Mapping Guide: Asian Towns

Introduction
Welcome to the October
issue of the
Cartographer’s Annual
2018. This month we
build on the September
issue “Japanese Temples”
by Sue Daniel, to create a
fully-fledged city style for
complete far eastern-style
towns.
At heart it is still a city
drawing style which uses a lot of City Designer 3 functionality
and therefore requires the City Designer add-on to be installed. If
you do not own CD3, you will still be able to use the style’s
symbols, textures and drawing tools, but the house and street
tools described in this mapping guide will not be available.
As this style shares some resources with the Japanese Temple
style (the September issue), make sure you have installed that
Annual issue as well as this one.

Creating an Asian Town Map

You can find the Asian
Town style among the
City styles of CC3+. The
included buildings and
texture bitmaps have
very high detail so that
you can create close-up
layouts which print
nicely at miniature scale.
Starting a New Map
Start out as usual, using
the New drawing
wizard. Choose the map
type Cities, map style

1
1
 Annual Asian Town and the option Decide your own settings.
From the template wizard create a map of the size you want. For
this example I will create a map of 1000x800 feet.
The Physical Layout
Take a look at the Terrain
drawing tools (click All city
drawing tools to access
them). Use the Terrain,
Contour X tools to highlight
higher elevations on your
map. If you want to add
more contours, use the
Contour Higher tool. This
will add a lighter-colored
contour on top of
everything else. For deeper
water areas, use the Water, Blue X tools.
The City Wall
I often use the city's walls
to define the overall shape
of the settlement.
There are several ways to
draw a city wall, for
example the City Walls
drawing tools or the wall
symbols from the style’s
default catalog.
Here I am using a different
method, employing
the House tool.
Click the House
button and choose
the house options
as show in the
dialog on the right.
Now draw one
straight section of
the city at a time with this tool, using the endpoint modifier (F5)
to connect the wall corners together. This will give you a roof-

2
covered city wall. Finally I add a couple gatehouses and a few
towers using the wall symbols from the default catalog.
Streets and City Background
Next up is the city's grid of
streets. Right-click the Road
button to see the
drawing tools for that
purpose. I start by laying
down the major
throughways of the city,
and then add branching
roads, open places and side
streets.
Use the bright symbols from
the default catalog to add
stone, wood and rope
bridges where your streets cross water or other obstructions.
If you want to add background fills for the city area – dirt, earth
and dust areas for example – you'll find the drawing tools for
these under the Terrain tools. If drawing cities I use these to
define the more densely settled parts to differentiate them from
the surrounding landscape.

3
3
 For a rural town like this is supposed to be I skip this step, letting
the grassy map background be visible beneath the buildings.
Generic Buildings
It's time to add the
majority of buildings to
the map. A substantial
town can have a lot of
houses and adding them
all individually can take a
lot of time. But we have
the Random Street
command at our disposal,
which makes the process
much less painful.
Simply click the Random
Street button, select a
road, pick a side and move the cursor to display house
outlines along the street. Move the cursor back and forth
to randomize the house shapes until you have something
that you like, then left-click to place the houses and finish.
Move through the city to place houses in this way where
possible, and then add individual houses with the House
command to fill in any gaps.
Important Buildings
Now I go ahead and add
significant and/or special
buildings to the map. For
thse I choose symbols from
the CA143 Default or
CA143 Temples catalogs
(click Symbol Catalog
Settings to select) as they
are a little more elaborately
drawn than the ones you
can create with the House
command.
The buildings are smart symbols, meaning you can align and
offset them to and from the existing streets. If the smart behavior
interferes with symbol placement at any time – which can

4
happen if you are trying to place a symbol near several roads –
simply right-click and check the Disable smart symbols box in
the parameters dialog.
If you find that the town is a little too crowded to place more
buildings, you can always delete a few of the randomly placed
houses.
Vegetation and Miscellaneous
We are getting close to
finishing the actual map. Use
the Terrain drawing tools to
add fields, gardens, meadows
and similar features in and
around the city. Load up the
CA143 Vegetation catalog
and add trees to the map.
The CA143 Default catalog
contains a few more neat
features. Add some piers and
wells to the map as a finishing
touch.
Text Labels, Compass Rose and Scale Bar
Finally we need to label the
city. Use the Text command to
add labels where appropriate.
Note that the map style (and
its sheet effects) are set up to
use a bright text color. I
usually label at least the most
important buildings,
differentiate the city quarters
and add a title, plus perhaps a
little description to the map.
If you want, you can also use
City Designer3's Create Index function on the map, but I'll not be
covering that here. Check out previous city Annual issues, or the
help file entry Create Index to see how that is done.

5
5
 Load the CA143 Cartouches symbol catalog to add a compass
rose and/or scale bar to the map, if you didn't already so when
you set up the map in the new drawing wizard.

The Final Map

And that’s it, our town map for a small Asian fishing town is
finished.