User blog comment:D0m0a/Nothgard Empire/@comment-27950421-20160806201841/@comment-27950421-20160808220112

Alright, I warned you I wouldn't be nice. I warned you that I would pull no punches. Time to tear your kindom apart.

First off the little ring of mountains that you completely neglected to name. Mountains ranges do not form like that. They are formed by tectonic plates push together and the ground is shoved upwards because of it. Because this mountains ranges always form in a line. The line my curve or turn, but it does not form shapes. Period. Now do I expect you to put all of that information in there? No. But you could at least attempt to look at a map and make your mountain range look like a real one instead of an incredibly obvious attempt to make a friggin wall around your kingdom. If you want a wall that bad, do what China did and actually build one. This could be more believable if you had a mountain range running through your kingdom and your capital city was in a valley within said mountain range. That would be believable. But having a mountain range just conveniently wrap around your kingdom like that? Bull shit.

That is of course far from the only problem your mountain range presents. First off, yes it is an amazingly effective way to keep enemies from invading. It also makes it really fucking easy to put your whole kingdom under siege. All an enemy would have to do is park their forces around the exit of that gorge and that's it, no trade going in, none coming out, and if you think a merchant is going to try to navigate those mountains just to trade with you, instead of just turning around and selling their wares elsewhere, you're crazy. You could try to break the siege but your forces exiting the gorge suddenly have to contend with being surrounded on three sides and being unable to retreat due to having all the rest of the army behind them and shiving them foreward. In other words a blood bath. There's no way you could break a siege without outclassing your opponent in every conceivable way. Which is bullshit. No one wants to play with that shit. Aro and I can pull off being OP because we don't actually do much. In the final battle for Oz all I did was wedgie the panties off of Circe. That's it. Anyways, back on subject, how the hell are you gonna do anything to the countries north of you? Because really you have a choice, you can either try to march your army out the south and go around, which unless your natiom is friggin tiny (which I sincerely doubt) would take years. Or you can try march them through the mountains, where you will lose a huge chunk of your forces due to the cold, limited supplies, and treacherous mountain paths. Oh and you can kiss those siege weapons of yours good bye. There's no way in hell you're gonna tow a trebuchet along some rinky dink mountain trail. So congrats, you have an impenetrable nation. Who can't effectively attack anyone or trade.

But if we really want to go into detail it gets so much worse. See basic geography, Mountains block rain. Air traveling over mountains get forced upwards, where it cools, all the moisture in said air comes down as snow on the mountain, and the air that comes down off the mountain is almost completely dry. This is called a rain shadow effect and is the most common thing to form a desert. Your kingdom is surounded on all sides by mountains. Meaning your kingdom gets no rain. What's more, water runs down hill, as in away from mountains. There might be a river running through the gorge and into your kingdom if your kingdom was in a basin lower than the area outside of the mountains, which is highly unlikely. So with no rain or rivers coming in, your kingdom is a desert. Now something that needs explaining like that can normally be ignored. But if you're gonna have a completely unrealistic and rather blatant attempt at putting a mountain range as a wall around your kingdom, you better have your shit together and have figured this shit out.

Next comes your cities.

Northgard Prime, is actually not bad. The way the city is structured is realistic and it would actually work. The only issue I see with it is the name. The "Prime" part is redundant. The capital of the Roman Empire wasn't Rome Prime. It was just Rome. Prime just doesn't fit the setting. Just call it Northdard and make it the Northgar empire. Simple.

Tiamatnur, having a city dedicated to trainung troops is stupid. Just plain stupid. Unless your empire is the size of Connecticut, it'll take months or years to get soon to soldiers there from the edges of the Empire. Then you have to transport them back after training. That is huge waste of time and resources. Every great empire that existed before the internal combustion engine had forts amd strongholds scattered throughout their territory. These forts were wear local recruits were trained to be soldiers not at some giant centrilized location. If you did have a location where your military might was focused at, it would Northgard Prime where said military can defend the capital not at some other city that serves no other purpose.

Northgardmur, that one works too given the current geography. Though it would end being the biggest and most prosperous city in the empire.

Primeval, well it seems like you're making the Saurians a seperate group that cooperates with the Empire. So Primeval should be less of a town or city of saurians and more of the Empire outpost connecting them to the underworld that the Saurians make their home in. It works better. Also given the subterranean nature, having Primeval also be gathering useful minerals and ores also makes sense.

Farmagal, this one just screams ignorance. A large city or centralized location is just plain ridiculous for an agricultural region. Look at the vatious "Breadbasket" regions pf the world. You don't see big cities. You see miles of farmland with small rural towns. It's way more efficient. Also every city, town, village, and hamlet would have some kind of farming. Without food in the area a city never forms and you can't build a town whilst being a hunter gatherer. That means farming.

Forgan, once again, it just screams ignorance. Each settlement would have it's own smithy not have one town centrilized that focuses entirely on smithing. Each town would have to send a request for metal goods, the Forgan black smiths would have to forge it and then the goods would have to be shipped. Stuff like this isn't just for weapons and armor either. It's also for nails, farming tools, horseshoes. Now you could easily fix Forgan. Move it up into some mountains where ore is plentiful, make it a mining  town. They mine up ore, smelt it into ingots and ship it out to black smiths around the empire who get their orders directly from the person who needs it instead of from courier who just traveled half the empire for no good reason. Also, siege weapons aren't premade except for when they're on a ship. Those things are really fucking heavy and moving them around is a bitch so they get made at the siege using available materials. Trying to have them premade and then dragging them around is a huge waste of resources.

Calmagan, the religious center and political center of every empire was always the empire capital. Either so the religious leaders and political leaders could communicate easily or because the religious leader and political leader were the same guy. Same goes scholarly stuff and likely magical. The mined goods should either come from Primeval or Forgan.

Now for the Fauna or since it's the only fauna you bothered to mention, the Giant Lizards. First off seriously giant lizards? That is the most lazy shit I've seen here. You know my kingdom has giant lizards? I know it's a shock but yeah, the Reptile Kingdom has giant reptiles. If you're gonna have giant lizards that are unique to your kingdom, at least have the decency to give them a unique name instead of sitting there and saying that your kingdom has giant lizards and is the only kingdom with giant lizards.

The Dominate, I've already voiced my opinion of that but I'll go ahead and say that at least Hitler had the decency to say that the nations he conquered were part of Germany instead of a "Vassal State".

The Ancient Underworld, very Vernian I guess. Can't complain much about that one.