Elven City on a Lake

[Farland]

Here is a map I made for my website, the World of Farland. It is an elven city. I'll take advice. Thanks!alustel.jpg

[Chick]

Hi Farland, nice job! Very pretty, clearly a lot of detailed work, and excellent textures.

I do have a few comments ....
1. The tree clusters are all identical. That is easier to do, but it does stand out in a finished map. I suggest making at least 6-8 different clumps and scattering them around.
2. The lakes do not have outlets to the main water.
3. The shorelines are too green immediately adjacent to the water, there should be a beach of some sort.
4. Numbers 2 and 3 make it look like this land is floating on top of the water, instead of surrounded by it.
5. I assume you will be doing some kind of legend to label the numbers. You will also need to explain any specific building types, as I see several that are multiples, such as the red octangles in the lower left.
6. The docks are also a copy/paste look, all the same, and some of them don't match the road that leads to them, so you might want to angle them a bit or change the road slightly.

Mostly, the buildings look great, lots of variety and interest. The colors are very nice, and the layout attractive! I think with some touchups, you have a very nice map here!!

[Farland]

Thanks for your comments. You make great points, especially about the trees and docks. Yes, I have a legend, and yes the repeating buildings are explained.

[Wingshaw]

Just to contradict some of what Chick said, I don't think the lakes need to have an outlet to the main water body: does a backyard pool or pond have an outlet to the sea? No, because it isn't necessary.

Second, I don't think beaches are necessary, either. Elves are famous for their green thumbs, so perhaps the shore is green because moss grows along the water. My point is simply that, as long as your map is logical, it doesn't matter how different it is from anything familiar to us in the real world.

But a fantasy map doesn't just need logical consistency; it also needs aesthetic quality. A few aesthetic points:
--Chick is right, the connection between land and water does seem a bit vague. Maybe if you added ripples or little waves around the shore, you could correct that a bit.
--varying the tree clusters is a very good idea, also. In addition to drawing more clusters, you can also just try varying their rotation and size.
--all of the buildings (there is only one exception that I can see) are angled either horizontally or vertically. That makes them look rather weird. I think it would be a very good idea to start rotating your buildings, to add variety. When you do so, you should probably aim to rotate them to be aligned with the adjacent stretch of road, as that will look more logical.
--same with the docks, as chick has already pointed out.

THW

[Chick]

....I don't think the lakes need to have an outlet to the main water body: does a backyard pool or pond have an outlet to the sea? ...THW

Well, ummm, yes, they do. When it rains, water falls into the lake, pool, pond, etc, and unless there is an outlet, it just fills up until the water overflows and makes one.

In the case of a backyard pool, that outlet is typically the overflow drain into the sewer.

In the case of a pond, there is always an outlet, even if the water level occasionally falls below that level for a short time. A natural pond always has an outlet. An artificial pond created with a bulldozer may have the outlet deliberately kept high enough that evaporation keeps the level below the artificial outlet level.

The only real exception is a "closed sea" such as the Dead Sea or the Great Salt Lake, and in those cases, the outlet is actually evaporation. Those are very special situations, because in order for a closed sea to exist, the rate of water input must equal the rate of evaporation, otherwise the sea would dry up or fill up until it made an outlet.

[Wingshaw]

OK, I'll take your word for it. I know you have considerable knowledge in this area. I just assumed that, either through evaporation or by infiltrating the soil, a pond could exist without needing a surface outlet. I suppose desert oases are special cases, also?

Perhaps my error can be explained easily enough: as far as I know, Australia is a place where it rains too infrequently for a low lying area to fill with water and overflow. I frequently see ponds and dams that have no outlet, but never overflow, in the country around here. But, then again, the Australian countryside has never been a popular choice for fantasy maps.

Thanks for the correction.

THW

[Chick]

Those are called evaporation ponds here in the States, and are artificial or artificially dammed, right? Their outlet is evaporation, but they are not natural.

As for desert oasis and the like, those are like wells, holes down to the water table, so I suppose you could say they have no outlet (as in surface outlet), but in fact they are not actually ponds, just an exposed part of the underground water aquifer.

[Knightbanez]

I've always loved cities built on lakes or rivers, or even out in the water. I really like this one but keep improving! It seems like you've got some good criticism to work towards.

[ChickPea]

I do like the grassy effect on the ground and think it works really well. Agree with the commenters above, that with a few tweaks to the buildings and trees, it'll look great.

[Deadshade]

Just to contradict some of what Chick said, I don't think the lakes need to have an outlet to the main water body: does a backyard pool or pond have an outlet to the sea? No, because it isn't necessary.

THW

Just to convince you how improbable the sustained existence of something like that is on the Earth.

The main factor acting on lakes and ponds is evaporation which basically depends on temperature and wind speed.
Typically :
Around 10°C with a mild breeze you loose some 1 mm/m²day. That makes some 400 mm/year
Around 20°C with a mild breeze you loose much more - some 5 mm/m²day. That makes some 2 000 mm/year

Then you have precipitation.
There is a high variability and complex dependence on climatic and topographic parameters. But it is typically around 700 mm in temperate areas and much less in drier areas.

Already with that you see that evaporation dominates vastly in warmer conditions and can be compensated by precipitation only in cold and rainy regions.
So in a vast majority of cases, your pool or pond wouldn't indeed need any outlet because it would dry out and then start to oscillate between dry in some seasons and muddy in others..

Drying out then oscillating can be said to be a rule for any closed water body not connected to a sea and covers a vast cpectrum going from the Titicaca lake through the Caspian and Aral seas.

But then there can be another case when a river feeds the lake.
F.ex the Caspian sea has an inflow (mostly Volga) of some 10 000 m^3/s +. This is equivalent of around 1 000 mm/year precipitation.
So the total rivers+precipitation can come pretty close to the evaporation even in warmer climates where evaporation is high.
Of course the probability that these numbers be equal is exactly zero.
In colder climates the inflow will exceed evaporation and the lake will overflow and connect to sea. In warmer climates it will slow down the decrease of the surface of the lake but it will continue to reduce towards a much smaller oscillating value.