Cities are resource limited with regards to growth. The major contraints are usually food, potable water and sanitation. The large cities are developed enough to usually have some sort of buried sewage system instead of septic tanks behind each house, let alone open street sewers. Above ground covered aquaducts are common, but are still a limiting factor. Cities in very politically stable areas will expand into The Unformed Lands by creating mage domains near the city. This permits additional farm land for food.
Civilization in the Unformed Lands is very ancient. Since mirs are the only places that exist without magical intervention, the mirs have been settled for a very long time. As such, the cities in all the mirs are very old and have been rebuilt many times. Cities are laid out in the Roman pattern, or grid pattern. This consists of a central forum with a north-south major street and an east-west major street from the forum. For most of the past 3,500 years, grid style cities have had extra wide boulevards, large square blocks and ring roads at intervals. The roads and alleys within the large blocks are not aligned to a grid, but the roadways are wide enough for troops to work well. The desire for grid style cities was not new to the Romans. It was desired throughout history by many kings and leaders.
All mirs will have some sort of wall around the mir. In addition, some cities and towns within the mir that can afford it have stone walls around the city and limited gates. They will at least have a wooden palisade simlar to Plymouth Plantation or Jamestown Settlement. Towns will at least have a fortified wooden building that doubles as municipal building and armoury. Subsidiary villages generally have nothing in the way of defensive works.
The desire for engineering order has also carried over to the layout of town networks. Towns are normally roughly 25 square miles, with town centers being 5 miles from each other. A road will run from each town center to the town centers of the 8 towns surrounding it. In addition to the town to town roads, there are city to city roads if there is more than one city in the mir. The town is the lowest level of independent government for most societies.
Each town will have a number of villages, hamlets or thorps. The common naming conventions for subsidiary villages are a combination of geography or purpose and the town name. Usual areas are, by example for the town of Harwich:
There will sometimes be areas that don't follow the convention, and will use a local piece of geography or special event.
| Designation | Minimum | Median | Maximum |
| Thorp | 20 | 80 | |
| Hamlet | 81 | 400 | |
| Village | 401 | 900 | |
| Town, Small | 901 | 2000 | |
| Town, Large | 2001 | 5000 | |
| City | 5001 | 12000 | |
| City | 12001 | 25000 | |
| Metropolis | 25001+ |
Most cities and towns will have some sort of defensive setup. Small towns or new towns might only have a central keep that the population can retreat to in case of threat. Many city-states and countries have a home guard based upon the early Roman or early Greek traditions.
The amount of protection a city or town has is based upon population and age. This is a preliminiary formula and is subject to change if somebody has a better one. The basis for this is from the Dungeon Masters Guide (page 137 in version 3.5).
The first step is to take the size catagory of the village and determine the Gold Piece limit. This limit is the maximum cost of any single item in the defenseive setup. Note that walls are priced per segment, not on the total length. Walls can be built in sections over time, so while the wall is a huge overall expense it can be built over a number of years. Think of how a highway is paid for, a section at at time.
Multiple the GP limit by half and then by 1/10th the population to get the free cash in the society. Take the free cash amount and multipy by 1 percent. This yields the annual defense budget. Three quarters of the annual defense budget will go towards wages, upkeep of the infrastructure, training costs such as arrows, healing spells and such. The final quarter goes towards increasing the town or cities infrastructure. Note that this formula is for averages, and such only works for planning over a long period of time. You can't accurately use it to determine improvements made year per year if a city is being attacked.
At the momement this does not assume anything about the use of magic. The proper use of magic could yield large defenses quickly for a relatively small cost, or fixed cost.