itch.io

I can't speak for the developer, but this is how I've viewed it:  historically a dwelling would have two parents, several children (up to 8 or 10 depending on various factors, 4 is a good average assumption), and 2 to 4 grandparents.  There might also be a couple aunts and uncles.  So that's around 8 to 10 people per household, using my educated guess assumptions.  How many other buildings there would be beyond houses would depend on various factors, but a general rule of thumb is the larger the village the more buildings will be not-houses.  You'd want grain storage, animal housing, and the like for any village.  As it gets larger you'd start to see taverns, inns, shops, government buildings, brothels, et cetera.  There's going to be some kind of calculus relating the average population to the average number of shops, of taverns, of restaurants, et cetera, but that's beyond my level of education on the subject.

If you're designing a village for a tabletop game or something like that, it's easy enough to re-jigger the numbers to your liking (5 people on average per household, say) and pick a number of buildings based on that average.  That's what I do.

The values in your table seem right. The formula for population is very simple:

population = number_of_buildings * random_number_around( 5 )

Why?

• The average number of persons per household was much higher in a medieval rural settlement than in a modern city. The household usually consisted of an extended family (as @SophieNicole mentioned): the main couple, their children (not 1-2, but rather 3-4), some of their unmarried brothers and sisters, the husband's parents etc.
• I use a much smaller multiplier (5) than a reasonable average number of persons per household to take into account the fact not all buildings are farmhouses. Another reason is to make that value not so odd for a modern eye.
• I use random numbers instead of a fixed value to disguise the simplicity of the formula (otherwise the population of a hamlet of two houses would always be 10 for example) and also to "emulate" cultural differences.