How best to model wattle?

[Rhoderic]

If you want to keep close to realism you may want to keep close to realism you should probably think in terms of what climate and environment your city is in. The shanty town would take it's look from whatever the cheapest building material around would be. Wattle would work in a fairly temperate environment a lot of bamboo or hazel available, straw huts by a river delta, mud brick where there's a lot of mud and cattle, coral blocks where ... well you get it.

Open or sealed wattle is probably a question of climate. If you otherwise want to show off your wattle use it for fencing (in cattle).

Well, I'm trying, but the truth is I'm looking at it from more of a "mood" angle than a "climate" one. I want that Conan-esque mood. You know, dusty caravan trails, dirty thief-ridden city slums, and so on. To me, stone and bricks just don't seem very indicative of shanties. But maybe I'm wrong.

Primarily, I'm building the shanty town to be Zamorian. Zamora is sort of a distillate of all those stereotypical notions of "eastern mystique" that were in vogue in the western world when REH wrote his stories. It's meant to be the ancient homeland of the gypsies (who were not a travelling people yet at the time). I suppose one could view it as being kind of half Arabian, half Eastern European. But ultimately I want to use the scenery to represent any city in most of the western world of the Hyborian Age. There is evidence, however vague, that REH intended for the Hyborian Kingdoms (ie. Western Europe) to be somewhat hotter than their later counterparts in real history, and also for their cultures to be somewhat more eastern-influenced. Just to give you an idea of the kind of mood I'm trying to go for.

[Hammers]

Well, if you are going for fiction I would definitely build ancinet stone/brick/mudbrick building arround narrow winding lanes, walls propped up with timber here and there. The slums of Rome were definitely brick.

[Rhoderic]

Oh, there will be stone/brick buildings too. Stone/brick is good for representing "old" slums, but I want to be able to represent "new" slums as well. The sort with lots of temporary-looking dwellings built out of canvas and stuff like that, inhabited by visiting caravans and newly-arrived people from the countryside come to seek a new life (or simply refuge) in the cities. I guess this clip from the Conan movie shows what kind of feel I'm after:



Figures that there's no wattle visible in that segment

Anyway, my questions still stand. I'm not ready to give up on the idea of wattle-and-daub shanties just yet.

PS. Sorry about the Youtube clip being embedded in the message, the forum script seems to do that automatically.

EDIT: Damn! How do I get it to NOT embed the Youtube clip? This particular clip seems to have "Embedding disabled by request". I wish the forum wouldn't automatically embed the clips.