The river ingress and egress hexes are found by doing a transform on the character values of the strings of the names of the hexes. This gives a nice stochastic but repeatable location. For the roads, I simply reverse the inputs. Badabingbadaboom.
The roads (which are defined at the 20-hex level) enter the hex and make their way to the 1-hex with the highest infrastructure, which is located on the river and is assumed to be the settlement center. Where there are no roads, there are trails. Trails may or may not be well maintained, and they are not suitable for significant trade. But they allow transportation of goods and supplies to and from remote outposts such as mines which may not have access to a main trade road. Again, these trails all seek the assumed central hex.
Trails are also defined at the 20-hex level to connect settlements with low infrastructures. Generally speaking, a road will only occur through a 20-hex with $I\geq 50$. An exception is made if the road is being laid (and maintained) from capital to capital. Therefore, trails are used instead to connect lower $I$ settlements as well as provide access to hinterlands.
 |
| Darker hexes are less civilized, road in red |
As a note on the trade system: only 20-hexes with a road can have a market. If your settlement has no market, you'll have to travel to find one. All goods produced in a 20-hex without a market must find their way down a trail to somewhere they can be sold. Therefore, for the purposes of the system, these goods are credited as being produced in the market settlement, even though their physical location might be different. My trade system engine assigns them to the market which is closest in the network.
This raises interesting gameplay situations. Most people in these remote locations would either make their own tools or carefully guard something they took a specific trip to buy. Very rarely would a merchant make their way down these dangerous and unfriendly trails to sell their wares. Plan accordingly.
No comments:
Post a Comment