Interesting - it never crossed my mind to play at a resolution lower than 1920x1080...
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Small update...
I realized that India is kind of complicated and also that I know a lot less about Indian history than I thought I did. So here's Indochina instead:
Probably going to remove at least two provinces in the Cambodia and Annam regions, and maybe one in Myanmar.
I'm looking for a map of the Kingdom of Bhutan at the time of its greatest extent (just prior to the peace treaty of 1774) as well as maps of Assam during the Mughal period. I can't find anything online and none of the atlases I own or have access to (Joppen, Ruthven, Haywood, Nystrom, Barraclough/Times, Leisering/Putzger, Bregel, O'Brien) have any good maps of the region, either.
I realized that India is kind of complicated and also that I know a lot less about Indian history than I thought I did. So here's Indochina instead:
Probably going to remove at least two provinces in the Cambodia and Annam regions, and maybe one in Myanmar.
I'm looking for a map of the Kingdom of Bhutan at the time of its greatest extent (just prior to the peace treaty of 1774) as well as maps of Assam during the Mughal period. I can't find anything online and none of the atlases I own or have access to (Joppen, Ruthven, Haywood, Nystrom, Barraclough/Times, Leisering/Putzger, Bregel, O'Brien) have any good maps of the region, either.
Considering that the ruler of Cooch Behar asked the EIC for help against Bhutan, because Bhutan occupied Cooch Behar, can´t you simply assume they ruled anything north of Cooch Behar?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooch...:Cooch_Behar_from_1931_Imperial_Gazetteer.jpg
That's what I am assuming, and that's what the red province south of Sikkim is (the Eighteen Dooars and Cooch Bihar). However I prefer knowing over assuming and I definitely prefer exact borders over arbitrary lines.
I didn't get as much done in the last weeks as I wanted to, but here's an update with Japan, Korea, the Greater China region, a slightly revamped Southeast Asia (Myanmar has such a fascinating history!) and parts of India:
1:1 picture of Japan and Korea:
Of course this is all work in progress. Some changes that are on my to-do list:
One thing that may not be immediately obvious but is quite significant gameplay-wise is the shape of many provinces in and around Inner Mongolia; they're mostly long and narrow and aligned NE-SW. This allows for several historical borders between the Ming and the Northern Yuan along the Great Wall sections, but more importantly it also impacts how AI countries in that region will expand, which for China and the Manchu has historically been along a NE-SW axis. Also, with this setup it's more likely that Russia and China will first meet and clash in Manchuria rather than in Mongolia. On both MyMap and WATK there are only two Mongolian provinces between Ming territory and Siberia, while here there are four.
Here's an image of the Qing territories that illustrates this point, with the provinces coloured according to their respective distance to the provinces with the major cities of the late Ming and early Qing periods (Beijing, Shenyang, Hangzhou etc):
1:1 picture of Japan and Korea:
Of course this is all work in progress. Some changes that are on my to-do list:
- Merge Shikoku into two provinces.
- Maybe remove Tsushima.
- Maybe some minor changes to the Manchurian provinces along the Amur River.
- Redo Shandong.
- Maybe redo the borders of some of the inland provinces along the Yangtze River.
- Merge the two eastern Qinghai provinces.
- Tweak the Tarim Basin area.
- Completely redo western Tibet.
- Maybe get rid of one of the Vietnamese coastal provinces.
One thing that may not be immediately obvious but is quite significant gameplay-wise is the shape of many provinces in and around Inner Mongolia; they're mostly long and narrow and aligned NE-SW. This allows for several historical borders between the Ming and the Northern Yuan along the Great Wall sections, but more importantly it also impacts how AI countries in that region will expand, which for China and the Manchu has historically been along a NE-SW axis. Also, with this setup it's more likely that Russia and China will first meet and clash in Manchuria rather than in Mongolia. On both MyMap and WATK there are only two Mongolian provinces between Ming territory and Siberia, while here there are four.
Here's an image of the Qing territories that illustrates this point, with the provinces coloured according to their respective distance to the provinces with the major cities of the late Ming and early Qing periods (Beijing, Shenyang, Hangzhou etc):
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You're doing a great work here. Thank you in the name of all the remaining FtG players.
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Minor update, the 13 colonies:
I have done some other regions in Asia and North America as well but that's all still very patchy.
I have done some other regions in Asia and North America as well but that's all still very patchy.
The great thing about this is, that this map could be used for more mods, even an ancient era one.
Is there a flagmaker, or shieldmaker for FtG?
Is there a flagmaker, or shieldmaker for FtG?
About terrain...
When looking at any historical map with a terrain overlay it's immediately noticeable that historical (and modern) borders tend to follow natural boundaries such as rivers and mountain ranges. Rivers of course have been province borders back in EU1, but mountain ranges are still considered to be part of a province's terrain rather than terrain you need to cross to get to another province.
On my map, mountain ranges that form borders between provinces will mostly be handled with adjacencies, and will only have limited influence on the actual province terrain. Hopefully with 1.3 we'll get adjacencies that combine the defensive bonus of "river" adjacencies with the movement blocking mechanism of "winter" adjacencies. Provinces would then be assigned terrains like so:
In the game, the actual terrain map would of course look something like this (plus rivers):
This is essentially a colour-shaded relief map, and while it looks nice, it's of only limited use for determining province terrains and adjacencies. I've experimented with this a bit and the best I could come up with is to draw another texture onto the relief depending on province terrain. I did something like that with the mock-up of East Asia I posted a while ago; you can see that densely vegetated regions in Manchuria, South-East China and Indochina have a forest-like texture that becomes darker in the tropics, representing rainforest. In this case I based the textured area on potential vegetation regardless of province borders, but simply filling provinces that have a certain terrain would also be an option, similar to the Two Thrones map:
Speaking of vegetation, I'm considering having Victoria-like terrain, i.e. instead of plains, hills etc. there would be steppe, farmland, woodland, arid hills, cultivated hills, forested hills, and so on. On the terrain map these would be indicated by textures. Rivers would of course also be drawn, and mountain ranges could be inferred from the relief. Showing adjacency types on the political map would be a little more problematic since there will be no actual river provinces; I'm thinking of drawing some symbols instead (like on model railway plans) indicating watersheds, passes and bridges.
Another thing I've considered is not drawing province borders at all on the political map except where special adjacencies apply. So the only way of seeing the outline of a province would be selecting it. Not sure if it's a good idea, but it would look nice.
Anway, this is just some general info since there's not really much else to show at the moment. I'm currently working on several different regions kind of simultaneously and once one of them is completely filled with provinces I'll post some new map previews.
When looking at any historical map with a terrain overlay it's immediately noticeable that historical (and modern) borders tend to follow natural boundaries such as rivers and mountain ranges. Rivers of course have been province borders back in EU1, but mountain ranges are still considered to be part of a province's terrain rather than terrain you need to cross to get to another province.
On my map, mountain ranges that form borders between provinces will mostly be handled with adjacencies, and will only have limited influence on the actual province terrain. Hopefully with 1.3 we'll get adjacencies that combine the defensive bonus of "river" adjacencies with the movement blocking mechanism of "winter" adjacencies. Provinces would then be assigned terrains like so:
- thin grey borders = normal borders
- white borders = rivers and lesser mountain ranges (defensive bonus)
- black borders = mountain ranges (defensive bonus, no crossing in winter)
- red borders = impassable
- green provinces = plains
- yellow provinces = hills
- brown provinces = rugged hills and low mountains
- grey provinces = high mountains
In the game, the actual terrain map would of course look something like this (plus rivers):
This is essentially a colour-shaded relief map, and while it looks nice, it's of only limited use for determining province terrains and adjacencies. I've experimented with this a bit and the best I could come up with is to draw another texture onto the relief depending on province terrain. I did something like that with the mock-up of East Asia I posted a while ago; you can see that densely vegetated regions in Manchuria, South-East China and Indochina have a forest-like texture that becomes darker in the tropics, representing rainforest. In this case I based the textured area on potential vegetation regardless of province borders, but simply filling provinces that have a certain terrain would also be an option, similar to the Two Thrones map:
Speaking of vegetation, I'm considering having Victoria-like terrain, i.e. instead of plains, hills etc. there would be steppe, farmland, woodland, arid hills, cultivated hills, forested hills, and so on. On the terrain map these would be indicated by textures. Rivers would of course also be drawn, and mountain ranges could be inferred from the relief. Showing adjacency types on the political map would be a little more problematic since there will be no actual river provinces; I'm thinking of drawing some symbols instead (like on model railway plans) indicating watersheds, passes and bridges.
Another thing I've considered is not drawing province borders at all on the political map except where special adjacencies apply. So the only way of seeing the outline of a province would be selecting it. Not sure if it's a good idea, but it would look nice.
Anway, this is just some general info since there's not really much else to show at the moment. I'm currently working on several different regions kind of simultaneously and once one of them is completely filled with provinces I'll post some new map previews.
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