WIP - The city of Ankh-Bathor

[Clercon]

Hello thebax and thanks for your input. The whole point with this early WIP is that I want this to be right and I’m no city designer in real life. So hopefully people like you can help me to get things straight.

Clercon, I like your maps. I have little doubt it will be a stunner when complete.

Well at the moment the map is in a very early Alpha stage so hopefully the visuals will improve a lot :-) At least you have put some pressure on me now.

The first question that comes to mind--what's the scale? Are these two cities a mile or two apart or are they 20 miles apart?

At the moment the scale is about 12 km across. This in miles would be something around 7.5 miles. It might change however depending on how this map develops. But something around that scale it’ll be.

Second, if the cities are less than a mile or two apart, why is the canal between them so wavy? If the canal is man made, then it would likely have been dug as straight as possible, the only reason it would be that wavy was if the landform and terrain required it (which to be honest, is the explanation you might want to run with--your canal looks far more "interesting" than a straight line would be).

Spot on :-) I went for looking good here, but I might change some parts of it to a more straight path. However is the terrain some of the reasons that the canal isn’t completely straight. The canal has a small story to itself as well. The city of Ankh-Bathor is situated on the remains of a much older city from the times before the great war between the Archonts and the humanoids in the seven worlds. By then magic was very common in the world and the canal was created to connect the two seas, “innerhavet” and “Etrakiska sjön” (by then they had different names of course). After the war the city was laid in ruins but the canal remained as a scar in the earth. So we are talking of a canal that has existed for some thousands of years (haven’t really decided the timeframe here, but it’s not very important). So maybe the course of the canal has changed some bits because of earthquakes, changes to the world during the great war and so on, but a canal created by magic can’t seize to exist, not this one at least. And it looks better than a straight line :-)

Third, where are the locks? Although the two bodies of water on either side of Ankh Bator are likely close to the same height (for example at the Panama Canal, the Pacific is 20 cm higher than the Atlantic or about 8 inches), locks would facilitate two way traffic by moderating or eliminating a strong current and enabling horses, donkeys or whatever tow system you want to rig up to tow the ships from end to end (lookup the Erie Canal), they also can slow, moderate, or stop a storm surge from wiping out everything along the canal.

Thank you for this input, I love locks so of course I have to put some of them in. Didn’t know that the panama canal had them. So now the Ankh-Bathor canal will have them too.

Fourth, and this point ties into question two, is this piece of land the continental divide between two or more tectonic plates? I know it sounds a bit over the top, but Panama is, which is why it is so mountainous. If that is the case with Ankh Bator, the central part of the canal would be higher than either end. You'd just need to find a source of water to keep the canal running (Panama's is the massive amount of rainfall (69 inches a year) that keeps Gatun Lake filled). Perhaps there is some massive dwarven waterworks, aqueduct or similar system--just the thing requiring hardy adventurers when it starts developing problems.....

Another good question. This one made me think. First of all there are aqueducts going into the city from the hills surrounding the area, so some of the water comes from them. Secondly there are hot springs in this area that feeds the canal with water. The same hot springs are also used to heat some of the more luxurious houses during the winter.

Fifth, and I know this is early in the process, the canal will likely have towpaths on either side (or at least one side). There should also be markets. One final consideration is defense. Although the city is in the middle of a powerful nation If I remember your first reference to it correctly, what is to keep raiders attacking either on land or sea? City walls may not be necessary if the land the city is in has been at peace for a long time, but there should be at least some sea forts to deal with the marauding riff raff.

Yes there will be towpaths, at least on one side. At the moment the graphics are just placeholders for me to know where city, countryside and water will be. So the pattern used for the city is not the one to be used, therefor no markets, villas, palaces and so on. When it comes to defense the whole city is surrounded by a wall. Parts of the wall are from the times before the great war, these parts are of hard black stone that are impossible to break, protected by long time forgotten magic.

Hopefully this answers your questions to some degree.