Construction crews

General ACKS Forums Ask the Autarchs
,
1

D@W: Campaigns has a lot of good stuff about calculating how quickly construction projects can be completed based on the number and skills of people working on them, but, when there’s a small population to draw from, how do you calculate the number of available civilians to put on the project? Any mercenaries, conscripts, and militia can obviously be assigned to the task, but it should also be possible to hire more help than just the military.

(As background, my players are currently running a one-hex mini-domain with a total of 104 families (29 peasant farmers, 75 in a just-completed village). They want to expand the stronghold and secure an additional hex to provide a little room to grow, but they’re on an isolated and untamed island, so just pulling in workers from a larger population center would be non-trivial. Getting the assumed 3,000 workers to expand the stronghold at 500gp/day is looking pretty unlikely!)

Also, are agricultural improvements and urban improvements (to draw in more population) considered to be construction projects?

2

Between conscripts and militia, the ruler is able to tap into the able-bodied worker population of the realm - roughly 30% of the manpower.

If you would like, you could allow militia recruitment beyond 2 families per 10, with cumulative -1 domain morale penalties.

If you want to have “mercenary labor”, treat them as being available at 2x the numbers of light infantry.

Agricultural and urban improvements can be treated as construction projects but they can also be simple cash investments, as you prefer. The system economy functions just fine either way.

3

I wonder how many can spare the time considering they are probably growing/hunting/gathering/fishing for food to support the isolated community. Those able-bodied enough to work construction are also probably the best at getting food too.