Quote from: flyingmice;1010747By the way, I don't give a fuck what you think, Ravenswing. I just wanted to clarify. Rant on.

Well, aren't you a charmer.

Quote from: Ravenswing;1010628I'm pretty comfy with my assertion.

Seem more that you are pretty comfy with your rant and don't wish to confuse it with the many exceptions.

Quote from: Ravenswing;1010822Well, aren't you a charmer.

Actually, I'm a really nice guy. If you piss me off, you are either being a complete dick or a loudmouth moron. You can choose which you are being.

Quote from: flyingmice;1011012Actually, I'm a really nice guy. If you piss me off, you are either being a complete dick or a loudmouth moron. You can choose which you are being.

Whilst I have no sides in this particular argument, I must say I like thus comment.

No offense meant to Ravenswing, of course.

Quote from: flyingmice;1011012Actually, I'm a really nice guy. If you piss me off, you are either being a complete dick or a loudmouth moron. You can choose which you are being.

Whilst I have no sides in this particular argument, I must say I like this comment.

No offense meant to Ravenswing, of course.

Quote from: flyingmice;1010679Yes, yes, yes! There are many cities in deserts and semi arid areas that are NOT on rivers, like Jerusalem. WTF are people talking about here? I don't understand why there is a question. Also, see atoll cities like Tarawa or Majuro or Malé. Or Venice, for crying out loud!

Quote from: Ravenswing;1010731... you mean communities on seacoasts, communities in oases, communities with wells, communities with aqueducts, and communities with 21st century technology, for crying out loud?  Oh sure.  I'm quite comfortable with 21st century Male having a six figure population, and anyone who thinks the burg would have as much as a fiftieth as many people as it has on medieval tech needs to lay off the wacky weed.
...
But they are nonetheless extreme outliers.

Both of you seem to have jumped to agitated for unclear reasons. I agree that the initial point of not-by-a-river is so broad as to be meaningless since there's plenty of other sources of freshwater. When I first saw the original post, my mind immediately jumped to Crater Lake or other caldera lakes as potential freshwater sources not involving a river. In my public health education, I did run across a bunch of discussions regarding spring and cistern-based water supplies (including Jerusalem, as FM mentions). Ravenswing is right that modern cities have a significantly easier time of it (or would, if we weren't trying to provide water for 10-100x as many people). And people are right to point out that the outliers of the real world are certainly not too fantastical for a fantasy world.

I think perhaps before jumping to getting angry, we should be trying to figure out what question, if any, we're actually asking.

Quote from: Willie the Duck;1011163Both of you seem to have jumped to agitated for unclear reasons. .

This isn't the first time this discussion has come up here.

Magic means you can have an entire city balanced on the peak of a mountain if you like.

But historically, any significant pre-industrial civilization needed a major river. If it was a sufficiently advanced civilization, the capital itself didn't need to be on a river.  Jerusalem, for example, was not, but it made use of the River Jordan regardless, via Joppa.

And yes, a very clever engineering culture could have a single city-state in the middle of nowhere through things like cisterns and aqueducts, but as has already been pointed out, in pre-industrial times these were always extremely precarious and prone to sudden collapse.