Like rivers, my 20-mile scale maps indicate various villages, towns and cities within a country, which get special status because they were important enough to be included on 1:4,000,000 scale maps provided by Rand & McNally mapmakers in the 1950s. This is as good an arbitrary measure as any, because it is not my arbitrary measure and R&M knew more about why to indicate some locations and not others than I could ever hope to know.
These locations get a special status with regards to my population numbers, my infrastructure and my geopolitical boundaries because they were so included ... even if they happen to be immediately adjacent to another town of equal or even larger size. For example, Flekkefjord in Agder [Vest-Adger in modern times] is only 20 miles from Lyngdal, which appear to have been about the same size in the 1950s; but Flekkefjord has a much longer history and so it got chosen and Lyngdal didn't.
[An annoying thing about Flekkefjord came to my attention just two days ago. I plotted the town along with hundreds of others in 2010; but as it turns out, I have it about 35 miles east of where the town actually is. I most likely misread the latitude when I plotted the town, and am only learning this now. This messes with a lot of details having to do with maps I posted just a week ago, as well as my infrastructure numbers ... but I just know I'm going to obsessively fix the error, even going to the point of reposting maps and adjusting those numbers, just because. Damn it.]
I wrote on Wednesday that benefits do arise from towns ... and that references those specific towns that do appear on a 20-mile scale map. Sometimes, they do. Rarely.
Because the infrastructure calculation originates with these towns, they are bound to benefit from the distribution of more important hex types, which in turn are already accounted for. It wouldn't make sense to give a settlement, just because it is a settlement, an extra benefit. Therefore, I don't. Usually.
But ... a population center is going to have a minimum level of coin associated with its existence; and occasionally a pre-assigned population center turns out to be in a type-5 or type-6 hex, because the population of that center is very small and it is somewhat remote. Odda, in Hordaland, is an example (shown here in 6-mile hexes). None of the surrounding hexes are especially settled; the land is rough and somewhat obscure, with Odda enjoying the benefit of having a lake on one side of its location and the Sorfjorden on the other. The vision of the town is so pretty I feel I have to include a picture:
Most of the time, a pre-determined location like Odda winds up being on a body of water of some kind and I don't need to adjust its benefits by adding a coin. Odda's one coin originates with its location on the coast and lake (no, it does not get two, it is still in a type-6 hex). All of the non-wilderness hexes exist because Odda was noted on a map in 1952.
Now and then, however, I get a location that isn't ~ technically ~ located on a body of water or a river. Voss, or Vossevangen, is about 40 miles north of Odda. While it is located on a small body of water, the Vangsvatnet, this wasn't large enough to be noted on the 20-mile scale map ~ and like I said with the last post, you can't walk fifty feet in Norway without a risk of getting wet. We have to draw the line somewhere on what is a sufficiently sized body of water to count as a coin benefit. And yet Voss is clearly an important location regardless ... so the coin it doesn't get from water and wouldn't get from being in a more important hex, we grant because it is one of those Rand & McNally locations.
That's a lot of explanation for a very simple thing. But as I thought about it, I saw so many angles for how I could be misunderstood, particularly in readers thinking that every important location ought to be granted a bonus coin, so that Odda should have two and not one ... the only rational approach was to explain it very carefully.
There is another point I'd like to make about towns that won't take quite as long. The groups mechanic does create a number of type-1 to 4 hexes that don't have population centers at all, because they cluster around larger settlements like Stavanger and Bergen. And because the benefit for hex type grants these 6-mile hexes with coins, my answer has been to posit that a town does exist in that hex.
Take this area around Bergen, for instance. Bergen is the only pre-determined location for the area, but the distribution of hexes creates quite a number of type-2 to 7 hexes scattered over the islands and coastland. The coast is so complicated that my eyes tend to cross when I look at this too intently. There are five hexes, apart from Bergen, that have a coin benefit from being a type-1 to 4. In those hexes, I've searched on google maps and turned up actual place names to act as the "designated location" in those hexes: Knarvik, Hosanger, Bruvik, Salhus and Glaevaer, all real places.
In game terms, these are real towns, indistinguishable from any pre-determined town that would be in a comparable hex. Salhus, for example, would be larger than either Odda or Voss, with a great deal of industry and commerce, as indicated by its four coins. But it is shown here as a brown circle rather than a black, as a reference to it being a satellite town of Bergen and not an original town showing on the 20-mile scale map.
The last benefits come from trade references ~ but before I get into that difficult subject, I'd like to bring some of this conversation back around to the players, and how they might address the problem of picking a hex to play in and establish themselves and their "estate." We can talk about references, and about the scaled effects of multiple benefits, afterwards.
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