Entry 4: Storchenfeld
Storchenfeld, 1st Entry
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I can't think of any special response, so I wish to say thank you very much to all of you, @Dgmc2013 @Chappington @tomz16 @Ke|is @Tyberius06 @ulisse @kschmidt for your nice comments!
Introduction:
Before we start with the update, let me first share a bit of background info about Maxiland: Politically, Maxiland is divided into 5 areas, 4 so-called "Viertel" (literally means quarter, 1/4, I just translated their names with "realm", although I don't know if this is appropriate) and the capital district. I chose the name "Viertel" because it's similar to how two federal states of Austria, Oberösterreich (first map) and Niederösterreich (second map), are being divided into 4 quarters (although rather cultural and within the populace than politically) (pictures courtesy of Wikipedia):
(West: Innviertel, Northeast: Mühlviertel, Center: Hausruckviertel, Southeast: Traunviertel)
Every realm has its capital, and the capital of Maxiland, Maxistadt, has its own realm. This map shows all 5 realms with all cities (I left out all other settlements for now) I've planned, with red showing the capital and light red other important cities:
If possible, I'm trying to give all of these realms a bit of a different style and cultural background:
- Feldviertel: will be the realm with the highest number of inhabitants (second to the capital itself). As its name implies, it shall be the agricultural backbone of Maxiland. Since I like old town districs so much, said districs will mostly be made with Wallibuk's Slovakian houses and similar stuff.
- Waldviertel: will only have farms in the valleys; other than that, there'll only be some scattered villages, with a lot of timberframe houses.
- Seeviertel (See literally means lake, but in German poetry, See can also sometimes mean sea): since the terrain is rather difficult, villages will be scattered, but tere will be a large city to the southwest. I'm preferring Mediterranean content for this realm; this gives me an opportunity to try out my various relots of the Italian Collection.
- Bergviertel: I'm preferring German, Dutch, and Polish old town content for this one. I'll be placing a lot of cow or sheep pastures there. It has the lowest amount of inhabitants, but there will be a city with a bit of an unusual history in the mountains.
Further, I should mention that Austria has a bit of an oddity: In most countries, settlements just come as either towns or villages; in Austria, there's a third step, the so-called "Marktgemeinde" (lit. market community), between village and town. I seriously don't know why and what's so special about it, but interestingly, it gives me the opportunity to treat some of my settlements as a bit more important in regards of economy, history, culture, or simply number of inhabitants, so on occasion, you'll hear me talk about market communities.
Contents:
In this entry, we are going to leave Michaelshaven and visit the city tile Storchenfeld, directly to the north of Michaelshaven. Since I'm planning to completely change the layout of my agricultural areas (which are quite extensive in the Feldviertel/Field Realm), I've wiped out Storchenfeld and started from scratch.
Laying out the fields was the easy part - planting MMP's everywhere took me two weeks; this is so annoying with the double mouseclick bug and with the huge area and many rivers and creeks everywhere. I didn't get far, but there's at least some progress. I'm trying to lay out my fields in various angles, it does look weird in close-ups, but I like how it looks in overviews:
I also prefer placing or growing farmhouses and fields separately from each other; in most European countries, very few people nowadays are farmers, and they have motorized vehicles that allow then to take care of huge areas. These are three pictures of farms, the first of them is located near a sloped area, I occasionally place animal pastures there instead of farm fields:
This is also a place where two rivers are merging. I like dragging rivers with MMP's everywhere; it's more realistic. Although, unfortunately, it takes a lot of time to do this with MMP's, and the result isn't alsways satisfying.
Next are some overviews, first of the agricultural area to the center of the city tile, second of the area to the south; both are east of the large river. (To protect the surrounding areas from floods, this river has been moved to the east, but more about that in a future update.)
And a general overview from highest zoom level. Please ignore the mess to the left, there'll be a market community there. All MMP's there are either leftovers from the time before the wipeout, or are being used to outline future development. And the roads are only temporary, to connect this city tiles with its neighbors. By the way, I'm planning to make two settlements on this city tile. You can also see the new river and its old riverbed, where a bit of water remained. To the east, there's a bit of hilly and mountaineous area, traversed by a road and a railway line, to connect most of the settlements here, including Michaelshaven, to the settlements further east.
That's it for now. Hope you liked it. Next up on my list: Developing the market community of Storchenfeld (to the west, inside the "circle" of rocks), the village of Biberstein (northeast, outside of the picture), further farm fields here, and the island between the old and the new river arms.
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