TribeNet: Village walls, ditch/moat sizes From: Patrick Travers <ptravers@flash.net> Date: Tue, 07 Oct 1997 00:00:00 +0000 Greetings, fellow chiefs! I've been contemplating digging a ditch or a moat and building some walls around my fledgeling village. However, there doesn't seem to be a table in the rules that covers this sort of thing, so I've done some calculating and this is what I came up with. All ditches, moats, and walls in TribeNet are circular (according to Peter the Unpronounceable). Within a ditch, moat, or a wall, each goat takes up 1 sq. yard of space. Each person, cow, and horse takes 5 sq. yards of space. I don't know how much space an elephant takes, but it's bound to be a lot (anyone that knows this bit of trivia please tell me). The formula for calculating the area of a cirle (as we all know) is: Pi * r^2 (in english - Pi times the radius of the circle squared) Problem is that in TribeNet you specify the circumference of the ditch, moat, or wall - not the radius. Therefore, the formula to find the area based on the circumference is: 0.07958 * Circumference ^ 2 Ok, now what does this mean? Well, according to the rules, the minimum ditch/moat/wall size is 120 yards. Plugging 120 into the formula above gives you a total area inside the circle of 1145.9 sq. yards. This will allow a total of 229 people/cattle/horses within the ditch/moat/wall. That's not very many people, even if you ignore the animals! Here are the numbers for a variety of sizes: Circumference Area People/Cattle/Horses that will fit inside ------------- ---------------- ----------------------------------------- 120 yards 1145 sq. yards 229 200 yards 3183 sq. yards 636 300 yards 7162 sq. yards 1432 400 yards 12732 sq. yards 2546 500 yards 19895 sq. yards 3979 600 yards 28648 sq. yards 5729 700 yards 38994 sq. yards 7798 800 yards 50931 sq. yards 10186 I presume any people, horses and cows in excess of these numbers are left outside to fend for themselves if an attacker rolls into your hex. Ok, now that we have these numbers, just how many logs and stones does it take to build these walls? I'm glad you asked! It takes 3 logs to build 1 yard of 10 foot log wall. It takes 30 stones to build one yard of 10 foot stone wall; an additional 45 stones to build a yard of 15 foot stone wall, and an additional 60 stones to build a yard of 20 foot stone wall. Hence, each yard of 20' stone wall takes 135 stones. Logs for Stones for Additional Stones Additional Stones Circumference 10' walls 10' walls for 15' walls for 20' walls ------------- --------- ---------- ----------------- ----------------- 120 yards 360 3600 5400 7200 200 yards 600 6000 9000 12000 300 yards 900 9000 13500 18000 400 yards 1200 12000 18000 24000 500 yards 1500 15000 22500 30000 600 yards 1800 18000 27000 36000 700 yards 2100 21000 31500 42000 800 yards 2400 24000 36000 48000 That does not include towers, of course. By the way, each tower increases the usable space inside the wall by increasing the circumference of the wall. I didn't calculate that in (anyone that wants those numbers is masochistic). To sum it all up, I will buy a beer for the first person on Mangalia to have 800 yard 20' stone walls with a full complement of stone towers. Lemme see - that'll probably be in the year 2,010. ;) Just thought you might like to know. Cheers, Patrick Up