Shhhhh... don't give them any ideas.
Maybe I'll give WWIII a try as a slideshow that was suggested earlier, but only using European maps.Map Thread V
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Shhhhh... don't give them any ideas.
Maybe I'll give WWIII a try as a slideshow that was suggested earlier, but only using European maps.Revolutionary World
This map is actually a heavily modified version of a 'Guess The Wank' game I found posted on here from ages ago. I was amazed to find that,
when similar colours were assumed to indicate the same power, the end result actually looked fairly plausible (leaving aside odd elements like
uninhabited coastline and landlocked colonies), and in fact had less ridiculous uberpowers than OTL!
Accordingly, I decided to attempt a fully annotated map for the setting with a vaguely plausible invented P.O.D. (no War of the Spanish
Succession due to a new and distinctly less inbred Charles II delivered in a warming pan). Italy is united under Venice, France holds onto
western Louisiana (then splits into two metropolitan Frances in a delayed action super-Revolution), and Russian goes radical (TTL Communist)
then gets a Czarist Restoration. Hopefully there's enough flavour text on the map itself to give a good idea of how things are shaping up between
the monarchist and radical powers.
I was originally planning to group the nations into absolute monarchies, limited monarchies, moderate republics and radical republics, but didn't like
my chances of successfully putting so many annotations on the map without going insane. Instead, I've provided a key to show which powers are
Christian, Islamic, Humanist (think the Cult of Reason, á la Robespierre), or polytheistic, which, along with the tried and tested 'the more
'democratic'/'people's'/'worker's' adjectives in the country's name the more crazily bleeped up it is' rule, should give a fair approximation.
I tried to go for a style somewhere between b_munro's and Tony Jones' (it was originally titled 'A Very Different World',* but I felt it needed more
zing), so: lots of annotations, non-UCS colours, and lots of jagged edges. Unfortunately, I don't think I have quite the same gift for plausible borders
as the former, or the patience for tiny nation-states of the latter. But anyway, hopefully someone will enjoy it!
* Which isn't even true, seeing as it has a Spanish Empire in terminal decline, a British Empire trying to keep ahead of at least one massively
industrialised ex-colonial republic, and a Russia that's lost control of eastern Europe and central Asia. Now the other map I'm currently working on,
with Ethiopia and Persia in a space race...
UPDATE: The original map is here - it was by Venice. Hopefully the similarities are still just about visible - I dragged it through an intermediate
rough stage with the maxidivisions map, so quite a bit has shifted around.
This map is actually a heavily modified version of a 'Guess The Wank' game I found posted on here from ages ago. I was amazed to find that,
when similar colours were assumed to indicate the same power, the end result actually looked fairly plausible (leaving aside odd elements like
uninhabited coastline and landlocked colonies), and in fact had less ridiculous uberpowers than OTL!
Accordingly, I decided to attempt a fully annotated map for the setting with a vaguely plausible invented P.O.D. (no War of the Spanish
Succession due to a new and distinctly less inbred Charles II delivered in a warming pan). Italy is united under Venice, France holds onto
western Louisiana (then splits into two metropolitan Frances in a delayed action super-Revolution), and Russian goes radical (TTL Communist)
then gets a Czarist Restoration. Hopefully there's enough flavour text on the map itself to give a good idea of how things are shaping up between
the monarchist and radical powers.
I was originally planning to group the nations into absolute monarchies, limited monarchies, moderate republics and radical republics, but didn't like
my chances of successfully putting so many annotations on the map without going insane. Instead, I've provided a key to show which powers are
Christian, Islamic, Humanist (think the Cult of Reason, á la Robespierre), or polytheistic, which, along with the tried and tested 'the more
'democratic'/'people's'/'worker's' adjectives in the country's name the more crazily bleeped up it is' rule, should give a fair approximation.
I tried to go for a style somewhere between b_munro's and Tony Jones' (it was originally titled 'A Very Different World',* but I felt it needed more
zing), so: lots of annotations, non-UCS colours, and lots of jagged edges. Unfortunately, I don't think I have quite the same gift for plausible borders
as the former, or the patience for tiny nation-states of the latter. But anyway, hopefully someone will enjoy it!
* Which isn't even true, seeing as it has a Spanish Empire in terminal decline, a British Empire trying to keep ahead of at least one massively
industrialised ex-colonial republic, and a Russia that's lost control of eastern Europe and central Asia. Now the other map I'm currently working on,
with Ethiopia and Persia in a space race...
UPDATE: The original map is here - it was by Venice. Hopefully the similarities are still just about visible - I dragged it through an intermediate
rough stage with the maxidivisions map, so quite a bit has shifted around.
Last edited:
Thande
Donor
Very fine map and a good original use of a somewhat overused basemap which makes it look better. However, it's a good idea to put your explanatory text in a separate post to the map itself, as otherwise it word wraps in such a way that people have to tediously scroll back and forth to read your text.
I have'nt read every part of the map, but it is interesting, and as Thande said a good alteration to an overused basemap.
That, or do what I do and edit it after the initial post and 'cropping' the lines so they fit nicely.
That, or do what I do and edit it after the initial post and 'cropping' the lines so they fit nicely.
I really like this, it shows a great deal of potential for future cartographic exhibitions and you also have an original sense in grouping them by religion rather than the rather humdrum alliance system.
Personally, I would have used a different font (I don't really rate Times New Roman) but that is a very minor aesthetic choice on my part. The borders are all respectable and I particularly like what you've done with Indochina and the rest of Southern Asia, nice to see a fairly original take on a disunited China and India!
Thanks! Rather than try to remove the map and post it again after the comments people have posted, I've followed Iori's suggestion and manually wrapped the text in the post.
Lord Roem - Thanks! The font is actually Batang - I was going for something unobtrusive that looked reasonably modern and typewriterish, but I've just noticed it does look a LOT like TNR. I tried a more swirly font but coupled with the dusty colours it made it look too medieval. I was a little concerned I'd gone overboard with changing the borders - admittedly, no Treaty of Utrecht is going to mess things up, but still. There are a few borders that made me cringe a bit - namely Germany and the Royal Netherlands/Regal Belgium appear attracted by destiny to the same bits of Africa as OTL, but it was intended to be principally a tribute to the 'Find A Wank' map, so I shouldn't complain.
Ah, sorry, and here I was thinking myself some sort of typological guru!
Germany is always an awkward nation to do properly, I think that you've done as well as you could. I see no Austria, I take it that this is not a Prussian dominated Norddeutscher bund but rather a Germany that is controlled by various powerful states like Prussia, Bavaria and Saxony?
Nice!
I'm always a stickler for the "alternate textbook" look regarding maps. How did this analogy for the Ottoman Empire come about?
Nice!
I'm always a stickler for the "alternate textbook" look regarding maps. How did this analogy for the Ottoman Empire come about?
Thanks; the idea was that the European powers do not intervene in the Egyptian-Turkish War of the early 1830's.
I had a map at the bottom of the last page, you know.
Awesome, although the treatment of Africa kind of has a space-filling-and-what-else feel to it, especially compared to the (I must say) quite detailed depiction of SE Asia and Australasia.
Awesome, but how useful could the Mengo-Gulu railroad be? I confess I don't know much about East Africa, but it looks like there's several lakes and rivers nearby which could serve decent transport purposes. How much freight would there be that far south and that far inland, too?
Interesting..but was the name of Pepperland just a set up for the Beatles pun?
Aside from some color clash between the two Frances and Turkey this is a very well made original map.
Kind of. I wanted to do a Beatles-themed map, and I wanted to do another North America map just 'cos I've been on a roll working on a few other things, I've been reading up on the Dutch East Indies and the pursuit of the Spice Trade, and everything just seemed to roll together nicely.
SReagan, Rex - very nice maps. Congrats!
OK - I see I now have a recognized "style", and I'll try to do things a bit differently in the future, because I see that the "format" mentioned - a mostly crapsack world with a good bit or two - is exactly the sort of map I was going to post. In my defense, I've been reading the old AHTG Yahoo group, and there frankly are a lot of crapsack worlds on there - many of them better described than nicer ones, because, I guess, crapsackery makes for more entertaining reading. But I'll try to map some happier worlds in the future.
Revival world – the US had a “third great awakening” in the 1920s, leading to a theocratic takeover of the US in the 1930s Depression. The US (Renamed the Holy North American States) is a one-party Christian state, combining the worst nastiness of Jim Crow racial legislation with a level of imposed morality that John Calvin would have found “sufficient” (Pat Robertson would be considered a “liberal” in this world’s US). The US dominates Mexico and Central America, maintains puppet regimes in Japan, Korea, and the Philippines, and is allied with Australia (white, racist and with their own fundies, if still nominally multi-party), a larger and almost Muslim-free Israel, Apartheid South Africa, and has recently become fairly friendly with the current right-wing Hindu government of India, which although heathens share a strong dislike of Muslims.
Massive drives to support evangelical Christianity throughout Latin America in combination with heavy-handed meddling and dollar diplomacy has backfired, leading to a ferocious Catholic revival movement and anti-American violence (currently US forces are occupying half a dozen Latin American states). The juntas of Brazil and Argentina and Chile are allied to the right-wing Catholic dictatorships of Iberia, France and Italy, in a “Latin Block” with nuclear weapons of their own.
(The US stayed out of WWII thanks to the political violence of the 30’s, followed by the war with Japan. The European conflict dragged on till 1948 (with a 1945-1947 break), when the UK started dropping nukes on Germany every 2 weeks. The area was much more devastated than OTL, and there was no Marshall Plan: most post-war efforts to restore democracy failed, and Italy had a Red-White civil war where the Right won with French help. The exhausted USSR only occupied Hungary, Slovakia, Poland and the Eastern 40% of Germany).
Europe is divided into the Balkans, the USSR territories, the Catholic juntas, and the UK-led North European Federation. The Balkans is in turn divided between the Communist dictatorships of Yugoslavia and Albania, propped up by the USSR and several right-wing, Very Orthodox dictatorships. The Soviets have absorbed their conquests into a single integrated state, and have survived through a combination of heavy repression, slow economic reform, and looking good compared to the nasty regimes ruling so much of the world: there are hardly any Germans left in Germany, having been dispersed in the Soviet state like the tribes of Israel in the Assyrian Empire. The Catholic dictatorships are increasingly internally troubled thanks to serious economic problems, and decades of ultimately counterproductive efforts to maintain control of half of Africa in spite of Soviet meddling.
The NEF is a small light in the darkness: consisting of rump Germany, Austria, Western Scandinavia, Switzerland, the Low Countries and the UK, its 170-odd million inhabitants are the last bastion of democracy and liberalism in this world (since HAS became the HNAS with the invasion of Canada), although by our standards, with their 1950s public morality, they look pretty regressive.
The Middle East is a mess: there is hardly a country that hasn’t been bombed by the US or Israel at one point, the Palestinian Government-in-Exile makes trouble, and Mecca and Medina have been under Egyptian protection since the Saudi Civil War and the US-Israeli occupation (and later ethnic cleansing) of the oil fields. Currently much of the area huddles under the protection of the Soviet nuclear umbrella, not because they like the USSR, but because it’s the only enemy the US is genuinely a bit fearful of (the NEF could be, but they stick with armed (heavily) neutrality).
Africa is also a mess after decades of three-way proxy wars between the Latin block, the USSR, and the US, although there are a few islands of more-or-less stability propped up by the NEF, which is considered an “honest broker” by most Third-Worlders.
China, which has stuck with old-fashioned Stalinism, is currently reaching a crisis due to pollution-related crop damage and fuel shortages: there have been peasant uprisings, and even rumors of cannibalism. The USSR can’t do much to help, exporting little food and being short of fuel itself (the 10-year plan to change over from oil to nuclear and hydrogen-cell is still in its early stages) can help but little, although with some 12 million Chinese immigrants already, the tens or even hundreds of millions of refugees a collapsed China might produce are truly terrifying.
The latest right-wing Vietnamese junta recently collapsed, and this time it looks like neither the US nor the Latins are going to worry about it. Indonesia’s government struggles against an Islamic insurgency with US help, which of course only inflames the insurgency.
Pretty much everyone is poorer than OTL, and there is no internet or computer tech ahead of the OTL mid-80s. There are satellites, for communication and spying, but no space travel. And there are no less than 14 known nuclear powers.
Bruce
OK - I see I now have a recognized "style", and I'll try to do things a bit differently in the future, because I see that the "format" mentioned - a mostly crapsack world with a good bit or two - is exactly the sort of map I was going to post. In my defense, I've been reading the old AHTG Yahoo group, and there frankly are a lot of crapsack worlds on there - many of them better described than nicer ones, because, I guess, crapsackery makes for more entertaining reading. But I'll try to map some happier worlds in the future.
Revival world – the US had a “third great awakening” in the 1920s, leading to a theocratic takeover of the US in the 1930s Depression. The US (Renamed the Holy North American States) is a one-party Christian state, combining the worst nastiness of Jim Crow racial legislation with a level of imposed morality that John Calvin would have found “sufficient” (Pat Robertson would be considered a “liberal” in this world’s US). The US dominates Mexico and Central America, maintains puppet regimes in Japan, Korea, and the Philippines, and is allied with Australia (white, racist and with their own fundies, if still nominally multi-party), a larger and almost Muslim-free Israel, Apartheid South Africa, and has recently become fairly friendly with the current right-wing Hindu government of India, which although heathens share a strong dislike of Muslims.
Massive drives to support evangelical Christianity throughout Latin America in combination with heavy-handed meddling and dollar diplomacy has backfired, leading to a ferocious Catholic revival movement and anti-American violence (currently US forces are occupying half a dozen Latin American states). The juntas of Brazil and Argentina and Chile are allied to the right-wing Catholic dictatorships of Iberia, France and Italy, in a “Latin Block” with nuclear weapons of their own.
(The US stayed out of WWII thanks to the political violence of the 30’s, followed by the war with Japan. The European conflict dragged on till 1948 (with a 1945-1947 break), when the UK started dropping nukes on Germany every 2 weeks. The area was much more devastated than OTL, and there was no Marshall Plan: most post-war efforts to restore democracy failed, and Italy had a Red-White civil war where the Right won with French help. The exhausted USSR only occupied Hungary, Slovakia, Poland and the Eastern 40% of Germany).
Europe is divided into the Balkans, the USSR territories, the Catholic juntas, and the UK-led North European Federation. The Balkans is in turn divided between the Communist dictatorships of Yugoslavia and Albania, propped up by the USSR and several right-wing, Very Orthodox dictatorships. The Soviets have absorbed their conquests into a single integrated state, and have survived through a combination of heavy repression, slow economic reform, and looking good compared to the nasty regimes ruling so much of the world: there are hardly any Germans left in Germany, having been dispersed in the Soviet state like the tribes of Israel in the Assyrian Empire. The Catholic dictatorships are increasingly internally troubled thanks to serious economic problems, and decades of ultimately counterproductive efforts to maintain control of half of Africa in spite of Soviet meddling.
The NEF is a small light in the darkness: consisting of rump Germany, Austria, Western Scandinavia, Switzerland, the Low Countries and the UK, its 170-odd million inhabitants are the last bastion of democracy and liberalism in this world (since HAS became the HNAS with the invasion of Canada), although by our standards, with their 1950s public morality, they look pretty regressive.
The Middle East is a mess: there is hardly a country that hasn’t been bombed by the US or Israel at one point, the Palestinian Government-in-Exile makes trouble, and Mecca and Medina have been under Egyptian protection since the Saudi Civil War and the US-Israeli occupation (and later ethnic cleansing) of the oil fields. Currently much of the area huddles under the protection of the Soviet nuclear umbrella, not because they like the USSR, but because it’s the only enemy the US is genuinely a bit fearful of (the NEF could be, but they stick with armed (heavily) neutrality).
Africa is also a mess after decades of three-way proxy wars between the Latin block, the USSR, and the US, although there are a few islands of more-or-less stability propped up by the NEF, which is considered an “honest broker” by most Third-Worlders.
China, which has stuck with old-fashioned Stalinism, is currently reaching a crisis due to pollution-related crop damage and fuel shortages: there have been peasant uprisings, and even rumors of cannibalism. The USSR can’t do much to help, exporting little food and being short of fuel itself (the 10-year plan to change over from oil to nuclear and hydrogen-cell is still in its early stages) can help but little, although with some 12 million Chinese immigrants already, the tens or even hundreds of millions of refugees a collapsed China might produce are truly terrifying.
The latest right-wing Vietnamese junta recently collapsed, and this time it looks like neither the US nor the Latins are going to worry about it. Indonesia’s government struggles against an Islamic insurgency with US help, which of course only inflames the insurgency.
Pretty much everyone is poorer than OTL, and there is no internet or computer tech ahead of the OTL mid-80s. There are satellites, for communication and spying, but no space travel. And there are no less than 14 known nuclear powers.
Bruce
The Pepperlanders are known for their great strawberry orchards that George Starkey would describe in the nationalist anthem as "Strawberry Fields forever"Stick another Beatles reference in there, I dare you.
Cool map though.
Edit: Damn apparently he's already done Strawberry Fields ><
Greatly appreciated!
Ofaloaf, I agree with you; I wasn't too sure about including that, but I did it anyway.
I was thinking I would make a map series in different styles about a different Scramble for Africa that is in part changed by this.
Thanks for the feedback Thande! I was thinking of putting on basic land colours (gold for savannah, yellow for desert, etc) and possibly a few landmarks or geographical features (rivers 'n such). But, due dates sneak up quietly .
And about Marx, well, er, now that I think about it no he didn't. That's what last minute work will do. Maybe their disembodied souls had a philosophical debate ironically amongst the USSR?
.And about Marx, well, er, now that I think about it no he didn't. That's what last minute work will do
. Maybe their disembodied souls had a philosophical debate ironically amongst the USSR?- Status