Hello, fellow geofictioneers!

(The last time I wrote, I was responsible for a different country. I thought I’d mentioned that at the top to avoid confusion and questions about that)

So, I’m working on my new country - more specifically, one of it’s northern states. I thought I should start detailing with the biggest city / capital, and then spread out towards the rest of the state.

Since I haven’t mapped a big city in detail before, I thought I should use OGF’s guide on making realistic cities. It recommends to pick a model city. The problem is that I haven’t been able to find one that fits well.

So this is where I turn to you people. I’d really appreciate if you could take a look at my city and recommend me real life cities to model after. Any kind of related tips are welcome, too!

Here’s everything you need to know:

The city in question is Skarvienne. It’s about 196 km2 in size. The population is supposed to be anywhere between 300K and 700K (probably somewhere in the middle).

I don’t know the exact topography yet, but it lies in the 0 to 200 metres zone. Since it’s surrounded by rivers, I’m gonna say it’s pretty flat. The only exception being a hill in the middle of the city, by the river. That’s where the old town would be.

Culturally, the area is a mix of Baltic and eastern Nordic (Swedo-Finnish).

Cities I’ve given serious consideration to:

Berlin - flat, several confluences of rivers, vaguely northeastern. However, its old town is kind of weird and, uh, overly modernised? I’m also not a fan of the trams. There are too many marshlands surrounding it, as well.

Kaunas - flat with low hills, a confluence of rivers, hill fort/castle old town. However, there’s only one confluence, and I don’t like the reservoir.

Wrocław - fairly flat, somewhat of a hill fort (but not really), and I just like how the core of the city looks on the map. However, as I said, it’s not really a hill fort-type old town. Also, have I mentioned that I don’t like trams?

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This is a follow up to my previous post.

After reflecting on some of your suggestions and constructive criticism, I’ve redone my topoguide map of AR053. Most changes were made in and around the bay. I made sure that the ancient fault lines were more visible.

Ulihraad Topoguide Map version 2.0 | Enlarge | version 1.0

Of course it’s not guaranteed to be the final version. It’s also not guaranteed to be fully representative of how the nation will look on OGF. Obviously it’s going to be a lot more detailed, and some things will change as they’re developed. However, as far as I’m concerned, this is the final version. I shall now proceed with implementing these changes on OGF.

As the new owner of AR053, one of the first things I had to do was rework the topography of the area. I didn’t like the previous topography since it didn’t fit my idea for the country, and I felt it wasn’t the most realistic. So I took the topographic map the previous owner had made for the whole southern Astrasia, and built on top of it.

Since the northern nation is not currently being mapped by anyone, and the owner of the southern one hasn’t been active in a while, it’s not like I could coordinate with neighbouring mappers to rework the topography. Besides, I wouldn’t want to impose my ideal topography on neighbouring mappers, especially when their areas are so developed already.

Thus, I pretty much kept the topography as it was around the borders, while also making sure it matched the topography of the rest of the area, of course.

I’m posting this mainly for any current and/or future neighbours, as well as admins so that they know why I’m doing what I’m doing lol. Anyway, here it is.

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