Too many placename labels visible at once

[aLemonFox]

Description
The current basemap has issues with the amount of placename labels visible at once. Small villages overrule larger cities labels causing it to flicker (visible, hidden, visible) when zooming. I tried to figure something out in the style json but couldn't figure out how to reduce the amount of labels. Is it possible to reduce the amount of labels in general? (related to #116)

Location
E.g. 's-Hertogenbosch flickers when zooming between zoom levels 8-9-10 (same as linked issue). Even though 's-Hertogenbosch is the capital of Noord-Brabant, smaller cities overrule its label.

Screenshots

Schermopname.2025-07-29.214234.mp4

Note in the above image: 's Hertogenbosch (the capital of Noord-Brabant) is not shown while small neighbouring villages are.

[jgillich]

Min zoom for places does not appear to be set in the style, but instead here

basemaps/tiles/src/main/java/com/protomaps/basemap/layers/Places.java

Line 86 in c52a6fb

use("minZoom", 7),

At zoom level 7, a large number of places pop in. I don't think that is working as intended, because further down it sets minZoom for cities to 8.

Also population 5k for cities is strange because it's 10k for town. Maybe 50k was intended here?

basemaps/tiles/src/main/java/com/protomaps/basemap/layers/Places.java

Line 93 in c52a6fb

use("population", 5000),

Could be wrong though, I don't really know what this code does yet 😄

[jgillich]

Towns have min_zoom=8 but they show at 7 and should show at 9...nothing makes sense here 🤔

[jgillich]

I submitted a PR to prevent towns from showing earlier than intended. But zoom 10 is still incredibly cluttered, IMHO we should bump the minZoom of villages and below by 1