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Originally posted by Aldrick

I actually planned to make a post about how trade and economics likely work in the Realms, so I want to eventually address everything in your response in future posts.

However, I want to first address one of the main points about population. I would point out that the population numbers that I've given are MUCH higher than stated in the 3E FRCS.

For example, Unther has a population of 4,265,840 according to the 3E FRCS. I've given Unther a population of 12,960,000.

Mulhorand has a population of 5,339,520 in canon, and I've given them a population of 11,664,000.

Chessenta has a population of 3,386,880 in canon, and I've given them a population of 6,912,000.

Thay has a population of 4,924,800 in canon, and I've given them a population of 20,160,000.

Imagine that - Thay, despite it's intense use of magical agriculture - has a population nearly equal to war torn and famine stricken Unther, and a smaller population than Chessenta!

Of course, as I pointed out - the population numbers shifted dramatically between editions without any explanation. It is all based on the D&D formulas being used.

I'm going to write more about magical agriculture later, but if we assume the nations are roughly the size I outlined based on the 3E Map, and we took the population numbers from the 3E FRCS into account - then there would be massive amounts of wilderness in those nations. Keep in mind that in my population estimates I'm assuming that only roughly 33% of the nations are settled. The other 67% is wilderness. If we go by 3E population estimates, and assume the measurements are correct - then we're looking at only roughly 10% to 15% of the entire nation as settled. This wouldn't make much sense - arguably, my population estimates are on the lower side of things, and for Unther and Mulhorand I should have gone even higher with population density.

The alternative to fix that is to shrink the size of the countries (meaning the scale of the 3E map is wrong). However, that would make the countries seem unnaturally small. Keep in mind that Unther is (as I measured it based on the 3E Map scale), roughly the size of modern day France. Mulhorand is roughly the size of modern day Spain.

...and arguably speaking, I think the scale of the 3E map is already probably too small. So shrinking it further is something I'd personally avoid. So, we basically have a situation where - if we go by canon numbers - there is an insane amount of wilderness, or alternatively, the population numbers I've given are more realistic.

Once again, I'd point out that the population numbers change arbitrarily with each edition, based on whatever formula they are using - in most cases they shrank even more when 4E came out. (In a few cases - cut by almost half!)

So, personally speaking, I wouldn't be afraid to fiddle around with the population numbers. Arguably speaking, I think the numbers I gave for Mulhorand and Unther are too low - not too high, considering how long those lands have been settled.

The real point of debate is over the size of the cities. In general, more cities are generated than metropolises. I don't think it would necessarily break things to shrink the number of people living in cities by giving some additional population to the metropolises. However, an issue with that is we wouldn't want a huge amount of distance between cities without a legitimate reason. So that involves doing things like measuring distance between the cities on the map, and that could get insanely tedious.

According to what I came up with, Unther has 2 Metropolises, 27 Cities, and 156 Towns. However, canonically speaking Unther only has 7 listed locations - two of which are indeed Metropolises, and some of which are explicitly stated as being small towns or even villages, and I inflated their populations. So there is a lot of settlements that need to be added to Unther to flesh it out properly.

As for the magical agriculture stuff and economics - I'm going to address that later in a separate post.

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