In a message dated 7/23/2004 11:41:06 AM Eastern Daylight Time, Chris Turkel <zizban at adelphia.net> writes: > >On Jul 23, 2004, at 11:42 AM, Jose Marquez wrote: > >> Philip Hart wrote: >>> On Fri, 23 Jul 2004, Ken Koester wrote: >>>> This seems much too conservative. Agrarian France had 26M+; Britain, >>>> 5.6M+. Europe as a whole could not have been less than 60M, and the >>>> Empire is *at least* as large as Europe, to judge from travelling >>>> times >>>> (before teleportation, that is). China must have had at least 100M. >>>> . . >>>> . ah, I just pulled out my Braudel. In 1650, he cites a population >>>> for >>>> europe (including European Russia) of 100M; for Asia, of 250-330M; >>>> for >>>> Africa, of 100M. Your figures would lead to an extremely depopulated >>>> Empire, by human--er, Easterner (-: --standards. Not impossible, if >>>> the >>>> birthrate is extremely low. But to be that low, I'd say that all our >>>> expectations of what an Empire is, or does, or functions would be >>>> wildly >>>> off; the scale simply wouldn't translate to any experiences you care >>>> to >>>> name. >>> I've long wondered how the agrarian Dragaerans (say that 3x fast) >>> managed >>> to cope with the overcast. Perhaps they've been experiencing >>> diminishing >>> crop yields for many cycles now... >>> Also maintaining good topsoil for 200k years is probably difficult. >> >> Magic? > >Thats the big thing that changes the standard equation; magic. > > yeah, when you write fantasy you don't have to worry about the hard stuff. You just have magik fi x it. Sorta like computers. -- John D. Barbato, O.D.