Blue_Lion wrote:The Collation war campaign book actually covers an attack on the CS bread basket, they are stated as providing most the food needed by NA. So several non CS factions would help the CS stop such an attack on the bread basket.
Gonna need a citation on this one. It's not anywhere in CWC that I could find. The only mention of a "breadbasket" in the book is that CS Missouri is the breadbasket of the Coalition States.
And really, this is also outright contradicted by other sources. (Well get to that later).
eliakon wrote:Which honestly makes no sense.
The population of NA just isn't big enough to need a 'bread basket'
Yes and no. The population is certainly large enough to require it (about ~45 million sentients) if everyone was living concentrated in a few cities. They aren't, by and large, outside of the Coalition and a few outliers. Therefore, the CS has a "breadbasket" (CS MIssouri) but the rest of the continent doesn't seem to need one because there's more than enough arable land around the big cities that they produce what they need.
Freemage wrote:
You realize the continent has had a 'bread basket' since before the U.S. was founded, right? The central colonies served the same purpose, especially for the northern urban cities where there was less arable land.
Umm... no. This is not correct. The "central colonies" (i assume we're talking about the Viriginias) produced largely commodity crops. Tobacco and the like. New York and Boston both fed themselves, basically. (There was more than enough arable land around them to produce enough food to support the populations). Most food for the largest American cities pre-industrial revolution was grown within a 3-4 day cart drive from said city. The only exceptions might be grains and corn.
The existence of enclosed cities means you need a rather vast farming community to support them (unless you want to go all algae and mushroom farms with heavy genetic engineering--or, you know, full-blown Soylent Green).
Lots of acreage, but not a vast number of people. Once you get past about the 1920s technologically, 30-40 men can produce enough food to feed tens to hundreds of thousands. All it takes is tractors and piped irrigation. One man can work several hundred acres or more, easily, that way.
Once you get north of Michigan and Minnesota, the ability of the big cities up north to rely on purely local sources of food, particularly during the winter, is going to be dramatically reduced,
I have no idea why you would think this. Large swathes of modern day Canada are farmland, particularly in the areas inhabited in Rifts Earth. Quebec has an entire food culture centered around preserved foods precisely because that's how they fed themselves during the winter. (Thank you Bizzare Foods and Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations) You can grow more than en ough food to last you through the winter. You just have to store it right. Youve got your brain stuck in the modern "all food is always fresh" mode of going down to the supermarket and getting what you need from week to week. That's largely a mid-20th century and later contrivance. Before that, you generally had months and months of food on hand if you lived in a rural area, and in large cities, like NYC, storing preserved food to get the city through the winter was a major industry.
Trade is the only way to feed a city numbering six digits, let alone seven.
In the modern day, yes. In the recent past (as recently as the early 20th century).... no, not really. Food STORAGE and preservation is how you feed large numbers of people. Fresh food is a luxury.
And the only trading options available to Free Quebec and Northern Gun for food are the independent operations in the Magic Zone, the True Federation of Magic, or the Coalition States. The first are unreliable, the second are actively evil, and the third are someone you've demonstrated you can stand up against if it comes down to that. The choices are going to be pretty clear-cut.
... Northern Gun doesn't need outside food. I have no idea why you think they do. The Upper Peninsula is, outside of the major cities of NA like Chi-town or Lazlo, one of the safest places in all of North America. Virtually no monsters, very few D-Bees (and for the most part, all friendly, living under the radar since NG doesn't run them out as long as they behave), and almost no dangers. A worst, a few pirate raids, but NGs naval forces keep the coasts well patrolled. Sometimes, some gang-related highway robbery. That's it. Manistique is similarly safe (the other half of the UP). And that is some VERY fertile land. They can EASILY feed themselves.
Same with Free Quebec. The area around FQ is very fertile. There are hundreds of ranches and farming towns. They grow their own food, and patrol their own land.
Eagle wrote:The big cities in RIFTS would likely have some sort of internal food production. If you've got cheap fusion power, you can just set up some UV lights indoors and grow food all year round.
https://www.freightfarms.com/We don't really do it much today because it's cheaper to rely on the sun (which is free) and huge tracts of sparsely populated land in good climates. In today's economic environment, it's virtually never going to be cost competitive to grow wheat or corn in an indoor controlled system. But if you're on RIFTS Earth, where farming can be substantially more hazardous (and where fusion power makes electricity virtually free), it makes much more sense.
This is also quite possible/likely. Maybe not enough to feed the entire population in a giant fortress city like Chi-town or Waukeegan, but a good supplement. All it really takes is electricity, which, as Eagle points out, is expensive in modern day but essentially free on Rifts Earth for moderately high tech societies.
Freemage wrote:How often are your farms are regularly raided by rampaging Rhino-Buffalos, or haunted by Wendigos, though? The CS is the only nation thus far to put the military defense of rural communities as a priority (even if much of that is simply a side-effect of their campaign against the D-Bees and a desire to secure the Rifts).
Citation on that? And uh.. need i remind you that the CS, until recently,
included Free Quebec? They patrol their land vigorously, always have.
As for how often Rhino-Buffalos et al, terrorize a farm... often enough that many farmers, despite living in sub 20th century tech conditions, own an old laser rifle to run off predators or hunt with (RMB). The farms and ranches detailed in Rifts Canada could all easily stand off a few monstrous predators, and are cited as examples of the common ranch or farm in the area.
FreeQ had been deliberately holding its strongest military asset in reserve and secret,
Strongest, perhaps, but not even remotely their most numerous. They have several hundred thousand infantry. Not that Glitter boys make for good patrol vehicles anyway. Fast moving vehicles and mounted infantry make the best for patrolling borders and running off threats. FQ even has a hover-jeep they use specifically for patrolling the frontier because it is a good fast-response vehicle, and makes HEAVY use of the old style Sky Cycle.
in order to not tip their glittery hand too soon. That leaves their farms far more vulnerable.
Again, why? Holding their ~20,000 GBs in secret wasnt stopping them from deploying some of their 200,000+ soldiers to garrison and patrol duties. Which they do.
Most likely, farming in the wilds of the North are mostly going to be local affairs--a central town with a palisade (maybe constructed from scavenged MDC materials if available), with the farms immediately surrounding it. When monsters and their ilk come stomping through, the farmers all retreat into the walls with as much food as they can haul with their families, and hunker down and try to be a less appetizing target than the farms themselves. That's going to cut into the already shorter growing season.
A farm in Iowa, on the other hand, has a pretty solid barrier of patrolled land between it and the nearest wilderness, and may even have the ability to radio to inform the CS if something pops up unexpectedly, with the Coalition on rapid-deployment readiness for anything truly ugly.
The farms are actually mostly patrolled by Skelebots. (Not that that is a bad thing, really. Theyre plenty good at something like that.) Also, the farmers in outlying CS territory are allowed to own MD firearms to protect themselves and their farms.
Freemage wrote:Again, you're misunderstanding the situation I'm presenting. FreeQ has settlements throughout the territory. Each individual community can fund the defense of a small central town, but not a range of farmland. They also would likely produce enough food for themselves in a good year, but not be set up for export (that's the biggest hit for the short growing time--a lack of actual surplus).
The growing season is maybe 3-4 weeks shorter than most of the US' breadbasket areas. That's not enough to cause a sudden disparity in crop yield, it just makes certain crops non-viable. They can still produce plenty of surplus. The situation you're presenting is that Free Quebec (one of the most powerful nations on the entire planet) is somehow the Rifts Earth equivalent of a post-Soviet-occupation Afghanistan. They aren't. They were, until recently, a fully contributing member of the Coalition States, and are the second most powerful nation on the entire continent. They have hundreds of thousands of people under arms. Their territory is a VERY fertile swath of land, rich in natural resources, and plenty of livestock (including a ranch that raises Fury Beetles!) and fishing. They have the strongest human Navy on the planet after the New Navy.
These are not Third-World Poorhouse schlubs, and i dont know why you keep thinking/insisting that they are. Barring alien societies (like the Splugorth and their servitor races), Free Quebec is one of the most powerful nations on the planet, right behind the NGR and Coalition States. (Japan has higher tech but is quite a bit smaller). You keep equating them to being barely able to function, and that is CLEARLY not the case, as they were a going concern and self-sustaining before the CS even existed.
Say 10-20% of the towns need assistance (ranging from 'some crops lost' to 'everything outside the walls is a smoking ruin') in any given year. Deliveries from the CS each year would be targeted to those communities, and only those convoys would need protection; by paying for the CS to handle it, FreeQ saves having to pay for protection costs on the other 80-90% of the farmlands, which remain unmolested.
There's no evidence that their farmlands aren't producing more than enough food to feed their people, much less that they need assistance. They aren't under any more threat or attack then the CS farms. In fact, likely less, as the CS has a lot of enemies that will strike at it that are situated fairly close by (Federation of Magic, Tolkeen Revenge Squads, other magic users). Free Quebec is pretty much sitting out there alone, with no real enemies to speak of.
And here's a big part of it that you're missing. The manpower to defend that farming territory, in the way the CS polices the breadbasket regions of Iowa and northern Missouri, would require Northern Gun and FreeQ to not only pay the cost, but also to conscript their citizens.
... why? NG has a population of about 1.5 million or so, and a standing army (that they already pay for) of over 110,000. That doesn't include the mercs that arent employed with the IMCN that would be happy to take a garrison job for a season for easy pay. And you talk like NG having to pay soldiers to protect their farms would be a huge deal - it isn't. Theyre the largest single (human/non-Splugorth controlled) corporation on the planet after Triax. They make TRILLIONS a year in profit. They can easily afford it, not that they need to.
Free Quebec has a few million citizens (2.5-3) and has a standing army in the 300,000+ range when you include support personnel, navy, infantry, Armor, GB Legions, and PA/Air Force. Theyve never had to conscript anyone. In fact,
83% of their adult population is either currently serving in the military or has served. (IIRC, mandatory 2 or 4 year tour might be a requirement for males, dont remember, ill look it up later). They have a VERY patriotic population.
A place calling itself "Free [Anything]" is not going to be big on conscription, and the citizens are likely to balk at being drafted. Conscription and other coercive means of getting people to enlist, meanwhile, mean that the CS is able to do it much more cheaply than an all-volunteer force could.
Quite the contrary, a lot of the most "free" countries in the real world have mandatory military or civil service requirements for all citizens. In those countries, no one resents it, they see it as part of their responsibility to their country. FQ is largely the same.
And of course, we're not only talking about the Great North. The Pecos territory is largely desert and scrub grasslands, and thus also likely to lack much by way of local farming on a large scale. For all their love of independence, bandits tend to like to eat like everyone else. (For that matter, food lost from farms in Arkansas and Missouri to raids by the bandits, who then sell it in Pecos, would actually count as the CS 'supplying' the food, even if they never got paid for it.)
ill give you this. The Pecos Bandits raid CS Missouri constantly. However, they also farm quite well (or at least, people living in the "Pecos Empire" do). You've got northern texas and southern texas confused (north is a dustball, south is actually quite humid and wet, particularly near the MANY rivers). Southern texas is plenty good for farming a lot of staple crops like corn and wheat. And amazing for raising livestock (which the Simvan - hundreds of thousands of them - do). The Pecos Bandits trade heavily with the Indian Preserves in the area, which do quite a lot of farming.
Freemage wrote:The 'get in the walls and hide' thing that I'm describing is, by the way, how human settlements survived hostile incursions from other humans for centuries. You let the farms get raided and burned, then you go back out and rebuild. It's cheap and easy, in comparison to trying to maintain a full military force to fend off a threat that comes around once every 4-5 years. You make the central fortress something that's very painful to attack, so the marauders take what they want, burn as much as they feel like, and move on without actually wiping out your population.
Actually, such towns routinely had YEARS of food in storage. For quite a while, in a lot of European countries, it was a law that towns had to have a certain amount of food stockpiled for emergencies. (though, less raiding and more to save themselves from a bad year of crops or the like.) When those laws went under, is when famines started to be an issue - including the very famous Irish Potato Famine.
But such communities are ONLY self-sufficient, and that off-year when they get hit, they aren't even that.
I think you have a weird idea of how much land it actually takes to feed a person. I own less than a full acre of land, and i could feed my entire street if i planted it correctly. (10-15 families, probably 50+ people). If we were remotely intelligent, it would easily last us all year (as it is, with just a tiny 30x25 garden, i end up giving away canned veggies by the bushel every year so my basement doesnt fill up) via canning and preservation. You've got to get your head un-stuck from this late-20th/21st century mode of "you only keep a few days of food on hand".
In the medieval/pre-industrial world, and a world like Rifts Earth... you keep months to years of food on hand. And if you dont, the city you live in does, or a company or corporation does.
Get too far away from the central fortress, and you're out of luck when the monsters come around. So the land that can be used to support the community is limited, and that community is very vulnerable to food disruptions, with famine a real possibility during the bad years. CS convoys can help with that, and I've already addressed why, economically, it's cheaper to buy one year's worth of food every year over five-ten years to provide for five communities, than it would be to pay for military defenses for all of those communities for all five years.
Most of the major Non-CS population centers that are detailed, though, dont need to pay to hire more forces. A lot of them have plenty of forces to begin with. (Ill cover that a bit later).
The CS is the only group willing to draft a significant portion of their population,
Citation? The CS has never, to the best of my knowledge, had to draft a single soldier. (I dont have the newest Minion War books, so maybe then?) Even gearing up for the Siege, all they did was ramp up the patriotism, and recruit from the nearly endless supply of fools in the 'Burbs, who joined up just for the chance to get their families into one of the CS cities.
and devote a significant portion of their economic strength to arming that force, to maintain patrols over more farmland than they technically need to produce enough for for their people, for this year. They have large food stores, and have a surplus that they can sell off.
Citation that they are the only ones? Lazlo is said (Rifts Canada) to have a fairly large standing army, a police force, and militia, and protects all of the communities nearby that want to consider themselves "part of Lazlo". Basically everything for almost 100 miles, right up to the border of FQs claimed land. They certainly have enough land to feed themselves. And access to other-dimensional sources of food (they could buy foodstuffs straight from Center on Phase World of they needed to).
Hell, they might even allow foreign powers to come to depots on the borders and pick up the food themselves. Doing so would STILL be cheaper for the other factions than maintaining a CS-style military.
You dont need a CS-style military to protect farmland. A couple dozen to a few hundred guys that patrol regularly on fast moving vehicles can cover a gigantic area of farmland. See, for instance, the Colorado Baronies.
Blue_Lion wrote:the CS warcampain says in an adventure about an attack on the CS food supply that they provide most the food in NA and even nations like Lazlo get their food from them through a indirect source.(kind of hard for that to be miss understood as you claim.)
Again, citation?
Only "breadbasket" reference i can find in the entire book is referring to CS Missouri as the Breadbasket of the CS.
SereneTsunami wrote:If consumption is also a factor, then the CS has the most mouths to feed, and im not sure of the numbers, but could easily have over half of all the people in NA.
About a quarter of the population of the continent is the Coalition States, though at the time of that population quote (SB1 classic) Free Quebec was part of that overall number, as they were still a State.
Further, all of the other even remotely major areas that are detailed (Lazlo is only vaguely detailed, but its pretty clear they have large army, protect their borders and the surrounding lands) are either heavily implied to have their own food sources or outright stated to.
NG and Manistique certainly do NOT need food from the CS. They have one of the safest areas in North America for farmland. And a decent amount of seafood as well (being on the Great Lakes).
Free Quebec doesn’t either, and has a standing army that only the CS can rival on the continent.
The Colorado Baronies are surrounded by hundreds of ranches and farms (each Barony has about 2-3 times as many people farming or ranching as live in the “capital” and they are all well-armed (by OCC breakdown, lots of cowboys with guns and a bucketload of magic users).
Arzno sits just a few miles south of an entire confederation of towns that grow crops and have cattle ranches. (Clarkdale Confederacy).
Merctown is surrounded by farms - in fact, one of the ways it became Merctown was the Mercs taking over and protecting the farmers and civilians.
Los Alamo and Kingsdale are also surrounded by farms and protected by those cities.
By and large, the “people” of North America have no need of the CS’ food.
Im loving the Foes list; it's the only thing keeping me from tearing out my eyes from the dumb.