(Continuing the post from yesterday – where the geography and size and a bit of the background of Cruar’s Cove was determined)

Now that I’ve determined how big the city is (8,000 population) we know that there will be 80 “blocks” in the city, each 500 feet on a side. For the map I’m drawing I’m using a scale of 1,000 feet to the inch, so each “block” will be a half-inch square. Using City Works, the next step would be to determine the divisions of blocks within the city.

A roll of 99 makes Cruar’s Cove a “Fading City”. Business is poor for this city, as its reliable industries have hit a serious slump. Many laborers are unemployed, and those few families who can afford to have left for greener pastures. Normally this has 5% of the non-residential space as dock space, where a port city has 10%. What I’ll do here is turn Industrial down from 20% to 15%, and add 5% ruins to the city, and have the ruins as the old unreppaired and collapsing docks.

The distribution of blocks goes as follows (80 blocks total – 40 residential, 40 industrial)

Industrial Blocks (40 total)

• 5% Ruins (2 blocks)
• 5% Docks (2 blocks)
• 10% Entertainment (4 blocks)
• 10% Government (4 blocks)
• 15% Industrial (6 blocks)
• 15% Markets (6 blocks)
• 5% Military (2 blocks)
• 5% Parks (2 blocks)
• 5% Temples (2 blocks)
• 10% Travel (4 blocks)
• 5% University (2 blocks)
• 10% Warehouses (4 blocks)

Residential Blocks (40 total)

• 5% Upper Class (2 blocks)
• 10% Middle Class (4 blocks)
• 65% Lower Class (26 blocks)
• 20% Slums (8 blocks)

Now it’s time to draw the basic environment for the city – keeping in mind that it needs room for 80 blocks (so roughly 4.5 inches by 4.5 inches on my map). A roll on Table 3 (City Shape and Layout) sticks to the standard Radial layout. It has 1d3 walls (one of which is an outer wall, and any remaining walls being ones the city outgrew). In this case we get two walls, the outer walls and an inner wall. 20% of the city is within the inner wall, 60% within the outer wall, and the remaining 20% will be outside of the walls. 2d4 major roads run into the city (from the farms and fishing villages scattered across the Hill Islands). I roll 5 roads. Half run directly from the outer wall through the inner walls to the centeer of town.

Time to break out the tracing paper and the terrain map from yesterday and lay down the grid I’ll be using for the city. I lay out an area roughly the size I need and then draw in the city walls (in pencil for now – I’ll add them as a new layer in pen once the blocks have been assigned). I also haven’t put the major roads in yet in this scan – we’ll see them once I start assigning blocks.

For the roads, I place the two that head straight into the core of the city and will place the other 3 using the random tables after the blocks have been assigned. I do, however, place their gates around town where I think they would look good.

And we’re on to the blocks.

The first thing we have to place are the ruined blocks. In this case, because of the theme of the city, they are docks and therefore I put them on the bay but far from the city core (which is on the Eastern hill).

Next up are the Government blocks. I take the point that I’ve indicated as the middle of the city (not the geographical middle, but the middle when it first started, in the old city up on the East side), and I put them in the inner wall, up against the Eastern wall, where there is a gate for the main road into town. With only two upper class blocks to place next, one goes up against the government blocks (randomly rolled to be to the South), and the other goes somewhere pretty… (Slightly SouthEast of the other Upper Class block, against the city walls).

The Docks get placed against the water, as needed. In this case, half are in the old city, and half right beside the ruined docks.

The six market blocks are next. I break them up into 3 2-block markets. There should be a market attached to each dock, so I put one between the inner city docks and upper class districts, another adjoining to both the new docks and the ruined docks, and the last market goes on a major road. The road market gets placed 1d6-1×10% of the way between the city walls and the centre of town along the road. I roll a 3, so it’s 20% of the way (on a roll of a 1, the market is at the city walls and half of the market sits outside the city gates – I like the feel of that, maybe next time).

The Travel and entertainment blocks are placed like the market blocks, but placed adjacent to markets instead of docks. Half are placed with the docks, the other half are placed with the roads. With only 4 travel blocks, that’s one block at each dock, and the other two will be at the city gate closest to the non-dock market. The ones by the docks specialize in boating and so on, while the one at the gates is for horses and trade caravans and farmers.

Warehousing is also based around the docks and markets. In this case, the largest section of warehouses are adjacent to the ruined docks as well as the market there (and are probably quite run down and rat-infested, with some even being used by squatters now), with smaller warehouse areas in the old city and along the South road.

So here’s what the city looks like now (you can click on this map to see a larger version where you can read my terrible handwriting):

Tomorrow I’ll place the rest of the residential areas, the military blocks, temples, university, parks, and industries before laying down the remaining three major roads through town.