The Isle of Cornad

[Aval Penworth]

The Island is about 750 miles across. The larger cities sprawl to 20-30 miles across. The isle is home to 12 million people and 150 million sheep.

[ravells]

20 - 30 miles for a city is huge in medieval terms, Aval, but as always there may be in-game reasons for this. I'm a big fan of exaggerating city sizes anyway, even if it does put them out of scale. For me if the map looks artistic then I'm quite happy to take liberties with scale. Although bear in mind the larger you make the cities the 'smaller' the land area looks to the eye. One of the best ways of helping the eye to denote scale to show that the map is of a large landmass is to put in a ton of city and town labels.

150m sheep? Is this an alternate New Zealand?

[Aval Penworth]

20 - 30 miles for a city is huge in medieval terms)

Oh, I probably should have mentioned that this is not a medival map. (None of my maps are) It is for a high-fantasy steam-age scenario. Lots of magic, lots of crazy steam-punkish devices, derigibles, ornithopters, iron-clad ships, stupendous bridges spanning mile wide rivers. So I need lots of unwashed masses for the players to sneer down at from their shiny Jules Vernesque flying machine.

The sheep are an in joke in the campaign.

Your advice is noted and I will be adding a lot of lables for cities and regions once the "landscaping" is finished.

(Post 400)

[Aval Penworth]

Latest WIP for constructive critique from my esteemed peers.

[Aval Penworth]

Another update with some lables...getting there.

[rdanhenry]

You've got some... what I can only describe as "horizontal scratches" in your terrain. Straight lines that really ruin the natural look. (See between Tavershome and its label for an example.) Otherwise this is mostly looking great. The only other thing I see is that you might want to try to blend the river mouths into the sea. The smaller rivers look fine, but where the larger rivers hit the pale coastal waters, the change is rather abrupt.

[jbgibson]

A really, really nice look. The mountains are particularly successful. A couple of quibbles - one with terrain, one about logic:

There's some depressions where I kind of expect to see lake or swamp in the bottom. Or if you have enough editing control over the terrain, maybe a canyon where some former lake has cut an overflow escape. One halfway between Baverstead and Highpoint, another half between Brinmire and Firestone. Where you do have lakes, it seems odd that none have outlets (except that huge one).

The logic question is do you intend the little network of roads and brighter green outside some cities to be farmland? And I guess much of the rest of the open space is grazing for the sheep? Unless your farmers are just imMENSEly productive, it takes many, many times the area of a city to support a city, food-wise. Or is it mutton and milk for breakfast, and milk and mutton for dinner? :-) If those inhabitants largely subsist on mushrooms grown in the cellar and attic, that's fine, so long as you have some rationale in mind.

Your cities are very tidy - do they have walls? Or do your people not have our tendency to spread out? What with all those Really Really Big urban areas I'd expect a gazillion towns, villages, and hamlets. If you've just not gotten around to that yet, forgive the question - the map is a delight!

Steam-age society... so is there ore in those mountains, to feed the smelters that pour the metal that goes into all the lovely cogs and pistons? If so, how do the raw materials get to the cities?

[Aval Penworth]

A really, really nice look. The mountains are particularly successful. A couple of quibbles - one with terrain, one about logic:

There's some depressions where I kind of expect to see lake or swamp in the bottom. Or if you have enough editing control over the terrain, maybe a canyon where some former lake has cut an overflow escape. One halfway between Baverstead and Highpoint, another half between Brinmire and Firestone. Where you do have lakes, it seems odd that none have outlets (except that huge one).

The logic question is do you intend the little network of roads and brighter green outside some cities to be farmland? And I guess much of the rest of the open space is grazing for the sheep? Unless your farmers are just imMENSEly productive, it takes many, many times the area of a city to support a city, food-wise. Or is it mutton and milk for breakfast, and milk and mutton for dinner? :-) If those inhabitants largely subsist on mushrooms grown in the cellar and attic, that's fine, so long as you have some rationale in mind.

Your cities are very tidy - do they have walls? Or do your people not have our tendency to spread out? What with all those Really Really Big urban areas I'd expect a gazillion towns, villages, and hamlets. If you've just not gotten around to that yet, forgive the question - the map is a delight!

Steam-age society... so is there ore in those mountains, to feed the smelters that pour the metal that goes into all the lovely cogs and pistons? If so, how do the raw materials get to the cities?

Thanks for the feedback. I will carve some outlets into the sides of the depressions you mention...good call.

As for the lakes I will consider some out flowing rivers, I wasn't sure about that. Maybe I'll build the hills around the "land locked" lakes keep them in.

I envisioned a good portion of the cities to be detached or semi-detached dwellings with a small fenced garden or courtyard. I had imagined many of the inhabitants of the cities to have a vegetable patch and a couple of sheep or a goat in the small garden around their property. I will however expnd the farmlands and road network. The oldest parts of the oldest cities have walls but 95% of the urban sprawl would be ouside the walls.

As for the small villages, I wil try placing some to see how it looks. Too hard to label them though.

I thought that lumber and ore would be transported by river.

[Aval Penworth]

You've got some... what I can only describe as "horizontal scratches" in your terrain. Straight lines that really ruin the natural look. (See between Tavershome and its label for an example.) Otherwise this is mostly looking great. The only other thing I see is that you might want to try to blend the river mouths into the sea. The smaller rivers look fine, but where the larger rivers hit the pale coastal waters, the change is rather abrupt.

Thanks I wasn't sure if that texture edge was noticable at 100% zoom. If it is I will fix it,... but like the river mouths I think I will wait until I have finished the other adjustments and merged all the layers. Once it is merged I will take to those problem areas with a clone brush.

[Aval Penworth]

Okay, I think most of the fixes are done.

Latest WIP attached