Board Thread:Suggestions forum/@comment-26296200-20160123014258/@comment-25841881-20160123170702

People, can we agree that they have an actual city of Umbar? Since if we can, I can prove that they either were a very very extraordinary nation and very powerful, or that they had forces besides pirates. Here are the proofs, based on the assumption of an actual city:

Extraordinary, Powerful Nation

A city must have people. People must have food. How do people get food? The raider pirates give it to them(Very unlikely unless the land people have something to give in return, which means they'd have land industry/conquest). How do raider pirates get food? Raider pirates raid. They'd have to either have tons and tons of fleets, as in more ships raiding than people in the city, or each ship/fleet would have to raid an insane amount. Each ship would be feeding itself, as well as the city. That's quite a lot of food, when you think of the distance between Umbar and Gondor, where they'd raid cities. Also, the Umbarian fleet would have to be stronger than the Gondorian fleet for them to be able to provide a steady stream of food to the city. Since this is an unlikely scenario, I am going to use the second proof.

Land-based Nation

A city must have people. People must have food. How do people get food? People farm. What do people farm with? Tools. Where do people get tools? Mines. How do the farms and mines stay safe from invaders(We can assume Umbar had some enemies, we also know that they were enemies with Gondor, and if they had a good fleet they would raid Umbar.)? They had land-based soldiers.