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Behold the perfect hive city map for 40k!



Seriously though, it would be fittingly grimdark for a hive city to cram in layer upon layer of roadworks in the center of their cities. Make it as inefficient as possible. I think it would also make for an interesting map for vehicle heavy games. Put in a few roadways and add some industrial or habitat buildings in-between. The troops could make their way through the denser areas while the tanks fight for clear laneways. Maybe add a scaffold running over the highways.

The_Real_Chris wrote:
In the fiction some authors (Abbnett et al) don't seem to like the necromunda hive. Indeed they constrain writing a fair bit. As you say the description of hives in stuff like helsreach is more like a MC1 city. External walls, tall buildings, roads etc. That sort of environment allows you a lot more writing freedom.

I was just looking at the maps from the novel Helsreach, and I just noticed there is a cutaway schematic that shows the map is actually just a slice of the lower hive. Interesting.



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 Mr Nobody wrote:
Behold the perfect hive city map for 40k!



Seriously though, it would be fittingly grimdark for a hive city to cram in layer upon layer of roadworks in the center of their cities. Make it as inefficient as possible. I think it would also make for an interesting map for vehicle heavy games. Put in a few roadways and add some industrial or habitat buildings in-between. The troops could make their way through the denser areas while the tanks fight for clear laneways. Maybe add a scaffold running over the highways.

That is an abomination... I've seen spaghetti that is more organised.

Which is what makes it so perfect for the Imperium.

One thing that is worth considering.. given that a lot of hives are described as having formed gradually, as layers of new construction was built over existing construction, i'd argue that a good way to depict a hive city might be to make a normal urban board.. then stick some big pillars in there supporting another urban board directly above, with ramps and stairs to link them. possibly just a partial board above.



these screenshots from macross, showing the "city-inside-the-ship" are a good example of what i'm thinking of, albeit in a less grimdark aesthetic.



and that seems to be sorta what the makers of Darktide seems to have gone for, as a lot of their 'urban center' maps seems to be just layers of platforms and bridges with smaller buildings on top of them, and a few larger buildings poking up through.
Edit: screenshot of what i mean, from a recent play through. Had an even better one, but an ogryn photobombed it in the last second, blocking sight if everything.

Love the image references! I agree about the roads, my ideal hive layout would have curved road-ramps connecting all the levels and acting as arteries. It's getting balance between coverage and accessibility for the underneath layers that is the challenge. And "layered city" is exactly the aesthetic I'd be going for.

Also, I'm a fanatic about modularity, even if it means aesthetic compromises. It needs to be able to pack away into a tub for storage and it needs to be able to be laid out in a huge variety of patterns to allow for interesting gaming. Playing something like Necromunda on a fixed board quickly becomes stale, and I think modularity beats aesthetics for gaming terrain.

Another aspect I think about is redundancy. The Imperial Hives are likely made from STC tech. In my head, there is probably an STC for a Hab unit, that is mass produced. And it's probably adapted for all kinds of worlds. I imagine it as a hermetically sealed block with air filters and so on, probably made of similar materials to a starship so that it is equally comfortable on an airless moon with no atmospheric pressure or on the bottom of an ocean bed on a water world. This means that the hab domes would be full of smaller hab units which are themselves sealed, creating a nested environment of failsafes and seals.

That seems to fit the idea of mankind spreading to all kinds of available worlds with a common tech base - I imagine a big automated factory that just churns out modular habs made of ceramite and plasteel and they just get plonked down. Surely that would be the start of any human colony, the equivalent to the cellular tissue of the Hive.

The multiple redundancy aspect of this would keep a hive habitable even after extensive damage, as people could mostly stick to their habs or take shelter in intact habs. I imagine that in the underhive, intact fully functional habs are really valuable resources, and most people don't get to live in one.

Edit to add: Originally I had planned for soviet style concrete blocks for my hive city, based on stuff like that diagram Haighus posted and just the general aesthetic. But I gradually moved away from it for a variety of reasons - one being practical. I found electrical gang boxes I could get cheaply and adapt into hermetically sealed habs, and decided to go that road instead. But I think the soviet tower block style of hive is also a really cool aesthetic and certainly allows for a more traditional battlefield and feel, and is probably more multi-functional in terms of using the ruins for different settings. I decided when I make my modular ruins they're gonna be fantasy though, and my sci fi stuff is going to really lean into the sci fi aspect.

In terms of aesthetic? Keep in mind not only do many Hives and Hive Worlds pre-date the Imperium? But even within the Imperial Era, we needn’t feel restrained to a specific aesthetic.

As a Hive grows, its most desirable areas necessarily shift location. The poshest and most exclusive areas tend to be in the then pinnacle. But as layers are added on top? Earlier luxury areas become buried within the Hive.

This allows us a pretty decent level of freedom to play around with aesthetics. And it’s entirely possible something Art Nouveau, with elegant curves immediately abuts something horribly Brutalist or Industrial, representing once fancy areas eventually subsumed into now lower levels.

An interesting example of this in my memory is Canary Wharf, and Tower Hamlets. In pop culture parlance think Old Detroit and Delta City.

See, Tower Hamelts is one of the poorest areas in the UK. Filled with high rise, high density housing in a Brutalist style. All manky concrete, small windows and hard edges. Canary Wharf is all glass and steel, with wide, straight boulevards.

Now, Tower Hamlets is undergoing regeneration, and the replacement flats aren’t as ugly as what they’ve replaced. But the transition is stark - not helped by private security leading into Canary Wharf adding to a real “us and them” feel.

The same can be true of a Hive, regardless of which level we’re looking at.

Yeah I agree with that - I think you can have really wildly different aesthetics for hives in the Imperium and within each hive.

My preferred 40K is a bit toned down in terms of the extreme technogothic style that is on all the official terrain. I get why they do it - it's a very visually distinctive and interesting style that is really hard to replicate with traditional scratch building, but in my head that stuff would be more limited to shrines and shrine worlds rather than your bog standard STC constructed furnaces and habs.

Surprised no one's brought up the irl hive city, Kolwoon.

I hadn't heard of it until you posted that, off to read about it now. Looks fascinating!

Also UK cities, particularly those that saw extensive damage during the blitz can serve as interesting examples.

Keeping with London? A lot of the medieval and later street layouts still remain, and the place is riddle with tunnels - both sewers and other amenities, and smuggler’s tunnels. This means above and below you’ve a real hodgepodge of not just architectural styles, but street layout.

If you visit Edinburgh? It’s only in the last couple of hundred years the New Town has existed (building began in 1797). The Old Town, best represented by the Royal Mile linking the Castle to Holyrood Palace remains. And it’s literally a spine, with closes and roads coming off the main thoroughfare, built on the tail of the volcano the Castle sits upon the crag of (thanks, Primary School History Lessons!)

The closes are claustrophobically narrow. So much so neighbours could easily reach out a window and shake one another’s hand. In fact, you’ve a great use of verticality there too, as the buildings have multiple “ground” floors with direct street access. Add in oddities like Mary King’s Close, and you start to see an early Hive type structure, with buildings and streets built atop one another.

Da Boss wrote:Yeah I agree with that - I think you can have really wildly different aesthetics for hives in the Imperium and within each hive.

My preferred 40K is a bit toned down in terms of the extreme technogothic style that is on all the official terrain. I get why they do it - it's a very visually distinctive and interesting style that is really hard to replicate with traditional scratch building, but in my head that stuff would be more limited to shrines and shrine worlds rather than your bog standard STC constructed furnaces and habs.

I agree for the most part- I think that most of an Imperial city is going to look quite utilitarian in one form or another, made from prefabs of some kind as you mention above. Both "ferrocrete" blocks and metal habs are likely to exist, and I think the distributions probably vary by world and zone within that world. It probably also depends on whether a design is an STC prefab in its own right that is shipped from a large factory, or is instead constructed on-site by some kind of STC-based construction machinery using locally-available materials. Both seem plausible.

Regarding GW terrain- I think it is noticeable that GW have never made urban hab terrain (to my knowledge). They have made frontier outpost habs, like the Ash Wastes habs or the Ryza-pattern fronteris stuff, but these are not dense urban terrain like the old Cities of Death terrain or the more modern Sector: <insert name here>. We never got a Sector: habitorum or something.

So all that terrain either represents industrial zones, which are going to look very technical, or symbols of Imperial power. The highly-gothic structures are either religious/semi-religious facilities for the Ecclesiarchy or other high-ranking officials or are administratum buildings. These are essentially colonial structures reminding the locals of their duties to the wider Imperium so it absolutely makes sense that they are meant to be grand symbols of Imperial power in their gothic glory. On many worlds (particularly the less developed ones), the church, administratum presence, and Arbites contigent are the only real links to the outside Imperium and will typically live in a small (probably gothic-styled) enclave alongside the planetary governor.

Now it is weird that the bulk of urban architecture (where people live and the associated facilities) has never been represented by GW, but I think you are right in that it is less marketable.

Inquisitor Gideon wrote:Surprised no one's brought up the irl hive city, Kolwoon.

Kowloon walled city is a great reference, probably the highest population density of any city in human history. I used its estimated (volumetric) population density to estimate an upper limit of population for Hive Primus's main hive area. Obviously an overestimate, because the hive isn't purely hab zones and has masses of industry and will have significant space taken up for structural reasons. But if you scale KWC up to a cone or fustrum of 10 miles diametre by 5 miles height (I calculated up to a top diametre of 3 miles) you could cram in a population on the region of 60-90 billion. I wouldn't expect even half of that but the numbers are huge. I'd expect maybe up to another billion, but probably somewhere in the millions for the hive spire (all those insanely-rich nobles are going to have legions of servants) and who knows how many in the underhive.

I also did a bit of a deep dive on Kowloon and combining it with what Mad Dok mentioned about reconstruction on ancient roots there is definitely space for a brick and mortar style Hive board with loads of corrugated iron and signs everywhere, it seems like a lot of popular stuff was inspired by Kowloon. The history is really interesting, how people chose to live there due to the legal grey area it represented. I knew it would be something like that immediately on seeing the aerial photo, but it was fascinating to read about.

On population, it is just staggeringly massive. A big question is where do you get food for all of those people, especially if the biosphere is ruined. Enormous bioreactors full of yeasts and algae being processed into food is the only likely solution (I believe Imperial space ships would have a section full of this sort of thing too, it's the only thing that makes sense at their scale - it does atmosphere and waste recycling AND some food production for your massive crew). So I've got that on my to do list - build some bioreactor tanks for the "farm" districts.

And another point is...if you've got billions of people in a single hive, how does ANYONE invade and conquer it? Armies of billions would be possible, and it's hard to see how anyone would ever take one of these things on the ground. How big would the armies of the Third War for Armageddon have to be to assault multiple Hives simultaneously?!

The greatest challenge with hive city's would be making the table playable. Once you get four levels of walk ways cris crossing in a game, its practically impossible to reach the lower levels. I've modelled terrain with walkways between upper buildings and these often prove a hindrance to moving around in the actual game.

I think thematically battles in hives and tunnels fights etc are cool, but due to the nature of table top gaming, it is well handled by zone mortalis and then mechanicus terrain.

As a one off, i would love to battle over a 5 level terrain set, but I think it would prove really hard to do so regularly with speed.

That said, i do like the idea of a wall mounted table. Here me out! You mount your standard size table on the wall, and then place levels with 4" spacing all the way up, each roughly 5" deep. Then you decorate, build and create a cutaway of the hive, but play your game as if you are going up and down, rather than across the table. That sounds like a great table.

Yeah I think that sort of layout could work for sure. 5" deep does seem a little shallow, but I think it could be really effective at showing a Necromunda style Hive.

I kinda agree that 4 or 5 levels is too much. I think 3 is about as far as you can push it, and 4" - 4.5" between levels allows for you to fit your arm in and move stuff. I also think it has to get less dense as you go up, or else it'll be too crowded underneath, because every walkway and platform on the highest level has to have it's base on the lower levels.

In terms of a practical, usable gaming board? I feel like as you go up, you need to compromise on the depth and width of the board. And even use it for specific games, as having gantries and walkways and ladders is great, but not if I’ve brought Knights, an Armoured Company or other heavily mechanised force.

Likewise you might need to house rule infiltration and other advanced deployment.

Though only really for three floors and above I’d reckon.

I think if you know there are gonna be Knight Titans and Baneblades and other massive models on the board you really have to design with that in mind, maybe making the first "level" double height for example so that you can comfortably have the titans and superheavies fighting at ground level while infantry battle above them. That could be pretty dramatic and interesting.

Though you'd be getting pretty ludicrously high for the third level at that point - 8-9" for the first level and then an additional 4-4.5 puts you over a foot off the table for your third level. 8 inches might even be a bit of a squeeze for the bigger Knights.

Well, you can also have limited routes for the big vehicles- a couple of wider streets or highways that cut through multiple levels. Sure, their options would be limited and the terrain can be used to counter them... but then you chose to send super heavy units into dense terrain

Ultimately different terrain favours different units and dense, multilevel urban terrain does not favour super heavy units.


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 Da Boss wrote:


On population, it is just staggeringly massive. A big question is where do you get food for all of those people, especially if the biosphere is ruined. Enormous bioreactors full of yeasts and algae being processed into food is the only likely solution (I believe Imperial space ships would have a section full of this sort of thing too, it's the only thing that makes sense at their scale - it does atmosphere and waste recycling AND some food production for your massive crew). So I've got that on my to do list - build some bioreactor tanks for the "farm" districts.

See my sig for a thread that partly covers this exact topic

And another point is...if you've got billions of people in a single hive, how does ANYONE invade and conquer it? Armies of billions would be possible, and it's hard to see how anyone would ever take one of these things on the ground. How big would the armies of the Third War for Armageddon have to be to assault multiple Hives simultaneously?!

I've pondered this, and I think the answer is that no one can or does mobilise most people. I see the control of territory in 40k as being very akin to feudal or colonial methods. In these situations, the general populace is generally seen as a resource with a small number of troops in proportion to the general populace. Battles are fought for control of the political institutions at the top, but by and large the population is not mobilised or does not form effective troops if they are because you want to keep them in their place as menial labour. Oppressed menial labour with good combat training and equipment is a threat to the oppressor.

The Imperium often doesn't even know how many people actually live in a hive, they are not going to be able to mobilise a billion people to face an invasion. Recently, the UK military said it couldn't handle reintroduction of national service in its current state, and would be able to process max about 30000 individuals. It tales a lot of logistics to equip and give even basic training to military units, and all those trainers are soldiers taken off other duties. A billion militia requires an awful lot of training staff- even one drill sergeant per thousand would be a million drill sergeants. Also, all those souls are probably doing more for the war effort by keeping the soldiers at the front supplied with fresh ammo and equipment than being a rabble of poorly equipped, basically untrained warm bodies that are going to be as dangerous to those forcing them into combat as they are to the enemy.

They also don't want to have the lower classes to be veterans with guns, as then they might not be able to put down the next round of food riots. A few gangs are fine, especially whilst they are divided and fighting amongst themselves. Plus, if a hive does turn traitor and is able to mobilise billions, retaking the hive becomes nigh impossible.

In the siege of Vervunhive, it is astonishing that the entire population of Ferrozoica is mobilised, and that was only a few million. I think most hives just barely touch the toiling masses in the foundries during a war. This is Minea, a typical hive world. It has a standing garrison of just 2 million soldiers on a population of 154 billion! They can't mobilise more than a tiny fraction of that 154 billion without severely compromising the effectiveness of their garrison.

True, certainly an inaccurate archetype of a Hive is that it must be tight and claustrophobic. But, they’re also functioning cities/arcologies. So all the things we depend on in day to day life must be accommodated for.

Not just power and water, but transportation of persons and materials, and on a scale sufficient to service such a mind bogglingly dense population.

So there would be things at least roughly analogous to internal motorways/freeways/railways/monorails etc for distribution of goods and persons.

Which puts me in mind of the fight scene in early Clone Wars, on the internal freight way of a Confederacy Super Capital Ship. Which now I think of it could make for a thrilling game of Necromunda, with gangers having to jump between moving trains, risking life and limb, but mostly life, should they botch it.

And as Necromunda shows? It’s even possible for waterways. Well. Not so much water as industrial chemical rivers. But enough to involve pole driven skiffs, speedboats, subs, all sorts depending on how big you need the chemical sludge sea to be for your purposes.

God I love Hive Cities. As a concept. I’d hate to live in one.

Oh yeah, the image of Helsreach upthread shows the road network (including the pivotal Hel's Highway), Vervunhive has a road network and several rail terminals, and the image upthread of Dheneb Capitalis from the Cities of Death book shows a cool rail system. GW has also added railway terrain to their boards before.

Hives definitely have transportation networks, although they are probably horribly inefficient in some dumb way like having to stop to pray to the Emperor for 5 minutes every time the hour changes.


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Oh, a lot of foodstuffs are probably distributed by pipeline though. You can pump nutrient gruel to local distribution hubs easily enough.

I agree you wouldn't be able to mobilise the entire hive, and Chaos or Genestealer Cults, probably also Orks would leave the population alive. Eldar and Dark Eldar are probably never trying to take a Hive conventionally.

But Tyranids certainly would be, and it'd be a nasty as hell fight to the death against them. I suppose most of the Hive dwellers would die from sporeborne diseases and other issues...but then again a Hive that's a nested layer of sealed domes and habs would be pretty resistant against the usual Tyranid MO. I'd imagine it'd come down to hab by hab fighting and in that case the billions of people in the hive would be fighting back for sure.

Just seems to me like a Hive World is a costly fight for a Hive Fleet. Depends a bit on the hive - if it's not properly sealed then the 'nids will have a much easier time.

Oldschool Necrons would also have wanted to exterminate the entire populace, but I guess they're pretty patient about it!

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
In terms of a practical, usable gaming board? I feel like as you go up, you need to compromise on the depth and width of the board. And even use it for specific games, as having gantries and walkways and ladders is great, but not if I’ve brought Knights, an Armoured Company or other heavily mechanised force.

Just from games with the old cardboard necromunda walkways I can say that multi-level boards quickly become difficult to play on in terms of reaching and moving the models.

For any given part of a board I think the considerations have to be - can you place a model, can you reach it without pulling(or knocking) the board apart, and can you get a line of sight to it from at least two different directions.

Narrow walkways also skew how certain units can perform.

For instance? On the Sector Mechanicus walkways you can go about two abreast. Which naturally limits the number of combatants in a punch up, almost to the point of Herohammer should a combat monster character get stuck into an enemy squad, as the enemy are getting far fewer attacks in return, preventing any chance of a pile-on-kicking.

Likewise, something akin to Custodes vs Orks is going to see a heavy advantage for the Custodes, provided they keep up above the main battlefield, as Orky numbers just cannot be brought to bear. Though objective placement can mitigate that to a greater or lesser degree.

Should be interesting for you the blokes done a load of excellent Necromunda stuff in this style.
https://www.dakkadakka.com/gallery/images-8745-65203_Norwich%20Castle.html
This was a building refurbishment project I did the archaeology for in Norwich Castle. i'd llove to make a 40k table in this style massive gothic outer walls with loads of criss-crossing gantries for inner walls.

 Haighus wrote:

They also don't want to have the lower classes to be veterans with guns, as then they might not be able to put down the next round of food riots. A few gangs are fine, especially whilst they are divided and fighting amongst themselves. Plus, if a hive does turn traitor and is able to mobilise billions, retaking the hive becomes nigh impossible.

The in universe example is the necromunda (was it them or a different hive world?) gang that was press ganged wholesale into the guard (was it the spiders?). Presumably they were a house like the Orlocks, decided to make a play for the spaceport and greater legitimacy. 10's of thousands strong it ultimately failed but after their officers were executed and replaced with proper nobles they were transferred to the guard on mass and sent off world.


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Modelling usable multi level terrain is fiendishly hard, even more so when you have game systems written for mostly 2D environments. It can look great but not be usable, very hard to be both. Very few wargames do proper urban fighting well as it's a swingy nightmare armies hate.

So, what do people think are the criteria for usable multi-level terrain?

I'll give a run down!
1. Level Height - try to keep it fairly consistent for ease of linkage. By that I mean everything on one level should be at the same height. I think 4-5" is a decent height for a level, allowing hands to get in between levels fairly easily. The old Cityfight books suggested 3" and I think that is actually a bit too small.
2. Walkway width - I think walkways should be wide enough to allow for 3 normal infantry to walk abreast. For me that's 3" across, and why I do not use 32mm bases at all in my collection. 2 40mm can walk abreast on this kind of walkway too, which allows for a better gameplay dynamic. If you want, you could include 2 abreast walkways, but they should be less common and not the main thoroughfares. And wider walkways up to 4" or more could form highways and other transport links suitable for vehicles, but I wouldn't make those the most common type.
3. Walkway sides - I would tend to not putting too much on the side of my walkways, just to maximise access. I'd just rule that models on a higher level benefit from cover and move on.
4. Platforms - Your platforms should be at least 4" square, and I think 6" squares are also a good idea. If using platforms it's good to have a mix where the platform is on a solid pillar that blocks LOS and movement and a platform where the platform is on thin "legs" that allow models to move underneath.
5. Level access - There should be copious ladders and stairs and then I'd just handwave models climbing between levels. I wouldn't sweat it too much. Otherwise the upper levels won't get used much.
6. Board Layout - I think you want access to the upper levels in both deployment zones. So that someone could deploy on the highest level at the start of the game and mostly stay up there, or in the middle, or on the bottom. That should have the result of making 3 different battles play out at different elevations.

What do you guys think? Would you add anything to this?

Well, tomorrow I’ll hopefully get my Hab Units assembled, and see if I can offer photos of random possible Underhive setups, including Zone Mortalis.

 Da Boss wrote:
1. Level Height - try to keep it fairly consistent for ease of linkage. By that I mean everything on one level should be at the same height. I think 4-5" is a decent height for a level, allowing hands to get in between levels fairly easily. The old Cityfight books suggested 3" and I think that is actually a bit too small.

5" is the height of a single 'battlezone' scale level including the walkway itself. It is also the height of two zone mortalis blocks stacked together - so ideal for anyone with more recent GW scenery.

The old cityfight wallsets were 3" high, as were bastion wall sections, while the larger ruined chapel was 9" from base to walkway.

I'd say that 5" is ok for walkways and ruins, you'd probably want to at least double up if someone has to reach in any distance underneath, though it does depend on whether you are using it for 40k or necromunda scale games.

I think 3" works fine for ruined buildings in the set-ups in Cities of Death. It was chosen in part to maintain 2" coherency between models from the same unit on different floors (most models being about 1" tall) and 3" looked relatively natural for a floor (actually really big compared to most modern structures). But it does get claustrophobic and difficult to play on once your structures get more complex and interconnected. It wasn't designed for that though, Cities of Death was designed for multiple discrete buildings.

5" is more accessible but looks weirdly tall outside of a palace or cathedral. Also spaces units out a lot if spread across floors.

I think both can have their place.

I would mix in some 3" tall habs and hab towers that go up in steps of 3". So you might have a 5" high platform 6" square with three 3" walkways going off it, and a 6" tall stack of two hab blocks on the platform.

But I consider the structures on the walkways and platforms to be separate to the walkways and platforms themselves. They make the floor that the rest sit on. So I don't think it looks too bad for them to be quite high.

Yeah, I think that combination works well.

 Sureshot05 wrote:
The greatest challenge with hive city's would be making the table playable. Once you get four levels of walk ways cris crossing in a game, its practically impossible to reach the lower levels. I've modelled terrain with walkways between upper buildings and these often prove a hindrance to moving around in the actual game.

I think thematically battles in hives and tunnels fights etc are cool, but due to the nature of table top gaming, it is well handled by zone mortalis and then mechanicus terrain.

As a one off, i would love to battle over a 5 level terrain set, but I think it would prove really hard to do so regularly with speed.

That said, i do like the idea of a wall mounted table. Here me out! You mount your standard size table on the wall, and then place levels with 4" spacing all the way up, each roughly 5" deep. Then you decorate, build and create a cutaway of the hive, but play your game as if you are going up and down, rather than across the table. That sounds like a great table.

i agree. using Kowloon Walled City as an example of the urban areas of a hive undercity, you basically get something not playable except as a first person videogame..