Emperor-of-New-Zealand
Kicked
If we're talking colours, I'm not convinced every country needs a colour. It's one of the reasons why I still think the old UCS/RCS was best. It didn't have as much use for ATL maps, but it also wasn't overstuffed.
The NextGen OTL Worlda Series
- Thread starter hadaril
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Hadaril's been a bit loose with NCS lately given he's been working on a new version for it, I think you can just get away with using the SUCK or something for now.
Thank you. Fallow actually fits in quite well as an insular counterpart for the shade that NCS already assigns to 'Minor Central Italy', which seems appropriate considering not only Corsica's location but also the relationships of the Corsican dialect, so consider it adopted.wasn't expecting to see a reference to TACOS this far down the linegod, that was a long time ago
i'm not familiar enough with NCS_ to know if this would help--been out of the mapmaking game too long and i've been using older color schemes for placeholders in what i have worked on--but i set up fallow as a Corsican color for a TL-specific color scheme that i've been developing (it doesn't have especially much meaning--this particular color scheme is deliberately extremely different from the UCS basis)
Fallow (color) - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
I looked at TACOS because of the Hadenosaunee (Iroquois) previously having been given their colour from that system on the map that I was adapting.
I agree that not every country needs a colour, but would prefer to have the choice available for those that are likely to feature in the Timeline at some point or that border directly on them.
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personally, i think every recognized contemporary OTL country should have a color and that those should be used to extrapolate for ATL/fantasy countries (got a totally fictional kingdom on a totally fictional planet inhabited by a totally fictional species but which is also a kinda-sorta UK? give 'em British Pink, why the hell not?) and for their "ancestor states" to help track how far back they "really" go (using Britain in example again, British Pink being used for pre-unification England, and maybe further back to Normandy) while leaving all "historical-only" countries without one unless they're especially prominent (the Confederacy, for example; this again is something i'm doing for my TL-specific color scheme, with every country that exists as of TTL's present-day having a distinct color within the intended color themes and everything that isn't a contemporary country or a direct ancestor of it gets either a basic Neutral White or, depending on their importance, a shade of white that "crosses over" with another color theme--the Confederacy, again, and the Kingdom of France and Republican Spain are examples "unique" to the TL, while OTL examples would include the various Russian states/Russian-led unions, which of course is already a thing with Soviet Red)
i do admit, in hindsight, that i went a bit overboard with some of the TACOS representative colors. if i were to try to make a more all-encompassing color scheme again, like a whole new take on TACOS, i'd probably try to more closely analyze patterns in fiction after taking all the OTL countries into account; if i were to omit any, it would be countries with no non-contiguous territory (meaning that the likes of Fiji would have one while, say, Chad might not)
I think having all countries have their own colors is the most consistent thing. Especially, as @oshron points out, in the case of non-contigious countries. I find the colors a useful element in having the map give information without necesarily needing to have lots of text.
Emperor-of-New-Zealand
Kicked
The trouble is that when you give every country a colour, and also give every country a version of that colour for four different levels of government, you wind up with some colours being so close they're almost indistinguishable from a distance. E.g. Japan and New Guinea on the NCS; the New Guinea colour is just slightly lighter than the Japan colour. On an OTL modern-day map you can presume they're separate countries, but on an ATL map where Japan controls Indonesia or something?
I believe Hadaril has said that he doesn't want to take alternate timelines into account when making the cs, hence why there's no colour for quebec or new england.
Emperor-of-New-Zealand
Kicked
Which is fine, but it doesn't change the fact that nearly everyone is making ATL maps.
Anyway, my post was about personal preference.
IDK if there should be an NCS for OTL maps and an NCS-expanded for ATL maps?
Emperor-of-New-Zealand
Kicked
Speaking for myself, when I used to make maps more frequently I'd just pick and choose whatever colours I liked from a variety of schemes and make a key.
My comment was prompted because I was looking back at some old B_Munro maps on his Deviantart, and old SRegan maps as well, and I remembered how simpler things were.
tWINsies???????????Speaking for myself, when I used to make maps more frequently I'd just pick and choose whatever colours I liked from a variety of schemes and make a key.
My comment was prompted because I was looking back at some old B_Munro maps on his Deviantart, and old SRegan maps as well, and I remembered how simpler things were.
More seriously, yeah—personally, I too, get a headache when I look at people's maps where every single country gets colored
The RCS/UCS is much more simpler...
Second on that, I used to color every countries when I first started but now I mostly group them based on political alignment, much more pleasant to the eyes.
i suppose that kind of depends on how much a map/TL is really supposed to encompass. i'd say a good minimalistic approach would be to only color in the "relevant" countries; using the campaigns from vanilla Empire Earth in example, that would mean having distinct colors for (among others since i'm going off memory here) Greece, (with some city-state colors for flavor) Macedonia, Iran, Normandy/England/Britain, France, Germany, Poland, Russia, one or more Scandinavian countries, the US, Ukraine, China, and Cuba, but not for, say, Australia or Estonia because those ones don't appear as independent countries. that is kinda the point i was making about "historical-only" countries, though.
Emperor-of-New-Zealand
Kicked
Speaking of colours, there are some that don't appear on the key. The declared state of Azawad in Mali has a random colour, for example.
I also noticed that Fiji is coloured as a British dominion in the modern-day map.
I also noticed that Fiji is coloured as a British dominion in the modern-day map.
When making your own maps, obviously you should just use whatever color scheme you want and it doesn't matter.
Traditionally I've been more in favor of minimalistic schemes, but in the specific case of this project, because of the vast scope of the maps and the consistency across not just individual eras but literally all of human history- the 'every country' scheme makes sense.
If we ever break it up into sub-projects, like some limited-scope deal where we focus entirely on the 1919-2019 period say, the only countries that should really have colors are great powers or extremely non-contiguous states (e.g. modern Denmark or Netherlands), simply because the roster of countries won't change enough over the course of the hypothetical sub-project to really necessitate such detail- but because of how broad this is, being able to reference maps from literally hundreds or thousands of years apart that have consistent baseline schemes is useful, especially for places and eras individual users may know less about. There simply aren't that many projects or historical atlases that do this, and because of that value as historical reference in addition to its value as sourcemaps for AH projects, I'll gladly tolerate some stuff that I would never be comfortable with elsewhere.
Traditionally I've been more in favor of minimalistic schemes, but in the specific case of this project, because of the vast scope of the maps and the consistency across not just individual eras but literally all of human history- the 'every country' scheme makes sense.
If we ever break it up into sub-projects, like some limited-scope deal where we focus entirely on the 1919-2019 period say, the only countries that should really have colors are great powers or extremely non-contiguous states (e.g. modern Denmark or Netherlands), simply because the roster of countries won't change enough over the course of the hypothetical sub-project to really necessitate such detail- but because of how broad this is, being able to reference maps from literally hundreds or thousands of years apart that have consistent baseline schemes is useful, especially for places and eras individual users may know less about. There simply aren't that many projects or historical atlases that do this, and because of that value as historical reference in addition to its value as sourcemaps for AH projects, I'll gladly tolerate some stuff that I would never be comfortable with elsewhere.
I've noticed that the borders of Ingushetia isn't clear on the most recent maps.
Emperor-of-New-Zealand
Kicked
Don't suppose anyone can point me to any of the older maps that show the island groupings in the Pacific? I'm pretty sure I've got most of them right but the division of the Cook Islands and French Polynesia has me a bit stuck, even using reference maps.
Something like this?
(This map is pretty incorrect but it does have the outline, so)