Post by TheBunyip in Perilous Shores comments

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I have one question/suggestion...

Am I correct in thinking that the rivers cannot follow roads? I have a campaign with a town in it where a road through the town follows the river, and it looks like your generation algorithm can't ever produce this situation (at least, I tried a lot of times and never saw it happen). If it can't do this, it would be a cool feature, to add some extra verisimilitude I think - paths and roads often build up this way in real life.

watabou1 year ago(+1)

It’s no like they cannot at all but…

They can’t do it really tightly because roads run through centres of hexes and rivers run along their edges.
They rarely do it for long. Roads connect settlements and they "try" to be as short as possible (where terrain allows). So for a road to follow a river for a noticeable length, two settlements need to be located at the same river and that river needs to run straight between them.
A road following a river is a nice image, but I don't think it happens much in real life. Essentially rivers make roads unnecessary, at least if we are speaking about roads for carts, caravans and stuff, not mere trails.

TheBunyip1 year ago

Your last point might be true (I have no way to verify either way, but I have seen a lot of paths and roads that follow a waterway for extended periods - I expect it was just easier to build a road on the flat near a lazy river, and they would then part ways at some point). However, in the case where a river makes building a road unnecessary, wouldn't you expect the river to connect up settlements?

itch.io

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