Map editor : an european point of view.

[Bogdan]

Hi,

Reading some thread here and there, it appears that the « CMX2 » subject is in every mind (including mine, of course !). Even if nothing yet (informations, timeline, screenshots) has been released by BFC staff, guys here keep throwing threads about the future game, wishing and whining for new functions, more realism, cosmetic-graphical improvements and many other candies.

My post here won’t list these sweet awaited features or question the CM community about « What d’you want in the next CM », just because that kind of thread already exists and the subject was/is/will be discussed many times. I hope (no, I’m almost sure) that these posts are taken into consideration by BFC designers in order to improve the existing project.

The point I want to discuss is in relation with map designing in general, and the scenario editor in particular. It appears, in my very humble opinion, that the graphical representation of the battlefield and terrain features in general are made « in an american point of view ». Some things seem to confort my idea.

Let me explain.

CMBO, CMBB and CMAK are tactical games which represent WWII era fights in the european theater (I don’t talk about mediterranean or north african ones, as I’m not very fond of them). That thing is very important. Then, one of the first thing to do, in order to create a conform 3D environnement, is to visit european places, look at pictures, maps and other sources. The best would be to visit, of course.

One of the first thing you will discover, visiting Normandy (for example), is that squarred road pattern, Magdeburg-type town SIMPLY don’t exist in the region. But it can also by verfied in entire France and surelly in Italy, Belgium and Germany (except Magdeburg of course ). Then, the CM editor is just unsuited to represent correctly such towns or villages. Consult a map of Bayeux and compare it to Manhattan NY (!) : of course the comparison is irrelevant but it will easely demonstrate the non-geometric road pattern of ancestral european towns.

What about walls ? CM only represents one kind of stone wall, measuring approximatly 1 to 1,20 meters high. Hedges are represented the same way. You may know that a 1,20 meters high stone wall is simply not suited for its principal purpose : create an obstacle to invaders (it could be a jealous french peasant, wilds animals, wind...) and protect agricultural exploitations, orchards, gardens. These walls are very common in rural France, and in occidental Europe. But there are 2,50 – 3 meters high... The 1,20 meters high wall exist too, but there are often shorten high walls, which has been transformed for aesthetical reasons. I don’t advance that this kind of walls didn’t exist during the 40’s, I’m just warning you that another kind of wall exist(ed) too, and is/was maybe more common. Hegdes may be considered the same way.

Bocage. In the CM editor, bocage is simply consider as a « tall » hedge. It’s not. Bocage is first a stone wall, with trees over it. With time (bocages often date from centuries), vegetation created a coat of earth, with brushes and trees. On the graphical point of view, you can imagine the appearence of the 3D battlefield if bocage tiles were represented that way. On the 3D abstract representation, I wonder if this change would modify the LOS representation. It may already has been taken into consideration, I hope so.

Roads. It has been discussed many times, but yes, there are often too large, too wide to realistically represent french or italian rural road network. In clear terrain, we can accept a kind of abstract representation and use these 20 meters wide road. But some little roads (which still exist in Normandy nowadays) are simply too narrow to afford two cars lanes. And I’m not talking about tanks ! Same thing for Italy, with these many little rocky roads, along the mountains. Then, what happens with a little narrow road, between two hamlets, flanked by bocage ?

In town, the problem exists too, of course. Apart from the attempt, in CMAK, to reproduce narrow city streets, it’s impossible to represent nicely those little rural hamlets which are/were legions in occidental Europe, from Brittany to Russia. These villages were created at a time when cars didn’t exist. Transport was made by foot or by horses. Even in Paris, I could find you a narrow street (or two )where a 3 meters wide tank would encouter many difficulty to pass. Then, in the coutry... !

Of course, all these arguments may be schematic. As I don’t master all american/english linguistical « finesses », it’s a bit difficult to explain simply and clearly all I want to demonstrate. The thing I’ve in mind is that the CM editor, actually, is more suited to represent an actual american little town than a 1940’s village of Normandy.

I also agree that CM is mostly based on abstraction of reality. With that in mind, it’s evident that it may exists some tweaks to represent some terrain specificity that the editor cannot handle for the moment. However, with BFC planning another WONDERFULL wargame, it would be sad to continue to use tweaks and tips . It may be usefull to take into consideration the european architectural (I don’t find an appropriate word) complexity for a better representation of those historicall battlefields.

Comments and riposts (err... replies !) are very welcome

[Joachim]

Originally posted by Bogdan:

Hi,

Let me explain.

One of the first thing you will discover, visiting Normandy (for example), is that squarred road pattern, Magdeburg-type town SIMPLY don’t exist in the region. But it can also by verfied in entire France and surelly in Italy, Belgium and Germany (except Magdeburg of course ).

..

Roads. It has been discussed many times, but yes, there are often too large, too wide to realistically represent french or italian rural road network. In clear terrain, we can accept a kind of abstract representation and use these 20 meters wide road. But some little roads (which still exist in Normandy nowadays) are simply too narrow to afford two cars lanes. And I’m not talking about tanks ! Same thing for Italy, with these many little rocky roads, along the mountains. Then, what happens with a little narrow road, between two hamlets, flanked by bocage ?

Comments and riposts (err... replies !) are very welcome

Magdeburg is a town founded about 900-1000 AD. that suggest the usual chaotic medieval city map. And surprise... last time (one day after 9-11) I was there it still had no city grid. Several broad Soviet-style alleys, but the pre 1945 parts that survived the bombings were definitely the usual European style. What you mean is Mannheim. Planned and founded in the Renaissance using a city grid... for the downtown areas. Everything else (read: the villages that grew around it and were swallowed by the city) is the usual "chaotic" style. Suggest you visit these towns (no...ignore Mannheim. Magdeburg had some nice places.)

CM roads are not 20m wide. It is possible to have a road with a line of trees on both sides in 20m. It is very hard to overtake a moving vehicle. But I admit there should be "tracks" that merely allow a jeep, but no heavy truck to pass.

Gruß

Joachim

[Michael Emrys]

Bogdan,

I think your points are all well taken and I do hope they are heeded. The medium of the computer game imposes constraints on what can be done in the end, but I do hope that most—or better yet, all—of your suggestions take root and blossom into reality.

As a footnote, back about six years ago when CM was first being mooted on the Board, I urged Steve and Charles to get and study as many aerial photographs of the European countryside (preferably of WW II vintage) as they could get their hands on. It is significantly different enough from the American variety that just familiarity with the latter is not enough. I don't know how far they heeded my advice, but I do note that the CM maps are an order of magnitude (at least) better than the old Squad Leader mapboards ever were.

Michael

[dalem]

I agree that the map editor needs to be better, but I do have to say that it's pretty darned awesome as it is.

Now, as far as roads & tracks, back when I played BB I made a handful of rural maps that handled that simply by leaving a clear path through woods/scattered trees and labeling it "Road" or something.

BFC has said in the past that they want to aim for a map grid with 5m x 5m squares as opposed to the current 20m x 20m squares. Assuming they can hit that mark, even if nothing else were to change at all, a LOT of our issues would be solved. Bocage specifically, which years ago I posted at length about, would cease to be a canned terrain feature (at least for me) and become much easier to simply create in the editor.

Also, small roads and tracks would be much easier to fudge up, assuming they don't do a new feature "track", which is worse than the current road, and smaller, but a tad better than Open Ground, or something.

Now I'm assuming that there will be more changes than just the grid size, and that would entail more kinds of walls, hedges, buildings, slopes, etc.

It'll be fun, that's for sure.

-dale

[Sergei]

Originally posted by dalem:

BFC has said in the past that they want to aim for a map grid with 5m x 5m squares as opposed to the current 20m x 20m squares. Assuming they can hit that mark, even if nothing else were to change at all, a LOT of our issues would be solved.

I personally think that would be a problem, not a solution. Of course, maybe the next game will concentrate on a much smaller level of action, similar to Close Combat. I mean, same-size maps would contain 16 times as many tiles as they currently do - or other way, maps with same amount of tiles would be 16 times smaller in "actual" size.

It doesn't necessarily mean that making a map of the same size would then automatically be 16 as laborious (even if one doesn't take into consideration all the new terrain types that probably have to be considered), but even if it takes four times as much time, it'll be hell of a work to create a map. And making a good map consumes plenty of time already the way things are! I hope this will be remembered.

I don't think tile size has to be made smaller or tile-based maps be even totally abandoned (which is one option of course), it would be enough to add a few tiles (like buildings not centered on the tile they sit on) and allowing walls to run between tiles, not just through them. This alone would allow for cities where all buildings aren't in a nice+neat grid.

But that's just me trying to make things difficult.

P.S. Maybe a compromise could be made - have the tiles 5m wide but 80m long, that way they would cover the same area!

[Sergei]

Btw. it is maybe a little bit misleading to talk about "European" cities lacking a grid. There were many big cities in the middle ages in the western parts of Europe, especially in Netherlands and Italy. But eastern parts of Europe remained predominantly rural well into the age of rationalism, well into the previous century in fact. A lot of the cities in the east were established since 18th century, like St.Petersburg, or were expanded from the couple of mud huts that had been there before industries arrived, or were largely rebuilt after fires had destroyed most of the old city (wood being the most usual building material). Which means that in the East Front nearly all cities would be either built into a grid of some kind or the old parts of them would be only a very small corner of the town.

[wadepm]

I am hoping that the model of the ground surface and the terrain features will be decoupled in the new program. So, after the ground surface has been created (5m grid sounds great!) the terrain would be "drawn" on that surface. Roads, hedges, walls, etc, could go anywhere and in any direction.

[Andreas]

I think a pure 5m grid would be unworkable. As someone designing maps I would hate it. I want the 5m ability in some circumstances, but in others, 100m squares are perfectly fine. Basically I want a mix of Mapping Mission and the CM map editor. On my Mac.

Sergei is bang on about many European cities at least having parts that are on grid square. Rshev for example was mostly on a grid system. I suppose many other Russian cities/towns from that era would have been as well. The Prati area in Rome, which was built up in the 1920s, is on a regular, almost grid system. Many parts of Berlin are on a very regular intersection system as well that can be portrayed quite well in CM.

I think it is pretty much possible to construct realistic looking cities now. Yes they are not perfect, but the far bigger impediment I find is that I can not put large buildings next to an abyss. If I had the choice between being able to have significant height differentials in built up areas, and a more flexible grid in the map editor, I'd go for the former anyday.

The CM editor gives a lot of power to map designers at the moment. I think there is a lot of room for improvement, and I am sure that BFC will look at this. It should be an easy win in terms of time invested vs. benefits gained for them.

One thing to consider though is that even with the best map editor in the world, you still need map designers who know what they are doing. Michael's recommendation that BFC should look at aerial photographs is very sound. Europe does not look like North America. When looking at pictures from the war, people intending to design maps should stop looking at the kit portrayed, and focus on the landscape.

[simovitch]

Bocage. In the CM editor, bocage is simply consider as a « tall » hedge. It’s not. Bocage is first a stone wall, with trees over it. With time (bocages often date from centuries), vegetation created a coat of earth, with brushes and trees. On the graphical point of view, you can imagine the appearence of the 3D battlefield if bocage tiles were represented that way. On the 3D abstract representation, I wonder if this change would modify the LOS representation. It may already has been taken into consideration, I hope so.

I have often wondered this as well. A norman hedgerow was (is) quite a barrier to passage and LOS. I assume a CMAK tall hedge was never intended to represent true bocage. But in CMBO it was, yet even there it still seemed innocuous compared to the protection a real life hedgerow would provide. I wonder if anyone has studied the difference in game terms between CMBO Bocage and CMAK tall hedge?

[flamingknives]

Hardly studied, but CMBO bocage and CMAK tall hedge is identical in every respect. Even to the extent that post-July 1944 allied tracked vehicles can pass through it and Axis vehicles can't.

[dalem]

Originally posted by Andreas:

I think a pure 5m grid would be unworkable. As someone designing maps I would hate it. I want the 5m ability in some circumstances, but in others, 100m squares are perfectly fine. Basically I want a mix of Mapping Mission and the CM map editor. On my Mac.

Interesting.

I assume that the new CM2 map editor will be more than simply "what we have now with a finer grid", but you're saying that if that's all it was it would be more bad than good? How come?

-dale

[Andreas]

I am trying to imagine doing a 2.5km by 4km map with 5m grids. Makes me want to crawl in a hole and take up FPS games. Without the ability to handle swathes of terrain better, and more flexibly, moving to a 5m tile would be a designer's nightmare, IMV.

I also think that I am capable of churning out decent maps with the current editor. Not so much of cities (although even there you can do quite a lot, and what I can not do is more related to the elevation problem than the 20m tile), but of pretty much everywhere else, except mountain ranges - there a 5m grid would be great - but also, there you may only need a 240x240 map to have a believable situation.

The 5m tile is no silver bullet, and for me not even the first thing I would consider changing about the map editor.

[Rokossovski]

I am so fond of the existing map editor that I hesitate recommend changes -- I'm afraid that monkeying with it could produce something far less desirable. I agree with Andreas that making elevation changes easier to represent in urban areas would be great. I am very much opposed to changing the scale of CM, or of going to 5m squares. An equal sized map would require exponentially more work to create.

GETTING TO MY POINT...

While I agree that the editor is better suited to portray American urban areas (gridded) than typical european ones, I suspect this has nothing to do with some sort of bias or ignorance on the part of the developers, and is instead a product of the limitations of the game engine. I have read that the game can only handle a small number of possible game tiles. When some are added (say vineyards) some must be removed (for example tall grass). Properly modeling the chaotic patterns of european urban areas would have required a galaxy of possible terrain tiles. It was much easier to instead model the much more limited options necessary for a grid. This in turn presumably freed up space for other sorts of tiles (wheatfields, scattered trees etc) that add more to our game experience.

Just a guess. I'd like to see if the developers were making the same kind of cost-benefit analysis I suspect they were when creating our current terrain editor.

[dalem]

I don't see a problem, myself. For myself, I'd still do the underlying landform first, then plop the details down over it. If I need a large span of details I use the wider "brush".

For walls and roads and similar linear features a smaller granularity is, I think, irrelevant with respect to "effort". They could be smaller, which I think is good.

I must be missing your point.

-dale

[Andreas]

Maybe, maybe we just have a different approach.

Smaller, while generally good, is not necessarily required by me, or indeed the simulation. In many cases you would just get eye-candy - nice to have, but not fundamentally advancing the simulation.

I am not fundamentally opposed to moving to smaller tiles - just saying that without a vastly more powerful solution for the 'brush' than the one we currently have, in particular when it comes to the laying of roads, railroads, fences, etc., it would be a feature that would be completely counterproductive. IMO.

At the moment, I guess I easily spend 60-80% of the time on settlements. With a 5m tile system, that time requirement would be infinitely longer. Probably so much longer that I would consider giving up on designing stuff altogether. It would just be a chore, if all other things stay unchanged.

YMMV.

[dalem]

Fair points, all. I tend to stick with rural maps because I lack the skill to get anything bigger than a little village to "feel right" to me, no matter how much time I spend with it.

I guess the main thing I would be excited about for smaller tiles would be the ability to create my own streams, bocage, roads, etc., without relying on a specific tile type to do it for me.

-dale

[Sergei]

I was thinking something like this would be great: let other things stay the same, but make buildings and possibly roads non-tile based. Now, I don't know how well this would work, but I'll explain anyway. The main problem, to me anyway, is that you have only a limited palette of buildings, and you can't really get them of the preferable size & direction for all situations. Other terrain features I can live with the current way just fine, thank you. Having a forest consist of 25m^2 tiles wouldn't really make that forest considerably better than if it was made of 400m^2 tiles. The same with fields, lakes etc. Also with contours. But I wish it was possible to place buildings onto the map freely, by hand, as moveable 3D objects in the editor. Also to rotate them and to choose their size. This would, for instance, let us make two parallel single store houses, both 10m wide and 30m long, facing NWN.

And it would be nice to have the possibility to draw roads as straight lines, instead of them having only cardinal and half-cardinal directions to go. The engine would allow combining roads of any type/width with the underlying terrain types.

But I dunno how well/efficiently this could be implemented.

[edited for getting things strange]

[ April 15, 2004, 06:32 PM: Message edited by: Sergei ]

[Lawyer]

Originally posted by Andreas:

Michael's recommendation that BFC should look at aerial photographs is very sound. Europe does not look like North America. When looking at pictures from the war, people intending to design maps should stop looking at the kit portrayed, and focus on the landscape.

I agree completely with Andreas. From my time spent scouting Battle of the Bulge sites and general travel in Europe, the European topography is definitely different. WWII aerial photo's are most definitely the BEST sources to make a great map.

But good aerial photo's from WWII are hard to find. Does anybody have a good source? Despite searching, I haven't found a good book with aerial photo's of WWII battle areas. However, I've just ordered a new book of aerial photo's of Normandy from the History Channel that comes out in May. I'm hoping it will give me some good photo's for maps. Top down pictures from great heights (like the B-17 bombing pictures) are not enough. You need some low-level angle pictures to show elevations, buildings, farms, and trees. The shadows give a lot of nuance, and the little hedge and road details become clear.

I'd love to have aerial photo's of other battle areas sites, and I'm sure the US reconaissance corps must have taken a boatload of them. Where can they be found?

I was able to do a nice Baugnez map for a CMBO battle because the book "Battle of the Bulge, Then and Now" included a few photo's taken by the US right after the massacre there to document the scene. I used those pictures to add WWII period details to my basic geographic map that I knew was accurate (within CMBO map editor limits) from my visits to Baugnez.

Using period air photo's was the only way to really get the correct layout of the buildings, roads, fences, and farms at that time because a LOT has changed there from WWII, and much of it just in the past few years. For example, you can no longer see the Baugnez Crossroads across the fields like the Germans did because new warehouse buildings and houses block the view. If you didn't know what the place looked like in 1944, you cannot understand or appreciate the events that happened.

And I must agree with Andreas from experience that all the best individual game matches in the CM series start with a great map. So that's where my interest lies... It just kills me to see a phoney "made-up" map of a battle area that I've actually visited. They miss the whole point of recreating a historical battle situation. The land often defines the battle, and that's the challenge of playing CM with good tactics.

Jake

[Michael Emrys]

Originally posted by dalem:

I don't see a problem, myself. For myself, I'd still do the underlying landform first, then plop the details down over it. If I need a large span of details I use the wider "brush".

For walls and roads and similar linear features a smaller granularity is, I think, irrelevant with respect to "effort". They could be smaller, which I think is good.

I must be missing your point.

I have to say I agree with Dale here. The objection seems to presuppose that the editor would work in the same way that it does now except with 16 times the amount of time and labor involved. But BFC has already hinted that they envision a radically revised editor. Since they have not yet specified what is meant by that, it is open to speculation.

I for one can't see any reason why you would be compelled to lay down terrain one tile at a time. Why not simply sketch the boundaries of an area and then designate that you want it filled with a terrain type? Why not be able to place a building and then be able to rotate it a specified number of degrees in either direction? Why not be able to draw contour lines on a map and then instruct the program to smooth them out, then do whatever tile-by-tile adjustments you like? Those are all possibilities that seem doable to me if BFC wishes to go that route.

Michael

[junk2drive]

the more i read the next generation cm threads, the more i wonder what kind of alienware system you will have to buy to play it. i would think that bfc needs to make money from as broad an audience as possible. since the current game is designed to run on older hardware, i dont expect as much change in the new game. cm still beats board games and 2d top down.

[Michael Emrys]

Originally posted by Lawyer:

But good aerial photo's from WWII are hard to find. Does anybody have a good source? Despite searching, I haven't found a good book with aerial photo's of WWII battle areas.

I doubt very much that you are going to find all you want within a single cover. There were, of course, millions of aerial photos taken during the war, and I expect that a huge number still reside in archives in the various belligerent countries. So far as I know though, large collections do not exist in print that are readily available.

That said, I have seen thousands of aerial photos of European landscapes, perhaps hundreds taken during the war era. Where? In various books and magazines. They seem to turn up particularly plentifully in aviation magazines for fairly obvious reasons.

Getting aerial views of specific battlegrounds is a lot trickier, especially ones taken at or near the time of battle. I recommend a search through issues of After the Battle magazine as they specialize on these kinds of reconstructions and sometimes have useful overhead shots as well. Your other recourse is to get in touch with the relevant national archives. Find out what they have and how much it would cost to get copies. Expect to spend lots of money on this if you follow it very far at all. There was some buzz a couple of months back about somebody in the UK putting all the ones in their archives online, but I haven't heard anything since.

Michael

[Michael Emrys]

Originally posted by Bogdan:

Bocage is first a stone wall...

Are you quite certain of that? I'm not trying to argue the point, but I do want to pin it down. This the first time I ever heard this. While it does not seem beyond possibility, I have to wonder if it was the standard. I have to wonder if all the hedgerow breaching techniques I've read about would have worked against stone walls.

My supposition based on what I have read was that the hedgerows began as windrows of closely planted trees. Since the ground between the trees would not have been cleared, brush would have grown there. These would have tended to capture wind-blown soil which added to dead vegetation fallen from the trees and brush, in addition to grasses and weeds growing there, would have built up to quite a pile over the centuries.

Michael

[JonS]

TARA, mentioned by Emrys above. Some freebies, mostly pay. (Hans - were you looking for Amsterdam stuff a while ao? They have a good chunk of downtown A'dam for free)

Allied Photo Reconnaisance of World War II, up to $16 from Amazon. 300 b/w photos.

Timeframes, NZ Natuional Library. You'll have to search and rummage, but quite a few good photos of Greece, Crete, North Africa, and Italy, including some Aerial Recce ones.

Otherwise, it's as Emrys said above - you see them here, you see them there. The BBC website has some from time to time to go with particular stories. Ebay has copies for sale from time to time. Etc.

Regards

JonS

[dalem]

Originally posted by Michael Emrys:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Bogdan:

Bocage is first a stone wall...

Are you quite certain of that? I'm not trying to argue the point, but I do want to pin it down. This the first time I ever heard this. While it does not seem beyond possibility, I have to wonder if it was the standard. I have to wonder if all the hedgerow breaching techniques I've read about would have worked against stone walls.

My supposition based on what I have read was that the hedgerows began as windrows of closely planted trees. Since the ground between the trees would not have been cleared, brush would have grown there. These would have tended to capture wind-blown soil which added to dead vegetation fallen from the trees and brush, in addition to grasses and weeds growing there, would have built up to quite a pile over the centuries.

Michael </font>

[Bogdan]

Wow ! more than twenty replies in one day !

Thanks !

Posted by Joachim :

What you mean is Mannheim. Planned and founded in the Renaissance using a city grid...

Thanks Joachim, I wasn't sure it was that german town which adopted a grid pattern.

Posted by Dalem :

Now, as far as roads & tracks, back when I played BB I made a handful of rural maps that handled that simply by leaving a clear path through woods/scattered trees and labeling it "Road" or something.

That's exactly that kind of tweak that I think it would be nice to take into consideration. Even if it works in the actual CM engine, it would be nice, eye-candy; to actually have another type of road, named "track" or "path" for example.

Posted by Sergei :

I don't think tile size has to be made smaller or tile-based maps be even totally abandoned (which is one option of course), it would be enough to add a few tiles (like buildings not centered on the tile they sit on) and allowing walls to run between tiles, not just through them. This alone would allow for cities where all buildings aren't in a nice+neat grid.

I totally agree about the tile's size. In one hand, a smaller topographical grid could bring some more details, of course. But in the other hand, designing a map would become a real nightmare ! You can actually set preciselly the topography for every 20 meters tile and it can be sometimes very long and painfull. I cannot imagine myself scanned 1:25000 scale map and import them in a new Mapping Mission version which handle 5 meters square tiles !

However, I think the actual editor system is nice and accurate. The probable solution would be to add many more tile types and handle tile's borders, in order to put wall (high walls please), hedges, fences ot tree lines for example.

Another great improvement would be to work in cooperation with Mapping Mission system in mind. The map layer is very usefull device for every map lover. It brings higher accuracy.

About town/village designing :

The actual road system, which of course may be ameliorated-upgraded, can actually provide a wide pannel of patterns. Look at the CM editor tile pannel : 3/4 of the board is made of every road tile actually available. Apart from the lack of another kind of road (yes, two type, paved/unpaved is good but fail to recreate small rural paths), I can live with it !

The actual weakness would be the lack of house/buildings tiles, in regard with the plethora of road tiles. There's absolutelly no house tile made for 45 degrees corners. That's, IMO, the main drawback.

Here is an example of a small village of western France, near Dreux :

...and there an alsacian village :

Burnhaupt map

...here a small town of Luxemburg, called Garnich :

(Here is a more detailled map of the town ).

Of course, these maps are post WW2 but the historical village, the original road pattern and houses "distribution" is the same as ago. Please observe how "non-geometrical" is the road network, compare it the topography. Have a look at the villages : the center is totally build up, with narrow streets : it's the older sector of the agglomeration. It's exactly what CM editor actually failed to reproduce. Unfortunatelly, little towns like that are very numerous in Europe, each one with its specificity and regional variants, of course, but which dated, in majority, from the middle age or earlier.

See also all those curves...

About bocage :

Posted by Michael Emrys :

Are you quite certain of that? I'm not trying to argue the point, but I do want to pin it down. This the first time I ever heard this. While it does not seem beyond possibility, I have to wonder if it was the standard. I have to wonder if all the hedgerow breaching techniques I've read about would have worked against stone walls.

Glad to make you learn something

This is an interesting subject, which doesn't really fit this thread however. But, like dalem well said it, I can confirm that the majority of the Normandy bocage (and by extension the bocages of Brittany, northern France and southern England) come from a rural and agricultural activity. The main goal was to correctly delimitate agricultural fields and orchards between several peasants, by erecting walls.

Here is a web page in french that explains it (pictures are evocatives) :

The "talus" shown here is the ancient stone wall, which has been slowly "colonisated" by a vegetal biotop. It's now a mix between stones and earth and remain the unique "vestige" of the original wall. Ditches were made from irrigation and prevented from flood. I guess also that the main wall's orientation took the main winds into consideration (mostly from the west, from the ocean, in Normandy) in order to protect vegetation.

If I find some good weblinks, I'll list them here.