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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Nyeshet" data-source="post: 3168812" data-attributes="member: 18363">No, there are just empty areas surrounding many of the buildings in the city maps. Have you ever seen a map of a walled city from the high middle ages or early renaissance? This is true for even some of the larger middle ages cities, actually. Buildings fill the city. There is so little empty space that even the roads often are narrowed by the crush of the buildings. Only a few major avenues and a few plazas where such avenues meet are typically all that 'open' - and those were usually constructed after the fact of the city's rise - buildings torn down to make way for the new avenue or plaza. Cities with walls do not just expand outside the walls - they also expand inside, until most empty space is gone. By the time the wall goes up, often the city is already 3/4 or more filled space. If the settlements outside the walls grow too large, perhaps another wall will go up. But again, by the time the second wall goes up the land within it is likely already at least 2/3 - 3/4 filled. Some of the oldest cities have three - four rings of these walls, showing their continuous growth. Even without walls, the heart of the city will have a premium price on land - and as the city ages all that land will be bought, built over, etc. The end result is that the heart of the city is rather packed, while the outskirts are a bit sparse and spread out - rather like today where the heart of a major city is packed with skyscrapers and little land can be found for parks or even empty lots, while the outskirts of a city - the suburban area - is more spread out and has space for grass covered front yards, parks, etc. And yet, if you look at the maps of the cities with in the book, they remain rather open and sparse uniformly everywhere. The heart of the city is no more filled with buildings than the extreme outskirts of the city. I can't glance at a map like that for even a second without thinking that something is notably wrong with each of those cities. I certainly would never use any of them - as they are, as they are mapped - in their current condition. Perhaps as ruins . . . . Yes, that makes sense. If they are treated as ruins, it would make sense that many of the buildings might have collapsed, been overgrown, etc. But these are currently stand - as supposedly thriving cities of different types - they make little sense. They are too un-crowded to be cities. I mean, they don't even have enough buildings to hold their stated population! Are half those residents living in tents in all the empty lots? The book itself looks potentially interesting, but the maps are - in my opinion - poorly done and distracting due to their oddities.</blockquote>

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