Discussion:Import/Export Ideas for towns and cities in the middle ages

Lyrad8791 21:36, 11 October 2011 (MDT)

So, I am working on building a "Campaign World" and have come to the point of building towns. While I have populations and such as well as the ruler type for towns setup in my head, I need ideas, and good reasoning behind them, for Imports and almost more importantly, Exports. I have one town, by the name of Ion, which exports Iron and Coal. The town depends heavily on the sale of Iron, but gets by with the amount of Coal that they mine out as well. I have towns that live in forests, plains, and sea shores or islands. Currently, I am working on the mountain type towns to see what would be exported and why as well as what would be imported. What I mean by this, is large quantities bought and sold by the town to other towns. Any takers on this?

Mordred the dark (talk) 20:04, 13 October 2014 (MDT)

Okay so it depends on the type of mountains. Colder parts of the mountains would most likely import furs especially if they didn't have a decent forest around the base of the mountain. Most mountains would have to import vegetables and most fruits. Most of the food that grows in rocky terrain is olives and grapes. Where it isn't rocky but is cold mostly potatoes and berries would be grown. Most other food you would need to import. Otherwise as long as they had craftsmen in town they wouldn't need to import tools or weapons. Forests would produce wood and furs (barring Druid protection) while orchards near the edges of the forest would make most of the fruits. Plains would have lots of farmland surrounding towns. like, miles of walking from first farm to actual town. Vegetables, spuds, squashes, chicken eggs, cow milk, meats. There may also be a few farms that raise and train horses for trade. Sea towns would mostly depend on tech level here. Sandstone quarries, glassware, and pearl farming would be slightly above middle ages but possible in a fantasy setting with magic. Otherwise fish, seafood, some jewelry made of shells and few pearls. Also these towns tend to be much larger as they are centers of trade for far off kingdoms. This holds especially true for an island country. Mordred the dark (talk) 20:04, 13 October 2014 (MDT)

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