X2 (Every Colour Scheme Ever Colour Scheme) Colour Scheme
- Thread starter Ashtagon
- Start date
Witch0Winter
Banned
One thing I'd ask is maybe another level of divisions, if that's okay? Most maps in TACOS and, I believe, GCS tend to have 3 levels where it's basically sub-areas, autonomous areas, and highly-autonomous areas. Basically like provincial divisions, federal states, and autonomous republics/princely states. Is there any chance to get one more gray color to show this or will I just need to make do? Either is fine, just thought I'd ask ^^;
Sort out the island colours, to make sure they aren't clashing with their neighbours, OTL colonial powers significant in their area (including darker/lighter shades of those), or the ocean. Also, actually use this to make some maps (such as my recent English Civil War Majors-General map).
I have purposely left it undefined waat to use the shaded colours for. I had originally envisioned darker-II as "territory of a dominion" (c.f., Canada, Australia), and by extension, "ASSR of an SSR" within the USSR. My original plan for paler-II was to mark a) minor statelets that are culturally in a certain sphere, with the Holy Roman Empire being the ur-example, and b) pre-state tribal culture areas. However, in a modern context, using them to indicate maritime boundaries as you have is absolutely fine too.
Definitely something I can look into
Looking back a few pages, there was a proposal for a Blue Nile colour, contrasting with the White Nile (for Sudan). Sudan's capital sits on the point where the Blue and White Niles meet; there isn't really any place where a dominant Blue Nile state distinct from its contemporary Sudan/Ethiopia-equivalents existed. I had a fallback plan of using that colour for Darfur (and Wadi Tushka, which apparently was a "lost" tributary of the Nile). However, it is too similar to Libyan green, and more critically, Ottoman green. So, another colour for Darfur/Wadi Tushka has been added within the North Africa palette.
Alex Richards
Donor
I don't see the point of a furry colour either, but frankly I find it easier to ignore. As for your example- couldn't you just as easily have a single colour for 'maritime claim boundaries' and use that throughout? And in terms of being a sovereign nation- Barbados has a population comparable to the City of Derby council area. My own borough council of Erewash has a larger population than Dominica. I can't find the exact figures, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's also got a larger GDP and has certainly got a larger GDP per capita.
Why is any sovereign nation actually important enough to show as a separate colour? What territorial claims against their neighbours do Barbados or Dominica have? What detached territories do they have? What other nations do they hold significant political influence over? What power do they have in the UN or the world economy? If you colour it in white, what information are you actually losing? Because frankly the answer to all of those questions is 'negligible.'
What makes a sovereign nation important enough to have its own colour is the fact that it is autonomous and sovereign (two words which etymologically mean the same thing, but I digress).
Afaik, neither Barbados nor Dominica have any territorial disputes. But that doesn't mean that an a-h Barbados or Dominica wouldn't. The colours exist for those scenarios. OTL they don't have detached territories; ATL they might, and the colour exists for that scenario. OTL they don't have any meaningful influence in world politics (although within Caribbean politics they do), ATL they might be economic giants (through banking services, perhaps, or tax accounting shenanigans). OTL, you aren't losing any real information by colouring them white; ATL, you just migt be in some scenarios.
In a scenario in which some countries are relevant and other (even large ones) are not, feel free to colour only the relevant ones. By way of example, here is a (half-finished) map of Earth from Heinlein's novel Friday.
Alex Richards
Donor
But to play devil's advocate, if being 'autonomous and sovereign' is sufficient to have a colour, and any colour can be justified by possibilities in A-H, then surely we need an infinite number of colours to cover all contingencies? A hypothetical independent Lincolnshire could have territorial disputes with her neighbours etc. etc. after all. Since an infinite key is an impossibility, obviously some sort of dividing line has to be drawn, choices have to be made and so forth. Now to go through those, If Barbados has detached parts, then it's with other islands in the Caribbean- due to location and unlike St. Kitts and Nevis or Grenada this is virtually certain to be by dint of some sort of inter-island federation, could even just be something in the Windward Islands covering Barbados, Grenada, St. Lucia or what have you. For this purpose, you don't really need separate colours for Barbados, St. Lucia or Dominica, you just need a 'Caribbean Federation' colour, maybe 2 at a push (and personally I think you can show the Situation with St. Vincent using box outlines and no colour, but it's more arguable). For territorial claims, again likely to be other islands, and we already have a colour for 'claim of white-on-white'. If Barbados is claiming control over the Turks and Caicos, and I seriously claiming it we're probably looking at another instance where it's effectively part of a federation anyway. Economic influence without political influence isn't really something you can map, and political influence is either going to be a sort of Cyberpunk corporate government affair- in which case it's more likely to be a business which happens to own Barbados than Barbados actually influencing things. Even within Caribbean politics Barbados has minor influence (mainly in terms of wanting to set up a federation of island states) and if you were to map that we need lots more US influence about the place.
The fundamental issue here is simply this: Any scenario I can think of in which Barbados might deserve a colour, it's either the seat of government for some sort of federation, or the circumstances are so radically different that the resulting entity has about as much relationship to our Barbados as one where the island was colonised by Tamils fleeing from Sinhalese oppression in a vast Kandian Empire of the Indian Ocean- i.e. the physical geography's the same, but nothing else is.
For me, the key difference is that Lincolnshire doesn't have a modern history as an independent nation. I appreciate that if you go back in history far enough, there are literally thousands of sovereign states, as just about every tribal village was at one time autonomous. That's why I've drawn at line somewhere around the turn of the last century. tbqh, in any map I create, I probably won't use any of the Lesser Antilles colours, except in a "palette map" or to test for colour clashes. But some people wanted them, so I added them. I think I can say with certainty that any state than achieves or has achieved full autonomy post-1900 will get a colour. (For me, that means it has maintained a peacetime/armistice existence for at least a year, and recognition by at least two countries that have UN recognition).
I also get that in a-h, literally anything is possible. I have purposely not tried to attempt to cover "literally everything". Instead, I am trying to cover enough that any OTL map can be done, and also cover *major* ATL tropes.
As a counterpoint to your Barbados, consider Dahomey. By your criteria (border disputes, non-contiguous territory), it should not have a colour. But it has in fact had a colour since UCS days. The "all countries no matter how petty get a colour" ship set sail long before I began X2.
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Alex Richards
Donor
The main thing I'm doing is essentially trying to provide you with the same sort of rigour in question that I got from people like LSCatilina which results in cases such as 'if we're going to give a colour to x. we also need to give it to a-though-l because they're in the same boat in this map of 1450 I'm doing at the moment.' I can tell you for a fact that any scheme that considers being a fully independent and autonomous state in the 20th Century is worthy enough to have a colour will fail at covering any OTL map, because you've effectively made your criteria for having a colour 'it's independent and autonomous'. Heck, you're still missing a bunch of interesting cases- where are the Free Cities of Danzig, Trieste and Tangier for example? The various Transcaucasian federations or the 5 Year independence of Anjouan?
As for Dahomey, the entire UCS Sub-Saharan African set (apart from Ethiopia) was chucked out about 3 or 4 years ago (in that whole messy business with Green/Gold Russia) precisely because they were there just to sit around and make the map look pretty- they're also not in the first UCS key but later additions. Then we created an entirely new set of African colours because with more research we found a bunch of cases where they were needed. Dahomey itself does not have a colour at this point in RCS (the most modern iteration of UCS)- indeed the Tertiary West African state colour specifically states there isn't a modern equivalent (unlike using Dominant for Mali and Secondary for Nigeria). And if you don't believe me on that point, just look at the 1885 map...
If you won't count UCS but consider RCS, then why Cambodia? It has one border dispute, true, but over an area of about five square miles. It is questionable whether it will even be visible at the MBAM scale map being made.
As for Danzig, Trieste, and Tangiers, they weren't technically independent; they were protected by the auspices of multinational bodies (ie. LoN, UN, or France/Spain/UK et alii. for Tangiers). As such, I'd use the "UN blue" progressive multinational organisation for them.
I wasn't aware of Anjouan. How much international recognition did it get?
As for Danzig, Trieste, and Tangiers, they weren't technically independent; they were protected by the auspices of multinational bodies (ie. LoN, UN, or France/Spain/UK et alii. for Tangiers). As such, I'd use the "UN blue" progressive multinational organisation for them.
I wasn't aware of Anjouan. How much international recognition did it get?
Alex Richards
Donor
Cambodia falls into the category of 'gets a colour in 2016 because it's a direct descendent of countries which need ones earlier on'- much like Czechia and so forth, there's about a thousand years of Khmer States subjugating bits of Indochina. If I was basing it purely on the modern map, it wouldn't get a colour- indeed it didn't have a colour for many years until the realisation was made that we couldn't just use the Thai colour for the Khmer Empire because it counted Sukothai as one of it's vassals.
As for Danzig- yeah, well South-West Africa was technically a League of Nations mandate that South Africa was merely paying for the administration of, and the Marshall Islands are members of the UN but exist in a state of Free Compact with the US giving them responsibility for the defence and control over a large amount of foreign policy so that's not exactly a clear cut situation either.
Anjouan didn't get any international recognition, but then neither has Somaliland, and considering the guy who took over the independent state in 2001 stayed the head of the autonomous region after reunion and eventually had to be removed by military action in 2008...
But with Cambodia's historical predecessor, there's still no border dispute as such. That's a concept that simply didn't exist pre-Treaty of Westphalia. The border was either here or there at any given moment before that, never in "dispute". And it's territory was always contiguous.
btw, anyone know where @Aquagel8last320 is? They are the one who wanted all the island colours, so they should be the one to defend their presence.
btw, anyone know where @Aquagel8last320 is? They are the one who wanted all the island colours, so they should be the one to defend their presence.
Alex Richards
Donor
It's not border disputes with the Khmer Empire, it's the complex relationship of suzerainty, vassals and influence with neighbouring polities.
Fair enough, but that simply begs the question of why those others didn't get any colour, since after all they too would be involved in complex relationships of suzerainty, vassals and influence.
That's a rhetorical question by the way - no answer needed. I think I'm done with this aside now, and I don't think either of us will change their minds. Ultimately, every colour scheme will have issues around corner cases of "why this state and not that state".
Alex Richards
Donor
I have no idea who you're actually referring to by 'those others', but a country on the receiving end of a vassal situation doesn't really need to have a colour. But fair enough on dropping the aside, it's just that if you actually want people to use a colour scheme you need to be able to justify the 'corner cases' as you put it and thrashing out that reasoning beforehand is a good way of doing so...
Seemed about time to upload a new version...
2016-08-29:
Moved EU from France to Low Countries header, reflecting the location of its core government cities.
Added three new colours for secessionist regions in Brazil
Changed layout for Lesser Antilles palettes
Changed layout for Oceania palettes
Added secondary Japanese state colour
Moved Doggerland/eastern Brythonics to British Celts palette
Added "pin the Zion on the map" to secondary Jewish state colour
Split North Africa into two header groups (Coastal and Nile Valley)
Changed upper Egypt colour (too many browns shades of in one place)
Added Darfur/Wadi Tushka colour
2016-08-29:
Moved EU from France to Low Countries header, reflecting the location of its core government cities.
Added three new colours for secessionist regions in Brazil
Changed layout for Lesser Antilles palettes
Changed layout for Oceania palettes
Added secondary Japanese state colour
Moved Doggerland/eastern Brythonics to British Celts palette
Added "pin the Zion on the map" to secondary Jewish state colour
Split North Africa into two header groups (Coastal and Nile Valley)
Changed upper Egypt colour (too many browns shades of in one place)
Added Darfur/Wadi Tushka colour
A map conveys geographical information. Having a blank map, filled with whites and grays, signifies a lack of information. Last time I checked, Barbados and Dominica are both informationaly important to understanding the geography of the world in a better context. Also, being a sovereign nation is no easy task, and although your arguments for Derby may have some truth to them, Derby is not even close to being considered one of the 206 countries of the current world (excluding the Ukraine rebels and ISIS), but Barbados, Dominica, and about a hundred other "unimportant" nations are, and because of that reason they are well deserving of a color on this scheme.
I am an anthropology student, trying to get a Masters degree in the study of Oceanic cultures. I can tell you that some nations, like Nauru and the Cook Islands, do not find themselves to be unimportant in the wider world.