SnopyDogy

Wow, that must have taken some effort. I really enjoy this sort of speculation on Brandon's wonderful; world building .

A few things i'd like to point out:

• I seem to recall a thread from a couple of years ago were there was a general agreement that the size of the Roshar super continent was about the same as Eurasia or 10,000km across (a resent reddit thread using OB info puts it about 7,500km across including aimia). I did some rough math with that in mind and it turns out that the OB hardcover jacket map has a scale of about 220-280km per centimetre. That makes some of your small passes 100-300km across . More defensible than 1000+km but still not small, even for nations that can field armies of 100,000+ men.
• You forgot about soulcasters. i suspect that the ability to soulcast food changes its geo-political importance somewhat. 
• Another possibility for Thaylenah is to colonise the Frostlands, i suspect they are underpopulated.
• Trade with the Reshi isles could be very profitable, in the same way trade with Indonesia was very profitable in our world for a while (gotta get those spices for the men's food from somewhere right?).
• I'm not sure you can describe Azir as a desert. A desert implies low rainfall, less than 250mm according to Wikipedia. A typical highstorm must deliver at least 50mm every time it comes through. As we know Shinovar is the only place that doesn't see the highstorms and it isn't a desert. I think it is fair to say that there are no deserts on Roshar, at least as we define them on earth.
• Highstorms also make availability of fresh water a non-issues for anyone with the basic infrastructure (roof + water tank) to collect rainfall. 
• I imagine Azir being sort of like the Holy Roman Empire, everyone like to pretend it is one sate when it is convenient while acting like a bunch or separate states when it isn't. Azir does seem to lean more towards the unified state end of the spectrum tho.

Okay so that was more than a few points. Do any of these change your model?

On ‎9‎/‎04‎/‎2018 at 11:35 PM, Draigon said:

I'm not sure where it would fall in the various areas of technical advancement, but there is an active industry creating glass bottles with metal caps.

Glass is very important. It's one of the reasons Europe got ahead of China. Clears glass in particular is important. Without it you don't have telescopes (they have spyglasses) or microscopes/magnifying glass (can't remember if we have seen one, but they likely do). Not to mention inert sadly worked glass without which any complex chemistry is basically impossible.

Speaking of chemistry, didn't Shallan mention it as one of the sciences in her first meeting with Jasnah in WoK?

I think you guys are over complicating this, the answer is simple:

Syl just like showing off.

I think syl's intuitive understanding of lies is improving as Kaladin says more oaths. If he had said this during the WoK than she would probably have complained about the lie.

By this time she is able to correctly interpret kaladin's response as "haven't I apologised enough" (it's more hyperbole than lie really). This would explain her playfull response.

Hell it wouldn't surprise me if syl was looking for another apology and set him up for it. She is pretty narcissistic, in a playfull, I know it and I don't care sort of way.

I've been thinking of spren in terms of (my limited understanding of) quantum mechanics myself lately. I have a theory that all spren start of in a base, stable state I.e a shard of investiture. When it interacts with some intent (or thought) it become exited and changes into a different state, this state is the spren.

I conceptualise this as being like the energy states of an electron around an atom. Just like an electron will drop down ito a more stable/lower energy state I also believe that a spren will, in the absence of additional intent, return to the base state it started as (which I suspect is what the spren think of as death).

This would mean that most spren are unstable unless they have a supply of intent, provided by living things in the physical realm, to keep them stable. This would explain why spren seem to follow the thin they "represent" around, it's a matter of survival.

Actually I wonder if spren have a half-life, like unstable elements. Would a population of windspren deplete by half after, say, 30 days if deprived of intent?

what do you guys think?

I'd recommend that you skip ahead and read all the interludes, especially the one with Lift in it. If you want to avoid spoilers then skip the interludes featuring Sezth.

I think there is a more mundane explanation for why surge binders tend to gather, it goes like this:

Someone with power, magical, political or otherwise, will either by choice or not get involved in important events.

If the number of surgebinders is greater than the number of important events them it is inevitable that surgebinders will meet, and given there shared philosophy will form groups.

if we look at this by looking at lift you can see how it works:

-- Lifts power makes her a better theif so she gets recruited by a group of thieves for a big.

-- her power help her perform a "miracle" in front of other people with power cause a new emperor to be crowned.

-- her power causes her to come into conflict with darkness.

-- finally her conflict with darkness brings her together with another surgebinder.

basically my point is this would have happened even without the world being invested to the hilt.

Why settle for a three hour move? Why not go for the 5 hour epic with an intermission?

With 5 hours you could fit in a lot more story.

I like them both. i was a little worried people wouldn't get what i was drive at, i'm relived someone got it. 

If it were me i'd have a second team produce/film the interludes then release them one by one to fill in the gaps between main seasons. Ideally you wouldn't stop producing new episodes, i.e. even as the first season is released you are filing the second. there would be a gap between season while you build up the episodes to have the full part but you could use the interludes to fill this gap in and build up the world. almost the opposite of how Brandon used them. Brandon used them to break up the monolithic book, a TV series could use them to keep interest up between the main seasons.

2 hours ago, Lord_of_Awesome said:

Let's face it, a Stormlight Archive media format would just be a very bad idea.

Not Necessarily. I agree a movie wouldn't work, way too much story, way too little screen time. But a TV series could work, if your willing to drop everything that makes it suitable for TV. by that i mean abandon having episodes of a regular length designed to fit into a TV time slot (with Ads, can't forget the ads). Instead you make one episode per chapter and make it whatever length it needs to be to convey the story in that chapter. Some episodes would be only a couple of minutes long, others half an hour or more. A season would correspond to a part and would be released all at once to service like Netflix.

Doing it like this would give the creators a lot of flexibility. Lots of short episodes don't matter too much because people will binge watch the whole season anyway. likewise you could pack a lot into the screen time, e.g. have things going on in the background that people can pickup on a re-watch (if it took us multiple re-reads to get everything then i don't see why it won't work for viewers). I think a format like this could work. There are already people doing stuff like this (in format, not content) on YouTube where that make episodes 5-20 minutes long depending on the need (or constraints).

As for weather it should be some sort of animation or live action... well as much as i love Anime i must admit i have never really imagined it as anime in my head, i just can't visualise it. I fear for the spren in a live action tho, i mean i could just see most of them never being shown which is just sad , Syl would have no one to play with .

19 hours ago, Sand Master said:

 

I didn't specifically say anime because the two you named I was not familiar with and didn't know they were anime. I said cartoon because it's a broad term that refers to any animation, not just western style, even though it usually carries that connotation. I also personally dislike anime as a style, because every one that I've seen over-exaggerates every emotion and is so over-the-top that to me, it's unwatchable. As for the budget not being big enough to pull it off right in live action, I completely agree. I never meant to imply that this was a show that was actually going to happen, I just wanted to express what the ideal would be in my mind. Given an infinite amount of money and time, that's what I personally would have envisioned for it. 

Speaking of Anime i feel obliged to defend the medium (feel free to skip as its off topic... i wont be offended  ). Most Anime you'll see on TV in the west is Shonen, which is pretty much a genre in its own right. The Japanese can make anything Shonen, including Cooking! Its the Japanese version of the western Super Hero Comics and has it own tropes etc. It is characteristically over the top and exaggerated.  To make matters worst the compinies that import and dub it often remove alot of the fan service (aka nudity) and more graphic violence. in addition they often change the script to target a younger audience. Its not uncommon for a series target audience to lose 5 years in translation (which is, imo, a pity as often the whole message/point of the show is lost as well). For adults this really isn't the ideal introduction to Anime. 

Other genres aren't anywhere near as bad. most of the ones that are do it for a reason. Often over the top animation or a less real style is used for comedy, in much the same away a laugh track is used by western sitcoms (seriously watch one without the laugh track, it doesn't work nearly as well). Skip Beat is a very clear example of this, that show has multiple genre disorder . The less serious/over the top art style is used to signal when it is in its comedy genre, the more serious used to signal when its in Drama mode. Full metal Panic is a more subtly example, when it gets over the top it is usually because that scene is part of the rom-com between the two main characters, the rest of the time it is a very serious sci-fi/war story. In short the over the top parts are generally used as a visual signal of a change in tone in the story telling. Some Anime don't use it at all tho, ghost in the shell comes to mind.

Personally if Stormlight Archive was done in an Anime style id expect the over the top parts to be kept to a minimum and preferably be non-existent. 

I don't believe that Shard blades themselves have and "bonus" vs shardplate due to investiture or anything like that. Instead, iirc every time we see blades doing significant damage to plate (more then we see mundane weapons doing) the wielder of the bald is wearing plate. So it is the attackers shardplate that is really doing the damage by allowing him to put a lot more force behind the blow then someone without shardplate would ever manage.

The one advantage shardbaldes have (and the reason why someone in plate would prefer it) is that no matter what you do to the blade it will not give or break, unlike mundane weapons. However this advantage is offset by the fact that the blade is a woeful weapon for dealing with plate armor, it just isn't designed for it. Given that shard plate has no gaps a fine piercing point on the blade would be no use (and no of the illustrations show) it is clear that shard blades were not designed to fight people in shard plate. What it is designed for is long sweeping cuts, taking advantage of the fact that it can cut through pretty much anything. i.e. it is a weapon optimized to fight people without plate that gets used against plat when required.

Plate armor, and sharplate would be no different, is optimized to turn and deflect bladed weapons. I suspect that someone without plate using a shard bald would have difficulty damaging the plate itself as many of his blows would simple be deflected away from the plate, meaning that very little force is actually transfer to the plate. This also makes the one definite advance of the blade (i.e. its indestructability) irrelevant.

Now the mundane War hammer/Mace is designed very specifically to fight someone in armor, especially plate. It delivers a large amount of "blunt" force to a small surface area using a form which minimize the chance of deflection. Against mundane plate armor the idea is that the blow would still hurt the person in armor, perhaps bruising or breaking bones. Against Shardplate which doesn't allow much if any force through to the wearer all the force imparted by these weapons would be transferred to the plate, causing more damage and encouraging failure. The only question is if the weapon can outlast the shardplate. I suspect that it will.

TL;DR I believe that the optimal design of the war hammer will, in the hands of an unassisted wielder, prove the better weapon for cracking open plate.

There is a difference between telling the future (prophecy) and just knowing the probability of different outcomes. 

The first is stating something that hasn't happened yet as if it was a fact without any proof to substation the claim. If a supernatural source was claimed then this would defiantly be prophecy. an example might be saying "I'll roll a six" before rolling a die.

The second is simply stating how likely a particular outcome of an action is. it makes no definitive prediction about the future. An example might be to say "there is a 12/5% chance i'll role a six". Whats more you can prove you're statement using math. This is what the stormwardens are doing when predicting the weather. They probably say there is a 88% change of a highstorm between 8 and 9pm tonight. they can show the math they use to determine this. The result is that the ardents (who are educated) agree that this isn't prophecy, but math instead.

Also i suspect that the math for predicting high storms was developed in the east where vorinism prohibitions on prophecy probably don't mean much.

It also wouldn't be prophecy if you were doing a thought experiment. There is no future to predict in a thought experiment.

And statistics are just as important  for working out things about the present or past as they are about the future. For example working out the current population of the parshindi using statistics, past knowledge of raids and army strength would have nothing to do with the future. The same would be true of a shop keeper trying to work out how much new product to order using statics on past sales, no future involved.

In fact thinking about it the vorin doctrin against prophecy might have forced the development of cretin math in an attempt to get around the prophecy stigma, after all math is logically and provably not prophecy.

tl;dr Statics and probability don't necessarily conflict with vorinism and where they do (or are seen to) they can still be developed in the vorin free east, moving west when they have firmly established themselves as a science.

In regards to mathematics there is this:

 

"Even though they'd killed plenty of Parshendi - as many as a quarter of their originally estimated forces were dead..."
Page 224, kindle Edition, Way of Kings.

I doubt the Alethi were able to conduct a census of the Parshendi population before going to war. So they must be using some mathematical method to estimate their numbers. Iirc this estimate was fairly accurate, so either they were lucky or they have some reasonably good statical methods. This reminds me a little of how the allies in WW2 would estimate the number of German tanks based on the non-sequential serial numbers of captured examples.

Also Storm Wardens predict highstorm occurrences and even what weather/season will occur between highstorms using mathematics. I belie it takes some fairly fancy math to predict the weather.

Another thing to consider is this:

 

"I can speak with skill about geography, geology, physics, and chemistry"
Shallan, Page 87, Kindle Edition, Way of Kings

If scholars see physics as a separate discipline then it implies that understanding of it is reasonably advanced. Which could imply that calculus has been developed (Newton developed his calculus to help advance his physics theories). bit of a stretch but still.

Also the above quote came from Shallan's interview with Jasnah to be her ward. It was a direct response to a question about Logic and math. 

It seems here like you're committing the same crime you're accusing us of: Europe-norming .  It seems like the rate of technological advancement is a particularly poor metric for measuring the state of a society as a whole.  Aristotle and Plato agreed on very little, but they agreed that the chief virtue of society is giving philosophers the leisure to think, by means of the menial drudgery of the majority of the population.  Several preindustrial societies had intellectual golden ages while the vast majority of their populace was mired in serfdom: The Greeks had inventors like Heron of Alexandria and Archimedes; the Song Dynasty invented the printing press, the compass, and the mathematical matrix; and of course there were Ummayyad Arabia and Gupta India.  Before companies could afford R&D departments, the best way to get a high rate of technological innovation was to have a lot of upper-class people with both education and leisure: Alethkar obviously has that in lighteyed women and in ardents.  

This is basically my argument. The rate of change, of innovation, in most of the times you are talking about was still very slow. it was there, innovation has always been there, but it was slow. as you point out the more of the citizenry which had free time to innovate the more innovations there were. what made the Industrial Revolution different from the times you mention is that the number of those innovates was higher then it had ever been before (that is what made the 80/20 ration so magic, and for the record that ratio is now better then 10/90, complete reversed from where it has been for 99% of human agricultural history). What i was trying to say is that there appears t be a rapid increase in the rate of innovation in Alethi society, and I'd like to know how big this increase is as it would help us determine how close they are to an industrialised society. 

There are several times in human history where we see a big improvement in the rate of innovation. 1) the start of agriculture, which for the first time allowed some people to think about more then where the next meal was coming from. 2) the widespread use of the printing press, which help spread information 3) the beginning of the industrial revolution, 4)  the information revolution (internet). you'll notice that these are getting closer and closer together. So what i think (ymmv) is that this rate of innovation we are seeing is less medieval and more renascence or near-industrial.

also most of the benefits of the early industrial revolution took decades to filter down from the rich to the poor. Actually in some ways i agree with your point that they seem to be creating toys for the rich, more so then was the case in the early industrial revolution. However the desolation will probably change that. in a total war setting (which I believe a desolation is) the entire economy goes into fighting the war. no one is going to have the time or resources to spare in that case to build a heating fabrial for some rich lord. however they might build them if troops are freezing to death and they are running out of wood. So a desolation would distort the priorities of the economy and may force an industrial revolution earlier then we might have otherwise expected. This is what I believe.

Mind you I'm not as sold on my own argument as I appear... anyone got a knife I could borrow? 

... If this was on Roshar, it would require the attacking army to sit out in the open during highstorms. Siege weapons would suffer massively as they take a lot to move, a lot to set up, a lot of time to fire, and a lot to dismantle for something in the grand scheme of things that is very fragile. By the time the army showed up, and braced themselves out in the open by using soulcasters for windbreaks, and set up their siege weapons, a highstorm would have come by and damaged the siege weapon before it could have even fired....

To add to this, if the besieged city has Soulcasters which can produce food and water, it's nearly impossible to cut off the supply lines.

 

Most sieges in the middle ages (where the attackers won) were resolved by starving out the besieged. As you have both pointed out I suspect this is impractical on Roshar. Actually storming a fortified town wasn't popular until canons came along and allowed attackers to effectively breach walls in relatively short periods of time (weeks instead of months or years). On Roshar most sieges would have been resolved by an assault on the walls with siege towers (explains the design of Dalinar's bridges), rams and ladders. I suspect this one of those arias where having a shard bearer would help as they would make a great forlorn hope.

I think some of you are misunderstanding the reasons some things were invented. Especially in the warfare department. Take the crossbow for example, while it does have a lot more power than the standard bow, this was a secondary improvement over the fact that anyone could fire a crossbow affectively, while only a person trained with a bow and with a strong enough arm could fire a bow affectively. The true advantage of the crossbows the reduced training time required, increased short range accuracy and finally the improved power and armour piecing.

Interestingly the same argument applies to muskets.

I think some people are getting siege weapons confused with field artillery. The Roman Scorpio is a good example of field artillery and the howitzer is the dominant form today. Canons were defiantly field artillery, especially the lighter canon. the job of field artillery was to kill men, best example of this is WW1 where field artillery killed millions.

A good example of siege weapons would be battering rams or seige towers, or even the humble ladder. all of these are designed to breach or bypass fortifications like walls. Heaver canons would defiantly used in this role, in fact the very heavy 24 pounder guns were exclusive used in this role being too big and heavy to be effective field artillery.

So based on an economic analysis, Alethkar is mostly medieval in economy, but slowly, slowly tipping towards a more capitalist society.  The seeds of proto-industrialism are there, but we will have to see if the Desolation kills it off. 

 

One thing that I'd like to know more about is the Alethi middle class, the first and second nahn of citizen darkeyes, and the tenners to the sixth dahn of lighteyes, who make up society's trained professionals and bureaucrats.  They are the largest segment of consumers with the expendable wealth to buy luxuries, yet they are also the group that could make best use of market regulation and legal protection.

 

 

 

tl;dr - Alethkar economy is mostly medieval, but this doesn't mean they will be like that forever.  Probably.

 

^{Disclaimer:  I am not an economist, nor do I make claims to be one.}

Excellent point. I hadn't thought of the economy. It defiantly looks more medieval. However I suspect the Alethi economy might be a little backwards compared to others. The Thaylen for example might be a lot closer to the sort of capitalist society that was around at the beginning of the industrial revolution. 

I would like to dispute a couple of points. The first is the Davar finances. Given the politics involved it wouldn't surprise me if the reason why Lin Davar didn't borrow from a bank was politics, if someone owes you a lot of money then you would be more likely to help them stay afloat so you get a return on your investment. Same for using the soulcaster, Lin got more then just the soulcaster in that deal (the soulcaster may have been the least of it for all we know). 

As for why they weren't talking about investments when the loans came due, that is easy. They had no capital to invest. They were selling what little they had left to try and stay ahead of their creditors, they simple weren't in a position to invest. I wouldn't consider the Davar's finances as a typical example, altho it is the best we have.

My second point is regarding the potential for an oligopoly. We have to remember that the united Alethkar is only 10 or so years old at the most, and is barely even united at all in many ways. I have to wonder if this is allowed at lower levels in the economy, i.e. is this political manoeuvring at the high level and not typical of day-to-day business in Alethkar.

Third point; given what happened to Roshone what he did probably isn't legal under Alethi law, or if it is legal it is a least frowned upon, or getting caught is frowned upon.

Fourth point; When the industrial revolution began in Britain many of the protection you talk about weren't present either. However she was in a little war with France at the time, which created unprecedented demand for things like guns, uniforms and rope. (actually rope manufacturing was one of the first things to be industrialised in a modern form, using water powered factories. The Royal Navy used a Lot of rope.) By the time the war ended the Industrial revolution had gained enough steam (litterly) to be self sustaining. While the war wasn't the only source of demand for products it was probably the single biggest one and would have help overcome some of the problems of a very unregulated economy.

Having typed all this up my arguments feel a little flimsy compared to yours, especially when I remember them having "moneylenders" but no banks   

I really would like to get a better look at the middle and lower classes, preferably in a major city (which is something we haven't seen at all yet). In fact now that I think about it, with Kaladin being the (nearly) only darkeyed point of view character we have actually seen less of darkeyes then we have of lighteyes. And Kaladin's pov has been dominated from inside the military which is probably one of the worst povs we could have for determining how close they are to an Industrial revolution.

The main reason why I think they are closer to the industrial revolution then to the middle ages is because of the pace of change we are seeing in technology, especially fabrial. Much of the fabrial Technology we see appears to be relatively recent, if it had been around for longer (like is suspect fabrial clocks have) then it would be more wide spread. I'm hoping Dalinar's flashbacks (which will go back 20 years further then the others) in the next book will give us some idea of how recent it all is. If the heating and cooling fabrials are around in Dalinar's youth then the tech is 30+ years old. but if they don't start showing up til Alethkar is unified then most of it so only about 10 years old or so. one of the things that did happen in the lead up to the Industrial revolution was an increase in the development of new technology. 

Edit:

After thinking a little I'd like to go back to my Britain at war point. A case can be made that a state of total war would cause greater demand for industrialisation than any other peace or ordinary wartime economy could. I suspect a desolation would count as a case of total war. in such a case, assuming the everstorm didn't flatten them straight away, then the pre-war economy probably wouldn't have a great effect of weather or not they industrialise.

Instead I see the bigger factors being:

1) How much of the population is well educated and how good is that education, i.e. how much of the population can innovate. which comes back to my point about how fast the Alethi might be innovating.

2) how much of the population was living off subsistence agriculture vs off surplus. just before the Industrial Revolution in Britain this reached a magic 80/20 Subsistence/surplus ration iirc. given that soulcasters seem able to support the approx. 500,000 on the shattered plains it is possible that the Alethi are close to this ratio. (this is sort of related to the above, the better this ratio, the better the above is going to be). A good indication of this would be the population of Kholinar. If it is around 1 million, then it suggest something close to this ratio, if it is only 200,000 - 300,000 then it suggest something more like 85/15 or 90/10.

3) Do they have a good enough tech base to act as a seed? Maybe?

I would like to state this tho: if in any total war between otherwise equal powers, where one Industrialises and one doesn't the one that doesn't, the industrial power will win.

 wonder what the void bringers would do if the humans Industrialise? would this be enough to convince Odium he could lose?

Wow, this thread has generated more discussion then I thought it would. 

I have two problems with this, the first is that no artillery gunner in their right mind would have tried to aim a single cannon at a shard bearer unless he had nothing better to shoot at. the purpose of artillery is to cause massive damage to as many soldiers as possible, in this role the aiming issues aren't as big of a deal as you are shooting at large large target, 100s or 1000s of men. If a shard bearer got it it would be pure luck either way.
My second issues is that you are vastly estimating the effectiveness of shardplate. Look at the following quote describing shard plate in battle agains Pashendi:

 

"Weapons bounced off his armor, leaving tiny cracks."

Page 783, Kindle Eddition, Way of Kings.

If Parshendi weapons can cause plate to crack, even slightly, with every hit then i think it is safe to assume that a cannon ball would probably kill a shard bearer in a single hit. Same goes for a company or more of musket men firing volleys.

My personal theory with regards to why there is no gunpowder is that one or more of these ingredients are harder to find on Roshar then on earth. Nobody invented gunpowder because they set out to do so, it was most likely an accidental discovery. If the ingredients are harder to find then it is much less likely that it would be discovered. Also it looks more time is spent playing with stormlight then with chemicals too.

Good point, I hadn't thought about the printing press. And yes paper/parchment is soulcast:

 

"... onto unnaturally large seamless sheets of parchment. Such parchment was obviously Soulcast."
Page 352, Kindle Edition, Way of Kings.

I agree that the best general term we have to apply to Alethi society is "Pre-Industrial". The question for me is are they closer to the stereotypical (or even real) medieval sociality or are they closer to industrialisation? i think they are closer to the latter, thus my original post.

Snopy, which specific extrapolations particularly irk you?  In the thread you cited, I tried to make a very rough estimate of Alethkar's annual death toll by assuming a population density similar to medieval Europe.  I did that because the pictures of village life showed an agrarian society dependent on human and animal muscle-power, and because the Shattered Plains warcamps, with approximately a half-million people, were now considered a major population center.  Given that both villages and larger population-centers had populations similar to those in medieval Europe, and given that Alethi geography seems less fertile than European, it seemed reasonable to guess that Alethi population density would, if anything, be a bit lower than medieval Europe's population density.  That particular extrapolation still seems reasonable to me--although it could definitely be disputed

The problem i have with this is that the same assumptions could be used to justify other starting points, instead of Europe in the middle ages, what about late feudal Japan? That would give a population of as much as 29 million (with a lot less extrapolation based on further assumptions about the size of the country). What about a comparisons with Yuan Dynisty China (for 60 million) or with Ming Dynasty (for 110 million)? My point is, what you describe, rural labour intensive farming and large population centres of 500,000+ could be used to describe multiple time periods in human history. I don't think we have enough information to really say that medieval Europe is a good starting point (altho I think it is no better or worse than any of the others I have mentioned, they all have their flaws).

The only village we have really seen is Hearthstone and that is describe as being more rural then most and the shattered plains isn't really useful to us as an indication of "normal" large population centres. We have no indication of the population of the cities we have seen either. What I would really like to know is the population of Kholinar. That would be a really good indication.

For the record I agree with your estimate of Alethkar's population.

I don't think I made my point too well. Both King of nowhere and Yata have made it better for me. with fewer words too. 

My point was that people seem to generalise about Althi society and extrapolate accordingly, most often they assuming it is medieval. I wanted to push back against that, in part because I believe that they might be on the cusp of something like an industrial revolution (feel free to persuade me otherwise). I suppose my post achived its goal if people are making similar points.

@ King of nowhere:

I agree that the new fabrial tech isn't affecting the lives of common people yet (with the possible exception of spanreeds), but how long until it does? My point was the innovation and rapid development we see is more like what you would see in an industrialised society, the distribution/manufacturing however still needs improvement.

I regards to farming on Roshar, I don't think it is possible to say they are using farming methods similar to medieval Europe, they are completely different crops in, as you say, completely different ecosystems. I mean does crop rotation on Roshar even make sense if highstorms are dropping nutrient rich crem every week or so? Also given that no one has re-settled and cultivated the unclaimed hills i suspect that farming might not be a limiting factor on population in Alethikar.

@Yata

Thanks for the Welcome. Been lurking for ages and finally got around to posting something. You have precisely and succinctly made my point for me. I do take issue with this tho:

Anyway your analysis is good but to me you are tring to fit things too much through stereotypes.

My point was that other people were applying Stereotypes and if I have used them it was only to better make that point... yeah, that was totally the reason.