[Region 1][Map 06][City 01] Arborea

[ravells]

The city outline is based on Montepulciano in Italy (if you want beautiful walled cities, northern Italy is the place to go). Attached is the real map with the entrances and exits, which I may or may not follow depending on how the internal structure of the city begins to shape out. The map is drawn with vector software (drawplus), so the towers are dead easy to move around the walls. Similarly the river is easily moved too as it's vector based - but a big bridge sounds quite cool, so I might leave the river where it is.

The information I'm trying to get across (unsuccessfully so far) is that the city is built on a slope which is high in the south and almost at ground level to the north. I think the surrounding mountain conveys that but it's really difficult to graphically depict the slope in the city itself without making a more isometric type view (which comes with all its own horrors of construction).

Also, I'm finding it difficult to give the impression that some of the buildings are higher than others. Varying the length of the drop shadow and inner shadow helps a bit, but the result is still not striking enough to be obvious.

Sigurd, not sure what you mean by 'food prep' areas, but I'll probably dot some farmland around the city. From what I can make out in Neon's CWBP map, it's in the middle of a forest, so I may have to rework the background a bit.

This is my first go at mapping a city and I'm learning a lot as I'm going through it. One of the most difficult aspects, I find is to have the form of the buildings or collection of buildings suggest a function. Without this, I fear that the city will just look like random lego blocks with no underlying human intent and no layers of history written upon it. I think it's time I looked at a few books...

Ravs