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Generate
Part of Map Making Tools
The Generate tool populates your map in one run. It works out where people could live on the land you have shaped, then places capitals, cities, large towns, towns, castles, fortified towns and ports, links them with roads, river trade routes and sea lanes, and divides the land into realms, duchies and counties. Everything is named. A run can pass through several ages, so the map can have a history: ruins, abandoned castles, old roads and former capitals.
What Generate makes is ordinary map content. The realms, duchies and counties are regions in a layer set called Political (see Regions), the places are pins and the routes are routes (see Routes and pins), and their names are labels (see Labels). You can edit any of it afterwards with the other tools. When you generate again, what you edited or locked is kept and the rest is replaced.
Generate is the first tool of the Populate stage. Next goes to Regions.
Generate after a run on the tutorial's world map, with its realms, roads and towns on the map.
A run reads the map as it is: the land and sea, the height and ruggedness of the ground, the temperature and moisture, the biomes, the rivers and the coast. From these it works out, in stages:
- Reading the land: how many people each part of the land can feed, how hard it is to cross, and how easy it is to defend.
- Settling the peoples: where each culture lives (see Cultures).
- Founding the towns: cities first, spaced across the land, then large towns and towns between them.
- Tracing the trade: the routes trade takes between the towns, by road, by river and by sea. The busiest become trunk roads and main roads.
- Drawing the realms: the strongest cities become royal seats, and the land around each is divided among realms, duchies and counties.
- Raising the castles: dangerous borders and passes gain castles, exposed towns gain walls, and trade gathers in the towns that are safe.
- Settling the roads and fixing the borders: the trade and the realms are worked out again from the safer, busier map.
- Naming everything: places, realms and castles are named in their people's language.
The run happens in the background. The map is covered while it runs, showing the stage, how far it has got, and a line saying what it is doing. Cancel stops the run and leaves the map as it was. The whole run is one step of undo.
The same seed and settings always give the same result on the same map.
The panel's Estimated time is a guide for a typical computer. A run takes longer on a map that covers a larger area of the world (a wider span of latitude, or a larger area factor in New map), not on a map with more pixels. Each age adds about as long again. Above a minute, the panel says the run will take a while.
A run places towns at the spacing of a world map: cities a few hundred kilometres apart. A map that covers a small area (an island chain, or a regional map) gets only a few realms and the larger settlements, and the panel says so. A larger area factor in New map makes the world larger, with more of them.
A regional map cut from a map that was generated holds the parent's generated content, and the panel says so. It also keeps a copy of the parent's run over its own area, so its thematic layers show the parent's figures (see Thematic layers). You have two choices:
- Fill in adds villages and market towns between the places the regional map inherited, and keeps everything it inherited (see Fill in).
- Generate replaces the inherited content (except what you have edited or locked) with a run of its own, made for the regional map's own terrain.
The button at the top of the panel runs the generator. Once there is a run, it reads Generate again and asks first, saying how many realms, places and routes will be replaced and how many of your edited or locked items will be kept.
- Seed: what the settlements, routes and realms are made from. Left empty, the map's own seed is used (shown faintly in the field). The shuffle button (Generate random seed) picks a new one.
- Name style: the language the places and realms are named in, from 43 styles. Shown only while the map has no cultures, since each culture names its own places.
- Estimated time (see How long a run takes).
The section's badge says out of date when the terrain, climate, rivers, area factor or Generate's own settings have changed since the last run. Generate again to bring the map up to date. Notices below it say when the map is small, when it holds content from its parent map, when the last run stopped before its last age, and when a culture's homeland was left out or placed for it.
Shown on a regional map. Fill in adds the villages and market towns that lie between the places the regional map inherited from its parent, and joins them to the inherited roads by lanes. Everything the regional map inherited stays as it is. The new places share out the people the parent's run put in the region, so filling in never adds people the parent didn't have.
Fill in on a regional map at the Local detail level: the villages, market towns and lanes between the towns it inherited.
What a fill-in adds:
- Market towns fill the gaps between the inherited towns. Where people live more than half a day's walk from any town, the place with the most people round it becomes a market town, and so on until the gaps are filled. A market town holds a share of the people it serves, a few hundred to about a thousand.
- Villages: of the places where people farm, about one in as many as the map's area factor has a village (see New map): at the default of 15, about one in 15. They are picked by chance, but more often where more people live, so they gather in good country without falling into a pattern. A village holds the people of its own patch of land; the rest of the country people live in hamlets and farms, which are not shown. A village of 1,000 people or more is a large village.
- Lanes join each market town and village to the nearest road, town or lane, along the easiest way on foot, so lanes merge as they near a road.
- Names in the language of the people living there, none the same as a name already on the map.
Where they stand:
- Near the roads: market towns and villages stand only within about 15 km, over land, of an inherited road, river route or town, and further round a big town, whose country feeds it: about 30 km round a town of 4,000 people or more, and 45 km round one of 15,000 or more. Further out, people live in hamlets and farms: even a track to the nearest road is a lot of work, so settlement follows the roads. A regional map with no inherited roads or towns has no such limit.
- Spaced by the area factor: the larger the map's area factor, the fewer villages and the further apart the market towns, in step with how the area factor thins out everything else (see New map).
- Out of the rivers: places keep clear of the rivers as the map draws them, however wide.
They use the map's Market town, Large village and Village pin styles and its Lane route style, added from the defaults when the map lacks them (see Styles and icons). Market towns and large villages show from the Local detail level, and the other villages at Everything (see Detail level). After a fill-in, the map shows the most detailed level at which its new places aren't crowded.
Fill in works in the background, with the map covered and Cancel to stop, and is one step of undo. Afterwards the section counts the Market towns, Villages and Lanes the last fill-in added, and the button reads Fill in again. Filling in again asks first, then replaces what the last fill-in added, except what you have edited or locked. What the map inherited is never touched.
Filled-in places and lanes are generated content: they have a Generated section in the inspector, can be locked, and Generate or Remove generated content replaces or removes them like the rest. A regional map cut from a filled-in map carries its villages, market towns and lanes as inherited content, so it can be filled in again, more finely.
When it is offered: once the regional map shows its world closely enough, which is when the parent's generator cells (about 25 km apart) lie at least 30 pixels apart on it. Further out, the section says to cut a regional map closer in. A regional map cut before regional maps kept their parent's run gets a copy when it is opened, if its parent is saved and still holds the run its content came from; otherwise the section says to cut it again.
At cut: Fill in villages and market towns in New map's Regional map section fills in the new regional map the first time you open it (see New map).
The badge says rebuilds the political map. Each slider is a multiple of the usual, so 1 is the default. Double-click a slider to put it back to 1.
- Population density: how many people the land feeds. Higher values give more and larger settlements.
- Urbanisation: the share of people living in towns and cities. Higher values give larger towns and busier roads.
- Realm spacing: how far apart royal seats must be. Higher values give fewer, larger realms; lower values more, smaller ones.
- Fragmentation: how far a lord's wealth carries his rule. Above 1 the map breaks into more, smaller duchies and realms; below 1 fewer, larger ones hold together.
The map's peoples, each with its own habitat, homelands and name style. See Cultures.
The history the map grows through, oldest first. The last age is the present, and is what the map shows. A new map has one age.
The Ages section: an early medieval age of peace, then the present, troubled, with the Hillfolk invading.
Each age has:
- Era: how much of the land is farmed, and whether a great plague has thinned the people: Early medieval, High medieval or After a great plague.
- Strife: how dangerous the borders and the wild are: Peaceful, Troubled or War-torn. More strife means more castles and walled towns, and fewer people where it is unsafe.
- Event (shown while the map has cultures, which are added in the Cultures section above): None, or a culture that arrives or invades in this age. A culture that arrives is absent from the ages before. One that invades also takes land from the peoples it meets, and the age is more war-torn where it advances.
The buttons on each age move it earlier or later, or remove it (at least one age remains). + Age adds a copy of the present after it, which becomes the new present. A map can have up to eight ages.
Each age starts from the one before:
- Land farmed in the age before farms better.
- Towns tend to grow where towns stood before, so most places carry on, and keep their names. What changes them is what the new age changes: a plague, a different era, more strife, a culture arriving.
- The roads and sea lanes of the age before are already there, so trade starts from them.
- Kingdoms keep their royal seats where the seat's town survives, so a realm carries on, or breaks up where its seat fell.
What the age before the present leaves on the map (when Ruins and old roads is on in Output):
- Ruins: towns of that age with no town on their ground now. A ruin is named as its people named it then (perhaps in another culture's language) and drawn in its own style: the icon of what it was (a star for a city, say), in red. Its details say what it was ("City in age 1, 31,653 people").
- Abandoned castles, in the Abandoned castle style.
- Old roads: roads that carried that age's trade and carry none now, dashed in the Old road style.
- Former capitals: a place that was a realm's seat then and is not now keeps its own style, with "(former capital)" after its name. A ruined capital has its own style, Ruined capital.
Every earlier age is kept with the map's run, and the History tool shows the map as it was in each, with what changed between them. Each place's details give its history through all the ages ("Town in ages 1–2 · City since age 3").
Stopping a long run: once an age has finished, the overlay offers Keep finished ages beside Cancel. It stops the run and places the ages already finished, with the latest of them as the present. The panel then says how many ages the last run made.
What a run writes onto the map:
- Political levels: realms are always made. Duchies and Counties add the layers below them in the Political set (Counties needs Duchies). Realms are filled; duchies are drawn as dashed borders and counties as dotted ones, each shown with its names from its detail level (see Detail level).
- Places: capitals are always placed. Cities, Large towns, Towns and Castles can each be left out. Fortified towns and ports count by their size.
- Routes: Roads, River trade and Sea lanes. River trade follows the rivers as the map draws them.
- History (shown with more than one age): Ruins and old roads, what the age before the present leaves on the map.
- Names: Show names shows the names of the places, regions and routes the run makes, each from its style's name detail level (see Detail level). Off, everything is still named, with its label hidden.
- Styles: Use the default styles sets the pin, label and route styles that generated content uses back to the module's defaults before the run, keeping their names, and restyles everything that follows them. It starts on when the map's styles come from an earlier version and suit a different scale.
A run uses the map's pin styles for each kind of place (Capital, City, Large town and so on), its route styles for each transport and class (Trunk road, Main road, River trade, Sea lane and so on) and its label styles for each kind of name (Realm, Duchy, County, Capital, Settlement). A style the map lacks is added from the defaults. See Styles and icons.
Shown after a run: how many realms, duchies, counties, capitals, cities, towns, castles, roads, river trade routes and sea lanes the last run left on the map, with ruins, abandoned castles and old roads counted apart, the population, and each culture's share of it.
Shown while the map holds generated content. After asking, it removes everything Generate made, except what you have edited or locked. One step of undo.
Generating again replaces what earlier runs made, so you can try other settings or seeds. What you have worked on is kept:
- Edited: anything generated that you change in a way that matters: rename, describe or move it, repaint a region, reshape a route, or give it a look of its own in its inspector. Changing a style that it follows, its label or its visibility doesn't count.
- Locked: anything you lock, edited or not.
- Regions keep their whole realm: a kept county keeps its duchy and realm with it.
- Everything you made by hand is never touched.
The new run fits round what you kept: no new place is put where a kept one stands, and new regions take only the land no kept region holds.
Locking: generated rows in the Pins, Routes and Regions lists have a lock button beside Focus view, and the inspector's Generated section has a Lock switch. Each is one step of undo.
Everything a run makes has a Generated section in its inspector (folded at first). It shows, as they apply:
- Place: what it is (Capital, City, Large town, Ruined city and so on), its Population, its Cultures (the peoples living there, over 5%), its History through the ages, when it was a Former capital, and for a ruin what it was (Formerly).
- Region: its Title ("Kingdom of Ashford"), its Rank (Kingdom or Independent duchy), Population, Cultures or Culture, and how many Duchies and Counties it holds.
- Route: its Kind (Road, River, Sea or Old road) and Class (Trunk, Main or Minor).
- Shown from (and Name shown from, when its name appears at a more detailed level than the place): the detail levels it appears at (see Detail level).
- Generate again: what generating again will do with it: Kept (edited), Kept (locked), Kept with its realm or Replaced.
- Lock.
In Foundry, exporting the map to a scene makes a journal page, with these figures, for each generated place, route and region whose name the map shows at its detail level (see Export).
- Shape the land first: Generate reads the terrain, biomes and rivers, so changing them afterwards marks the run out of date.
- Set the Detail level in the map controls to thin out a crowded world map (see Map Canvas). A run starts the map at the level that suits its scale.
- To see where the run put its people, choose Population in the map controls' Thematic layers menu (see Thematic layers).
- Try a few seeds with the same settings: each gives a different but equally plausible world.
- To add villages to a region, cut a regional map close in, with Fill in villages and market towns ticked, and step the Detail menu from Regional to Local to Everything to see them arrive.
- Lock the realms and cities you like before trying other settings.
- To make the land behave differently for the generator (a haunted wood that is hard to cross, say), give a custom biome Behaves like (see Biomes).
Next: Regions
Related: Cultures, History, Regions, Routes and pins, Labels, Styles and icons, Map Canvas