Capital City of Arkenfield WIP need advice/feedback.

[Warlander]

My apologies the image was scaled down in order to get it on the screen.




I am designing this city of an upcoming MMO called Chronicles of Elyria. The city itself sits on a total of 81 (9x9) parcels of land with each parcel square being rounded to 210 x 210 ft to make it easier to map. Since the game will allow me to actually use architecture I decided to make a city layout that makes the most use of the space rather than letting it grow organically.

So I went for a very compact design with in inner walled district with a great hall & adjoinining halls for a main government building, trade/craft guild building, and a militia house. the other 20 parcels are crop fields for food/feed, and also livestock and horse pastures. That way I can feed the animals I breed to maintain a calvary of 200 while selling off excess animals. Along with stables to house 200 horses, structures lining the inner part of the walls for farmers, tools, wagons, and feed. A horse track with stands built on top of the stables to watch races of horse/chariot racing. A couple of barracks, Administrative buildings and 20ft thick walls & 40x40ft towers. I also want to have flat towers with tall wooden watch towers build on top in order to zip line from the inner wall to the outer wall towers along with a small netword of ziplines in the outer wall that take people to and from each tower quickly.

The outer district has two street loops with 30ft wide streets and 10ft wide sidewalks in which people can set up stalls or tents between the shops to sell things. The many small building are 30ft wide and 70ft long. The bottom floors are made for shops with a 30x40ft showroom & 30x30ft warehouse/crafting area. The second floors are the residence with 10 rooms, balcony, and a living area for kitchens. The rooftops are flat to allow people to grow some supplimentary food sources, and there is a half residence variant & full 3rd floor variant. There are also 40x70ft buildings which are inns that have the first floor being a stable with some wagon storage, and 1-2 floors for the inn. All buildings also have an underground celler for food or item storage.

And lastly there are all the muunicipal buildings. I'm thinking of putting a hospital next to the church. The courthouse/library seemed like a good choice for record keeping, contracts, books, maps, ect being close at hand. The orphanage being next to the school so that wards of the state will have an outlet to learn or also to join the combat academy as an option too. All the corner buildings against the walls are large barracks. There are also wells in the center of every 3x3 parcel of the 9x9 grid. Lastly there are also taverns all over the city to serve food.

When the city is fully built it can potentially hold 2.5-5k population, with enough space for wagons, horses, and grow enough rooftop food in addition to what is grown in the inner district to help make the city more self reliant instead of relying heavily in food trading.

Anyhow any sort of advice or feedback is welcome.

[XCali]

I'm going to be honest, for me an extremely structured map like this is hard to get immersed with. True, a lot of new city plans today are blocks, but that doesn't make them interesting. It is the parts of a city that goes outside that structure that gives it life.
A map needs to be dynamic, it is the stuff that happened naturally that looks the most interesting. Take what I am saying the way you want to.

For a map needs to get your imagination flowing, make you wonder why. The way our brain works says a lot, it remembers the stuff that wasn't more of the same, it remembers the stuff that stood out. Hopefully that gives you some insight into how to tackle a city map. Make unique districts, make parts of it that is completely different than the districts on the others side of the map.