The NextGen OTL Worlda Series

Hadaril's NextGen OTL Worlda Maps

This project is a complete modernization of the multiple OTL Worlda's floating around the forums and the wiki. Previously, our collection of worlda's was a haphazard mess of maps, most of which were completely antiquated (Rectangular base maps, anyone?). Almost every OTL map was built on a different edition of the blank Worlda, utilizing a disjointed mess of color schemes ranging from UCS to TACOS. Borders were all over the place, in many cases wildly inaccurate, and in every case highly inconsistent with the rest of the Worlda's. For example, the Czech border, which has remained (for the most part) unchanged since the 1100's, was drawn differently on almost every worlda.

The NextGen Worlda Series cleans up this mess. In this series:
  • All maps are drawn on the most recent edition of the blank worlda
  • Utilize a standard and consistent color scheme (Dubbed the "NextGen Color Scheme", NCS for short)
  • Borders remain consistent and accurate over time.
Of course, not all Worlda maps could be salvaged. The first generation of worldas was built on the rectangular worlda, which is so wildly far off from the modern version that updating them would require tremendous work. Some years were simply omitted due to redundency (ex: having a 1100 AD and a 1115 AD map).


Blank Worlda's and Resources
Blank Worlda
Rivers Map
NCS Color Scheme
.PSD blank map with editable labels

Before Christ
3100 BC
2500 BC
1350 BC
323 BC
250 BC
100 BC
44BC

Classical Era
1 AD
117 AD
150 AD
200 AD
250 AD
300 AD
400 AD
476 AD

Medieval Era
500 AD
565 AD
600 AD
650 AD
710 AD
750 AD
814 AD
843 AD
900 AD
962 AD
1000 AD
1066 AD
1115 AD
1150 AD
1200 AD
1250 AD
1300 AD
1350 AD

Early Modern Era
1400 AD
1444 AD
1500 AD
1550 AD
1600 AD
1648 AD
1688 AD
1700 AD
1715 AD
1748 AD

Revolutionary & Modern Era
1776 AD
1803 AD
1806 AD
1812 AD
1815 AD
1848 AD
1861 AD
1885 AD
1900 AD
1910 AD

First World War
1914 AD
1915 AD
1916 AD
1917 AD
1918 AD

Interbellum
1919 AD
1920 AD
1932 AD
1936 AD
1939 AD

Second World War
1940 AD
1941 AD
1942 AD
1943 AD
1944 AD
1945 AD

Cold War Era
1946 AD
1960 AD
1962 AD
1970 AD
1980 AD

Millennium Dawn
1992 AD
2000 AD
2017 AD
2020 AD
Present Day

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Many thanks to:..
- Salem for their help on the 1648 map
- Viralworld for his 1748 & 1848 maps
- Bob Hope for his 1803 & 1806 maps, as well as his 1812 corrections.
- All the wonderful feedback from everyone on this thread!
- The Maps and Flags discord for feedback, advice, and corrections!
- ST15RM for his work on the pre-0 AD maps.
- Thanosaekk for his WW1 Maps.
 
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Update Log
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February 2, 2018:
- Added 814 Map
- Minor fixes: 843, 710

February 15, 2018:
- Added 1350 BC
- Added 650 BC
- (475, 565, 1000, 1115, 1350) Fixed Byzantium Color
- (ALL MAPS) Fixed / Standardized sahara borders
- (ALL MAPS) Minor alterations to borders in cacuasus
- (1000) Minor fix to Baluchistani & Uzbek borders
- (843) Minor fixes to some central asian borders.

February 22, 2018:
- Added 500 BC
- Added 250 BC
- (1776 Onwards): Fixed error with Vermont/New Hampshire/Maine Border

February 26, 2018:
- (2000, 2017): Colored Crimea
- (2000, 2017): Fixed Belize color
- (World War 2): Fixed Bolivian border disputes.

April 1st, 2018:
- Uploaded the 3.0 Blank Map.

May 18th, 2018:
- RELEASE OF THE 3.0 SERIES
- Overhaul of every map to fit the correct blank map
- Massive detail added outside and inside of Europe!
- Added 1250 AD
- Added 1600 AD

May 23rd, 2018:
- Added 117 AD
- Added 250 AD
- Added 400 AD

May 23rd, 2018:
- (400 AD) Fixed an issue where Japan was not colored.

June 4th, 2018 (Hadaril's Birthday Update!):
- (117) Removed Holland from the Roman Empire
- (117, 250) Fixed Roman provincial borders in the M.East & Alps
- (1650) Removed Netherlands from HRE
- (1815) Added Belgium to the Netherlands
- (1861, 1914) Fixed Finish/Russian border in Petsamo
- (1914 to 1946) Fixed de-jure and de-facto statuses of Newfoundland

July 29th, 2018:
- RELEASE OF THE 3.5 SERIES
- ALL MAPS UPDATED TO NCS 3.5
- Semi-major revisions to many pre-1800 maps.
- Added detail to many medieval states.
- Added a link to a .psd file with editable labels.

August, 18th, 2018:
- Added 150 AD
- Added 200 AD
- Minor fixes to a few borders in the 117 AD map.
- Added threadmarks for additional resources in this thread.

August 19th, 2018:
- Added 250 AD
- Added 300 AD
- Added 350 AD
- Added 476 AD
- Added 500 AD
- Added 650 AD

August 27th, 2018:
- Added 750
- Added 900
- Added 962
- Minor revisions 700, 814, 842

September 4th, 2018:
- Updated NCS to 4.0 (No major color changes - only additions)

September 29th, 2018:
- (1, 476, 565, 650, 710, 750, 814) Revised maps with many of the earlier borders from LSCatilina's maps.
- (1960, 1980, 2000, 2017): Fixed Ryukyu Ownership, Fixed island off Taiwan's coast, changed Korea's coloring.

October 8th, 2018:
- (1, 476, 565, 650, 710) Additional revisions made based on feedback from LSCatilina.
- (1914, 1920) Added new 1914 and 1920 maps made by Admiral A. Kolchak.
- (750) Marked as deprecated.

November 3rd, 2018:
- Added 100 AD
- (1, 200) Revised Central Asia
- (117, 150, 250, 300, 350, 400, 500) Marked as deprecated.

November 22nd, 2018 (Happy thanksgiving!):
- Added revised 500, 710, 814, and 843 maps.
- (476) Revised Indian, East Asian, African borders

November 25nd, 2018:
- Added revised 900 & 1648 maps.
- Minor fixes to 843.

January 6th, 2019:
- Added revised 962, 1000, and 1115 Maps

January 20th, 2019:
- Added updated 1200 AD map
- Revised maps from 1914-1945 with corrections to the McMohen Line
- Updated NCS with revised and added colors for Central and South Asia
- Updated revised maps with the new colors.

February 21st, 2019:
- Added updated 117, 150, 250, 300, 400, 1250, 1300, 1350, 1400, and 1444 AD maps.
- Revised 100, 200, 476 and 500 AD

March 5th, 2019:
- Added updated 1500, 1550 maps
- Major revisions to Southeast Asia and India for maps 1250 through 1444.
- NCS: Moved Chagatai to "minor mongolia" instead of "uzbek". Considering adding more colors for Central Asia later on, particularly a secondary and tertiary Uzbek color.

March 8th, 2019:
- Added ST15RM's 3100 BC Map.
- Split revision log into a separate post.

March 9th, 2019:
- Added new Indian, Central Asia, and African colors; updated previous 4.0 maps to new colors.
- Added updated 1600 map.
 
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Two comments.

1 - Although my comments on the accuracy of the QBAM base map are well-known at this poit, the worlda has projection inaccuracies too. Given this is intended to be a total revamp, are there plans to ensure that the basemap used will actually be an actually map projection and not a "drawing of a projection"?

2 - I totally get why a reduced colour scheme is in play here. However, some of the changes are odd. This would literally be the first colour scheme ever to not use the light mauve colour for Belgium. And also I think, the first not to use that dark green for Hungary (which tbh, I'm not so attached to).
 
Could we not have another colour scheme? Please?

I mean for heaven's sakes we've now got yet another colour for Russia.

Oh and Ashtagon, yes I get it, you've said time after time that you want to redo everything on a mathematical projection. However, despite offering to assist if you were happy to get the groundwork in, I've yet to see you ever actually do any of the work required to convert a terrain projection into a useful map. So please, unless you're actually going to help with creating the basemaps (even just a 2018 map would be a world of help) just drop it.
 
Could we not have another colour scheme? Please?

I mean for heaven's sakes we've now got yet another colour for Russia.

Oh and Ashtagon, yes I get it, you've said time after time that you want to redo everything on a mathematical projection. However, despite offering to assist if you were happy to get the groundwork in, I've yet to see you ever actually do any of the work required to convert a terrain projection into a useful map. So please, unless you're actually going to help with creating the basemaps (even just a 2018 map would be a world of help) just drop it.

Hi Alex Richards!!

There is absolutely nothing more reliable on this site (not even server uptime) than knowing that any time you reply to one of my posts, it will always be highly critical of me. Your criticism would be far more useful if it wasn't so consistent; as it is, it has become mere background noise -- a kind of persistent buzzing that I have come to expect whenever I make a post. If there were a way to prevent you from seeing my posts on this site, I truly would. It would clearly save you a lot of heartache each time you pour your soul into criticising me.

Personally, I'd love to work on the basemaps you, Alex, require of me. However, I have some rather more pressing requirements on my time right now (namely, keeping body and soul together; it's literally a full-time job), which prevent me from learning the mapping skills needed to do the job justice. I do, however, acknowledge that there are people on this site that already do have such skills. I had thought that in the spirit of group cooperation, it would make more sense in a project that would nominally require multiple people (because let's face it, the worlda through time project was never a one-person task) for individuals in the project to focus on the tasks that they are best at.



As for the basemap used here...

Iori's basemap is almost a Kavraisky-7 with the poles cropped, except it's vertically flattened about (by around 2%). This appears to be the same basemap picked by hadaril (the maker of this project). I've uploaded a comparison of Kavraiskiy-7 and this basemap for comparison, normalised so the maps coincide around the west coast of Africa.

Black coast, borders: Kavraiskiy-7 (coasts may have some nominal inaccuracies, as they are taken from a simplified vector-based coast/border model used in g.projector). Note that the K7 basemap extends considerably farther than the hadaril/Iori basemap at both the top and bottom; the hadaril/Iori basemap is cropped at approximately 85° north and south.

Dark blue coast, light blue seas, green land: Iori/hadari basemap.

(I could do similar overlays for the hadaril/Iori basemap with other map projections, but Robinson is even farther from the hadaril/Iori basemap, and other well-known map projections in this general oval shape seem to lack advocates entirely on this site).


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Edit: Good news for both of us: I think I have found the ignore function on this site.
 
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Personally, I'd love to work on the basemaps you, Alex, require of me. However, I have some rather more pressing requirements on my time right now (namely, keeping body and soul together; it's literally a full-time job), which prevent me from learning the mapping skills needed to do the job justice. I do, however, acknowledge that there are people on this site that already do have such skills. I had thought that in the spirit of group cooperation, it would make more sense in a project that would nominally require multiple people (because let's face it, the worlda through time project was never a one-person task) for individuals in the project to focus on the tasks that they are best at.

Which is precisely my point. I similarly do not have the time for such a large project as converting every worlda to a new projection. I had, in fact, become extremely demoralised a couple of years ago by the dawning realisation that apart from myself there perhaps a couple of others who were working on them and that was it. It's one thing to find a bit of time over a few weeks to produce a new map of 1890 or 1985 for example- you can take a lot from existing basemaps. As you're demonstrating with that overlay however, switching to a new projection is essentially starting from scratch.

Now I acknowledge that it must be annoying that this is basically the same argument I make all the time, but to turn it around, imagine how annoying I find it, when consistently I can pretty much guarantee that every time you've replied to something about the world or Q-BAM it can basically be summed up as 'your projection is wrong, I think you should switch to this one, but I can't do any of the hard graft on it.'

So if I come across as overly critical of you, it's only because you come across as being, in essence, the equivalent of someone who is standing on the sidelines shouting 'you're doing it wrong' without actually contributing.
 
I'm kind of on the outside of it here, but I guess I don't see why it matters a ton. The world-a, to me, is kind of a definitive AH world map and Hadaril has obviously put a ton of time and effort into his whole thing, and I even like the color scheme since, unlike a lot of the schemes, he also went and made the maps to go along with them. Maybe I'm just not so picky that way. Theoretically I could go on QGIS and pump out a world map roughly the same size in a real projection and try to get everything down to one pixel as a version of the world-a but I don't really feel there is a reason to, I suppose. I think it's fine if people do it on their own, but I'm just happy to still be getting updated world-a maps this far into development.
 
A small critique I have to bring up: your Turkey in 1920 shows it in anachronistic borders. Not only does it include Hatay, which joined Turkey only in 1938 (that also means that Hatay is a minor error in the 1932 version), but it also generally follows the borders of the Treaty of Lausanne, which was only signed in 1923. In 1920 the Treaty of Sevres was current.

Otherwise this is an ambitious little project and I wish you good luck with it. I'm certainly gonna use your versions of the basemaps from time to time ^^
 
I'm kind of on the outside of it here, but I guess I don't see why it matters a ton. The world-a, to me, is kind of a definitive AH world map and Hadaril has obviously put a ton of time and effort into his whole thing, and I even like the color scheme since, unlike a lot of the schemes, he also went and made the maps to go along with them. Maybe I'm just not so picky that way. Theoretically I could go on QGIS and pump out a world map roughly the same size in a real projection and try to get everything down to one pixel as a version of the world-a but I don't really feel there is a reason to, I suppose. I think it's fine if people do it on their own, but I'm just happy to still be getting updated world-a maps this far into development.

And exactly this is why I revere @hadaril and called him Lord and Saviour and such. Of course, minor errors like anachronistic borders (@Iserlohn ) need to be addressed, but I would never criticise something like a colour scheme or a different colour for Russia. I love the maps, I revere and nearly worship you, @hadaril , and everything is good!

WorldA maps are a staple of AH.com and should get updated every few years. And everybody who does that is - in my opinion - worthy of being worshipped. And you do so, which I find excellent!

@Alex Richards : You also deserve my love, especially for your cooperation (first with Martin23230 and, this year, hopefully with me) regarding the AHFA World Cup, but it is a pity that you got into such a dispute with @Ashtagon who is also deserving of my love for starting the X2 colour scheme, which led to such marvellous creations as the TOASTER and SUCK colour schemes.
 
Thanks for all the feedback guys! The idea to make a new color scheme was one I was toying around with for a while, and one that I was really up in the air about. I'm probably going to go back and put everything into RCS, as it's the more conventional choice for Worlda's. I'll be updating the maps to fix the errors you guys pointed out. Keep the feedback coming!

Edit: I'll be uploading the RCS maps separately.
 
Also, here's my two cents on the worlda vs. real projection discussion: As much as it would be great to use a realistic map projection, the amount of work it would take simply isn't worth it. It was difficult enough updating the coastlines of older worlda's to the modern one (it involves a *lot* of border revisions to do that) - doing that on such a scale would be a monumental effort. Additionally, there are so many preexisting resources on AH.com that would be completely incompatible. Third, the worlda is something of a cultural icon of this forum - it does its job fine enough in my opinion. Finally, we already have (in my opinion) far too many base maps: Worlda, Qbam, Mbam, Vbam, VTBam, MiniWorlda, etc (I've voiced my gripes with Qbam and VTbam elsewhere - not going to rehash them here :p).
 
Update, February 2nd, 2018:
- Added 814 Map
- Slight fixes: 710 and 843

All hail @hadaril ! Thanks for bringing the WorldA into the next generation!

During the modern era (post World War II), we would definitely need:
- 1949
- 1950
- 1953 (End of the Korean War)
- 1959 and/or 1961
- 1962
- 1968
- 1970
- 1975
- 1983 (Petrov incident, Able Archer)
- 1988
- 1989
- 1990
- 1991
- 2000
- 2001
- 2003
- 2011 (Arab Spring)
- 2014 (Crimea)
 

ST15RM

Banned
@hadaril we need more ancient civilization maps. Specifically(these are all BCE):
- 3200 (Sumer)
- 3100 (Early Egypt)
- 2800 (Kot Diji)
- 2600 (Harappa)
- 2100 (Xia)
- 1600 (Mycenaean Greece and the Shang)
- 1400 (Olmec)
- 1100 (Bronze age collapse)
- 1000 (Zhou)
- 800 (Greek city states)
- 700 (Rome and Media)
- 600 (Maha Janapadas and fall of Assyria))
- 550 (Rise of Achaemenid Persia)
- 500 (Greek Golden age)
- 400 (Decline of Greece and Warring states)
- 320 (Alexander the Great)
- 250 (Parthia)
- 220 (Qin China)
- 50 (Roman Civil War)
- 100 AD(Height of Rome)
- 200 (Srivijaya)
- 300
 
@hadaril we need more ancient civilization maps. Specifically(these are all BCE):
- 3200 (Sumer)
- 3100 (Early Egypt)
- 2800 (Kot Diji)
- 2600 (Harappa)
- 2100 (Xia)
- 1600 (Mycenaean Greece and the Shang)
- 1400 (Olmec)
- 1100 (Bronze age collapse)
- 1000 (Zhou)
- 800 (Greek city states)
- 700 (Rome and Media)
- 600 (Maha Janapadas and fall of Assyria))
- 550 (Rise of Achaemenid Persia)
- 500 (Greek Golden age)
- 400 (Decline of Greece and Warring states)
- 320 (Alexander the Great)
- 250 (Parthia)
- 220 (Qin China)
- 50 (Roman Civil War)
- 100 AD(Height of Rome)
- 200 (Srivijaya)
- 300
Maybe, just maybe, you could fix those yourself. Just a Thought.
 
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