[WIP] The City-State Union

[Vidgange]

I'm looking forward to your next update then, and I'll try to spot those U's you've missed

As far as the City State/Kingdom discussion goes, a City State refers to a very small nation - no matter the style of government. Rome started out as a City State; at first it had kings, but changed to republic later on. That form of government persisted until ca 30 BCE, but Rome had stopped being a mere City State long before that and was in effect an empire even before the ascension of Augustus. The same thing can be said for the old Mesopotamian City States; they were ruled by (priest-?) kings, and that didn't really change when some of them expanded beyond their original boarders. You can of course keep the name City State Union, I'm just offering a different take on the whole thing =) I like the concept of it, and have been toying with something similar myself. What you can do, is keep the name as a memory from when the cities rebelled together, but everyone living in the nations usually call them for "kingdoms" or "republics" or whatever government form they may have, or simply refer to it as "the Union"

[Meshon]

I meant to just jump in on the 'u' and 'v' thing. The only problem I saw was the kerni ng on the leading 'V', leaving the letter floating way out in front of the word. That actually seems to be a case with many other letters too, there's extra space between the capitals and the rest of the word.

If you're going for authenticity to a sort of early modern time period, then you need to use 'V' at the start of words, and 'u' in the middle, and that's the only rule to stick to. Thus 'Vnion' is correct but, for example 'Vtrevor' (in Galindor) or 'Antrevaly' (in Dalmony) would be 'Vtreuor' and 'Antreualy' respectively. Vindirai is good, but the city below it would be labled Treuonda. Then there's Boruio, Veruezly, Veruando, and maybe others I haven't spotted. This is only if you are trying to match up with a (roughly) 16th century Europe look for your map. And of course, maps from that period often used the Roman version of the V, replacing all uses of 'u' for major titles. You can see that in this map where "Nova" appears in a title, while one of the labels reads "Noua Francia". Then of course you'll start opening up the whole 'I' and 'J' can of worms too. All I really wanted to say is that an unusual (by modern standards) use of u and v is legitimate and, to do the basics, not very complex.

As to the map, I like it a lot, and everyone who has posted already has said much wiser things than I could. Good to see the progress you are making!

cheers,
Meshon

[DanielHasenbos]

@Vidgange: I see what you mean, I had not really thought about that. I made a quick estimation of the size of the region according to the size of the world which this region is part of. That would make Vayyo Island (the biggest one) about 300 kilometers long meaning that the city-state of Vandoria would almost be the size of England. I suppose you have a point and I'll consider what you said in your comment and have them go forth as Republics (in another map they are revered to as the United Islander Republics).

@Meshon: Thanks for your comment, I have already changed all the u's I could find to v's and I think I'll keep it that way.

[Vidgange]

Well, it was just a different take on the whole thing I think that making them republics sounds like a good idea; why install a new king when you've just gotten rid of an old one?

[DanielHasenbos]

Hello all, here is the latest version of the map.

City-State Union 5 copy.jpg

I fixed the inset map making it show things that weren't already on the main map, and tried out some mountains I drew myself. Not sure if it works with the style of the map that's where you guys come in.
All the u's have been changed to v's now, please tell me if you still spot any u's.

I pretty much consider this map finished. I'll leave it here a while to see if any of you have anything to add or fix, but besides that I have no further plans to add to it.

Let me know what you think

-Dan

[Ilanthar]

Nice map! The coloring is very subtle. The shadow is a bit strong on your shields imo, especially on the little ones. That makes it hard to see the details.

[Jayharchitect]

I think the styling of the mountains work fine. This is looking great. I'm curious why you left off every other city on the inset map? You might add those back in! (It might be in this thread, but I'm lazy this morning :-P )

[Diamond]

Yeah, that struck me as kind of strange too - the idea of a detail map is to show MORE detail, not less, so leaving off those cities was an odd choice.

However - awesome map. The layout looks great now, and I especially like how you did those trade routes.

[DanielHasenbos]

@Ilanthar: Thanks, I changed the levels for the shields a bit so the shadows should be better this way.

Jayharchitect and Diamond: The reason I left those off was because I thought the inset map was showing not simply more detail but a whole different sort of information (provinces instead of general city locations) I suppose it did not really work on this map and it was looking sort of empty so I put them back in.

I changed some labels and moved a couple things around, here's what I've got now

Attachment 74928
(I had to reduce the file size of the image so it may seem a bit odd)

-Dan

[DanielHasenbos]

I just noticed that the link to the image doesn't work, here's the right one

-Dan