Issues with Cliffs

[Zaxbeez]

Hello everyone,
I'm working on this city map for a D&D campaign and I don't see myself making the beautiful pieces of art that I see so frequently on this site. I would like to have something better than a cocktail napkin sketch though, so I've been working for about 2 or 3 weeks on the global map and 2 city maps. It's slow going.
But I'm pretty happy with how this city turned out, EXCEPT I want to show that there are cliffs around the castle/keep area.
I've spent hours trying to find or follow tutorials on how to make top-down cliffs but I just can't seem to do it. I was wondering if anyone had any advice on making cliffs? Or generally how to improve this specific map. I know there are tutorials on this site, and I've tried to incorporate a lot of them, but I don't really know what I don't know.
Any help, advice, or feedback is greatly appreciated. Thank you.

[Wingshaw]

I'm not entirely sure how to do cliffs that are consistent with this photo-texture style. I tend to do my cliffs by hand-drawing, but that would clash with what you already have here, I think.

In terms of general suggestions about the maps, I think there are three things that stand out to me:

First, the textures that you've used are way too big. I don't know what scale this map is, but it should not be possible to make out every single cobble stone in the upper and mage quarters without zooming in. The same goes for the grass and water, too.

Second, if you're going to use textures to show different things, than you should apply it to everything. And I'm looking particularly at the roads and buildings right now.

And third, there are issues of believability and realism with your city layout. I'm not going to go into all of them now (I've posted many times on this website about city layout) but the top ones that come to mind are:

-- the extremely straight streets in the upper and mage quarters that all run parallel to each other and have no intersections (and the buildings along those streets that are all the same shape, orientation and nearly the same size)

-- the absence of any buildings or landscaping outside the city walls. A common feature of historic cities was the overspill of urban areas outside the walls, especially for poorer inhabitants and migrants

-- the existence of only two gates - why isn't it possible to exit the city in the lower district? How do I get to the countryside (which I assume is farmland) on that side of the river? Roads and gates reflect the paths that people follow - both for long distance travel/trade and also for short-distance trips (eg farm to market and church)

-- none of the buildings are touching any other buildings, even in the (presumably poorer) lower district. In a medieval city, space inside the walls is valuable (hence poor neighbourhoods growing outside the walls) and so people will take maximum advantage of that fact by building right up to their boundaries (and sometimes over their boundaries) and consequently joining up to their neighbours' buildings.

Hope some of that is helpful.

Wingshaw

[Zaxbeez]

I'm not entirely sure how to do cliffs that are consistent with this photo-texture style. I tend to do my cliffs by hand-drawing, but that would clash with what you already have here, I think.

In terms of general suggestions about the maps, I think there are three things that stand out to me:

First, the textures that you've used are way too big. I don't know what scale this map is, but it should not be possible to make out every single cobble stone in the upper and mage quarters without zooming in. The same goes for the grass and water, too.

Second, if you're going to use textures to show different things, than you should apply it to everything. And I'm looking particularly at the roads and buildings right now.

And third, there are issues of believability and realism with your city layout. I'm not going to go into all of them now (I've posted many times on this website about city layout) but the top ones that come to mind are:

-- the extremely straight streets in the upper and mage quarters that all run parallel to each other and have no intersections (and the buildings along those streets that are all the same shape, orientation and nearly the same size)

-- the absence of any buildings or landscaping outside the city walls. A common feature of historic cities was the overspill of urban areas outside the walls, especially for poorer inhabitants and migrants

-- the existence of only two gates - why isn't it possible to exit the city in the lower district? How do I get to the countryside (which I assume is farmland) on that side of the river? Roads and gates reflect the paths that people follow - both for long distance travel/trade and also for short-distance trips (eg farm to market and church)

-- none of the buildings are touching any other buildings, even in the (presumably poorer) lower district. In a medieval city, space inside the walls is valuable (hence poor neighbourhoods growing outside the walls) and so people will take maximum advantage of that fact by building right up to their boundaries (and sometimes over their boundaries) and consequently joining up to their neighbours' buildings.

Hope some of that is helpful.

Wingshaw

Thanks for pointing out what you did. Some of the issues I just... don't have the time to fix. My campaign was sprung on me and I was very not ready for it.
In a perfect world for me, I would have a shoreline for the river outside the city and a barrier to make sure the upper/mage quarters didn't flood. Make it more of a canal than a river. I wish the docks made more sense. More varied lower quarter ground would be nice. Individual buildings. More descriptive castle, church and mage tower. Farmland/ forest outside.

The two gates thing though - the world this city is in is dominated by a magical wood that makes travel inconsistent and dangerous. There's no roads anywhere. You just kinda wander into the wood and you come out somewhere else. People just always seem to show up at the south gate, so they made that part of the city look best for curb appeal.
I apologize for not really laying this out before, but I don't know what's really valid and what's extra information.

I don't know the right word for it, but this map was supposed to be more of a general feel of the city, rather than a detailed layout. I wanted to give the impression that this city management cares a lot about the upper and mage quarter, not so much about the lower quarter. I imagined the upper and mage quarters getting a lot of road work and projects done to make it nice and orderly, to reflect a very orderly king. But the lower quarter is for the poor and the undesirables. It's more run down and chaotic.

I really would like to get to the point where I can make a map that doesn't... hurt to look at. But right now I just can't spare the time to make it as perfect as I'd like.

[rdanhenry]

If you aren't going to go out on the northwest side, why build there at all? It is much more economical to build on one side of a river. There should be some very strong reason why they would cross the river to put the poor people there.* (And then why they made sure that poor people needed to pass through the nice areas wherever they left or came back to the city.) Separating the royal quarter makes some sense if loyalty of the subjects isn't so great, or was not in the past.

As far as making things easier on the eyes, prefer plain colors to textures. If you just replaced the river texture with a plain, subtle blue color, replaced the grass texture with a simple green, and the cobblestone texture with a simple gray, that would help. Right now, the textures aren't only wrongly scaled, they pull attention away from the buildings that actually are the city. Start simple and add flourishes as you have time (making sure to back-up a save of the old version before experimenting with making it prettier).

Also, what is the cobblestone texture? Plazas? If it's actually cobblestone, then what are those tan roads? Dirt roads? Do they really run dirt roads through an area otherwise paved? You really don't need to show roads in a medieval-style city, because once you have the buildings down, pretty much anything you haven't covered with a building is road. The only time you really need to indicate roads is when they're covered by the buildings (e.g., second or higher stories run over the road). You can have a few other things like graveyards, wells, and statues, but those need to be independently displayed anyway, so still no need to do anything special for the roads. So, following the less-is-more philosophy, the roads can be left blank (except for street names, if you show those). Whatever you do, you should make it less confusing than it is now. I'm not sure where I can walk on this map.

* - You don't need to think of this right away, but you'd better be thinking about what it might be, because if one of the players notices how odd that is, you're going to need to come up with an answer. Maybe something about a dark god and an ancient curse, where the poor are placed as occasional sacrifices of some kind? (Doesn't even need to be blood-and-guts stuff, just something like children born blind or lame when the old god hungers, but he's satisfied before he crosses the river, and the powerful are safe.)

[Zaxbeez]

If you aren't going to go out on the northwest side, why build there at all? It is much more economical to build on one side of a river. There should be some very strong reason why they would cross the river to put the poor people there.* (And then why they made sure that poor people needed to pass through the nice areas wherever they left or came back to the city.) Separating the royal quarter makes some sense if loyalty of the subjects isn't so great, or was not in the past.

As far as making things easier on the eyes, prefer plain colors to textures. If you just replaced the river texture with a plain, subtle blue color, replaced the grass texture with a simple green, and the cobblestone texture with a simple gray, that would help. Right now, the textures aren't only wrongly scaled, they pull attention away from the buildings that actually are the city. Start simple and add flourishes as you have time (making sure to back-up a save of the old version before experimenting with making it prettier).

Also, what is the cobblestone texture? Plazas? If it's actually cobblestone, then what are those tan roads? Dirt roads? Do they really run dirt roads through an area otherwise paved? You really don't need to show roads in a medieval-style city, because once you have the buildings down, pretty much anything you haven't covered with a building is road. The only time you really need to indicate roads is when they're covered by the buildings (e.g., second or higher stories run over the road). You can have a few other things like graveyards, wells, and statues, but those need to be independently displayed anyway, so still no need to do anything special for the roads. So, following the less-is-more philosophy, the roads can be left blank (except for street names, if you show those). Whatever you do, you should make it less confusing than it is now. I'm not sure where I can walk on this map.

* - You don't need to think of this right away, but you'd better be thinking about what it might be, because if one of the players notices how odd that is, you're going to need to come up with an answer. Maybe something about a dark god and an ancient curse, where the poor are placed as occasional sacrifices of some kind? (Doesn't even need to be blood-and-guts stuff, just something like children born blind or lame when the old god hungers, but he's satisfied before he crosses the river, and the powerful are safe.)

Okay, so it takes a lot more time for my players to advance plot than I thought it would. I simplified the map a lot, per your suggestion. I'm not sure how to depict farms, but I put some in. My goal with the cobblestone texture was to show a lack of greenery or trees or nature. Hopefully that still gets through.



Thank you so much for your input. This is what I've simplified it to.