What were the civil engineers thinking when they designed the Imperial City?
- Thread starter beefpelican
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simple, number 1. if there was only the outer wall then if invaders got past that they'd have the entire city to run amock in. if there's sections and a big castle that allows you to see where invaders are coming from then you can say "goblins attacking from the north" and get arcers ontop of all the walls. that way, even if they get past the outer wall there's still 3 more walls to get through, all with archers ontop.
It's a beautiful city and the walls are a sign of wealth.
Oh and, there's no other reason to build a city wall OTHER than defense, so you fall flat on your face saying it doesn't make sense to have walls everywhere.
It also helps with lag. Changing area and loading up a new one makes it so my laptop can handle it. But I still lag inside mage guilds.
Oh and, there's no other reason to build a city wall OTHER than defense, so you fall flat on your face saying it doesn't make sense to have walls everywhere.
It also helps with lag. Changing area and loading up a new one makes it so my laptop can handle it. But I still lag inside mage guilds.
The IC design has it's purpose, but look at the rest of the game. There is no thought in how the entire country was designed. Notice that there is a harbour in the Imperial City, but no waterways that leads to the sea(or any other city)?
Stuff like this makes the game a bit lackluster, even if they put a huge amount of detail on other stuff.
Stuff like this makes the game a bit lackluster, even if they put a huge amount of detail on other stuff.
It's likely that the city was expanded with each "Section" being built outside of other ones, and each set of walls having been the edge of the city at some point even if certain districts were later re-purposed.
Also it was not uncommon for there to be physical barriers between wards in a city to surpress riots, control the population, and/or seperate social classes. With say the area where a lot of residents lived being walled off from the markets gate passage being forbidden to visitors.
Understand that modern morality didn't prevail, and the middle class didn't want the poor people around where they lived, and the upper class didn't want the poor OR middle class around where THEY lived. Keeping the slums contained and walled up being paticualarly important.
It's also notable that people continually accuse goverments of doing the same thing by setting traffic patterns and stuff to make it increasingly difficult to get into or out of ghettos and slums. They even made a joke about it in "Grand Theft Auto IV" with the "Civil Servant" game. The basic idea being that with most people using cars and roads, by limiting the number of exits and access roads and having them be in messed up places, populations can be somewhat limited to specific areas just as well as putting up a wall, and having the gate guards only let people pass through with specific paperwork which of course none of the poor will have access to.
As far as size goes, I think they did okay with it. The problem with making things too huge in games is that they become annoying if there isn't enough content to fill them up. I think Oblivion's Imperial City was reasonably sized for the number of the things you had to do there.
Also it was not uncommon for there to be physical barriers between wards in a city to surpress riots, control the population, and/or seperate social classes. With say the area where a lot of residents lived being walled off from the markets gate passage being forbidden to visitors.
Understand that modern morality didn't prevail, and the middle class didn't want the poor people around where they lived, and the upper class didn't want the poor OR middle class around where THEY lived. Keeping the slums contained and walled up being paticualarly important.
It's also notable that people continually accuse goverments of doing the same thing by setting traffic patterns and stuff to make it increasingly difficult to get into or out of ghettos and slums. They even made a joke about it in "Grand Theft Auto IV" with the "Civil Servant" game. The basic idea being that with most people using cars and roads, by limiting the number of exits and access roads and having them be in messed up places, populations can be somewhat limited to specific areas just as well as putting up a wall, and having the gate guards only let people pass through with specific paperwork which of course none of the poor will have access to.
As far as size goes, I think they did okay with it. The problem with making things too huge in games is that they become annoying if there isn't enough content to fill them up. I think Oblivion's Imperial City was reasonably sized for the number of the things you had to do there.
Well, the city looks pretty nice from above. Best backdrop for a boos fight ever, Knights of the Nine was awesome.
Which doesn't correlate at all with the actual positioning of the walls.Therumancer said:
It really isn't it's underwhelmingly small. This city is the heart of a continent spanning empire. The city itself is smaller than vivec and it's nowhere near as impressive as it should be.
Wow... you thought a lot about this.
I was more worried about how in the beginning cutscene the guard walking in the city was as big as one of those fuck off huge doors that separate each segment...
I was more worried about how in the beginning cutscene the guard walking in the city was as big as one of those fuck off huge doors that separate each segment...
Oh shit! Are you telling me that in a game where I can battle goblins with my magical powers that the cities are unrealistic. GASP.Axolotl said:
Because building it any bigger would ruin the symetrical design they have....Axolotl said:
But why they choose such an Odd design... I dunno...
No. I'm saying that in a series that once prided itself on it's detailed seting and realistically sized settlements and landscape, the Imperial City in Oblivion breaks both verisimilitude and internal consistancy. It fails to convey the sense of grandeur that is expected of the location and is ultimately a bland and mundane disappointment.Daveman said:
Thanks for the crappy strawman by the way.
I think they built it in that fashion because it may have been built in segments. Like in the beginning it was just a fort, but as time went on and the empire became richer, they built the segments surrounding it, and the prison was built to separate it from the city.
I used to design maps for fictional universes in my spare time. Fictional cartography is pretty interesting and fun, and useful when I'm bored in lectures. And whenever I was designing maps of cities, I would use a similar system. Split up districts by walls to aid defence. I have to agree with option 1. Plus, the circular design isn't as interesting as the district design. With a circular design like in Minas Tirith, any attacker is basically going to be attacking from the front every time, and with fewer entry gates and whatnot in each circle and less space to maneuver around, the defenders will be much easier to kill each attack. Whereas with a district design, it can be much easier then for defenders to position troops in key districts and defend key locations, and to use their own controlled areas to maneuver troops around to flank the enemy. From a tactical point of view it's much more like a game of chess, and in fact benefits a defending army right from the off. Designing a city in the style of the Imperial City is actually a much more sensible approach, from a tactical point of view.beefpelican said:
However, I get the feeling options 3 and 4 jointly were the main focus for the developers, given they were designing a fictional city...
It would make it easier to isolate and quarantine areas of the city, which would come in mighty useful if there was ever a revolution so close to the Imperial Palace.
I think it's pretty grand seeing as it's visible from most areas of the huge map, which may be smaller than morrowinds but it looks quite significantly better. the inside is a little weird but if you think about it, it's just a game, why would you make loads of houses and stuff that basically nobody would ever go in or have need of? I say fun and usefulness is more important than some abstract standard of realism.Axolotl said:
that's what she said XDAxolotl said: