Regarding towns

Hi Lads

Since I’m locked at home all day i have plenty of time to read various manuals, and I’ve come out with a curiosity that has probably been faced by others.

Many of you will have acquired the 18th century gazetteer, which list a number of towns and locations with population, small history and some info.
Possessing a huge nation I was considering if it is possible to make a similar gazzette but for the nation ( in my example, Russia has now about 60 named towns, and I do not know all of them, nor I have any idea regarding how population is distributed, if a town was a fortress or a trade post and so on.

I was considering if I might ask Richard to look into it, and how long would have taken.

Has anybody tried?

Hope everything is ok for you Nexus.

I recently asked Richard for the populations of all of the Russian towns and don't think he was expecting that. I tend to look up Wikipedia for histories of the towns as they have quite a bit of information. Richard has supplied some town populations so far - I said don't worry about any write ups - and I've found I've raised units in towns with Nil to 50 population so the unit is ten times the population they are serving One town of Nil population - that I assumed was large - has a night soil man unit, so only carrying it's own waste to a field, bet their not spreading it around either! The odd town here and there have wooden fortress/stockade type facilities which has no doubt added to my expenditure.

Recently G10 had another map including Russia in the newspaper and I found another 14 Russian towns on top of the 62 I had listed at the start, so I may well ask about their population later. It would be a lot of work to get to 20 million souls as I suspect a lot of the towns are not on the maps. If have to self isolate I may well create my own Gazetteer for Russia, though I have recently bought the new Shadowrun rules so will see how it goes.

Wishing you well, regards Mark

My experience in Spain is that Richard just adds towns to the turn roster as I do things there. Some list population of the town, some do not. It's kind of random.

I mostly end up adding towns when I refurbish a monastery or the like that historically existed and the town that it is in wasn't previously listed on my turn.

I hope you don't get bored, Nexus ...

I faced a similar problem with both England and the Papal States.

With England it became quite clear that the towns on the map were not necessarily the most important or largest - just those that happened to fill the map out. During the war enemies had a habit of marching into towns not on the map which were usually undefended, then I had a little mini map appear on my lists, and when the main England map was redrawn those towns also tended to appear on the main map. In Scotland we had the strange development that Edinburgh was split into Edinburgh and Leith; Glasgow into Glasgow and NewportGlasgow, contradicting the entry in the gazetteer. One thing I did notice was that the GM did provide gazetteer style entries when this happened so along with existing entries in the official Gazetteer and adhoc entries in the back pages of the newspaper I was able to build up a country-specific list of towns. I extended this to the colonies, requesting entries once a month, so now have a fairly complete picture. It is very useful when planning trade and improvements based on populations. You should be able to do this for Russia by the same methods, but it will take time.

With the Papal States I found a shortcut. I asked that night soil men be raised in all towns required to get a permanent increased chance of harvest. My thinking there was that I could guess which towns were important and spend months tinkering with things, but that still wouldn't bring me into line with the GM's records or give me the chance of an increased harvest. The response was that I was given an almost complete gazetteer list of the towns. This was probably because other players had already requested them and there were not that many so the work required wasn't huge.

I suggest that you try a combination of methods - ask the GM for a list of towns you would need to raise night soil men in (which should give you a complete list), then check the gazetteer/newspapers for entries you already have, and then request individual entries over time to build up the full picture.

I should also add that some players for Russia have deliberately developed towns or built new ones which could explain why 14 new Russian towns appeared on one map. The new maps as published in the newspaper do tend to be the same in both G7 and G10 newspapers during the month (and I assume in other games) and are redrawn depending on what happens in each game. So the England map is probably the result of the G7 war with lots of towns on it that would not necessarily have been requested by players in other games. I imagine a new Spanish map would appear in a game where Spain was building towns or at war.

Hope this helps,

Marshal Bombast wrote:Hope everything is ok for you Nexus.

I recently asked Richard for the populations of all of the Russian towns and don't think he was expecting that.  I tend to look up Wikipedia for histories of the towns as they have quite a bit of information.  Richard has supplied some town populations so far - I said don't worry about any write ups - and I've found I've raised units in towns with Nil to 50 population so the unit is ten times the population they are serving   One town of Nil population - that I assumed was large - has a night soil man unit, so only carrying it's own waste to a field, bet their not spreading it around either!  The odd town here and there have wooden fortress/stockade type facilities which has no doubt added to my expenditure.

Recently G10 had another map including Russia in the newspaper and I found another 14 Russian towns on top of the 62 I had listed at the start, so I may well ask about their population later.  It would be a lot of work to get to 20 million souls as I suspect a lot of the towns are not on the maps.  If have to self isolate I may well create my own Gazetteer for Russia, though I have recently bought the new Shadowrun rules so will see how it goes.

Wishing you well, regards Mark

Thanks Mark

Situation here is quite peculiar, but seems all europe is getting prepared (and i cannot stress it enough, stay home safe if you can, it's not a nice cough to take). I cannot stay home because i'm a pharmacist, but i do enjoy a much higher spare time and i think i'll be able to deliver my turn in time now

i've got your point, as you know Russia is quite hard on the defensive and trade set up, so i was hoping to get few info from Big R. but wikipedia end is a useful tool too.

regards

Luca

Deacon wrote:
My experience in Spain is that Richard just adds towns to the turn roster as  I do things there. Some list population of the town, some do not. It's kind of random.

I mostly end up adding towns when I refurbish a monastery or the like that historically existed and the town that it is in wasn't previously listed on my turn.

it happens the same on my sheet, so basically i'm putting on some elements, like an army camp, in any town i'm interested and get a free description of it

Papa Clement wrote:I hope you don't get bored, Nexus ...

I faced a similar problem with both England and the Papal States.

With England it became quite clear that the towns on the map were not necessarily the most important or largest - just those that happened to fill the map out.  During the war enemies had a habit of marching into towns not on the map which were usually undefended, then I had a little mini map appear on my lists, and when the main England map was redrawn those towns also tended to appear on the main map.  In Scotland we had the strange development that Edinburgh was split into Edinburgh and Leith; Glasgow into Glasgow and NewportGlasgow, contradicting the entry in the gazetteer.  One thing I did notice was that the GM did provide gazetteer style entries when this happened so along with existing entries in the official Gazetteer and adhoc entries in the back pages of the newspaper I was able to build up a country-specific list of towns.  I extended this to the colonies, requesting entries once a month, so now have a fairly complete picture.  It is very useful when planning trade and improvements based on populations.  You should be able to do this for Russia by the same methods, but it will take time.

With the Papal States I found a shortcut.  I asked that night soil men be raised in all towns required to get a permanent increased chance of harvest.  My thinking there was that I could guess which towns were important and spend months tinkering with things, but that still wouldn't bring me into line with the GM's records or give me the chance of an increased harvest.  The response was that I was given an almost complete gazetteer list of the towns.  This was probably because other players had already requested them and there were not that many so the work required wasn't huge.  

I suggest that you try a combination of methods - ask the GM for a list of towns you would need to raise night soil men in (which should give you a complete list), then check the gazetteer/newspapers for entries you already have, and then request individual entries over time to build up the full picture.

I should also add that some players for Russia have deliberately developed towns or built new ones which could explain why 14 new Russian towns appeared on one map.  The new maps as published in the newspaper do tend to be the same in both G7 and G10 newspapers during the month (and I assume in other games) and are redrawn depending on what happens in each game.  So the England map is probably the result of the G7 war with lots of towns on it that would not necessarily have been requested by players in other games.  I imagine a new Spanish map would appear in a game where Spain was building towns or at war.

Hope this helps,

Thanks Papa

first of all since i'm from Bologna and my wife is from Rome, feel free to ask any local info, i'll be happy to send you needed info (if you wish to of course)

I agree that Richard keeps cards in his hands and show them when he thinks it's time, i'll won't get bored for that (not after two famines in a row and a financial failure).

I'll do as you suggest and keep a track of newspapers feed