Shillendar

[Braden Campbell]

My Old kingdom game has finally reached the "tiny human kingdom" based around the ancient elven fortress-tower of Shillendar. (LoB, 152-153).

Now, given that the structure is 900' across and 30' high (so... 2-3 stories) not to mention its central 150' spire... how many people could realistically and comfortably live inside the fortress, do we think?

[drewkitty ~..~]

Yay, a question about something for a game.... & not ..... err a min-maxing question.


The main level is 30 tall, nothing says anything about more than one floor. And the tower is located in the opposite wall from the gate. 900 feet is three football fields-ish. cut that by a third for walls a inner courtyard. Cut the rest by half to count for storerooms. Based on that, I'd guess that 3-4 hundred people would live there full time. During wartime it would go up to 5-6 hundred. During a siege up to a thousand, maybe as high as two thousand.
Most of the population of the fief would be living in the surrounding lands mostly farming. While the castle being half trained warriors, half building upkeep staff.

Tower pop....leader & family, and personal servants. 20 normally, and up to 100 during a siege.

[Library Ogre]

Well, let's see. You're looking at 900*900, or 810,000 square feet. We'll call it two stories, to make the math a little bit more conservative. Quick search says that each person is going to want between 100 and 400 square feet, so we'll sit at 250 sq feet per person. That gives us 3240 people, assuming living spaces are completely side by side with almost no common area.

So, I'd round down to about 2500-3000 people at full capacity, leaving you with 60k-185k square feet for common areas, hallways, and storage.

This assumes they get their food from the outside on a fairly regular basis. If they need to withstand a seige, you're going to see a lot fewer people, as they will need comparatively more storage space... or a few summoners.

[kiralon]

Depends if it was in decline or not. But for normal day to day i would say 50 odd soldiers, 12-24 cavalry and maybe 100-200 others people, with maybe half the soldiers on patrol at any given time, but could likely squeeze in 1000 or so in times of emergency.
It is a weird design likely made that way to make it harder for siege weapons to penetrate, because a lot of those walls are 50ft thick.

[drewkitty ~..~]

Well, let's see. You're looking at 900*900, or 810,000 square feet. We'll call it two stories, to make the math a little bit more conservative. Quick search says that each person is going to want between 100 and 400 square feet, so we'll sit at 250 sq feet per person. That gives us 3240 people, assuming living spaces are completely side by side with almost no common area.

So, I'd round down to about 2500-3000 people at full capacity, leaving you with 60k-185k square feet for common areas, hallways, and storage.

This assumes they get their food from the outside on a fairly regular basis. If they need to withstand a seige, you're going to see a lot fewer people, as they will need comparatively more storage space... or a few summoners.

You are a little bit off. it isn't 900 time 900. The castle is round, with diameter of 900 feet. Presuming the outer walls are 10 feet thick. That will make the square footage would be 608,097.6 square feet.
To include the inner walls will presume a person takes up 400 sq ft per person. That makes the max 'comfortable' population 1,520.
the main courtyard takes up about a third of the diameter so very roughly 1/7th of the area....so that takes it down to 1,393 living there comfortably.
That is the simple math.
I know the simple math is wrong because thing are more complex then that so there are missing variables from it.

[kiralon]

If you look at the map the walls are very very thick, and the layout is very wasteful of space

[drewkitty ~..~]

If you look at the map the walls are very very thick, and the layout is very wasteful of space

the building codes are that you build thick so when the neighbors come knocking on your walls they don't fall down.

It's a CASTLE. The walls are thick because people threw stones from catapults and trebuchets at them.
And it is only 30 feet tall, so they would have reinforced rooves also.

[Braden Campbell]

Still, its a lot roomier than I initially thought.

[kiralon]

Going by the map the walls are about 50ft thick, so yeah, if it was only 30ft tall they would be freakin hard to break through with siege weapons but relatively easy to overrun

[Braden Campbell]

Nah... I have the fortress sitting atop the Old Kingdom version of Castle Rock (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle_Rock_(Edinburgh). So there's only one real approach and the site itself is 250' above the rest of the countryside.