www.sizes.com wrote: The word “mile” comes from the Latin word for “thousand”, from the phrase mille passus, literally “thousand paces”. Each passus consisted of five pes, the Roman foot, so the mille passus was 5,000 pes. This distance was also known as a milliarium, literally “milestone.” The mille passus was divided into 8 stadia, each of 625 pes.
Now, I found an absolute gem of a map a while back, which not only has huge dimensions, it also contains thousands of cities, stretching from England to North Africa, with rivers, lakes, mountains and so forth. All of which is set some time in Roman History.
When, I cannot yet determine, though likely it is from late Roman period, so I'll have to doublecheck any cities before I make them to see if they were around at that time.
In any case, it also has a distance ruler on it labelled Milliaria Romana. From this, I can work out distances between towns, and such. One mile, two mile, three mile, so forth.
Now, 1 mile = 1000 paces and 1 pace is 1 tile in-game (It's actually more like 2, but that'd be insane).
I measured the distance between Roma and Veii (Closest city), and it works out to be approx 8 mile.
That's 8000 tiles if you walk in one direction. If we squared this into a grid, that's 8000*8000 (6400000) tiles.
When one area is 50x50 tiles, that's (8000*8000) / (50*50), which equals 2,560.
So, we square this to form a square grid of map areas. Thats 80x80 areas (2,560 areas).
Or, by tiles, ((50 * 50) *(80 * 80) (16,000,000 Tiles)
Or, by pixels... (((32*32) * (50*50) * (80 * 80) (16,384,000,000 Pixels)
(Correct me if I'm wrong)
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This is obviously unacceptable.
There is a moment when realism becomes boring, stupid and completely unrequired, which is advised by the above.
So, I have three options.
1 - I can completely ignore the ruler and the map, and go as I like.
2 - I can "bunch up" the areas, smosh them together, and divide the distance.
3 - Make it a World Map.
I'd personally like to go with Option 2, seeing as I'm aiming for historical correctness and emersion.
I can divide by two or four, to keep things clean and simple, as opposed to three and five which could be troublesome.
By /2
Thats 40x40 areas (1600 areas).
Or, by tiles, (25 * 25) *(40 * 40) (1,000,000 tiles)
Or, by pixels... (32*32) * (25*25) * (40 * 40) (1,024,000,000 Pixels)
(Correct me if I'm wrong)
By /4
Thats 20x20 areas (400 areas).
Or, by tiles, (25 * 25) *(20 * 20) (250,000 tiles)
Or, by pixels... (32*32) * (25*25) * (20 * 20) (256,000,000 Pixels)
(Correct me if I'm wrong)
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The city of Rome itself is approx 430 areas itself, so I believe a compromise between /2 and /4 will work.
25*25 tiles per area and 500 steps a mile. (So, 1 mile on the map is actually 2 mile in-game, now).
So, these are the new measurements:
Distance Measurements
Player = 1 Tile.
25*25 tiles = 625 Tiles = 1 area.
20*20 areas = 400 Areas = 1 mile2.
2*2 mile = 4 mile2.
1 mile2 = 250,000 tiles
1 mile2 = 400 areas
Rome to Veii
Areas2 between Roma and Veii = 3200.
Area Distance along the road between Roma and Veii = 160.
Tile Distance along the road between Roma and Veii = 4000.
Character Speeds, Real Time
When a Character is walking, he can step 3 tiles a second.
3 tiles a second * 60 = 180.
180 tiles a minute * 60 = 10800.
10800 tiles per hour.
500 tiles in a mile.
25mph
It would take approx 22 minutes if the player walked from Roma to Veii.
When a Character is running, he can step 6 tiles a second.
6 tiles a second * 60 = 360.
360 tiles a minute * 60 = 21600.
21600 tiles per hour.
500 tiles in a mile.
50mph
It would take approx 11 minutes if the player ran from Roma to Veii.
When a Character is riding a horse, he can step 12 tiles a second.
12 tiles a second * 60 = 720.
720 tiles a minute * 60 = 43200.
43200 tiles per hour.
500 tiles in a mile.
86.4mph
It would take approx 5.5 minutes if the player rode from Roma to Veii.
From Roma to Ortona (East coast of Italy) on horseback, it would take 1 hour 21 minutes.
Walking would take 5 hours 24 minutes.
Running would take 2 hours 42 minutes (If your stamina could hold out that long!)
From Augusta (North-west Italy) to Sila (On the "toe" of Italy's "boot"), on horseback, it would take 8 hours 44 minutes.
Walking would take 34 hours 16 minutes.
Running would take 17 hours 29 minutes.
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Ye gods, this took longer than I thought, had to redraft the numbers twice. Nethertheless, I think it's right, now.
But, there you go. Horse seems the best way to go, and the travelling speeds/distances seem pretty levelled out.
And, on that final calcuation of travel times, I will most definetly be putting fast travel in. My god, 34 hours?!
And that's if you were to walk constantly along the road - the calculation, also, was counted in a straight line/quickest route along the land, not accounting for obstacles, multiplied-area towns, cliffs, and so forth.
Have you seen the fallout map?
You could do something like that, but with the capability to walk area per area if the person wished. (Treasures inside? =D)
About bunching the things up, I disagree, if the focus of the game is to make a realistic world, let it be realistic.What's wrong with simple 36,25 Hours?
Or make the PCs have a somewhat "magical ability of tele-transporting between cities", just the PCs. =)
I think a system where a character has to pay for transport is better. The poor, stalwart travellers of the world will slowly get around and view the world.
Meanwhile, the lords and traders who need to get to a tip-off in the north of an opportunity quickly can pay for it.
It also stops people just quickly jumping from Africa to Japan in minutes, ruining the immersion, surely.