The City of Melekhir
I am starting a map of another city and revising my mapping process. I am using CC3+ and the houses from Bitmap style B. I made a background in SketchBook combining several different parchment/old paper images and drew the cliffs for the hill the palace sits on on the south side of the city. I would like to sketch out some additional hills on the background. One in the north center area of the map, one on the northwest side on the map, one on the southwest side of the map, and another possibly in the southeast corner. We will see how that progresses. I am pleased with how the cliffs came out. They are far from perfect, but a big step forward for me. All the beautiful maps on this site have challenged me to keep improving.
Melekhir is the capital of Elandia and is a city with almost 1000 years of history. I have started laying out the street network. The large paved area is the market square. Just north of that on the island with grass (it is an artificial island created by the canal and mill pond) is a water mill which grinds grain into flour. The road running north-south on the west side of the map is the Old Highway which is even older than the city.
Last edited by Texas Jake; 08-27-2018 at 10:33 PM.
Loaded image generated from CC3 showing location of rivers into SketchBook with previous layers. Using image from CC3 as a guide. Drew contour lines to guide the hill making process.
Sketched in ridge lines and valleys (dashed lines) to help define hills
Now that I have the contours drawn it tells me a lot about where the roads should run. I will be rerouting them. I am debating how I am going to do the hills. With the contour lines, I can definitely see where they are, though. Learning more and more about the process every day and really enjoying the journey. This map making is addictive.
Working on the background in Autodesk SketchBook. When I finish I will probably fine tune it it PS then import into CC3+ to layout the city. When that is done, back to SketchBook and PS to fine-tune and label. I tried several abandoned attempts to use PS to create a 3D look through beveling, but never was satisfied with the results. Finally settled on some contour lines and shading. The hills are turning out more mountainous then I intended, but I am going with the look to see how it pans out. It is a challenge to find ways to capture the vision I have in my head for the map. It doesn't help that that vision is evolving as I progress. I am learning and pushing my limited artistic ability as I go. I am addicted to this map making thing it seems.
Finished hills and now will probably redo island where the palace is located and change from cliff to hill. More of a hill is what I originally intended, but the cliff was less intimidating.
Loaded image into CC3+ and starting to layout city. Have basic road network in and put a few houses on the hill terrace to see how they look up there. The terraces will be the upper-class districts.
Added more housing and widened some roads. Raised some walls to protect against raids. Moved the port facility to the east side. This is the original port that dates back to the time the palace (located on the island) was built. The terraces on the south face of the central hill are the result of what was a rock quarry dating back prior to the construction of the palace and the founding of the city. This quarry supplied the stone used to construct the palace and the city walls. After it was abandoned, it became the site of the estates of nobles and wealthy merchants. The port on the northern island serves the mill and the other buildings on the island are granaries and warehouses to store flour. Another, larger port will be located on the west bank of the western river on the bend just above where the two major rivers meet. The area in the vicinity of this port (the west bank in the area of the SW Hill will be an industrial district.
The City Zoning Committee met and said there wasn't enough land area in the city for the alleged population. Well I cut the scale in half, quadrupled the land mass, and silenced their complaints. As a result, I had to tear down all construction (what a mess that created) and begin the new Lilliputian Construction Project (LCP). The city land area is now roughly one square mile in the area south of the north central hill and between the rivers. More than enough room for the capital city which has a population of 10-12K (down from 20K before a plague swept the land 10 years prior). The housing on the hill is military families that are affiliated with the garrison in the fortress on top of the hill. The palace (on the opposite side of the canal) has its own garrison. The housing around the port is the city's slums. The east of the large bridge is the market district. The port, slums, fortress and palace are part of the original city. Form there, the city expanded. The city is located on the Old Highway which connects East and West. This location is strategic from a military, political and economic standpoint.
Hey this is a cool thread. Really like seeing how you've developed it so far and looking forward to more. I especially appreciate the wall actually encompassing the entire city.
For my eye it looks like it is going to be super densely packed, and assuming a consistency at that density I think it will have far more room that would suit 10-12 k population (or the previous 20k). Meaning a lot of derelict buildings and a lot of wasted unused land/resources. For instance, just around that grey building in the slum area NW of the port I see around 80ish houses in that little surrounding square, assuming a rather low 4 persons per house that is 320 people, extrapolating from that (very roughly) just in that southern tip you've filled in alone there would be almost 2500-3000 people. For the bigger houses in the west section you've drawn keep in mind that it is not only the rich people but also their servants who live there so whilst their buildings are bigger so are the numbers of people living in them (so not as dense as the slums but not as empty as one might imagine either). I would suggest that at this time period, people would tend to concentrate their housing tighter (multiple stories) in order to allow them more land in close proximity to use for industry or growing food. I think the rich places would almost certainly have parcels of private land attached to them and the poor slums would have fields if not next to them, very close by.
That's just my thoughts regarding the city, and I could easily be wrong. In any case, as I said, I really like how this has been developing it seems very natural and I look forwards to seeing where you go with it.
Thank you for the comments, Falconius. The areas mapped so far are some of the most densely populated. The occupants of the slums are laborers who work in the port and other areas of the city. They grow very little of their own food. The market district is larger structures, but still fairly tightly clustered. As you move out further away from these area, the spacing between structure will become more generous and include land for farming and livestock. The land area is sufficient to support more than 20K. London grew to over 80K in a similar area (1 square mile). The city draws inspiration from Rothenburg ob der Tauber, London, and Jerusalem, combining the flavor of all three to some extent. Rothenburg probably being the strongest influence and the wall around the city is modeled after its wall.
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