i dont need to read the bible to understand it.
I was hoping you would explain how cities would get fresh water from rivers, rains etc. How would their freshwater plumbing systems work? And how can they support the population? How do they separate sewage and freshwater to prevent diseases like cholera and tuberculosis? Perhaps you could explore these topics in another video (unless it was already talked about before, in which case feel free to link me to the video). Nevertheless, this is a very informative video!
Probably late for this but if we are going by before industrial revolution standards, the the answer to the first question is a series of wells reaching the groundwater throughout the city that are considerably away from the river at then major streets/intersections form around as everyone uses the wells if you're not close enough to the water (even then you won't drink straight out of the river unless you are poor and had no other option). if you needed more water than the existing water table provided (which is considerably rare giving the population sizes and how expensive it would be) then you had either trade or build new ways for water to travel into the city (canals aqueducts, you get the picture) As for sustainability, yeah it pretty much wasn't as stable population in cities relied on people immigrating to them to offset the rate of deaths in the cities. To answer sanitation... Are you joking? Except for the sorta wealthy being generally upriver and on higher places with private water sources (shit rolls downhill after all), or the really wealthy people having estates on the outskirts where they could ride into the city in carriages if they had to, sanitation was almost nonexistent with open sewers and sewage dumped straight into the river. Other then not going near sick people and carting them off to the really poor parts, there was no real way to combat plagues as they didn't have the understanding of microorganisms back then.
Great video! Could we get something to help with drawing city maps? A breakdown on demographics (eg. what peasant to noble ratio would be sustainable) as well as land usage (how many houses were inside walls, how many people lived in each house, how far could farmers bring their food from to the markets etc.) would help a lot.
I have to disagree, cities arise where humans settle and where the infrastructure allows for high levels of commerce. Human settlements arise where there is water, mainly because we need water to live and it can be a good source of food via fishing. Trade comes later.
You should start with human settlements, see where the logical place for a town would be, see which of the nearest towns would be the logical place to expand and make that into a city. As for how you decide which village should become a town, and which town should become a city, that's where rivers - as water ways - come in.
You are unlikely to find a big city near the spring of a river, but you might find a village there since it's a nice, clean source of water. Since water flows downhill that means that most towns will be in mountainous depressions of valleys. Not only won't most people be willing to go up a mountain to reach the nearest town, but most traders will have an easier time going down the mountain to sale their wares then going up one. A river only adds an even simpler and easier means to transport goods. So where should cities go? Somewhere where they can be fed resources by multiple smaller settlements, be they villages or towns.
Good places for rivers are near the mouth of rivers that don't have deltas, at the intersection of two smaller rivers or a larger river and a smaller tributary or where you find an oasis in desert regions.
Also, regarding the defense of cities, cities were rarely built atop hills, mainly because you have a harder time accessing water from atop the hill then you would from the valley bellow. That being said, a lot of villages, town and cities had at least part of their population living on top of a large hill while the farms where in the depressions bellow. Good example include the greek city states where a city controlled the villages and towns in a region and which usually had double fortifications. They had an out wall protecting the city and an inner wall around a large hill, protecting a highly fortified position that was the place the populous was supposed to retreat in cases where the city was lost. Similarly, castles in medieval times would have a role similar to that of the greek acropolis by allowing the people of the villages around the castle to retreat within it's walls if the region was under attack.
Some cities were almost entirely on hills, if you take Lyon in France for example, there are two hills and the Romans built a city on each
@@grandengineernathan Old Lyons was on lowland. They changed it because the Empire declined & became incapable of defending lowland settlements
@@comradebear9477 Et l'amphi gallo-romain il est sur la presque il peut être ? Lyon was two cities, one on the hill and the other on the slopes of the second hill of the city
I challenge you to gather all of the common and sometimes uncommon reasons why many cities are build somewhere, and include them in such a short video. You could of course extend each of his chapters into a several hours long video.
"men and horses can't charge against you from a harbor"
There's some French Hussars and Dutch sailors from January of 1795 who would probably disagree with you.
I don't care how extenuating the circumstances are...it happened.
Just as an aside (don't think it got mentioned in the video) - by definition all civilisations are based on cities, because the word civilisation means 'city-based' - civilians are 'people of the city' (policeman also means 'man of the city' as in metropolis), civic = city.
An anecdote about cities being built by rivers:
The city I live in, which is Louisville, Kentucky, was built by the Ohio River, and sometimes is referred to as River City. I always thought that was a stupid name because many cities are built by rivers, so the fact that Louisville is next to a river is in no way a distinctive thing about it. Well, one day, my business took me to Henderson, Kentucky, which is also built by the Ohio River, and there were a lot of businesses which had the words "River City" in their name, and I kept seeing them and forgetting I wasn't in Louisville, which I felt reinforced my opinion that River City was a stupid name because here we had another city, in the same state, along the same river, not much more than a 2 hour drive away from Louisville which claimed the same informal moniker as Louisville.
What would some medieval structures look like if they had to support the weight of a horse or a centaur like alien? What different engineering styles would they use to account for their unique biology?
Dude, I've been learning so much with your channel! I'm revising all my world with your hints and I am sure it's getting better, thanks to you. Keep the great job, you're killing it!
People say to me that "fantasy cities don't need to be realistic" but I feel that making a city using real world logic makes everything else easier. Like in a DND campaign if you build a city like a real life one then when the players arrive there they can make the same assumptions about your city that they would a real life city "goods to trade routes to travel on ect" and you don't have to come up with convoluted ways of explaining shit later because a logically built city comes with a bunch of implied lore which you can develop later
I disagree with your take on the location of Caemlyn. If I were to take a look at the map of westlands with without cities marked and chose the best place for a city my choices would be; Tar Valon, Arnigill, Whitebridge and Caemlyn. This is because all four a located on the most important trades routes in the westlands; The Manetherendrelle/Arinelle, The River Erinin and the roads between Caemlyn and Tar Valon. Caemlyn is also located roughly in the population center of Andor and the whole of the Westlands.
I'm not trying to imply that you suggested cities were limited to the size of ye olde Paris but ROME CARTHAGE ALEXANDRIA BABYLON just for any author unaware when building their world ancient cities COULD get into the 100K to Million range. They also required and DID have solutions to the issues James mentioned. Just don't think technological ERA puts a hard cap on population, manpower in construction and architecture has historically been able to accomplish things which technology now makes easy.
only Rome out of that was a big city and even then, it was historically the most useless waste of food and money in existance
@@jam8539 Ignoring the question of Rome's usefulness to... history? Carthage had a population of 200,000-400,000 prior to its destruction and reached nearly half a million again as a Roman colony post rebuilding.
Alexandria's population was around 500,000 in the early imperial-late republic period.
Babylon is rather famous for being one of the first truly enormous cities with a population over 200,000.
How have you been picturing these places?
And unless I'm mistaken there were some TRULY gigantic cities in Japan and China, at least later on in the Medieval to Post-Reformation period (Edo having like a million, IIRC?)
@@MrBrachiatingApe Yes but to my mind the total populations of those regions compared to the European/Mediterranean and, in China at least, the river valley/floodplains geography makes their numbers somewhat less impressive (purely in the sense of their importance to the region and engineering) while RELATIVE political cohesion meant outside of civil wars they were at less risk of being sacked and sustained large "outside the walls" areas.
That said, to my knowledge even in the Early Empire phase of Roman history a dozen or so Chinese cities had populations in the several hundred thousand range. I don't know very much about the ways they addressed their sewage and infrastructure challenges.
@@scoutobrien3406 All good points. My comment was simply to expand the convo to include all relevant examples. Though I wouldn't say China was entirely free from outside menace, so while it was very much at risk of rebellion and civil war, it was, unlike Japan, also at risk of invasion. Manchu Dynasty, Mongols, etc.
So in short, a city needs four things: resources, defenses, infrastructure, and obviously a population.
I've got a project I started on recently - a somewhat secluded island, with four tribes living on it. They're not much on city building, but there is one major city on a cliff near the center of the island, with a name that roughly translates to Cinnamon Falls - because it's by a waterfall, and the bark of the trees that grow there is used as a spice, like cinnamon. The waterfall provides water, the cliff face means opportunities for mining, the bark and fruit of the trees are in high demand, so all that takes care of resources. The fact that it's on a cliff makes it fairly easy to defend, not only from potential invaders but also from floods or earthquakes, both of which are fairly common on a volcanic island. The city's location makes it a perfect place for trade, since the ledge it's on is a choke point on one of the few roads between the north and south of the island.
Could be interesting to look at the sustainability of this bark trade. Are the trees easy to grow in large quantities and farmed? How long do they take to grow? How sustainable is the trade. Are people just pulling bark off of any of the trees and selling it? How sustainable is that? I'd think if it were profitable then loads of people would try their hand at taking bark and selling it. That could cause massive issues. Are there laws against that? Does any one group with military force have a monopoly over the bark? When do the fruits come? Is there a process for readying the bark for sale? Why is it so valuable? I find asking and being asked questions is the best way to formulate answers and thus a better world. If that doesn't work for you then that's cool. But this world intrigues me. One last one though. Don't forget about human's natural curiosity. Has anyone tried to leave the island and find external trade or new lands and resources and if not, why not?
Another interesting thing: maybe look at some architecture from Japan. I don't know much about it but apparently large stacks of rock foundation were used to make them essentially earthquake-proof. If earthquakes are common maybe similar structures would be used
@@19IRGB I feel like you've already put more thought into some aspects of this project than I have ^^;;;
I haven't really thought about the long-term economics, but there is at least one point in there that I can address: the island natives wouldn't dare travel out of sight of land, because the seas are inhabited by dragons, who are fiercely territorial and can cause massive storms. The island natives are afraid of the dragons, for good reason, and some see them as incarnations of the plague god (I'll come back to that in a moment). There are other lands nearby though, just out of sight of land, including a society on a continent to the northeast, based in part on medieval Scandinavia, and one of the tribes on the island came from that society. They see the dragons as a blessing, because they're from a place where there's plenty of high ground, so to them floods mean fertile soil, plus they're far enough north that sub-arctic blubber-fish, an excellent source of food and oil, gather around the dragons looking for food, kind of like how remoras cling to sharks - so the center tribe and the mainlanders they came from see the dragons as fertility gods.
I said I'd come back to the plague god thing, and here's where I do that: on an active volcanic island, storms, earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions are fairly common events, generally accepted as a normal part of life. The island is peaceful, at least for the time being, and isolated enough that they don't generally have to worry about being invaded (not that it's out of the question, it just isn't a concern right now). Also volcanic ash is constantly providing new fertile soil, and the fact that most of the island is rock means that it doesn't have the drainage a larger land mass would, so in its current state a drought or famine is virtually impossible. All of that in mind, there's really only one thing the natives could meaningfully associate with destruction, and that is disease. Secluded islands tend to be breeding grounds for particularly nasty fungal and bacterial infections, and in such an isolated environment, any disease is going to spread through the population like wildfire. The plague god plays a similar role in the natives' mythology to Sutekh in Egyptian myth or Angra Mainyu in Zoroastrianism. There are wild cats on the island, something similar to tigers or leopards but much better at imitating human speech (although they don't understand it and still have the intelligence of a four year old), and some natives see them as avatars of the plague god. I already mentioned that some natives see dragons as incarnations of the plague god. The one thing the natives fear more than anything, the one thing they have reason to fear more than anything, is breakouts of wasting diseases.
Also, I feel like I should clarify that lopakwi is in high demand *on the island,* not necessarily in the world at large.
@@notoriouswhitemoth perhaps part of their calendar and date system could be based upon the last great plague and stuff as it seems to be the really big 'event' that occurs every once in a while. That'd give it some distinction from most world's that exclusively use the seasons/sun/moon.
@@notoriouswhitemoth where does the demand come from? Possibly the fact/belief that it helps prevent plague?
"A city doesn't just pop into existence by accident, nor are they just a collection of buildings either."
Looks like somebody didn't play SimCity.
Here before 1 billion subscribers
same
Box Boi me too🤪 how strange
Same 8)
I appreciate all the Colorado references!
In waterdeep the city has a magical area that makes dragons unable to enter it.
I really really love this kind of videos, please keep making this kind of content.
Great overview as usual. Keep up the good work!
Venice wasn't as well defended as Tenochtitlan, since you couldn't just sail a ship to Tenochtitlan. You would have to cross land and then get across the lake at the centre of an endorheic basin, building ships on-site, or bringing them over 100 mi inland.
You should have maybe included, that suburbs as we know them nowadays are only possible because of fast and far reaching transport and an overproduction of food. If a limited area has to support the city, fertile land is more valued, and therefor cities tend to densify.
Totally taking notes, as if its a study course.
This was great. Look forward to a continuation of the series.
You deserve more subs
Constantinople was also a good example of a near impossible city to take!
Thank you for the awesome video, this really helping me a lot getting back into world building again.
This video reminds me of a town near my rl home. Said town is over 750 years old and didn't go beyond the size of a small town.
Would you say proximity to a coastline could be a bad thing cause all the water there is saltwater?
Past worldbuilding a defined means of problem solving will grow a story itself.
Great points. Just when I think I've learned everything I need to know about world building, I find out more.
Just a thought though (feel free to ignore): have you thought of a different outro moniker?
watching a pre covid video talk how disease was rampant in urban areas like it's something that doesn't happen today
Something you really should've added to the placement/infrastructure segment is drinking water. I know you brought up cities being built on or near water for trade, but if all of it's saltwater or heavily polluted water, everyone's going to die of thirst before they can strike it rich on the stock market. Most of the earliest cities sprung up because they were on or near areas that were rich in both fertile farmland and drinking water and later cities followed suit. It really wasn't until the industrial and modern ages that technology allowed the transportation of water across great distances to desert cities like Las Vegas. If you built a city in your fictional world that wasn't near a water source, much of its economy would be centered around trading for daily water imports; if one shipment failed to to come in, it would be in crisis.
In all likelihood, the places most suited to space commerce will be low-gravity worlds where landing and takeoff take less fuel. Aside from that, it would have some sophisticated orbital infrastructure.
0:49 Wtf I'm french and I live in a town in France which is also called Gentilly.
"A city don't pop into existence on accident."
Me playing Civ5:
Sometimes cities were built because someone pointed on a map. Saint Petersburg… 🤷
Also, all of the large cities with staggering traffic flow issues are adjacent to a large body of water... and it is a large contributing factor of the traffic congestion. LA, Chicago, and NYC.... all one less egress point by land and a large population. More people and fewer ways to leave [on land].
Not even a stone wall, wooden palisade and a moat, even dry one. That's the most basic stuff you can do to defend your city. It's also very effective against enemies that don't use siege equipment.
Thank you for making these videos!
The Walls Have Machicolations sometimes T-T.
Daniel Duntavs Saunders uh, do you mean MACHICOLATIOOOOOOOONNNNNNNSSSSSSAHHHHHH!!!?!?!?!!
I never thought I would game at Denver and mecca in the same sentence
Most of the worldbuilding about cities in this video is basically what I learn in history. It's the only reason I care about history.
Thank you for this video, very informative!
this is paramount info, especially as I play dungeons and dragons, a lot of this can help me make a convincingly realistic setting for my next adventure I have planned. thank you for your time. can you recommend a good book series for me? big LOTR Shannara, Star Wars, Lovecraftian fan
edit at the end of video: I subbed my dude
i never thinked about write something but with this series of worldbuilding videos maybe im gonna try, because why not? :)
Don't need to be an author to enjoy your videos I love the history involved. However it is a great notebook to world creators or creative thinkers which I think everybody is at some degree and level during there meditation throughout the day
Ok, so if I'm understanding, the first thing about world building is, well, building the world, after the world itself is set up, y'know, resources, wind and air-flows, that kind of thing,
After that, you can begin designing things like magic systems, if your world has them, who has control of them, and how hard they are to control,
Once you know that information, you start on mounts, what they consist of and what their capabilities and limitations are, this helps you decide where people can go,
And once you know the limitations of where people can get to from any given location, you can then start deciding where cities would be, picking strategic points that allow for the city to evolve in the way that civilization should,
A warlord would pick places to make travel nearby dangerous for opposition, if possible, preventing any supplies from getting between two allies, and even using cities to try to encroach on someone else's land, their cities will have various walls to protect from outside attacks, or, with a cheap wall, to defend the construction of the next wall while they move forward (I've done that at least a few times in various Civ-style games), this city's population in general is likely to be highly trained, prepared to defend or attack at a moment's notice,
An economist would pick places people travel frequently, preferably near valuable commodities that people would treasure (delicacies, jewels, metals, that kind of thing), that way they can attract new customers, or just sell to those who happen to be taking this route anyway, the population, being mostly merchants, is not combat oriented, HOWEVER, merchant republics also tend to attract mercenaries, places where you can buy an army rather than training new recruits,
Only a minute and a half in so this might be mentioned later lol, but...and I am admittedly being a smart ass here, though correct, the reason why cities tend to be on water, primarily rivers, is because water literally equals life. It's where you can grow food, feed your livestock and get...wait for it...water...lol to drink. Coastlines were also crucial but not so much for trade, but for the seafood. It's more about being able to survive than trade is all I'm saying. Easier trade is just a bonus.
Mortal Engines and Arknights answer to making cities: just make them movable
5:07 fortifications was very importent even in the age of gunpowder. Sure you can reduse them using siege artillery, but then your army louse its speed, becuse the need to haul the siege artillery around, and it will take time to reduse a fortifcation. Hence you waste lots of time. You can bypass the fortification, but fortification is normaly construct at a strategic postion, like beside importent river or a road junction, so bypass them threaten your logistics.
No fortress is impregnable, its all about how mutch time and resources the attacker is willing to "waste" Time for the defender to assemble there army, call in there allieds etc
Its not untill the industrial age, a army can bypass a fortification, becuse technology allow suplie to a army far away from traditional logistic hubs.
You should play Martian Skylines
If layouts of places dont make sense, you should include weird ass stories or local eccentrics to make them mold that...
HNARG. Why is world-building so difficult. If only there was an easier way.
The creators of the lotr movies should have watched this video
That's a good game, a little too easy after a while even on max settings
Hey, have you read the Red Queen series or the Queen of the Tearling? Do you think they're good? I'm in doubts with the red queen
2:42 If there are anyone in NASA watching this video, if you build a city or a settlement in Mars, please call it Bruno!
Lets turn the first off-world settlement into a meme!
Part 3: see trantor from the founsation series, perfect extrapolation of the concept
Great video 👍🏾
Normal people: Military
Me, a degenerate: Mill Tree
Song at 0:48?
oof i forgot surviving mars even existed
Paris has about 12 million inhabitants! We can't just ignore the metro region
What happened to the intro song?
It was not very good and didn't last very long.
Check out Patricia Crone's work on the history Mecca and its sketchy history
Why tf were we not taught this in school?? This is way more useful than "what is the capital of Bangladesh". How about WHY is the capital of Bangladesh?
Dhaka
@@meatiest1989 yes but *why*
But if a city is on the coast, couldn't it produce it's own food by having a fishing fleet?
If they were especially enterprising they could have seaweed farms and artificial islands supporting kilojoule dense foods as well.
Can you do a lovecrat review?
3:58 Well Morrowind is fudged.
“people need food to live. i don’t think that’s news to anybody”
what? people need food to live?
0:48 my answer was gird. Damn, I am stupid
You sound like Ben Sharpio
What city is that in? At 4:35
Yo moma
Paris City proper yeah 2 million but in reality it has more like 8 million to 10 million people in it's adjacent metropolitan area.
0:25 oops,I accidentally built a large complex settlement capable of housing at least 3 million people again... When will I stop?..
Do a video on magic schools.
Great job James! Your channel is great I hope that soon the rest of the universe catches on what they've losing by not following your channel
ancient rome could have had a population of 2 million people, so you don't need magic or high technology for massive cities
We don't talk about Bruno