# Mapmaking Discussion & Philosophy (WIP/Critique) > Town/City Mapping >  The City of Sanctuary (restarted)

## Mouse

Hi Everyone  :Smile: 

Some time ago... a long time ago - nearly a year in fact... I started doing a city map for the Profantasy Community Atlas; a communal project to produce a world atlas of maps that can be downloaded by users for personal use and modification, and which recently passed its first anniversary with nearly 100 maps in the collection, ranging from continental maps through regional and town maps to individual building and dungeon maps.

I wasn't enjoying the design I initially created for the city, so my own project quickly failed despite the overall success of the community effort.  However, I've recently been re-inspired to try again, and this is the start of it:

Sanctuary is positioned on the north-facing rim of a very large gulf in a small tropical/sub/tropical continent called Malajuri.  The land along the coast either way is tropical forest (mostly palm), while the hinterland to the south is mostly agricultural.

At the name implies, Sanctuary is meant to be a medieval mixed race city where all can find sanctuary against the rest of the world (hence the really big wall)



This is the watabou randomly generated city layout I chose to work with (and I am fortunate I got it when I could, since I don't seem to be able to open that site anymore)



And this is where I am at with the central part of the drawing after about 2 weeks work:



This is a 7500ft square section of the map.

All comments and suggestions welcome - please bear in mind that this is in its infancy, and yes  :Razz:  I do know about the uphill river where I forgot to leave a gap in the dyke wall for it - and the houses that are in the middle of the street where I lost control of the street generator  :Laughing:

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## Falconius

I think that looks very good.  The layout, the streets, indeed everything looks like it really belongs that way.

I don't know what houses are in the middle of the street, but to me though the city gates look like they are facing the wrong way round.  And given the generally high amounts of investment in the general defences I'd expect the fortress to be even more heavily defended.

Speaking of defences I'd like to hear whats going on with coast.  It looks like there is a parapet along a cliff.  For instance why would they not invest in towers or short little stumpy towers along that walk, and why would they not bother defending the stairs up with anything?  Even just tiny gate houses?

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## Mouse

Thanks Falconius  :Smile: 

I've got what the wrong way around?  :Shocked:  Oh yes!  I see it now.  I just found the picture I remembered from a few months ago here:  http://111musicfestival.com/beaumari...umaris-castle/.  Its the round end that needs to stick out not the square end!   :Rolling Eyes:   :Laughing:   It looks like I could also do with moving all my towers off-centre to place them more outside the wall than straddling its centre line.

Funnily enough I was toying with the idea of gate houses on the ramps (those are two-way ramps not stairs - pedestrian/rider/horse and cart access to all levels that way)

And you've got a point about the sea defences.  I might have to move the buildings up a level to make room for them.  I'll have a think about that one  :Wink: 

There is definitely a house smack bang in the middle of the road at the top of the northernmost ramp there  :Razz:   I was just too distracted by the dyke wall construction earlier today to remember to go back and jiggle them all into a better position.

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## bkh1914

I'd also add that I would expect to see some serious defenses where the river passes through / under the wall.

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## Mouse

Thanks bkh  :Smile: 

I'm working on it  :Wink:

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## QED42

Great to see you back and working on a new map Mouse! Also looking forward to seeing what you can do with a Watabou base as I've used them a bit in the past  :Smile:

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## Mouse

Thanks QED  :Smile: 

A CC3 map (even a large one like this) will only take a fraction of the RAM that a GIMP or Krita map will hog, and can be exported many times larger than the files I can still open in those two bitmap apps, so despite the crippling of my machine I can still do CC3 maps reasonably easily - plus its fun doing something and seeing how far you can take it using just one app instead of many once in a while  :Wink: 

As for the Watabou base... I'd say they are terrific for inspiration and basic structure, but its definitely not good to allow yourself to be limited by them.  By that I mean that the city walls and basic road structure are the same, but I have already bent them around the modified harbour.  I don't use the Watabou rivers because they always look a bit angular to me, and they run in some pretty strange places - like to the side of the settlement instead of through it.  The roads themselves do tend to be incredibly iron-rod straight, which is unnatural in a medieval city (unless its a city that has inherited its basic structure from the days of the Roman Empire).  There are also some extremely strange shaped buildings.  In reality, I don't think I've ever seen a triangular house.   

Where Sanctuary is concerned (and quite apart from the fact that I ripped out the heart of it to make way for the harbour) each district outlined by the original Watabou map is subject to revision.  For instance I have shaped the northernmost roads to vaguely resemble a sort of petal around the temple, and in the most recent version (below) I have completely redesigned the roads of the Fort Garden district in the southernmost part of the walled city to more closely relate to the fact that this was the original village attached to the fort.  It even has its old village green still intact.  You see this kind of development around many English castles.  Such houses, though small, are highly prized property acquisitions these days because they are often very picturesque.  Here is the old village around Corfe Castle, about 20 miles from where I live.  It is this kind of village I am trying to place in the shadow of the fort, between the fort and the bend in the river - the original village of Sanctuary.

Ok, so its not your typical tropical/subtropical city with lots of flat roofs and dust wherever there isn't stone, but the hinterland is a vast swathe of farmland, so it can't be all that dry in the city.  Besides - there will be plenty of orange tiled and flat roofed buildings elsewhere, and this is a fantasy city not a real one  :Wink: 



In this image I have also hopefully remedied the gates that were the wrong way around, placed the river in a proper channel under the wall that is protected by _at least_ two iron griddles, moved the wall towers off-centre so that they protrude from the outside of the wall sufficiently to get a good angle on attackers who have made it as far as the wall, and indicated the presence of a submerged chain that can be raised to prevent invading fleets from entering the harbour.  This is the same kind of defence system that made it so difficult to attack Constantinople from the sea, only where that chain was 300m long, this one is about 900m long.  That's a lot of weight to tension between the two underground winching stations buried in the cliffs (and accessible only by underground passages from the city), but don't forget that we have elves and therefore magic to assist the mechanics of the winching stations  :Wink: 

I've decided not to put walls along the lowest level of the harbour, but to add a substantial tower to the end of each of the piers (not yet drawn)

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## Falconius

There are options to mechanically reduce the weight of the chain, it could be attached to floating buoy's or if they somehow built a platform or tower towards the middle of the span where the chain could rest.  It's looking good Mouse.  You do amazing things with CC3.

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## Mouse

Thank you again, Falconius  :Smile: 

I may think some more about the chain, but for now I have to populate this city with thousands of buildings!  LOL!

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## QED42

Corfe Castle is one I know well, I spent my holidays in that area as a kid!

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## Voolf

So good to see you back on this project. I expect some crazy good stuff going on here.

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## Mouse

> Corfe Castle is one I know well, I spent my holidays in that area as a kid!


I can't decide whether I like the castle or the steam train best.  The fish and chips are also pretty good  :Wink: 




> So good to see you back on this project. I expect some crazy good stuff going on here.


Thanks Voolf - I hope I don't disappoint  :Smile: 

I've added most of the old village, a castle and a palace.  I've also scaled down the wall towers to a more believable size  :Wink:

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## Weery

What a great (re)start  :Wink:  I'm looking forward to this, I can't recall right now the name of the vinyard map you did last year but if this turns out anything like that one it will be fantastic.

Thanks for posting Mouse.

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## Mouse

Thanks Weery  :Smile: 

The vineyard map?  Merelan City had several vineyards on it  :Wink:  

I don't think this city will be half as complex as that one.  There will be at least 3 times as many shaded polygon buildings (which take more memory than symbols but have far more variation than even the best of the symbol sets).  Sanctuary is also very much larger than Merelan City.  The entire Isle of Merelan is about the size of the walled part of Sanctuary, and the map I've shown in the last few uploads is only about half the total area of the map.

Mind you - it is still nowhere near as HUGE as your city  :Razz:

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## Ilanthar

I like the global layout. I'm gonna keep an eye on this  :Smile: .

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## Mouse

Global layout?  :Question: 

Oh - you mean the whole city

Thanks, Ilanthar  :Smile:

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## Mouse

I've done a lot of things, but they are mostly detail work, so this may not look all that different at a glance.

I've reduced the size of the houses in Sanctuary Village, and added a newer section to the north of the old village - originally built for the families of the men who were brought in to build the city walls. I've added a few taverns and a temple, crenulated the city walls and towers, added gardens to the village and started naming things.

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## Weery

Funnily enough, part of what I enjoy seeing most on maps are little details such as your defence chain, underground winch stations and culverts.

I also really like the back gardens in Sanctuary Village.

Totally on board with the 'telling yourself stories about the residents and area as you work' process too btw! I even go so far as to imagine I'm walking around in the places I'm drawing and writing about  :Very Happy: 

Great stuff.

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## Mouse

Thank you, Weery  :Smile: 

Maybe the story idea is the only real way to keep going.  I can tell I wasn't thinking any stories when I worked on Rimtown.  That bit needs re-doing.  Another trick (if the city is very large) is to move onto a new area and come back to something later on if its turned out a bit disappointing compared to what you hoped.  Already, having hidden it from view all morning and been working elsewhere I can also see the roads in Rimtown are a bit too far apart.  

Stories and imaginary walkabouts, leaving things instead of forcing them, and going back to redo something later - I think that sums up almost my entire approach to building a city once its basic design is out of the way  :Wink: 

This time I've moved on from Rimtown for a while and done a bit of Mandel to the north west of it instead.

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## Mouse

I dug a big hole for the dwarves today  :Smile: 

This hole was once a large lake, but it was drained and further excavated by the dwarves for building stone (an export of the city as well as used within it) and extra living space within the safety of Sanctuary's walls.  It extends some way out beyond the city walls away from the coast, but so deep that it would be easier to penetrate the city wall than burrow down to get into Sanctuary that way.



Not sure about how the winch on the funicular (the incline tram system) should be powered just yet.  I'm reluctant to add a thundering great steam engine.  Maybe it uses a counterweight - two carriages balanced by water tanks - one on each side of the incline.  Then it would just need a very big braking system, and something to move the top carriage over the rim and onto the slope of the incline.  It would still need a really big horizontal pulley quite apart from the power.

So for now I've hidden it inside a really large building while I think about it.

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## MistyBeee

I was a silent observer until now but it's time to tell it's a real fun to see the city progressing : I love your updates, and have the feeling it's just as discovering a city during a trip, with a travel book in my pocket ^^. Yesterday, I visited the Fish Market and the Mandel theater, and today I'll have a walk around the dwarves hole  :Very Happy: 

It's good to see you mapping, Mouse ! It's not Krita yet, but it's something  :Smile:

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## Mouse

Thank you, Misty  :Smile: 

I have a lot of fun making cities, but they do require a lot of time to get right.  I find it easier working on urban areas in CC3, since drawing each building is as simple as clicking four corners into place once you have a house style set up.

This will remain a CC3 map throughout - partly because I can't produce anything of this size in a bitmap editor right now (what you see above is less than half the map area), but mostly because the CC3+ file will eventually be uploaded to the community atlas over at Profantasy for other people to download and use in their private games.  Also hopefully for a few useful tricks to be passed on  :Wink: 

Maybe once I get some more RAM for this machine and have enough memory to run more hungry apps like GIMP and Krita, I might do a touched up version of it.  I'm not sure yet.  Maybe not.  

I think Sanctuary would be better left as it is - a CC3+ city.

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## Vobland

Nice layout, love the area of docks! But why fort so far from the harbor? Fort artillery should cover the banks, or in case of sea invasion – enemies can take town ignoring fort! Guess best places to build fort – where you got Mandel or Sanctuary. 

Waterfalls are super cool!

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## Mouse

Thank you, Vobland  :Smile: 

The fort is where it is because that was the layout I chose from the watabou.itch.io random city generator site.  I must admit that its possibly not in the best position, but in my mind it was originally built as an outpost before there was ever a city there to protect.  The village of Sanctuary grew up between the fort and the river, and the rest is history.

The wall itself is 30ft thick, 50ft tall, and built on a dyke with a 300 ft wide base section.  

As for the harbour - well, there's a Constantinople-style chain on the sea bed between the two winching stations buried in the cliffs either side of the city that can be raised if a fleet of invading ships appear in the sound (the sea channel leading to the city), and though I haven't drawn them yet there will be 4 substantial defensive towers - one at the end of each of the dock arms.

I'm actually more worried about the potential flooding of the new cavern, but I've been asked to keep it in place for now.  I think there will have to be some kind of hole in the floor of that cavern leading to some kind of underdark, so that fluids that would otherwise collect in the cavern can drain away  :Razz:

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## SteffenBrand

I'm very excited where this is going! Looks very good so far =)
From a physical standpoint, I'm unsure about the length of the chain to be honest - it will get extremely heavy if it should stand to hold off ships. But it's a minor thing =)

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## Mouse

Aw thank you  :Smile: 

It's been an adventure so far.  I really never meant to dig a big hole just there.  It just kind of happened that way!

The chain is about 800m long, and would probably weigh far too much for any medieval fantasy winch to hold, never mind reel in.  I'm thinking about building sea walls out towards the channel to narrow the gap and support most of the length of the chain.  It would also give the harbour more protection from tidal surges - it being at the top of a natural funnel shape  :Wink: 

How is the Capital of Barradesh coming on?

I must go and have a look!

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## Falconius

There is a whole other option for the chain.  I read that the ottoman one was held up by buoys.  So what you could do is have a floating chain that is normally all gathered in at one end (and likely kept out of the water so it doesn't rust as quick), and have one end attached to a rope, and when they want to block off the harbour they winch the rope in and the chain floats out across the mouth there, and then they secure it at the winching end and viola, blocked.  Although it's a lot of trouble for the general layout of the land, since one could presumably land ships just up the coast on either side.  The ottoman one actually forced armies into attacking strong points and blocked a passage up around the city.

Also yay for the incline plane!  I actually made something like that for my dwarf city, never felt comfortable with it though.  Yours looks awesome.

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## Mouse

That's a really good idea, Falconius.

But then, I wonder why no one ever dropped the chain by severing the buoys?

They must have had their own ships guarding the chain from the inside.

That really is the weakest point, since the wall is far taller and broader than any on Earth.  I think the widest curtain wall in existence is 20ft, whereas this one is 30ft wide and built of solid stone blocks instead of being filled with rubble as many of them are (thanks to the engineering genius of the dwarves).  The wall should hold out any ogres or giants, since its also very much taller than any on Earth.  The next weakest point is where the river enters the city, but there are at least 2 culverts there, probably more.  It wouldn't be possible to ram through all of them in one go, and any attempt would soon raise the alarm at the nearby city gate.

If I was going to plan an attack on Sanctuary, I would do as you say - land ships up the coast.  I might then attempt by some means to enter the caves where the chain is anchored into the solid rock and try to break the harbour defences - sending a second fleet into the harbour once the chain was down.  That plan has a weakness, though, in that the caves where the chain is anchored are buried in cliffs that have been deliberately chiselled smooth as glass, and are inaccessible except through the tunnels that lead to them from secret places within the city known only to the guards.

So I suppose I might infiltrate the population several months beforehand and try to find out where these tunnels are and get some of my men down to one or both of the anchoring points.

I expect, though, that they would be so heavily guarded and locked away inside the king's/queen's buildings that I might have to admit defeat and give up  :Smile:

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## Azélor

Are these chains really  that effective? Is it that hard to cut? Is it likely the attacker would be unaware?

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## Mouse

The information about whether it made a difference if the attacker was aware or not doesn't seem to be available, but I'm sure most of them were.  It was such a uniquely brilliant idea that I'm sure the whole world knew about it.

The chain at the Golden Horn in Constantinople was effective for 400 years, until the great tower anchoring one end of it was blown up during the fall of the city, and only then because the invaders slid their boats across land and entered the water above it.

Boats were a lot smaller and slower then, and hitting a massively weighty chain, even at top speed would have been like hitting a springy reef.  They would simply have slowed down, and been rebounded as the chain pulled tight like the string of a bow.

I assume that when it was in use the defending fleet would have made it impossible to attack the chain itself.

Its a good example of a totally simple idea that was massively useful at the time, though of course it probably wouldn't provide much of a barrier to any modern steel hulled icebreaker, I shouldn't think - especially not if the crew just happen to have a cutting torch handy.  It would still take them a while.  The individual links were really huge.

EDIT: Here's a picture of a segment of the actual chain: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Istanb...3%BCze_971.jpg

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## Falconius

Cutting a chain that size pre-acetylene-oxygen torches would have been extremely difficult, and in the water would have been 10 times more difficult then that.  at that time most metal would have been cut cold or hot using a chisel (and something solid to rest it on).  Filing through that would take hours and hours and a few good files.  No the best option when dealing with such a chain would be to attack the buoy's and try and sink them, but there are a bunch of ways to make that just as hard, for instance by making them out of a matrix of floating material rather than a big airbag.  Second point is that the chain and it's buoy's don't have to be at surface level to be effective, a couple of feet down would be just as good.

In a modern setting there are more effective options, but if they were to use chains I'm sure they'd use the same chains as used for boat anchors on those super cargo carriers, the ones where each link weighs a couple hundred pounds.

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## ChickPea

Glad to see you back working on this. It's looking great. I particularly like the area just above the docks, where the waterfalls are. It's looking fab.




> I really never meant to dig a big hole just there.  It just kind of happened that way!


I'm sorry, but I can't stop laughing at this.  :Very Happy:  It's like you went into your garden to dig a little hole in the earth to plant something... and accidentally created a massive sinkhole. Oh well, could happen to anyone!  :Very Happy: 

Looking forward to the next update.

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## Mouse

> Cutting a chain that size pre-acetylene-oxygen torches would have been extremely difficult, and in the water would have been 10 times more difficult then that.  at that time most metal would have been cut cold or hot using a chisel (and something solid to rest it on).  Filing through that would take hours and hours and a few good files.  No the best option when dealing with such a chain would be to attack the buoy's and try and sink them, but there are a bunch of ways to make that just as hard, for instance by making them out of a matrix of floating material rather than a big airbag.  Second point is that the chain and it's buoy's don't have to be at surface level to be effective, a couple of feet down would be just as good.
> 
> In a modern setting there are more effective options, but if they were to use chains I'm sure they'd use the same chains as used for boat anchors on those super cargo carriers, the ones where each link weighs a couple hundred pounds.


Its certainly a lot more sophisticated than the main method of blocking a harbour employed during the last war.  Unless they've cleared it in the last 20 years when I wasn't looking, we still have a deliberately wrecked destroyer blocking one of the two entrances to Portland harbour.  There's not even enough room to take a decent sized sailing yacht over it  :Razz: 

I'm going to redraw that chain line - maybe symbolically with a dashed line and little dots to represent the buoys  :Wink:  




> Glad to see you back working on this. It's looking great. I particularly like the area just above the docks, where the waterfalls are. It's looking fab...


Thank you, Chickpea.  Still a long way to go, but you know how it is with cities  :Smile: 

And as for the hole...




> It's like you went into your garden to dig a little hole in the earth to plant something... and accidentally created a massive sinkhole. Oh well, could happen to anyone!


LOL! No don't!  Stop giving me ideas!  I just had this sudden image in my head of the world tree growing out of it now!  :Razz:

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## Azélor

In a modern setting, you could launch missiles from afar. Getting rid of the chains can be delt once the main forces of the city have fallen.

Portland,Dorset (there are so many Portland)?
I could not find anything like that.

It's these  improbable things that makes a place distinctive  but most people would find it unrealistic in a fantasy setting.

That is a big hole indeed, it's going to get flooded unless you have some dutch pumps. 

You said dwarves? Or did you say aquatic dwarves?

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## Mouse

You're right, it wouldn't be any kind of a proper defence these days  :Wink: 

I was referring to the original Portland harbour - the English one in Dorset... and I was wrong.  She wasn't a destroyer.  She was a modified Royal Sovereign-class pre-dreadnought battleship built for the Royal Navy in the early 1890s.  She's been there (if no one has raised her or blown her up in the last 13 years) for over a 100 years now.  You can see the dark shape of her form lying between the breakwaters in the closest entrance to the harbour in this 2005 image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/F...bour_south.JPG.  And I was wrong on a second count - the term I should have used is 'scuttled', not sunk. 

Dwarves?  Maybe I meant mermaids.  After all - according to local legend the smooth artificially sculpted form of the harbour was created by them in the first place.

I'm going to keep the cavern and put a nice hole in the bottom of it for drainage to... wherever.  These dwarves are clever folk  :Wink:

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## SteffenBrand

> The chain is about 800m long, and would probably weigh far too much for any medieval fantasy winch to hold, never mind reel in. I'm thinking about building sea walls out towards the channel to narrow the gap and support most of the length of the chain. It would also give the harbour more protection from tidal surges - it being at the top of a natural funnel shape


You could also drop some Breakwaters (Link) in there. It would slow the waves crashing from the sea, it would prevent erosion of the coastlines of the harbor (a bit) and it would provide a hard to navigate nearly invisible (if placed sub-aquatic w barrier for every captain with large ships who does not know how to navigate between them once the tide kicks in and gives way for ships up to the city. 

I'd include some towers sprinkled along where the chain lies now, to break the segments up. It would allow the segments to be lowered and raised individually and let through friendly ships while providing a barrier for others in another areas. The Towers could serve as a first line of defence, as lighthouses to point the way between the Breakwaters and as warning beacons for the city in times of danger. Just an alternative thought =)

I also answered why I don't find time for Bahradyar right now in my thread to not spam you here. And to keep it all nice and sorted. ;D

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## Mouse

Breakwaters are a really nice idea.

Thank you, Steffen  :Smile: 

I'm thinking now in terms of having an outer harbour defined by these breakwaters - one with a city wall type construction on it, and very much like Portland harbour, which has three breakwaters defining its extent.  I could have a 'great tower' like the one at Constantinople on both the harbour entrances, and the ability to let my own attack ships out of one entrance to deal with an invader trapped against the chain at the other  :Razz:

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## Mouse

I've worked on all kinds of different little things - colours, relief, road patterns, breakwaters...

Hopefully, it makes a bit more sense this time  :Wink:

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## Weery

I like the solution to the overly long defence chain. I really like the fields (gives a good sense of there being more of a world beyond the edge of the map). I like the topography added to the ground and indicated by the roads around the excavation.

I can't tell whether or not I prefer this tone or the previous cooler one? But I definitely prefer at least some of the rougher ground texture in the previous version.

Overall, great and I look forward to seeing more Mouse  :Smile:

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## Falconius

I like the warmer colours and all the new earth tones used in the fields.  It looks nicer.  I think the fortified breakwaters look more interesting than just the chain laying on the bottom and seems like a good solution.  And if the breakwaters ever get captured they could still just sink a ww2 destroyer in the mouth of the harbour  :Wink: .

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## Mouse

> I like the solution to the overly long defence chain. I really like the fields (gives a good sense of there being more of a world beyond the edge of the map). I like the topography added to the ground and indicated by the roads around the excavation.
> 
> I can't tell whether or not I prefer this tone or the previous cooler one? But I definitely prefer at least some of the rougher ground texture in the previous version.
> 
> Overall, great and I look forward to seeing more Mouse


Thank you, Weery  :Smile: 

If you've ever seen one of my maps evolve before, you will know that the colours are forever changing throughout the development stages, but I will bear in mind your comments  :Wink: 

Also - this is only the centre of the map just yet.  Its only 1/4 of the total area.  There are a lot more fields outside the frame, but they are really quite plain and boring to look at right now.  I'm saving them till I've added a few farmsteads and things  :Wink: 




> I like the warmer colours and all the new earth tones used in the fields.  It looks nicer.  I think the fortified breakwaters look more interesting than just the chain laying on the bottom and seems like a good solution.  And if the breakwaters ever get captured they could still just sink a ww2 destroyer in the mouth of the harbour .


LOL! 

Thank you, Falconius  :Smile:

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