I dont know if anyone else asked this, I havent checked, but let me know:
TLDR as a meme
So in a recent discussion Caspian had talked about how parcels were too accurate when it came to food supply(Taiga will be used as an example as always), and 300,000 parcels would support over 500,000 people based on their calculations.
Link
Now Caspian said 5-10 parcels to a person would mean the nearest person would be 300-600m away
"How fun would that be to play?"
Now, off topic a little, but I dont think everyone is gonna be, or even want to be a farmer for food alone, so Caspian, please dont use that as an excuse, because heres where we get into the meat of my question,
What about NPCs? Let's look at actual population stats on Snipehunters post:
Link
So heres the numbers for those of you who didn't open that
Actual population: 114,640
Max population: 418,252
So let's do some math, we won't be using the parcel number on that link but just use Caspian's number, 300,000.
Caspian said If it was 3 acres(parcels) to a person that would be 100,000 people, and if it was 10, 30,000 people.
Heres the issue, our NPC's will starve to death with that as the calculation and it will be a solely player based population, so let's account for the NPCs instead, because the numbers I gave from that link are total populations, not anything to do with the player population, player population shouldn't matter actually, NPCs need food just as much as we do, so:
Actual population: 114,640
Max population: 418,252
Starting at 3 parcels-per-person we would already be starving, because: 14,640 of taiga's population would not have food, even at 2 parcels-per-person its 150,00 people, which means we would have to watch our numbers or else we might run into the same problem, so let's just get a solid number, how many parcels, for just taiga in this example, would be accounting for the population while not going over it, to me it seems simple enough,
418,252(max pop)÷300,000(parcels)= 1.39 parcels to a person(npcs are people too)
Now, that just accounts for taiga, and gives you an idea of what that number should kind of look like, but heres where it becomes in issue with that as well:
Not every parcel is for farming, in fact, can you guess what Food's biggest competitor will be? Buildings
People need a place to sleep, a place to craft, a place to store items, a place to govern, a place for their horses, and a place to trade.
And that's just buildings, Food farming isnt what everyone wants to do on their parcels, so that's a whole other issue.
So the real number comes down to this, what number of parcels would be actually used for farming food, and farming food alone? That I couldn't tell you, but even my number wouldnt cut it, but that's for max population.
Oh, and that's another thing, yield, as an adequate farmer for food alone theres bound to be a whole other host of issues to be accounted for, how much time within 7 Elyrian years, is actually farmable for crops? If you already have crops farmable for the dark and cold years of Elyria I guess that's okay, but theres also bugs, disease and soil quality, which I hope is also accounted for.
Anyway, that's all, I hope I dont sound like a huge idiot for asking, maybe NPCs dont need food(never stated to my knowledge) but this concerns me seeing as how based on that conversation Caspian had, he only accounts for player population, and doesn't even touch on non-farming parcel usage.
Good day