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[10ebbor10]

Oh, and remember, walls are a right we have to buy with taxes, or earn in some other way.

We've been given permission.

Note to self, read post more.

Anyway building a wall takes a lot of time, so I suppose we leave the pallisade intact and build around it, enclosing some of the fields. This gives extra grow space, and food production during sieges.

[Gervassen]

I played with the numbers a bit more. Feel free to tell me where your parameters differ and we can sort this out.

The walls of Phillip Augustus were 5100 meters long over 25 years, so 204 meters built a year.

If our town devotes 50 square meters of living space to each person (understood as adults) then 200 people would use a hectare of living space. Since the family business is often conducted on the first floor and living quarters are above, this also contains most our trades and shops. The inns, docking area, courthouse and library are a separate hectare, the market is its own hectare, and room for expansion is three hectares for 600 more people.

Five hectares are 50,000 square meters, which you can visualize as ten football fields. If the town is 250x200 and one side on the riverbank is not enclosed in the wall, that means a perimeter of 650 meters of wall.

It would take 3.2 years.

[GreatWyrmGold]

Under Phillip Augustus  beginning in 1190, Paris enclosed approximately one square mile in 20 foot walls 10 feet thick. It took about 25 years for a city of 30,000 people. Just saying!

We've got WAY less than 30,000 people. I'm not sure if we have [sqrt 3*(10^4)] people yet!
...[(sqrt 3)*(10^2)] is actually about how many people live in our town. Huh.

Anyways, that's convenient. Assuming our cities are in the same shape, our city's area would probably be about the square root of Paris's (assuming no room for growth was added), which would mean the wall was...let's see. For the sake of calculations, assume a square wall; the ratios should work out the same using whatever shape, but squares are easiest.
p_P=4s_P
A_P=s_P²
p_s=4s_s
A_s=s_s²
A_P=A_s²
s_P²=s_s⁴
s_P=s_s²
This doesn't sound right...I'm almost certain I made an error somewhere...

[MATHS REDACTED]

It would take 3.2 years.

Huh. This works out better. Let's go with 3 years, 2 months, and 12 days. Make it "and 2.5 months"--those extra few days will help us if something unexpected goes wrong.

[10ebbor10]

However, we got a quarry like structure and large scale brick production. Meaning that we might have less problems with supply, and hence, faster construction.

[GreatWyrmGold]

On the other hand, we probably have a lot less people to spare building the wall.

[LordSlowpoke]

Let's build a huge wall now and not run into problems when our growth sprawls outside said walls later. :3

We could even get seasonal workers after the next tax collection.

[Maldevious]

A quick Wikipedia search told me that the wall of Philip Augustus also had 77 semi-circular towers, 4 huge bastion towers, fifteen gates, and at least one fortress with ten more towers built into it. So, your simple wall and one tower will take considerably less time to build, proportionally.

[Gervassen]

Towers aren't that much more labor intensive or materials intensive, simply more skill intensive. A semi-circular tower every 66 meters is not a game changer. Howbeit, let's plow forward.

[kaian-a-coel]

It's a bit OOC, but about medieval stonework: french scientists decided that they weren't understanding the building of a medieval castle enough, and so just went on and built one. Using the 13th century techniques of course.
It started in 1997 and is supposed to take 25 years (because of the lack of workers). Meaning they are about halfway by now.
I visited it, and it was beyond absolute coolness. It was like I went back in time
All of that just to say that these guys might know a bit about how long it takes to build towers and wall, because they are building some with their own hands.

Completely OOC: When the scientists will finally fully understand how the egyptian pyramids were built, expect a full-scale replica being undertaken. Science is awesome.

[GreatWyrmGold]

Towers aren't that much more labor intensive or materials intensive, simply more skill intensive. A semi-circular tower every 66 meters is not a game changer.

Shuttup, shuttup, you're not helping!

It's a bit OOC, but about medieval stonework: french scientists decided that they weren't understanding the building of a medieval castle enough, and so just went on and built one. Using the 13th century techniques of course.
It started in 1997 and is supposed to take 25 years (because of the lack of workers). Meaning they are about halfway by now.
I visited it, and it was beyond absolute coolness. It was like I went back in time
All of that just to say that these guys might know a bit about how long it takes to build towers and wall, because they are building some with their own hands.

Why do the French never act the way fictional French people would?
...Probably the same reason Americans don't act like fictional ones. Usually.

[Mlamlah]

Towers aren't that much more labor intensive or materials intensive, simply more skill intensive. A semi-circular tower every 66 meters is not a game changer.

Shuttup, shuttup, you're not helping!

It's a bit OOC, but about medieval stonework: french scientists decided that they weren't understanding the building of a medieval castle enough, and so just went on and built one. Using the 13th century techniques of course.
It started in 1997 and is supposed to take 25 years (because of the lack of workers). Meaning they are about halfway by now.
I visited it, and it was beyond absolute coolness. It was like I went back in time
All of that just to say that these guys might know a bit about how long it takes to build towers and wall, because they are building some with their own hands.

Why do the French never act the way fictional French people would?
...Probably the same reason Americans don't act like fictional ones. Usually.

We only have permission to build one tower, so it doesn't really matter.

Personally, i find the historical french much more compelling than the "fictional" french. The french have always been badasses, they basically invented chivalry, and despite common belief they were badassing it up all the way into world war II, the french resistance basically invented the trenchcoat-wearing asskickers.

[Gotdamnmiracle]

So no on the strong hold? Okay. Tower it is.

[GreatWyrmGold]

How did fictional French get to be such wimps, anyway?

[javierpwn]

Why do fictional Americans never exercise? Same reason.

[Truean]

Mind if I join?

1.) First and foremost, pay The Rat something, pronto. Dude just saved our land, our liberty and our life. Find out what he wants, perhaps suggest something of the shiny gold/silver/gem-set-in-it variety. We will need him later. Let's keep him on our side and hope he keeps knives out of our back. Make it clear we appreciate him and -- without being pushy at all.

2.) Spend some time with the spouse. Happy wife; happy life.

3.) Start thinking about getting our connections in order. Ask the merchant working for us, Victor Irlof (if I got the name right), how things work in this place. Are there guilds or merchant companies? However things get traded, we need to figure it out and figure out how to start influencing that so among other things we can start enticing stuff to us and keep an ear out for the next lackey merchant the count tries to use. If there is no structure (guilds etc) in this place, then ask our merchant about how we could go about setting that up. Don't do anything yet, but consider building guildhalls in the future, holding organized guild contests at our festivals, etc, etc. Find out what kind of things our allies (the two knights and the industries in their towns) need and consider finding a way to provide it or trade it to them.

Nothing cements alliances like fattening your allies' wallets legitimately.

4.) Make believe you do not suspect the count and if possible like you are still loyal to him. I mean of course the one who drinks too much and likes to try and kill us.

Always forgive your enemies. That way they never see your vengeance coming.

Find his weakness. Exploit it. He likes the drink Pay as much of your taxes as possible in wine to keep him good and drunk. Consider subsidizing it if possible. Consider paying him a little more in wine value than he would've gotten in coin. More wine for him, less coin for him. The more drunk he is, the less clearly he'll be thinking. He'll either screw up at some point or drift into inebriation instead of assassination. Send in quantity only so he doesn't think we're trying to poison him (we probably shouldn't poison him when constantly drunk will do just as well).

Figure out what the count's drink of choice is and where he gets it.

Keep in mind that the count probably has spies in the duke's court and thus knows that we implicated him. Make believe we think it was just the wool merchant for now, should it come up.

Consider having the masons/ builders build more complicated housing for your people.
One of our biggest assets is living space. Condos and apartment complex like places will save some space and allow us to offer more of that to the right people.

A consistent enticement we have repeatedly used is giving people a place to live as a recruitment tool. We want to attract, train and retain top talent in industry and military. 

Have somebody survey our land to figure out where we can build walls on the edges.

I'm not sure how much time it would take to do all of these things, break them up if necessary, assuming people even want to do them/some of them? Up to you really.