Land of the Eleven Tribes

[Juggernaut1981]

Lone> Don't mind helping you establish your politics. As you can no doubt tell, I'm big on grand scale politics in D&D campaigns and how they burrow down into individual stories.

Also in D&D terms, I tend to also be very aggressive about alignments in D&D (particularly Evil societies... 3.5E and onwards don't make Evil societies "evil enough", they're just 'not absolutely friendly' instead of EVIL with a capitalised BBEG thrown in).

But then again, that's probably for another forum and a set of posts about 6 months long about wether 4E is the D&D equivalent of fairy-floss or a "genuine evolution".

[LonewandererD]

Okay, with the terrain done of this map I'm moving onto towns and other signs of civilisation and settlement. On my last map I did this with small and rather simple symbols to represents towns, capitals and forts and with a simple line of dots to represent major travel routes. Now, aiming for a more detailed and pseudo-realistic map I'm trying to make symbols and stuff that actually look like what they're supposed to look like.

Let me begin by saying that I have no idea what i"m doing so most of this is based of Pasis' tut with the town texture made using Pyrandon's town tut. Here on this practice map I have a city, a town, two small villages and a lot of farmland. I have four because I have four different farmland types, which do you think looks best? I personally like the fourth one but some might find it too bright. And before people point it out, I know the roads aren't that great, as we speaks this I have fixed the problem and have a more cobble-like road for the next map.

Also note that all of these things are much larger than they will be on the real map, its just practice right now. I'm also trying to make some forts and towers and such but first I'm doing some research to try and figure out which cultural architecture I want to try and emulate. I'm aiming for something a little less european and a little more asian or indian but so much that people couldn't immediatly relate them back to either culture, maybe i could aim for babylonian

-D-

[Steel General]

Honestly I don't care much for the farmland texture, looks more like cracks to me. Maybe try something more like this

I do like the towns, etc. though.

[LonewandererD]

Yeah, the farmland does look like cracks, which was something i was hoping to downplay in the third pic which looks more like fields than the other three but the colour threw me off. My farms are still in an experimental phase.

I do have a concern about my scale though. Right now I have it at 1 pixel = 1/4 mile or 400 metres, would things like towers and fortress even be visible at that range or should I make the map bigger to increase the scale. On the same note would it be feasible for a 1000x1000 mile country to have 12 cities or should it be 1 city and 11 towns?

-D-

[LonewandererD]

I have a question about this map, does the geography make sense, is it possible to find this kind of layout in a real world place. I ask because I was thinking of redoing the geography, mainly mountain placements, but if people are fine with it I'll continue as it is.

-D-

[Diamond]

Just wanted to say I love this map; it looks simply beautiful, especially the mountains.

I do have a concern about my scale though. Right now I have it at 1 pixel = 1/4 mile or 400 metres, would things like towers and fortress even be visible at that range or should I make the map bigger to increase the scale. On the same note would it be feasible for a 1000x1000 mile country to have 12 cities or should it be 1 city and 11 towns?

I've always found this to be useful: Medieval demographics made easy.

[LonewandererD]

Yeah, i founf my copy of medieval demographics and found out that a 1000x1000 mile map gave me more people and cities than i knew what to do with. So i changed the scale so that 8 pixels = 1 mile which gives me a 500x500 mile map. This gives me a population of 5 miliion people, about 20 people per square mile to represent that most of the country is still wilderness, and can support 1 big city and 11 smaller cities, exactly what i was aiming for, although naming 60 towns isn't going to be easy.

On the subject of terrain, I'm leaving it as it is but I'm now breaking it down into 11 territories and will change any terrain that I believe needs changing.

-D-

[LonewandererD]

Okay, fooled around with the farmlands, put in two castles and redid the roads. The farms look more "farmy" here and while they're small here when put on the full-sized map they'll actually look bigger.

Short update I know.

-D-

[Gandwarf]

I like the second one better, it does have a bit of a neon glow to it though...

[LonewandererD]

Okay, I have three maps here. The first is Evelakaia with the last of the terrain done and the tribal borders put it, the borders are still quite rough and probably won't be on the end map but are there to help me figure out who owns what. The second and third maps are my farm types with two different colour styles, which is better? Note: on the large map you have to zoom into 100% to see as intended, the zoomed out look does it no justice.

In order to use the more accepted farm type and use my orchard farm type I've decided on two farm types. As you can see on the map there are large areas of rocky terrain, these areas are actually a lot greener and wetter than they appear. As the farming of things like grain and rice and such tends to ruin the soil the fertile valleys of these rocky areas are given over to the cultivating of fruit orchards and several special farms devoted to growing medicinal herbs. The main farm types of grain and rice will be cultivated along the rivers near the cities.

It is to be noted that only about 11% of the land will be farmland. Alot of the newer towns will rely on their own small crops or would have to have food shipped in from other towns. Most of the food production in this country is done around the older, major cities and these lands are always heavily guarded against "bandit" raids and spirit attacks.

Also, I'm having a slight colour problem with my rivers right but that should be fixed by my next map.

-D-