Figuring out the hex size on the City State of the World Emperor map

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robertsconley

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One of the mysteries of the original run of Judges Guild products is the scale of the map of the hexes on the City State of the World Emperor.
Blog Post: https://batintheattic.blogspot.com/2019/04/figuring-out-scale-of-viridstans-map.html

Viridistan_Scale_3.jpg


Nowhere on the above the map or in the text of CSWE is how big each hex is and has remained a minor mystery for the past 35 years.

Recently I realized that the city map to Tarantis is drawn in a similar style to CSWE. While it doesn't have hexes it does have a scale.

So I superimposed a section of Tarantis on top of CSWE and resized Tarantis until the main street, alleys, and building look comparable to the same on the CSWE map.

Viridistan_Scale.jpg


I then made the Tarantis map transparent and moved the scale over on of Viridstan's hexes. And viola! It looks like each hex is 120 feet.

Viridistan_Scale_2a.jpg


While my works is an elaborate guess it makes a lot of sense. It unlikely to be 240' feet, but it could have been 60 feet. Or the 60 yards of the Thunderhold Map. Making the scale 120' would make the size of the building comparable to those in Tarantis.

If ever get around to drawing the City State of the World Emperor that the scale I will go with.

Wilderlands of the Magic Realm News
Ordered the proof copy, the release should be mid-April
 
Thanks for that! I am so glad I have original copies of CSIO and CSWE; when they were first published I'm sure it seemed like there would be a lot of similarly detailed and complete city settings published, but it sure didn't turn out that way. After 45 years of this business there are surprisingly few published cities that don't take the coward's way out and wand wave all the details.
 
+1...

The single page CSIO map that I have that has a square grid has 120' squares so 120' hexes match up nicely. What's nice is that one square or hex is one turns movement (assuming 2 moves in a turn with 6" movement since someone is always in heavy armor...).
 
I know this thread is a couple years old but felt the need to reply to it. I, too am trying to figure out the scale so I can use this in a campaign I am running.


If 1 hex = 120', then this is a city for giants.

Here is my breakdown:

My old hard copy from the original I bought from the store back in the early 80's each shows each hex as 5/8" when I measure it with a ruler.

Thus if each hex = 120' then 120/5=24' per 1/8 or 12' per 1/16" on the map.

Each average doorway on the city map measures to be about 1/16"

So if each hex of 5/8" = 120', then just about every doorway in the whole city is at least 12' wide (over 4 times the size of any average door), even on the tiniest hovel or shop. The roads leading up the gates are then 12*4=48' wide (note a Roman road was typically only 8' wide. A small street would be 1/8-3/16" wide or 24' to 36' wide at that scale. Pretty luxurious for a back alley shop.

I think more realistically would be 30' per hex. Which would give:
Regular door width= 3'
Small side street alley width = 7.5' wide
Entrance to gate Road Width = 12'
Gatehouse over a road = 27' which matches a lot of gate houses you can find on castles using google maps.

I base this solely on what makes sense at that scale and not going by an game materials comparison.

If this logic follows, then one might want to rethink the author's scale on the Tarantis map as well. I could not find a PDF of that map online but it was only a short search.

Please let me know if you see a flaw in my logic above.

Thanks!
 

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BrianGodiva BrianGodiva
I would consider the doorways drawn to scale. More like a suggestion of where the door is on the building.
As for the street scale and building size yes they are pretty darn wide (or long for buildings) compared to life.

It not just CSWE or Tarantis it is CSIO as well.

Consider this with 120' square
1620051529784.png

Which is why when I redrew CSIO for my Majestic Wilderland I did this instead. On the left is the City of Aleath from Harn and the right isa slice of my CSIO for the Majestic Wilderlands. I pick roughly the same area and the square are now 60'. Now when I originally drew this (the paper version) in the late 80s I had to eyeball it. Obviously I did not get it quite right but it was close.

1620053606989.png

1620054196832.png
Handdrawn version


I think if you went with 30' it would be fine. The Wilderlands is highly malleable to that kind of tinkering.

The problem for me is that I had two types of project when I was still working on the Judges Guild stuff. I had my Majestic Wilderlands where I fixed up things so they were consistent with how things worked out better in play. This includes expanding the hex scale of the maps from 5 miles to 12.5 miles. And reducing the city scale so the building had reasonable proportions. So I did pretty what you do did for my own material.

The other was to present the original material 'as is' with a better presentation and only mistake that were consider mistakes back in the day were fixed. For example the toe of one the major islands in the Wilderlands was shifted by a hex row when it straddled a map border (Isle of the Blest and Silver Skein Island). Luckily I didn't have to make a lot of judgement calls on that as that list was drawn up during the Necromancer Game Boxed set project and I kept a copy.

And that mean in some regions you can see the smoke from a chaotic evil village from a lawful good village along with what you noted about giant sized doors and street widths.
 
BrianGodiva BrianGodiva
I would consider the doorways drawn to scale. More like a suggestion of where the door is on the building.
As for the street scale and building size yes they are pretty darn wide (or long for buildings) compared to life.

It not just CSWE or Tarantis it is CSIO as well.

Consider this with 120' square
View attachment 30397

Which is why when I redrew CSIO for my Majestic Wilderland I did this instead. On the left is the City of Aleath from Harn and the right isa slice of my CSIO for the Majestic Wilderlands. I pick roughly the same area and the square are now 60'. Now when I originally drew this (the paper version) in the late 80s I had to eyeball it. Obviously I did not get it quite right but it was close.

View attachment 30399

View attachment 30400
Handdrawn version


I think if you went with 30' it would be fine. The Wilderlands is highly malleable to that kind of tinkering.

The problem for me is that I had two types of project when I was still working on the Judges Guild stuff. I had my Majestic Wilderlands where I fixed up things so they were consistent with how things worked out better in play. This includes expanding the hex scale of the maps from 5 miles to 12.5 miles. And reducing the city scale so the building had reasonable proportions. So I did pretty what you do did for my own material.

The other was to present the original material 'as is' with a better presentation and only mistake that were consider mistakes back in the day were fixed. For example the toe of one the major islands in the Wilderlands was shifted by a hex row when it straddled a map border (Isle of the Blest and Silver Skein Island). Luckily I didn't have to make a lot of judgement calls on that as that list was drawn up during the Necromancer Game Boxed set project and I kept a copy.

And that mean in some regions you can see the smoke from a chaotic evil village from a lawful good village along with what you noted about giant sized doors and street widths.
I considered the idea of the doors being indicators too and not to scale as well. At 30' per hex, Viridistan can be a congested ancient city, but the one problem I found with my 30' is that then, the city that is the capital of "The World Emperor" becomes pretty dang small. It would be only the size of the area of the main road the surrounds the Acropolis in Athens. Smaller than the Vatican and no where near as large as Rome. It makes you think that the World Emperor has overly ambitious hype-men exalting his name. Though I did find some old versions of Viridistan with much larger scale and dimensions, but not any real architecture.
 
I considered the idea of the doors being indicators too and not to scale as well. At 30' per hex, Viridistan can be a congested ancient city, but the one problem I found with my 30' is that then, the city that is the capital of "The World Emperor" becomes pretty dang small. It would be only the size of the area of the main road the surrounds the Acropolis in Athens. Smaller than the Vatican and no where near as large as Rome. It makes you think that the World Emperor has overly ambitious hype-men exalting his name. Though I did find some old versions of Viridistan with much larger scale and dimensions, but not any real architecture.
This?
1620129408527.png
 
Off topic, but I find it interesting that these maps use the S.P.I. hex-numbering system. IIRC, TSR had to get permission to do so with Empire of the Petal Throne.
 
I considered the idea of the doors being indicators too and not to scale as well. At 30' per hex, Viridistan can be a congested ancient city, but the one problem I found with my 30' is that then, the city that is the capital of "The World Emperor" becomes pretty dang small. It would be only the size of the area of the main road the surrounds the Acropolis in Athens. Smaller than the Vatican and no where near as large as Rome. It makes you think that the World Emperor has overly ambitious hype-men exalting his name. Though I did find some old versions of Viridistan with much larger scale and dimensions, but not any real architecture.
So according to Bob Bledsaw Senior, Viridistan's population should be pegged at 200,000 people. Which if you look at various sources or a nice summary like Medieval Demographics Made Easy by S. John Ross, one will see that a medieval city of 200,000 will cover a little under 3,300 acres or roughly a square 2.3 mile on each side. In 120 ft hexes that would mean 100 hexes by 100 hexes, in 30 ft hexes this would mean 400 hexes by 400 hexes.

So yup a bit on the small side.

Medieval Demographics Made Easy calculator
Fantasy Demographics My own take on the building type calculation

Personally I let it side due to the playability of both CSWE and CSIO. When put side by side CSWE feel bigger to my players than CSIO. And both are vast as far as the players goes.

However when it comes to my own efforts like Eastgate below, I calculate it out and go with whatever the numbers are. Below I use 120 feet squares and it amounts to a population of 30,000 as the urban area covers around 481 acres. The width of the city is 1.2 miles and the height is .6 miles. Note it is a work in progress.

1620130993743.png
 
Off topic, but I find it interesting that these maps use the S.P.I. hex-numbering system. IIRC, TSR had to get permission to do so with Empire of the Petal Throne.
I have not heard of that one. Why would numbered hex grids require permission?
 
I have not heard of that one. Why would numbered hex grids require permission?
IIRC, it was an S.P.I. innovation--they began using it in late 1972 or early 1973--and they had intellectual property rights over it. I don't know the legal details and likely wouldn't understand them in any case.
 
...Which if you look at various sources or a nice summary like Medieval Demographics Made Easy by S. John Ross, one will see that a medieval city of 200,000 will cover a little under 3,300 acres or roughly a square 2.3 mile on each side. In 120 ft hexes that would mean 100 hexes by 100 hexes, in 30 ft hexes this would mean 400 hexes by 400 hexes.

.....
Will certainly read it in full (looks like but what is the assumption on building height and type? 2-3 stories with some space? Or more like Sienna, 5-6 story solid blocks with no gaps, or like Çatalhöyük just a mass of dwellings one on top of the other.

It's nice to have medieval statistics as a touch point but it is very important to know the source and the assumptions. Once you know those then can get a better idea of what is actually possible. Especially in a fantasy world where magic and fantasy materials could change how high you could build, or how much food land can produce (heck one good weather control spell could prevent famine) but also make things harder with added dangers.

It seems, and I could be wrong, that RPG city game aids rely on 1 primary source filtered through a secondary source.

Specifically, the tax list of Paris in 1292, as found in Life in a Medieval City by Joseph and Francis Geis (Harper and Row, 1981...but when I have seen this work cited elsewhere it is 1969, so likely 1981 is not the first addition) a book by amateur historians, that is the interpretations and sources have never been subject to question as they might be in a peer reviewed journal. Not that this work is without use, just take it with a grain of salt. Also I want ot be fair to the original authors, I recall looking at Life in a Medieval City at some point and my recollection is great liberties were taken to go from the book to RPG game aid.

If it (the calculator) is based on Paris then, my view is you could easily double the population density and still be within what medieval northern Italian cities had.
 
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IIRC, it was an S.P.I. innovation--they began using it in late 1972 or early 1973--and they had intellectual property rights over it. I don't know the legal details and likely wouldn't understand them in any case.
I think I recall hearing this as well, true or not. Would love to hear the argument about the creative content of sequential numbering that provides it with copyright protection. They may have had intellectual property rights on the printing technique though, could see that.
 
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I really really like "medieval demographics made easy. But according to it, a population density of 30 per square mile is the lowest reasonable, "for countries with lots of rocks, lots of rain, and lots of ice—or a slave-driving Mad King". In 1600 my country of Sweden had a population density of somewhere around 6 per square mile. That's after the medieval period and still nowhere near the lower limit. In 1800 Sweden was still at a population density of 13.5 per square mile. In 1900 Sweden was at 29.5 people per square mile. So still below the low limit for a medieval country.
 
I really really like "medieval demographics made easy. But according to it, a population density of 30 per square mile is the lowest reasonable, "for countries with lots of rocks, lots of rain, and lots of ice—or a slave-driving Mad King". In 1600 my country of Sweden had a population density of somewhere around 6 per square mile. That's after the medieval period and still nowhere near the lower limit. In 1800 Sweden was still at a population density of 13.5 per square mile. In 1900 Sweden was at 29.5 people per square mile. So still below the low limit for a medieval country.
Medieval Scotland, is even lower, like 4 per square mile. So 30 per square mile is more like a "maximum" than a minimum, especially for rough country.

Your observations on Sweden I think are right on point. The medieval Nordic counties had far lower population densities than England and France, certainly didn't stop them from being the ones doing the raiding Instead of being raided.

I also suspect the density of Mongols in their home territory was very, very low. The Mongol Empire also being a medieval entity. A very quick google search says 110 million people over 9.1 million square miles. Let us say 12 per square mile. As a large percentage of that population was concentrated in China, can only imagine the population density of the Mongols in their homeland was very low indeed, certainly a good bit below 30. They too were not taking any gruff from their neighbors, very much the opposite.

Without knowing the assumptions the game aid makes, such pronouncements are pretty meaningless, and a little bit of actual knowledge (primary references and not tertiary at best) shows how much salt you need to take these things with.

I really think there is no lower limit for a medieval country. What can't all the people just live in one city/region and lay claim and project military power to the rest? Certainly the low population densities of the Vikings and Mongols did not hold them back.
 
Well, the one thing you really don’t tend to get with such low population densities is big cities. City states happen where there is a fairly high population density. Neither the medieval Mongols nor the Viking age Scandinavians were known for their cities.

in general, the extreme over reliance on England and France when talking about “how things were” in the medieval period bothers me. England especially is in so many ways an extreme outlier, France a lot less so. But really, every place is unique. Just like today. And an average is just that, and seldom representative of anything real.

There’s an average city density in the modern US. I’m not sure what it is, but it exists. Meanwhile. New York City has a population density of 27,755.25/sq mi, while Los Angeles is at 8,485.74/sq mi. That’s less than a third of New York, and these are the two most populous cities in the US. The same kind of variety should exist for fantasy cities as well.

 
Well, the one thing you really don’t tend to get with such low population densities is big cities. City states happen where there is a fairly high population density. Neither the medieval Mongols nor the Viking age Scandinavians were known for their cities.

in general, the extreme over reliance on England and France when talking about “how things were” in the medieval period bothers me. England especially is in so many ways an extreme outlier, France a lot less so. But really, every place is unique. Just like today. And an average is just that, and seldom representative of anything real.

There’s an average city density in the modern US. I’m not sure what it is, but it exists. Meanwhile. New York City has a population density of 27,755.25/sq mi, while Los Angeles is at 8,485.74/sq mi. That’s less than a third of New York, and these are the two most populous cities in the US. The same kind of variety should exist for fantasy cities as well.

That was interesting. Seattle is ~9,000 and Vancouver BC (highest population density in Canada) is ~4,500
 
Will certainly read it in full (looks like but what is the assumption on building height and type? 2-3 stories with some space? Or more like Sienna, 5-6 story solid blocks with no gaps, or like Çatalhöyük just a mass of dwellings one on top of the other.
It a general average culled from a variety of source which is why there is a range in Medieval Demographics. There is a definite low range and a definite high range but it hard to pin down a specific number for a specific place at a specific time. For the purpose of an RPG campaign I just pick on between low and high and adjust my maps accordingly.

It seems, and I could be wrong, that RPG city game aids rely on 1 primary source filtered through a secondary source.

Specifically, the tax list of Paris in 1292, as found in Life in a Medieval City by Joseph and Francis Geis (Harper and Row, 1981...but when I have seen this work cited elsewhere it is 1969, so likely 1981 is not the first addition) a book by amateur historians, that is the interpretations and sources have never been subject to question as they might be in a peer reviewed journal. Not that this work is without use, just take it with a grain of salt. Also I want ot be fair to the original authors, I recall looking at Life in a Medieval City at some point and my recollection is great liberties were taken to go from the book to RPG game aid.
For me I downloaded the Tax List of Paris of 1292, read a couple of books like one on the economic life of medieval Southhampton. The result is my Fantasy Demographics. Used the mechanics of Medieval Demographic but with number based on my own research. Including looking directly at the Paris Tax Roll.

The thing is all historical sources are shit and hard to use. Not because they are inaccurate but rather for the purpose of gaming they are cluttered with mounds of useless trivia to shift through.

The Folks I considered to have done their homework and made useful gameable material are Adventurer, Conqueror, King, and the Harnmaster line. They give useful RPG mechanics alongside the detail. Just sitting below are Ars Magica Mythic Europe material, Chivalry, and Sorcery, Pendragon, and GURPS. The problems with either they are too generic like GURPS or too wordy for what you want like Ars Magic, C&S, and Pendragon. But they for the most part done their homework and have a lot of useful bits.
 
Well, the one thing you really don’t tend to get with such low population densities is big cities. City states happen where there is a fairly high population density. Neither the medieval Mongols nor the Viking age Scandinavians were known for their cities.

in general, the extreme over reliance on England and France when talking about “how things were” in the medieval period bothers me. England especially is in so many ways an extreme outlier, France a lot less so. But really, every place is unique. Just like today. And an average is just that, and seldom representative of anything real.

There’s an average city density in the modern US. I’m not sure what it is, but it exists. Meanwhile. New York City has a population density of 27,755.25/sq mi, while Los Angeles is at 8,485.74/sq mi. That’s less than a third of New York, and these are the two most populous cities in the US. The same kind of variety should exist for fantasy cities as well.

The nice things about ACKS is that they spell out their assumptions. Which I like as I can take the numbers tweak them to fit how I do things in my setting and use similar mechanics.

For example my trade and commerce is similar but not quite the same as ACKS. My sailing ships details are compatible with Harnmaster's Pilot Almanac and the historical sources I have access too but also represent my own take on the take. For one think I elected a lower level of detail in the sailing ship mechanics.
Merchant Adventures
 
So according to Bob Bledsaw Senior, Viridistan's population should be pegged at 200,000 people. Which if you look at various sources or a nice summary like Medieval Demographics Made Easy by S. John Ross, one will see that a medieval city of 200,000 will cover a little under 3,300 acres or roughly a square 2.3 mile on each side. In 120 ft hexes that would mean 100 hexes by 100 hexes, in 30 ft hexes this would mean 400 hexes by 400 hexes.

So yup a bit on the small side.

Medieval Demographics Made Easy calculator
Fantasy Demographics My own take on the building type calculation

Personally I let it side due to the playability of both CSWE and CSIO. When put side by side CSWE feel bigger to my players than CSIO. And both are vast as far as the players goes.

However when it comes to my own efforts like Eastgate below, I calculate it out and go with whatever the numbers are. Below I use 120 feet squares and it amounts to a population of 30,000 as the urban area covers around 481 acres. The width of the city is 1.2 miles and the height is .6 miles. Note it is a work in progress.

View attachment 30455
This is great stuff! Thanks! I am now thinking that I might scan small sections of my Viridistan with the architecture, and pull them out when ever a neighborhood encounter occurs, and then use the larger scale abstract to show its size. I also am using a map generator from InkWell which might offer some neat solutions. It's too bad we can't find map generator software that will create a whole Viridistan at the 1500' per hex scale!
 
It a general average culled from a variety of source which is why there is a range in Medieval Demographics. There is a definite low range and a definite high range but it hard to pin down a specific number for a specific place at a specific time. For the purpose of an RPG campaign I just pick on between low and high and adjust my maps accordingly.

I'd rather have examples like a city with these types of buildings and open spaces has a density of x, etc. Simple graphics would be best.

For me I have an image from the ye 'ole English village, to Carcassone to Sienna to Rhodes to the Cliff Dwellings of the US west, to Plymouth recreation, (many an old house of fort from before 1700), to Çatalhöyük to ancient Rome. Have been all those places except the last two, and more (if their is something medieval or older when I travel always go see it :smile: ).

Personally more interested in replicating an ancient, Hyperborean feel so medieval Europe is not the best for me. More precisely I ma interested in what can be accomplished with ancient and medieval technology and pre-industrial revolution farming. Have a taste / experience of it from childhood, we had like an acre "garden" which I had the great honor to weed :smile:, even then though we did not hand till.

For me I downloaded the Tax List of Paris of 1292, read a couple of books like one on the economic life of medieval Southhampton. The result is my Fantasy Demographics. Used the mechanics of Medieval Demographic but with number based on my own research. Including looking directly at the Paris Tax Roll.

IIRC I have the tax roll as well somewhere. It is really hard to find sources that go into the amount of shops etc. So do find that use full as a touch point. I think it is good for authors to note the source and what may or may not make it representative. I know, these are game aids sold for cheap so really don't expect that. I am acting a bit triggered as have seen these demographics (or game aids) pulled out as holy writ.

The thing is all historical sources are shit and hard to use. Not because they are inaccurate but rather for the purpose of gaming they are cluttered with mounds of useless trivia to shift through.

Well they are what they are, never designed for games. I have one great paper on area vs population density in medieval England, France, Germany and Northern Italy (could post a citation, maybe a link) but it plots data as log-log (really ln-ln) by city (it even shows you haw it defines "city" and has a high n) which I can work with but imagine very hard for others.

I like the useless "trivia" though, it is more than half why I read such things :smile:

Different sources suffer from different inaccuracy, if one reads the scholarly works (especially the ones post 1990 or so) it is discussed.

That is why the roman writers when writing for the upper classes are generally consider reliable. These are basically "so you want to have a plantation" books, that go into the economics of it all. So one can imagine they are as accurate and truthful as they can get because they would have been called on it otherwise.

Instead of historical sources there are also archeological sources, the work on Pompeii alone is pretty impressive just have to keep in mind that was a resort town.

All that being said, it's pretty easy to figure population based on housing area, just make some assumptions about household size, plenty of sources that show a medieval house, how much area people had and family size....or I just go from experience a family of 4 in a 1500 square foot house was middle class in the US not so long ago....then when have lived where that 600 square foot apartment had 10 people living in it. Then assume how tall the average building is and it's easy. There is also archeological data on roman apartment buildings and roman villas as well.

My research and greater "concern" is food production. How much land do you need to feed the city; and how many people to work that land. By land also include rivers, fisheries, etc. If the area is dangerous all those people are going to pile up behind walls, if not they will spread out across the farmland.

That guides me the most as it gives the true extent of the environs, what the lord needs to protect etc. If protection is very much needed then will get villages with garrisons within whatever response time they need. If not it will be more places for people to stay as they bring food to market, and places for them to mill grain and the lord get his cut, etc.

I think I digress though...I do like the work on CSIO and have always found those city maps more ancient city in layout than medieval but as you are a designer would love to hear if there was an historical example as an influence.
 
I think I recall hearing this as well, true or not. Would love to hear the argument about the creative content of sequential numbering that provides it with copyright protection. They may have had intellectual property rights on the printing technique though, could see that.
I wish I had a decent source on this; someday when I have some spare time for it I will look for one. I have no idea whether the rights were claimed in copyright, patent, or trademark.
 
I wish I had a decent source on this; someday when I have some spare time for it I will look for one. I have no idea whether the rights were claimed in copyright, patent, or trademark.
Copyright protect an expression of an idea. The specific look of SPI's hex map could be copyrighted which includes line weights and number font. But the not the idea of a numbered hex grid.

Patents protect idea, and there are no patents on numbered hex grids for use in wargaming.
From time to time you get stuff like this but they are abandoned when prior art is dealt with.

And there is nothing related to hex grid between 1965 and 1975.

Trademarks protect branding the goal of which to prevent confusion in the market.

Likely what happened that TSR was mistaken about needing to ask permission. But it was not an unreasonable assumption for a layperson as SPI pioneered the use of numbered hexgrid for published wargames. And there was no internet where one could easily look up this stuff.

The idea predated or was concurrent with SPI for example chess notation. Or wargames utilizing play by mail.
 
Or, being that this was the 1970s and not today, they asked SPI to borrow their originals rather than having to make their own versions. SPI and TSR had a lot of business dealings back then anyway (SPI went out of business when TSR called in a loan that was secured by SPI's assets).
 
That was interesting. Seattle is ~9,000 and Vancouver BC (highest population density in Canada) is ~4,500
And those are like, next door to one another too.

The one thing I think is really important when designing a country or especially city state, is to remember that cities need a lot of food production that's going to be outside the city. Rome depended on Sicily, and later Egypt, to keep it's enormous population afloat. Once those were lost, Rome shrank considerably. Same happened with Constantinople when Egypt was conquered by the muslims. And yes, if you have a fantasy city you can have magical help, but you're probably still going to need a bunch of land, even if you need fewer workers.
 
And those are like, next door to one another too.

The one thing I think is really important when designing a country or especially city state, is to remember that cities need a lot of food production that's going to be outside the city. Rome depended on Sicily, and later Egypt, to keep it's enormous population afloat. Once those were lost, Rome shrank considerably. Same happened with Constantinople when Egypt was conquered by the muslims. And yes, if you have a fantasy city you can have magical help, but you're probably still going to need a bunch of land, even if you need fewer workers.
About the same distance as Vienna to Budapest.
 
About the same distance as Vienna to Budapest.
Ok, so a little farther than it looked at first glance. although I guess it depends on where ytou start counting, it looks like the suburbs of Vancouver (the Canadian one) and Seattle bleed into each other.
 
Copyright protect an expression of an idea. The specific look of SPI's hex map could be copyrighted which includes line weights and number font. But the not the idea of a numbered hex grid.

Patents protect idea, and there are no patents on numbered hex grids for use in wargaming.
From time to time you get stuff like this but they are abandoned when prior art is dealt with.

And there is nothing related to hex grid between 1965 and 1975.

Trademarks protect branding the goal of which to prevent confusion in the market.

Likely what happened that TSR was mistaken about needing to ask permission. But it was not an unreasonable assumption for a layperson as SPI pioneered the use of numbered hexgrid for published wargames. And there was no internet where one could easily look up this stuff.

The idea predated or was concurrent with SPI for example chess notation. Or wargames utilizing play by mail.

As I said, I don't know the legalities involved. This is what Dunnigan has to say about it in Wargames Handbook: How to Play and Design Commercial and Professional Wargames, 3rd edition (2000), p. 92:
Hex Number. In many games, a four-digit number that describes the row the hex is in (first two digits) and the hex in that row (second two digits). It is printed in the hex. It was developed by Arnold Hendrick (while he was working for wargame publisher S.P.I. in the early 1970s) and later released to the public domain for any game publisher who wanted to use it (many do). A variant of the older letter-number hex identification system.

He apparently thought that Hendrick or S.P.I. had once owned the rights to the system, otherwise it could not have been "released to the public domain." I don't know what this belief was based on, but he was head of S.P.I. at the time.

Chess notation systems are of course older, as was the Avalon Hill system, which used letters for columns. S.P.I.'s adoption of the new system seems to have been linked to their development of simultaneous movement games, as suggested by this statement in Moves Magazine, no. 9 (1973):
The Simultaneous Movement System is really quite simple. Two new "standard" elements in our games make this so. First, all of our games now have a standard numbering system for each hex. Each column of hexes (along the "grain") has the same first two digits for each hex in that column. The last two digits in each hex then give the hex a unique four digit code. In other words, all the hexes in a column would start out 0101, 0102, 0103, etc. Twenty hexes away a column of hexes would begin 2001, 2002, 2003 and so on. We have found this system to be very simple in use. We've been using it for a few months now on five different games as well as most of our new ones. It works.
 
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