# Mapmaking Discussion & Philosophy (WIP/Critique) > Town/City Mapping >  Altdorf map (Warhammer)

## gyldenstern

*****WIP*****

Awhile back I began drawing on a new map of the city of Altdorf (that would be the capital of Empire, in the Warhammer Fantasy RPG setting) with the aim of making it look a bit more realistic. V1 is in the trash, but not a waste of time since I figured out a quick workflow. Anyway, this is V2. Its just a sloppy coloured version, just the get a view of the layout and such. 

Since this is my first attampt at a city map I might need some help, both regarding the actual look of a medival city and tips tricks to make it look as stunning as I envison it in my head  :Smile:  

First question (Ive been googling but in vain), how would a medival city wall look? And, Ive been thinking about another, older city wall surrounding the old city (that is bound to be there somewhere, I need to consult the fanatic gamers regarding this  :Smile:  ). Isnt that the way cities are built? Expanding, building new walls. 


EDIT: _Latest update_

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## Wingshaw

Hi Gyldenstern, welcome to the guild.

Let me give you some tips about medieval cities.

First, regarding medieval walls, check out Carcassonne, France. It still has many of its medieval walls intact, and is probably the best example I know of for looking at the way medieval walls should look. Another example worth checking out is Caernarfon, Wales, which has a magnificent castle, with impressive walls around it. There are plenty of other castles to check out, and places where the walls exist as remnants of their former appearance.

One of the things to remember about walls is that they are expensive to build, both in resources and manpower, and, to be effective, you generally want to avoid having too much length that needs defending, too: i.e. it is better to have short walls that can be defended easily, rather than  a long wall that stretches your forces thin. Consequently, a double-layer of walls is unlikely. However, there are occasions where more than one layer existed (Istanbul being a good example).

Also with walls, it is important to remember that walls have multiple functions, not just the obvious one of defence against siege. For example, walls and gates are a great way of controlling who enters or leaves a city, and are therefore also often used as money-generating toll-points. Walls can have symbolic functions (symbols of grandeur, expressions of power, and threats). Many cities have foundation stories that concern the walls (if I remember correctly what I learned at uni, I think the founding of Rome involved Romulus marking out the boundaries of the city), and therefore they figure prominently in the imagination. Last (as far as I can think of right now), they may have legal functions: define the extent of a civic government's jurisdiction.

All that said, however, military purposes are the primary ones: there are easier and cheaper ways of building a tax-collecting barrier and tollgate, after all. That means, when deciding on the nature of walls to include in Altdorf, it is important to ask whether the city actually needs military defence, and, if so, what kind. If there are no real threats, no walls are needed. If fighting a rabble of barbarians, a palisade or earthworks might be sufficient, or else a single fortified location, which leaves the rest of the city to fend for itself. If fighting large armies equipped with siege engines, the standard stone walls. If fighting an enemy with cannons and gunpowder, star forts are a preferred option.

Next, I don't think you are right that new walls are built as a city expands (at least, historically speaking). There are a few reasons for this: first, cities just didn't grow very fast. Second, the people who lived outside the walls (officially called suburbs, or extra-mural settlements, in urban history) were likely to be poorer and less worthy of defending. Now, it is almost guaranteed there would be suburbs around a medieval city (for economic reasons: land is cheaper, taxation is lighter, traders can set up their wares without having to pay the aforementioned toll), it is very unlikely a civic or national government would be moved to defending the suburbanites. More likely, when war comes, they would be brought inside the walls (or sent away as refugees), and if their homes are destroyed, so what. They should be lucky to be alive.

Now, looking at your picture, a few pointers come to mind:
--the area covered by the walls is very large, which suggests that they definitely wouldn't need to expand the walls for people beyond. There is plenty of space for a very large population to live in.
--your streets are perhaps a little bit too curvy, though overall not too bad. If you look at medieval cities, the streets rarely curve. Why? Because the fronts of houses do not curve. Instead, they are more likely to appear curvy due to lots of straight sections at slightly different angles to each other. I hope I explained that clearly.
--land beside the river is valuable real estate. While it is not completely unlikely that there would be a wide riverside boulevard, it is more likely that there would be lots of warehouses built right up to the water, and a large street in front of the warehouses. There would then be alleys and suchlike running between the warehouses. If you look carefully at this map of London, you'll see that there is no public thoroughfare right next to the water.
--back to the walls, there are a few places where the walls you have drawn are unlikely. Remember what I said about shorter lengths of wall being better? Those places where you have a jagged kink in the walls increase the length of them, without adding much extra space. Unless there is a good reason (eg natural topography, pre-existing barrier etc.) they should be straightened out a bit. The V-shape in the walls at the northwest of the district so far drawn is a particularly unlikely arrangement.

That's it for now. Hope it helps. Keep going--this has a lot of promise.

THW

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## gyldenstern

Thanks! Good points! Ive tried to make the streets apear more straight, and adjusted the city walls. Ive also added an island in the river (like in Paris). And, yes, there shold be warehouses by the river. Ill get to that eventually.  :Smile:

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## gyldenstern

Damn! I realize that youre right. That means that despite trying to deny it and even drown my troubles in wine, I need to re-draw the street layout. But still, thanks  :Smile:

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## gyldenstern

Ok, new try. Any thoughts?

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## Falconius

Looking pretty good.  I definitely like the new style changes.

It seems to me though that you are pretty limited in terms of your end goal (making Altdorf somewhat more realistic) by the fact that it is already a defined sort of thing (also it's set in Warhammer which goes together with realism about as well as oil and water.  Warhammer is always style over substance which is what makes Warhammer cool).  You may be better off re-imagining the whole thing from the ground up, or just playing heavy on the style aspect.

The second thing is that with such variation in sizing solid blocks like that become confusing in terms of what they represent, at least for me.  Do they represent built up areas?  Property lines?  Open areas? etc.  If they represent built up areas why do they lack the streets the other built up areas have.  (You can think of streets as drainage for people, or vascularization for your city.  Cities needs to have good flow, just like blood to organs)

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## gyldenstern

Thanks! 

I think Warhammer, and in particular the 1st edition RPG is more om the dark and gritty side compared to the later more high fantasy versions, and you could pretty much interpret it any way you like. So Im dont really see that as a problem. I'll leave some thing out and add others. Thats pretty much how Warhammer evolves  :Smile:  

So, my aim is to understand the city better even if I dont go all out on realism. At least I'll be able to visualize it better. The maps we have of Altdorf are quite weird, and doesnt look like cities att all. 

Anyway, regarding the map, its a WIP and I havnt got around to add all the streets yet. So what you see is the map in its current state. Actually it was a bit more time consuming than I thought!  :Smile:  

Ill post an updated version later this week, hopefully with more detail. And I havnt even begun to think about the style of the map yet. I just added some colour and texture to easiser see what Im doing. The finished map will probably look completly diffrent  :Smile:

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## gyldenstern

Slowly but surely...

Added some locations as the university, the imperial palace, the great cathedral and such. Also toying with colours.

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## gyldenstern

So, Im still not done with the layout of the streets, but Im going there. Meanwhile, Ive been trying out some options to mark important buildings and intresting places, and I think I will go for something like this. I still havnt figured out how I can possibly number all these locations, but maybe Ill have to settle with area maps for that. Anyway, heres the latest version of Altdorf, zoomed in:

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## Ilanthar

I like where you're going with this. I suggest a stronger contrast in the choice of colors for those important buildings. The red is perfect, the blue and especially the green are hard to see.
Good colors for the rest and excellent font!

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## gyldenstern

Thanks. Yes, youre right. Ive changed the colours, and added lots of other features (locations, back yards, streets...)

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## Wingshaw

I like the detail you are going into here.

I have two suggestions:
--I'm not too keen on the way the landmarks pop out of the map. I think it would look better if you got rid of the bevel effect.
--Your city doesn't seem to have many major roads. Like Falconius said, streets are like a vascular system: you have arteries to move large amounts of blood cells, veins to move medium amounts, and capillaries for smaller amounts. Your city should have avenues, streets, and alleys (first, this is a gross simplification, but it sets the groundwork; second, I'm not a surgeon, so don't use my anatomical analogy for medical purposes).

THW

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## Gidde

I have to agree on the bevels. It's not that they don't look good, it's that they don't mesh with the rest of the map stylistically. The rest of the map looks like it's on paper, but the bevels look very electronic.

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## gyldenstern

Good points. More major roads (conecting harbour, market, tempel and such) and get rid of bevels. And no unskilled surgery  :Smile:

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## gyldenstern

UPDATE:
Added a new palace and imperial church. Have begun street layout in the slums. Changed colours and removed bevels. And some minor tweaks. 

Please comment.

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## Ilanthar

It's looking good and better to me  :Smile: ! Without the bevel the colored buildings are far much easier to spot and all is very clean.
What are you planning to do with the lands around the city? I would like to have more contrast between the city and the surrounding areas.

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## Gidde

Much better! The roads make a lot of sense now and I really like the colors of the debevelled landmarks.

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## gyldenstern

Great, thanks!  :Smile:  Outside of the city walls Ill place some "villages", or maybe rather some buildings by the gates and the river. Ill also add some fields and some wooded areas. And roads of course. 

The colour key: 

GREEN - Taverns, inns. Basicly lodging and/or drinking. And entertainment.
PURPLE - Churches, abbeys and such.
ORANGE - Academical. 
BLUE - Shops, merchants, guilds etc. I think Ill make these  into to grous (light and dark blue) to represent public and private locations
YELLOW - Imperial. Administration, imperial palace, city watch etc. 

I think that will be suffiecent. Thoughts?

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## Falconius

I don't know, it looks pretty damn cool.  I like the thin black outlines you've put in there, but I'm wondering if you experimented taking them out or lowering their intensity at all?  This is going to be a remarkably detailed work when you're finished.

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## gyldenstern

> I don't know, it looks pretty damn cool.  I like the thin black outlines you've put in there, but I'm wondering if you experimented taking them out or lowering their intensity at all?  This is going to be a remarkably detailed work when you're finished.


Thanks! Yes, quite detailed  :Smile:  Fortunatly, the south bank is where the nobilty lives and its generellay an upper class area with less maze like backyards. On the other hand, the east bank is where the slum is...  :Smile:  
I havnt been experimenting with the outlines yet. Ive been thinking about it, and Ill probably tweak them a bit. Theyre just default black for now.

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## Ilanthar

Will you listing the main buildings on the map or in the key? Or a mix maybe? I mean, you probably have the place to name the big buildings on the map, but hardly the others.

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## gyldenstern

Not sure yet. I think Ill settle with having rivers, streets and districts on the map. Probably.

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## gyldenstern

- Some colour adjustments
- Added districts and numbers
- Added some details (blocks, yards, locations etc)

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## Ilanthar

It's looking good!  :Smile:

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## gyldenstern

> It's looking good!


Thanks! Hopefully Ill be able to finish it before 2015  :Smile:

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## Havard

Great work. I like the combination of more realistic coloring in general and combined with more noticable coloring of iconic buildings.

-Havard

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## ConradB

Awesome!

I noticed the street pattern is grid-like: there are no dead-end streets, or dank alleys to get ambushed in. Seems like one could just cut across the entire city from one end to the other, with little obstacle.

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## gyldenstern

> Awesome!
> 
> I noticed the street pattern is grid-like: there are no dead-end streets, or dank alleys to get ambushed in. Seems like one could just cut across the entire city from one end to the other, with little obstacle.


Thanks. 

Well, there are alleys and dead ends. The only part of the map thats more or less done is the district named Niederhofen. You could find quite some allyes and backyards there. And, since this is a pretty big city, I imagine there are lots of smaller pathways between buildnings, but too small to be seen on a map of this scale.

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## nzlemming

> Thanks. 
> 
> Well, there are alleys and dead ends. The only part of the map thats more or less done is the district named Niederhofen. You could find quite some allyes and backyards there. And, since this is a pretty big city, I imagine there are lots of smaller pathways between buildnings, but too small to be seen on a map of this scale.


Yes, I can see those. One thing to remember about city streets (depending on your tech level - I know nothing about Warhammer - heretic, I know  :Smile:  ) is the service alleys round the backs of houses. If you think of all those rows of terraced houses in, say, Victorian England - there was usually a back gate into a service lane, which is where the night soil carts would come, and the garbage men etc, and one lane would service two rows of houses, back to back. A lot of them are still there, though modern sewage has removed the need for the night soil men! In the newer estates, where total plumbing was installled from the get go, these lanes and alley's don't exist.

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## Cirias

Great map. Warhammer has some of my favourite fantasy cities, Altdorf being one of them. You should take on Marienburg next  :Smile:

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## gyldenstern

> Great map. Warhammer has some of my favourite fantasy cities, Altdorf being one of them. You should take on Marienburg next


Thanks. Marienurg? This will be my first and last city map of this size!  :Smile: 

Ive begun to draw the fields and farms outside town. Other that that Ive just added some more roads and alleys.

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## gyldenstern

Added som more streets, alleys and such. 
Added suburbs.
Changed font.
Playing with map key.
Added sketchy texture to city layout (not quite done yet)
And probably lots of other stuff I already forgot...

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## randigpanzrall

Looks great so far, but it seems, that you lost the letter "v" in Universität  :Wink:

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## Formal Abu

I love the simple style you've used.

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## gyldenstern

I found my old map and started working with it again. Some style changes and added lots of new locations.

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## gyldenstern

Zoomed in:

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## Topdecker

I like the use of color to place emphasis on the real points of interest and I presume that color also suggests the category of the location

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## gyldenstern

> I like the use of color to place emphasis on the real points of interest and I presume that color also suggests the category of the location


Thanks. Yes thats right. Green are taverns and the like for example. Purple are churches and such.

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## gyldenstern

Never ending story, part 2311:

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## Blackmoon

did you ever finish this altdorf map?  if so, where might i get a copy?

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## gyldenstern

> did you ever finish this altdorf map?  if so, where might i get a copy?


Not yet, but I might still do it  :Smile:

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## Redrobes

This looks good !

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## Diresaw34

> Not yet, but I might still do it


Hey man great wqork. Were you ever able to finish this altdorf map? if so, where might i get a copy?

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