For Better Worldbuilding: Rants About Kingdoms and Cities

Greetings, mutants.

I think Bad Worldbuilding is when there's a kingdom with the best artists, a kingdom with the best scholars, and a kingdom with the best military.

Great worldbuilding is when they're all the same kingdom.

Bluntly put, the richer a country, the more likely they're going to do great with all three. You kinda need money to support the arts. Someone needs to be paying the artists. Someone needs to be paying the scholars. Someone needs to be paying the military. 

This is why the first universities appeared in Africa during the Golden Age of Islam. They had lots of money. Lots of money tends to attract lots of smart people, and smart people tend to bring in lots of money.

Also stop with the "100 people live in this city". All you'd get is farmers and coal miners. Your kingdom is not gonna be 4 square miles. That's not a kingdom, that's a backwater village in the Middle of Nowheresville, Kentucky.

Most major countries have about 100,000 or so square miles. In fact, the top 77 countries on the planet have over 100,000 square miles.

Germany: 137,000 

England: 130,000 

France: 247,000 

Singapore is a bit of a weirdo only having 281 square miles but being really powerful monetarily. 

Your kingdom, at four square miles - unless they're a remote island with no strategic necessity, no natural resources, not in the way of a major trade route - is gonna get eaten immediately.

"Lol, yeah, but I'm working with some medieval-" 

Shang Dynasty China had 30 million people at one point. That's not medieval—that is ancient china, before Rome, and had 600,000 or so square miles. 

Egypt had millions of people, about 600,000 or so square miles.

If we get to Rome, we have millions of people. Around 0—199 CE, we have one million people in Rome city proper! And 60 million people overall in the empire. At an area of over 5 million square miles.

Also Empires are coalitions of kingdoms and emperors rule over said empires. The only reason China called their leaders emperors is because China is less one country, and more a bunch of different countries and kingdoms.