Subject: So I had a bit of free time.
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Posted on: 2019-07-13 20:06:00 UTC

"I know," thought I, "I'll do some colouring of that digital art I've got going. But first, maybe a little topography work."

An hour or so later... ^_^

The images below are the OpenTopographyMap (like OpenStreetmap, but topo) overlaid onto Google Earth. OpenTopo has 10m contours, so it at least seems more precise than GEarth. Onto that, I've drawn the 800m contour in yellow, then highlighted peaks and ridges in purple, troughs and lowest points in red, and areas with a less than 10% slope in green.

10% is a pretty steep slope. There's a hill leading up to Bath Uni which is 5% for slightly less than a mile, and it is murder to climb. Anything over 10%, you're not going to want to climb for anything other than short distances. (That's not to say you can't build outside the green zones - but you'll want to follow the contour lines pretty closely.)



Starting in the north, we can see the basin immediately below the door is a beautiful spot for farming. Following the Rue Jay along, we find that it prefers to follow the contour than the ridgeline; that's probably fine. That ridge, the one visible in the farm image, is pretty flat; there's going to be some farms up there.

Cemetary Hill has a relatively gentle approach. The Sportsplex is on a steep slope, but you can see from the satellites that it's terraced, so no issues there.



Moving into the American Quarter, and I believe the term is 'zoinks!'. The whole thing is tumbling off the hilltop; down on the slope there, you're looking at a 50% or greater incline! I'm pretty sure that's impossible to walk.

I think the best solution is to cut off everything west of the Rue Jay. Have the American Quarter occupy the ridge running from the north, then run up to the ridge running west-east (that'll give it a beautiful view overlooking the city), and onto the green ridge/peak section to the east. The region north of that peak should be okay (the roads will just follow the contours), but the whole area will be an eastward fan from the Rue Jay.



Coming down into the city centre, a lot of the roads in the northern regions look good, contour-following or obvious hill-climbs between them. It's a bit odd that the Three Peaks are unused - perhaps the American Quarter could extend south along them? The park is on a steep slope, but that can either be terraced or simply heavily built-up.

The centre itself... I feel so bad about this, but how do you feel about moving the whole thing to the east? If the Rue Jay followed the main track (dotted on the OpenTopo map), it could run NE-SW through that green basin. You could have one district stretching down the valley heading NW, and another spanning the SE corner and that minor peak. The central square would be around where the TARDIS docks are now. (You can actually see this on the image from last time - there's a big basin with not much in it.)

(To make myself feel slightly better, I'm reminding myself that the MyMiniCity is isometric, so a NE-SW grid is actually true to the source material...)

That would probably swing the hospital down somewhat lower on the slopes, but keep the pub in the same place, which is a great spot between the two basins.



Ending on a positive note, the French Quarter looks pretty good! I'd probably curl it a little more around Pic Poya, and maybe trim off a bit of the hillside stuff at the north end, but if the roads follow the contours, those areas still work.

hS

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