A Dutch Treat - the history of dikes

[FrankU]

My dear SC4Devotion friends,

In the thread "Dutch, Flemish dikes/seawalls" (http://sc4devotion.com/forums/index.php?topic=5956.0)
Gerard79 had some questions about BATting or LOTting stuff to make realistic dikes.
I responded in that thread and without even having thought of what this was going to lead to I plunged into the subject.

After having thought about this a bit further I realised that it might be interesting to some of you not only to know how to make a dike in SC4, but also to know why we should need such objects in the first place.

Why do the Dutch build dikes?
Why do they live beneath sea level?
And how did they start to live there in the first place?

There is a clear answer to these questions. I try to present it in a short geographical tour.

As this is not a Mayor's Diary, nor am I sure that this is going to be a LOT thread or anything like that, I present you this as a Mayor's Report, me being a forums Mayor at the moment (with 462 posts) and this being a report on a Real Life subject.

What are the Netherlands?

This history, by the way, also accounts for parts of Belgium.
It is a small country, northern from France, western from Germany. It is the Delta of the Rhine, the Maas and the Schelde.
A delta is the large area where a river, coming from mountains far away, reaches the sea. The land is flat, the water runs slow and searches its way to the sea through small unevennesses in the terrain. The bed of the river moves constantly.
The river contains small particles of rock, stone, sand and clay. As the river reaches its delta, only the smallest parts are still carried by the river. In the delta these particles settle down and make excellent soil for agriculture.
You could account this story also for the Nile, the Mississippi, the Ganges, Indus, Yan-tze-kiang, Amazon, etc.

The Netherlands are a fairly small country.
I live just eastern from the green area in the center. My mother lives in the northwestern part between the sea and the central lake. It is a 1,5 hours drive. The Dutch consider this as far away.



On this picture you see the northern part with the islands. Here the real delta effect is visible. If the tide is high you only see water. If tide is low you see banks of sand.



Well, so you guess our ancestors started to build dams around the higher parts so that the sea could not flood the place two times each day?
No.
If only it was because the sea is salty and almost nothing would grow on a place that has been soaked in this water for ages.

No, it's a bit more complicated.

---------------------------

Between the water streams were higher places. Places where the flora flourished, where plants died and where new plants grew. For ages. All these dead plants make a good soil for agriculture. The differences in level between water, ground, flooded areas and "dry" areas are to be measured in decimeters! Dry is: you don't see water. But if you stick your spade into the ground you will see groundwater just centimeters under level.

The soft layer of dead plants could become coal if we would have waited for millions of years. We were too impatient for that. We arrived some 10.000 years after the end of the last ice age. In this geolgically short period the dying plants made a good thick layer of peat. It is not firm, it is hardly stable, but it is fertile as hell. And it is hardly dry. In fact often a bit too wet for good agriculture.

Picture this: a river with banks. In summer the river is small, the banks are dry. In winter the river carries a large amount of rain water coming all the way from Switzerland, France and Germany. The river grows wide and floods the banks. It also lays down particles of clay, which feeds the flora.
But people live next to it. They were smart enough to find their way to the small, sometimes very small, higher ares. Here they built their farms and villages. As said before: differences in heigth would be perhaps only 50 centimeters!
The country is flat and therefore every diffence in level means a lot and is accentuated by exploitation.

Then they started to drain the areas they wanted to use for agriculture. They made small ditches that carried the water to the river. Now the problem started to unfold. Peat is like a sponge: it contains a lot of water and when you take the water out, the peat shrinks. Meaning: the level of the land drops slowly. This process takes centuries. But the low land is lowered even more!

--------------------------

And there is another process.

The last ice age has ended some 15.000 years ago. Scandinavia was completely covered with large glaciers that were sometimes kilometers thick. A heavy weight, even for a continental shell that, as you probably know, floats on a fluid: the magma.
As the glaciers melted, the weight decreased and the lands of Scandinavia started to rise, being pushed up by the magma. But there is a compensation: the areas southern of Scandinavia started to sink! The Neterlands are part of this still sinking area.
So, our ancestors already had a climate problem before anyone knew there was such a thing as climate.

The land was slowly sinking into the North Sea and the inhabitantis themselves drained the soil, so that it shrunk.

------------------------

And even that was not enough!

Peat, or turf as we call it, is good fuel for the fireplace.

In the late middle ages the Netherlands, especially the now Belgian areas, were higly urbanised, probably even the most urbanised area in Europe. The citizens of these towns deserved fuel; for their fireplace, for cooking, for their industry.
There were hardly any forests left. Coal, gas and nuclear energy were not invented yet. So they used peat. Their own soil!

I have pictures.
Poor men worked in large areas where they cut the land in straight pieces.



Thgen they cut out the peat.



The blocks were put down to dry.



And were carried to the place of destination.



Of course this was disastrous.
Slowly the Dutch drowned themselves!

The land started to look like this. Can you still live there? Yes, where else could they go?



These small strips of water were often united into larger lakes. On stormy days these lakes nibbled on the soft shores and thus they grew.

So, rivers started to flood the fields. The sea nibbled on the lands in all directions. People were threatenend. Large floodings cost hundreds, thousands of deaths.
The St. Elisabethflooding in 1421 cost maybe even a 100.000 lives.



In 1421 there were already may dikes, but they were often demolished by storms.

------------------

Long before that, in the early middle ages, people started to feel annoyed about their constant wet feet and tried to invent defenses.
In Friesland farmers built "terpen", mounds: small hills to build their farm or even a complete village on it. The fields might get flooded, the houses were kept dry.



This was not always enough and people started to build dikes.
So here we are!
The first ones looked like this. They were not high and not too strong. People had to work together. With spade and wheelbarrow they constructed them. Many times the dikes were demolished or at least damaged by high river levels (after heavy rain seasons) or storms that threw the water against the dikes with furious power.



In the following picture you see the old dike along one of the oldest polders in the Netherlands, near Zwolle. To the north was the sea. In later years this northern area was also made into fields. On the southern side you see small ponds: these are the remains of small breakthroughs. Afterwards the dike was rebuilt around these ponds.



This is the way polders were invented. An area that was threatenend by water was surroundend by a dike. Mills were placed on the dikes to pump the water out of the polder and into the river or sea. Because what happens?
1. Rain falls and fills the polder.
2. Water from the high river seeps through the ground and bubbles up in the polder.
This must be pumped out. And the better the pumps are, the better the technology of building dikes, the larger the polders got.

A row of mills at Kinderdijk.



Another mill.



In the early polders the directions of ditches and the division of properties had grown in a quite natural way and these areas look random. In the newer polders, that were made since the late middle ages, the areas were completely new arranged and we ended up with very orthogonal landscapes. As if Maxis had invented them!

This is the Mastenbroeker polder, between Zwolle, Kampen and Hasselt.



-------------------------------------

So here we are: dikes are neccessary to defend us from a danger that is largely caused by ourselves.
Thank you for your patience.

Next time: more about how to work with dikes in SimCity.

[FrankU]

As a second part in this story I moved the tutorial from the thread I mentioned above into this thread

HOW TO MAKE A DYKE

Part One is dedicated to creating a dyke next to a river that threatens to flow your areas.

First you need the unspoilt bank of a river.


Then, on some distance from the water edge, you place Smoncrie's Ground Lifter and raise the ground by 15 meters.
You do it on some distance, because rivers usually are not kept like a canal, thightly between two dykes. There is always some room left between the dykes, depending on the size of the river. In winter and spring the water level is much higher (from melting snow in the mountains where the river begins and rain in all the lands down to the place where your region is). Then often all the land between the dykes is flooded.
I suggest you create the summer situation with meadows and creeks between the dykes, where cows and sheep can graze.


Now you widen the raised portion to 4 tiles.


And stretch this portion a bit.


Bulldoze the street tiles and place the Hole digger for rail. Now you level this part of the dyke to 15-8=7 meters.


Now extend this levelled portion a bit. But you must leave a small part on 15 meters heighth.


Extend the dyke as much as you want.


The lower part of the dyke is finished.
Now you can extend the upper part and the dyke is finished. You have a dyke with edges that are two tiles wide.


Of course it is possible to make a dyke that is 15 meters high or one that is 7 meters high.
The width, of course, can easily be changed.
Here I show you the three versions of the dyke.
The steep dyke gives stony edges, depending on the Terrain Mod and the Diagonal Jagged Edges Mod you use (if any).



Now you are in no way ready. The dyke needs some shrubberies, fences, roads, paths, etc. Often sheep graze on the edges!
Like this.


Dykes near the sea are a competely different story. Making them is comparable, but on the shore there are no green grassy dykes. They are reinfoced with concrete, asphalt, basalt blocks. The are harsh stony monsters like you can see on the picture that Gerard shows in his first post.

I did build one of these dykes some time ago, but I am not really content with the results.
But you may have a look.

Here is an overview.
The dam into the sea protects the entrance of the harbour from the highest waves and tidal streams along the shore.


Two details of the dyke.
It doesn't really work, now doesn't it?
Jeronijs walls are great, but too detailed for the seaside. The concrete texture is too empty. I need to take some time to get this right.

[Gerard79]

Beste FrankU,

This is a very informative thread. Not only very interesting for people with an appetite for knowing but also as a guideline for people who like to build dikes in their region and give it an all natural feel. I like the concept of organic grown cities, mixed with modern planning, this info gives makes a more realistic approch possible.

Keep me informed,

Hartelijke groeten,

Gerard

[Diggis]

Yeah, this wasn't what I expected when I read the topic name. 

That was very interesting Frank, thank you for putting that together. 

[sithlrd98]

Yeah, this was very informative Frank! A nice history presentation / tutorial.

Jayson

[FrankU]

For those who are curious wether all the above exposed knowledge does lead to any kind of SC4 related work I present you the following.

Remember this landscape?



My attempts to make this in our game are these.


A view on Zuidwijk.


The church of Zuidwijk and a sailing boat.
(Does anyone have a nicer model?)


Another shot.


Noone there...

I also have another development on dikes.
Sorry I misspelled the word in former posts....

I am working on a model of the dike. It is becoming even larger than the one in the tutorial. Don't know yet if this is realistic. I am also looking for textures to cover the dike in a realistic way. Not really anything to be shown at the moment. The dike is a bit too small in the picture.



For now I have another problem.
Trying to resemble a dike means also trying to resemble dunes. Now the texture is a bit bright, but I like it. It leaves a problem though: in city view the color of the sand diminishes untill it becomes invisible under water. This looks quite nice. In region view though it is a real bad sight. The under water sand texture shows through and the edges are sharp.
Look:



Is there anything that can be done about it?
And another thing: Our Dutch seawater is (almost) completely opaque. Does anyone know a water mod that can give me this?

Any kind of feedback is more than welcome. Thanks

[Gerard79]

Dear FrankU,

The waterfields look wonderful. An excellent and surprising use of Pegasus ponds.

I see you have been experimenting with 'duinen'. Very common in the Netherlands and ofcourse Belgium. A bit tricky when it comes to recreating them in Simcity. My own philosophy on recreating realism in Simcity is as follows: full realism is impossible, the more you're trying to imitate, the more it will seem unrealistic. You can stuff the place full with fauna and flora but in the end reality is just to complex in it's patterns to be recreated by this game. I think the best way is to give an illusion of reality. It's like drawing a flower, a face, a tree, you're never trying to imitate reality, you're trying to create an illusion of reality on your paper. Making it easier, less complex but in it's overall a very good representation.

I think the dunes are tricky that the transition to other parts (grass, game beach and such) will be sudden. I'm pretty certain that there is no way around the water problem in regionview (I've read it somewhere on this site). I think it is possible to recreate dunes but transition problems will always remain.

Using Photoshop I also tryed to do some experiments with dikes (since I cannot BAT, LOT or Model), making transitions less 'hard'. And ofcourse some general experiments. As you know I plop the dike full of low-wealth grass, which is an unfresh green but it has advantages:

a) easy transition to other game element since it's embedded in a lot of lot's and as streetgrass.
b) it makes lower and more realistic dikes possible (heightwise) since the grass 'betrays' the inclination of the dikes.

The only problem is transition to beach/water. If you're planning a harbor (small and seaport) you want to keep you're beaches more or less 'available' to seaport bits and pieces. The edge is just to sudden, to hard and corners are a mess (as you can see within the red circle). Trying to plop it full of JRJ rocks to simulate basalt is on way of making it less sudden but JRJ rocks are clearly not basalt (a common used rock for dike-construction). Making use of both mossy and bright JRJ rocks I tryed to simulate the difference of the tides.

Some ideas would be:
- changing JRJ rocks to a more basalt-like color (grey, darker)
- creating a grass-lot for corner pieces with a transparant side, trying to evade the waterbug (is this possible, I think I've seen a solution?)

More to come,

Regards,

Gerard

[Gerard79]

Part 2:


To continue the last post. I also experimented with plopping simple concrete plates (if I'm not mistaken a method used in the Netherlands). Because it lacks 'diagonal' pieces (at least, plopping it on corners looks like 'shite', giving even more transition  problems), some pieces with stairs, etcetera, I've never really used it but I think there is potential. A very simple but possible elegant solution to dikes.

Let the pictures speak for itself. Again the problem is the hard transition to game-beaches. But maybe softening it up is an idea. Letting grass grow a bit on the dike (a few random pieces) and letting sand from the beach creep up the plates (idem). I think not a big challenge for a modest BAT'er. Making a small narrow staircase or two to access the beach and on the dike itself embedded in the grass would make it more realistic.

http://www.waddenzee.nl/fileadmin/content/Vrijetijd/img/foto_s_Zomer_2007/NvanDijk01_-_fietsen_langs_de_dijk.jpg

The reason I chose to keep a space between the dike and the beach is obvious. Making transition to water is even more a problem. The water is to transparant - as FrankU mentioned. The water around here is very opaque indeed, you can't see 30 cm (1 ft.). Dumping concrete plates in the water would be an idea but I have no idea how something can be made water plopable.

I hope this topic can inspire some more (dutch) BAT'ers. FrankU is doing a great show (thanks again).

Regards,

Gerard

[thundercrack83]

This is one of the most interesting threads that I've happened upon in a while!

So much knowledge and information here--I'm so glad you've chosen to share it with us, as well as your work to implement in the game. It's stuff like this that makes this place and this game so great!

Excellent work!

Dustin

[FrankU]

Meanwhile I have been working on the dike project. Gerard made me take a new look at NOB's walls. There are quite a lot of them. Up to now I only had taken a look at his Walls version 2 and the lots were a bit of a mess. Sorry to say so, NOB.
I could not really understand the icons and it was not clear to me how they were to be used. The names were in Japanese, meaning that I could not see anything...Besides that they were placed in several menus.
So last year I deleted them.

Now I took a look at them again.

I started with the first wall set, consisting of simple one tile lots. The textures are great and very useful for dikes. So I started to rename and reorganise them.
I don't know if it is allowed to publish them.
I would never pretend that they were mine... I just edited them with the reader and LEprop. NOB made the stuff, I translate it into english and organise them in the water transit menu.

[FrankU]

I finished the editing of NOBs Walls 1.
I have some pictures of the three wall types.
I just added some combinations of diagonals and base textures.


The concrete walls


The brick walls


The stone walls

As you can see the concrete are quite good for walls two tiles high. The brick are not, the stone are, depending on your demands, quite acceptable.

And now I used them to improve my existing seawall





And I made the large dike in Bergen aan Zee.


With the beach.


And without the beach.

Which should I use for further development?


The dike has also a diagonal part. The textures are not too smooth, but I could not get it better. Is it acceptable?

[Fatsuhono]

FrankU, this history of the dikes, WOW! I can't believe how incredible Netherlands project was!

[Gerard79]

Dear FrankU,

Progress has been made, using NOBs wonderful (sea)walls. The walls do indeed have potential for recreating a dutch dike-system.

Concerning the dike with or without beach-pieces:

They both look good and have potential. The white beaches make it feel more realistic since it opens up the possibility of creating a larger beach without grassy bits popping up everywhere but it has one big disadvantage. If you plop beach everywhere you'll lose harbor, seaport possibilities since most, if not all of them, don't mix with plopable beaches. I personally would go for the dikes without the beach and try to use the natural beach. If you ofcourse want to create dunes, as you intend, it may be a little problem not to have plopable sand.

Concerning the 'seems' in between the concrete plates:

Personally I don't mind. I don't know of a way around this, but I am not a BAT'er. Let's just consider it the slits which form when the plates are poured. The absolute bliss in imagination where game-mechanics just don't want to cooperate.

The danger exists that I'm becoming too demanding but I thaught up some suggestions.

People need access to the beach. Maybe some concrete, simple stairs in the walls (stone and concrete) would add realism. And maybe some stairs imbedded in a grassy background would be nice to for those all-grass-dikes. Maybe one day we can drool over Oosterschelde-gates within Simcity (blink).

Keep up the good work,

Best regards,

Gerard79

[FrankU]

Not much development on the Dutch front. Sorry about that. I have been working on NOB's seawalls and on my region. In the meantime I have started to terraform a new region.

Up to now I always tried to develop an urban region with rural ares around it, just like my own country. But everytime my cities develop, my rural ares die. That is no stunning news, everybody knows about this problem, but I still thought I could do something. Well. I gave up.
The only way I know is by making a lot of ploppable farms and combine them with Chrisadams' RRP and some ploppable stuff from others. But that's too much work for me at the moment. Another project that has to wait (did anyone ever think SC4 is becoming a bore?).

Now I am going to throw all rural lots out of my plugins folder and start an urban area with lots of seawalls and port facilities. I have started terraforming already.

But now for the replies:

Diggis: Thanks, maybe some day I'll write a sequel.

sithlrd98: Thanks to you too!

thundercrack83: Thanks, I feel flattered.

Fatsuhono: Yes, the Dutch landscape is indeed a large project that lasts already some 1500 years.

Gerard79: A special thank to your comments. Who knows we can indeed make some dike system lots.

As far as my choosing problem concerns: I think I'll drop the whole dune issue and leave the beaches without props. Maybe I need to find some other terrain mod that gives me more useful beaches? The Meadowshire terrain mod is indeed meant for hills, while my terrains never have hills!

The seams in between the plates: In the orthogonal plates I think they are really wonderful, they give the lots some scale. I once used concrete textures without seams and the effect was really scale-less. No good sight. You can see that in my first dike pictures in the second post.
Just all the seams in the diagonal parts of the dike are a bit too much for me.

And the stairs? I think NOB has already an answer to that question. There are some lots with stairs. Maybe they are not quite what you want, but I could do something about that. Maybe you want a stair without base texture? That's no problem. I'll look into that.

As I said already, maybe I'll write a sequel to the development of the Dutch landscape. I have a lot of plans, but so little time to make them come true.

Thank you for your attention and your patience.

[MandelSoft]

Nice that you wrote about the history of the Netherlands and the dykes, but you forgot three famous works:

1. De Afsluitdijk (The line in the northern part of the Netherlands. It's not clearly visible). It is 30 km long and it closes down the central lake, het IJsselmeer.

2. Flevoland. In the center of the country you see a large island. It's in fact a very, very large polder.

3. The Delta Works. In Zeeland (the southwestern islands) three of the six streams are closed by dikes, twoare closed by a moveble water obstacle (I don't know the right translation of Stormvloedkering) and one is left open for ships.

Best,
Maarten

[FrankU]

Maarten,

Yes sure. I didn't mention them, because I wrote about how it happenend that the land is lower than sea level. Lots of people, like myself when I was young, think that the Netherlands have been lower than sea level since the beginning of time. But then you never can understand how the people were so stupid to go here in the first place.

So I thought it appropriate to tell something about the fact that the Netherlands have been sinking under sea level by our own activities! And then it is comprehensible why there are Dutchmen in the first place.

And I came up with the idea by Gerard79's questions in another thread who had some problem with making dikes in SC4.

But maybe I tell about these three works in another post, on another day.

[Gerard79]

Dear all,

It has been a while since we've posted anything of interest in this topic but remembering FrankU's effort in constructing realistic dunes I found an interesting topic posted by Ennedi some years ago. With his insight in iLive and terrain proporties he allready constructed very very realistic dunes a few years ago.

http://sc4devotion.com/forums/index.php?topic=2157.0

17. Update 15: Roadworks in the main valley
Roads, bridges and intersections along the main Shosaloza valley. An addition: How to make dunes?

http://sc4devotion.com/forums/index.php?topic=2157.msg98405#msg98405

Since I'm a Mac user and therefor not capable of using this magic tool iLive (among other things... ) I wondered if some PC users could recreate this dune experiment and share it with me in a mac readable file (compatible with perhaps a terrain mod or two) .

So... who wants to help out this coastal dune lover... eternal gratitude ofcourse and a hug for the first one to help me out (plane tickets for a intercontinental hug not included in the deal), so you better be from Europe if you want the hug

Best of wishes

[FrankU]

Gerard,

Because I am a lazy man I copied the useful part of Ennedi's post down here.
It sounds as a not too difficult edit. Maybe it could be made as a simle mod that only alters these two items. But especially the beach width is tricky: it could be different for every situation, which means you need to make a separate file for every beach, or you just can make all beaches the same width. But it looks beautiful!

Gerad, nice to see you back here!

Pityfully I am not active with beaches or dikes at the moment, but who knows...

But I have something else for you.
I still play with terrain. I saw in the last update that some of you like my wide beach. So I tried to develop this idea a bit:

What do you think about these dunes?

15.19


15.20


15.21


15.23


As you see, dunes are higher than the grassy terrain behind them, but they have sand texture (as they should have)
How to do it? Very simple. I opened the Terrain Properties exemplar in the terrain mod and changed two properties:
- I set Max Beach Altitude to 100 meters above the sea level (0x1E), to be able to make high dunes.
- In the same time I set the Max Beach Width to 30 tiles.

I hope it can be useful for somebody 

This dune experiment is especially dedicated to Travis (beskhu3epnm). Travis, thank you very much for your continous support and great help! 
I remember about you last message, it's very interesting and pleasant for me, I will answer very soon!

Thank you again, I think we will meet at weekend 

Adam

[Gerard79]

Dear FrankU,

Indeed. It is kind of tricky. Simcity is not made for low-peaty-and-dune-lands simulation. I think if you adapt the map to fit with the terrain possibilities and limits It could give some very beautiful results. The best result would ofcourse be the 'brush' but I remember that brushed on sand, grass or other substance will not be saved.

I recently found this interesting new plopable dirt with nice edges which could do the trick; Cleared Earth by CSG Design. It is ofcourse to 'dirty' - color and texture - but perhaps with a little tweaking (bigger patches) it might be possible to plop sand over the terrain which give it the priced dune look. All the beach plopables are to beachy (and bright) for dunes for my taste plus no edges which could flow over in the terrain.

http://www.simtropolis.com/stex/index.cfm?p=files&keyword=CSGdesign&view=all

It ofcourse has the disadvantage – as you mentoined – that region view look like crap with the water bug. Nothings perfect.

I also found this beach mod by xcalbier which extends the beach deeper inland. It works with height instead of wide so lowlands behind the dunes would also be 'beached' over by this mod. But some fun possibilities perhaps.

http://www.simtropolis.com/stex/details.cfm?id=11406

For historic realism in dutch/flemish coastal development take a look at the Ferraris atlas. I have a printed version on the shelf and it's beautiful and very handy for those realistic organic growth of european villages and towns in the lowlands. Viewable online at:

http://www.ngi.be/NL/NL1-4-2-3.shtm

Press any place on the map en behold 18th century cartography.

Enough information for the moment. I want to play myself this evening.

Best Regards,

[Gilikov1994]

good to see some Dutch workshops here