Quote from: kustenjaeger on 04 August 2026, 07:17:03 PMI've bought Battlefield Command in pdf as a result of reading this!

I've got some 10mm 1859 Austrians and Piedmontese and 1870 French which I can use, as well as 10mm SYW figures.

Edward

Edward, I would love to hear what you think of Battle Command if you get it out on the tabletop. I own it but haven't tried it out yet.

I've bought Battlefield Command in pdf as a result of reading this!

I've got some 10mm 1859 Austrians and Piedmontese and 1870 French which I can use, as well as 10mm SYW figures.

Edward

A great looking game. Admire your 6mm figures.

The impact of the Black Death was significant:
The figure of 23,000 tax paying citizens (in 1377 - excluding the poor, underage and the suburbs, as the actual City of London - within the walls - is actually very small) and reflects a sharp decline from London's pre-plague peak of c.80,000 to 100,000* residents around 1300. The next biggest city in England at that time (1377) was York, with c.12,000 tax payers.

* this figure had been remarkably stable for almost a centuary. I quote a series of well regarded academic city population numbers, in my book on the Khmer, but even Cairo, Constantinople or Bagdad were only c.250,000 in the late C13th. This was when both the northern & southern Song chinese capitals each were just under 1million, whilst Angkor is now recognised as the most populus conurbation on the plant at that time with at least 1 million plus. But Angkor was spread over 100+ square kilometers, and the royal palace (Angkor Thom) at it's heart probably had an adult population of c.44,000 max.

The impact of the Black Death in China was (in some cases) worse than in Western Europe. With some southern chinese port cities experiancing an over 90% fatality rate. Where as, in the case of Angkor, the impact seems to have been negliagable (not even a mention in the inscriptions, unlike a later small pox epidemic, spread by an invading Siamese army). So population desity appears to have been a very significant factor contributing to deaths. A decline from c.80,000 to 23,000 reflects that.

Interesting stuff.

Quote from: Duke Speedy of Leighton on 04 August 2026, 07:58:16 AMThat's a hell of a game, complete perfect storm.

I was outgeneraled, drew bad cards and rolled bad dice. Felt like a proper Austrian commander circa 1859.

I felt helpless with the panicked mass of infantry packed into that valley and I neither had the cards nor the dice to rally them, get them deployed and get them out....with French cavalry ready to pounce

I realise there is no such thing as an average, but I'll have one in mind to work around - about 6-7 (4-9 extended range). I know that population is given as Poll tax payers, which is those 14 years or older, and the information I have indicates that about a third of the population is thought to have been under 14, so where records give 60, the total people will be about 90, giving 10 to 25 houses. Most people will live 'Above the shop' if they are a smith, shop keeper etc, so no extra buildings.

Average population is 30-70, so 6 to 15 buildings.

Personally I like the theory Nd2s depending on the movement speed chosen (nothing more annoying than declaring a sprint in Savage Worlds, for example, and then rolling a 1!), but just worry about the handling effort of converting the results of regular d6s into d2s at the game table, especially if you're having to do it for multiple figures 

A nice book to have a look at, if you can find a copy is:

Nicholson, Graham & Fawcett, Jane; The Village in History; Weidenfeld & Nicholson; 1988.

Covers the development of the English village from around the Norman Conquest up to just before the Great War, looking at the way the land was farmed and how the village and building design changed as the way people lived altered.

It's just under 200 pages and well illustrated, which means it's bit of a broad brush approach given that it's covering 900 years of change.

One thing to remember is that after the Black Death population density droped considerably. 30-50% dead. It finished the fuedal system off.