In my world, I have the cities on the coast. The coastal land is not particularly good for crops. It is very rocky. But, there is oil and coal. So energy production = civilization. Plenty of fish.
On 'the other side of the mountains' (mountains = a good device as a barrier, both physical and mental demarcation, and geologically reasonable as a means to separate two land types), there is very little to no fossil fuels, but great farmlands, forests and so on.
So this sets up two culture types, and why there might be an economic pull for farmers to get a good price on grain (etc) if they schlepp the stuff over the mountains to the cities.
But, I am seriously mentally revising the specifics of this on the basis of comments here. For example, I don't see why they would caravan to all the cities since a boat in city #1 can take over and the oxen can go back. Additionally, the idea of alcohol introduces some interesting character possibilities.
I had thought that they would caravan 8 hour days or more, in part to cover that 150 miles in the time frame I need. But it might make more sense to make the travel hours shorter each day, and the overall distance shorter too. This gives the oxen more time to graze, and the characters more time to interact with one another.
On 'the other side of the mountains' (mountains = a good device as a barrier, both physical and mental demarcation, and geologically reasonable as a means to separate two land types), there is very little to no fossil fuels, but great farmlands, forests and so on.
So this sets up two culture types, and why there might be an economic pull for farmers to get a good price on grain (etc) if they schlepp the stuff over the mountains to the cities.
But, I am seriously mentally revising the specifics of this on the basis of comments here. For example, I don't see why they would caravan to all the cities since a boat in city #1 can take over and the oxen can go back. Additionally, the idea of alcohol introduces some interesting character possibilities.
I had thought that they would caravan 8 hour days or more, in part to cover that 150 miles in the time frame I need. But it might make more sense to make the travel hours shorter each day, and the overall distance shorter too. This gives the oxen more time to graze, and the characters more time to interact with one another.