Advent 2019:Calendar/7

So I'm afraid that I was indisposed for the last few days and so I couldn't complete this on time but I love economics and politics (today's topic) so I am not just going to skip ahead to day 8 (though I hope to be able to publish that later today). More specifically we are going to be dividing out worlds into people who are short of certain resources and those who have loads. But first a short story. I grew up in a hamlet miles from anywhere in an ancient house (we believed that it was close to a thousand years old (though obviously it had been renovated since then). And as a result it was made from copious quantities of wood. We also travelled a lot to south France where the houses were also really old but they were made of stone. So what gives?

Well Suffolk (my birth place) is generally very flat and doesn't have any great cliffs. On the other hand south France was very cliff heavy (case in point Rockamador). Hence people in Suffolk built stuff out of wood and people in France built stuff out of stone. So what does that tell us? People try to use the resources available to them.

Now there are some resources that everyone needs and wants without any close substitutes. Wood can be used in houses but castle walls are another issue entirely. Hence Achthal has more castles than even Leon! More important are resources that are relatively scarce. Low levels of farming land have often been the driving force keeping the confederation together or indeed causing it to fall apart. As I talked about before, the relative abundance of food in Leon lead to less politics and trade and technological development because there's nothing to sharpen minds like the thought of a rumbling stomach. A lack of gold and other metals helps keeps down trade in æthelron. You can also see from this chart that culture plays a role as well. Usherway has plenty of wood and yet it is merely - (self sufficient). The North doesn't raise many more cows than Awegon but it doesn't import any meat either because it eats less meet