Entry 17: Sebastianskirch Bay, Buchberg Adlerkanzel

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Entry posted by 11241036 · July 28, 2024

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A big thank you again to @Honolulu for visiting my CJ and his nice comment. I'm taking back my statement in Entry 14 that I'll only write a comment on your posts if I think it is necessary (it's more personal and appropriately grateful), and thus, I'd like to also write a big thanks to @Lazarou Monkey Terror @Kuba138 @albireo38 @mayorleers @justforfun @JulioC for their nice comments.

My special thanks also goes to @memo for his Submenus DLL mod - without this mod, I would not only have given up playing SC4, this entry and its vast MMP work would have been nigh impossible. The ability to put all MMP's n my Plugins folder into submenus (and, you know, there's only one in-game menu for MMP's) has made this process 5 times faster and easier.

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We're still not done with the city tile of Sebastianskirch - we are going to visit the eastern coast of the bay, as well as a small mountain close to Buchberg in this update. It was really much work - I had to place MMP's about almost everywhere, and I'm not the best MMP landscape designer - but I hope it works out.

Please do not hesitate to write me a comment in case something is unrealistic or if there's something I could improve - I've never made such an intense effort in placing MMP's before, especially along a coast (after all, I'm living in a landlocked country, I've barely ever seen the coast myself...).

This small cove is the connection between Weinbach and Sebastianskirch. Nothing special here, except maybe the greenhouse complex, but I still wanted to show it off:

We continue along the gravel path (mostly for the tourists) to this area below a cliff:

This is a special place with a lake being fed by ground and rain water. After enough rainfall, the surplus water is flowing out of the lake through the now dried-out riverbed. Two pictures from different angles, on the second one, you can also see the dried-up waterfall and the paths better:

Here, I made something very special: The entire mountain ridge where Sebastianskirch is located (almost everything from Storchenfeld to the east) is actually of volcanic nature. One of the interesting results of this development are the many mesas in this area, made from granite which can resist erosion much better than the surrounding basalt. This mesa is called "Zwergentafel" (lit. dwarf table). Some historicians think it got its name from its small altitude in comparison to other mesas (we'll see them later), some think because of the 5 dwarf rocks on its surface - having been placed there in ancient times to worship the 5 Holy Dwarf Gods, the Gods of the earth who protect the miners and the shepherds. Three pictures, two overviews from different angles and a close-up; we can see the unique flora up there as well as the rocks and a small chapel (having been placed there in times of early Christianization in an effort to divert people from the old Pagan rites):

At the northeasternmost area of this section, there's this part of the coast, mostly steep cliffs and a bit of special grassland and shrubbery:

I already posted the small cove there in the "Before-After" thread, but I'm repeating it here because it has been a special experiment for me: This cove is very small in size, and one can clearly see the 16mx16m cells on the first picture below. I was trying to mitigate that effect by placing MMP's there - I hope it turned out well.

And we continue to the eastern arm of the bay of Sebastianskirch. There's a small hamlet there; centuries ago, people there lived from fishing and harvesting the salt from the cord grass at the salt marsh (the cord grass emits the salt it receives from absorbing the ocean water on its surface, and the salt can actually be harvested). First, an overview of this area:

This is the small hamlet, nowadays only a few people sticking to the old traditions, as well as a restaurant, are there:

And a close-up of the salt marsh. The beach is barely above sea level, and the salt water flows into the marsh through small channels. I've placed Simmer's small brown stony sand MMP's in order to give it more visual depth, it is supposed to look like wet sand. Other parts of the bay arm are overgrown with pine trees, feather grass, and shrubbery.

And the last picture from the bay, the legendary Simlore's Rock. According to old lore, Simlore was once the most beautiful woman living in this area. Every man seeing her fell in love with her, but she only had eyes for the only man that did not love her (who was a sailor). This was supposedly the rock that she occasionally sat on, looking for her love, and unintentionally making some of the sailors that fell in love for her careless enough that they shipwrecked nearby. And after enough ships sank at this location, it was decided to relocate the harbor of Sebastianskirch to a different location. (Nowadays, the industrial harbor of Maxiland is at an entirely different location - well, things have changed, and industrial harbors nowadays consume enough space that I would probably need more than a region of 7x7 large city tiles to make one.)

And an overview of the entire bay. I altered the picture a bit to remove a small island at the bottom of the picture - I'm going to move it a bit to the north, outside of this city tile, it's supposed to be a bit easier to make something there.

We now leave the sea and head for the mountains. This is the mountain Adlerkanzel, located between Buchberg and Sebastianskirch. If you are lucky, you can see eagles from its top; this is why the boardwalk next to the restaurants and the infopoints have been placed there.

Speaking of which, here's a close-up of the restaurants, the infopoint, and the Adlerkanzel itself:

We also have a closer look at this part of the street leading up to the restaurants, as well as the surrounding pastures. The brown spot is supposed to be a bit of a wetlands area overgrown with "Seggen" (in German we call this "Seggenried", I couldn't find an English translation for this word), a plant with a higher stalk than grass, usually brown or green. I used the ALN Pasture brown rye grass, but I'm not very satisfied with it; it isn't high enough, and cattails, however, are too large. Here in westernmost Austria, we unfortunately do not have large coherent wetlands, marshes, bogs, or swamps anymore, but occasionally, there are some small protected wetland spots.

A bit further to the west (on the top of the last picture), there's a place where a rockslide occurred a good time ago. Nature already started to overgrow the rocks with shrubbery and the first trees. The rockfall also dammed up rainwater in the cove there, forming a small mire with a lake and reed grass. Three pictures, first an overview, second a close-up of the rockslide, third a close-up of the mire:

And that's it for today. It was quite picture-heavy, I hope you liked it nonetheless. Next up - I'm not sure. I'm already having some plans to redo the mountaineous area in the next city tile to the west (Storchenfeld), as well as the city tile to the east (Birkenhang). Hope to see you again.

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TakemeThere 5,833

Posted: July 28, 2024

Those marshes came out great. I also like the overall cohesiveness of the area; the transition between water and land, nature and urbanity is quite seamlessly it looks both natural and thoughtfully designed.