For Guyana and Belize I would leave unless some voices a specific complaint, some colors are going to have to be similar to each other in a scheme so large.
Fair enough. I'll leave them unless someone complains.
As for minor countries part of me wants to saw "never give up, never surrender!" and leave all the minor countries. However, realistically some should probably be cut. I would, of course, leave any that do have their own color in another scheme. I would cut some of the decolonial constructs such as the individual colors for the Cook Island, Anguilla, Aruba, etc.
Unless there's a strong outcry, I'm probably going to compact some of these minor polities, as per my previous post.
Off the top of my head, the only entities I can think of would be the Island of Mann, a colour for a unified non-Anglo-Saxon UK, a separate color for different German entities, such as the North German Confederation or a Romance Germany, Communist France or a Blanquist state, I'm sure there are more native nations to add but I'm not familiar enough with them to be able to suggest examples.
Perhaps it's a failure of imagination, but I can't see an Isle of Mann being a significant nation with "overseas" territory, and not having most of its economic productivity (and shortly after, capital) overseas, at which point it's not really an isle of Mann nation any more. Note that the polities I choose to give colours for in England correspond to the Anglo-Saxon heptarchy.
I already had Wessex doubling for a pre-Norman UK, but I've also added Wales to double for a pre-Saxon UK. I've added a note for Prussia to indicate that colour doubles for the North German Confederation.
I've added a note for communist China that it can substitute as "secondary/Asian communist state", and communist Iberia can substitute as "tertiary/European communist state". I figure if you've got more communist states than that (and note that Japan and Germany also have "communist" substitute colours), you're at the point where ASBs are straining the limits of any standard template colour scheme.
I tend to see communism (and other radical ideologies) as something that should really be noted in the story attached to a map; a map by itself is a wasted piece of potential fiction writing. So while a few countries do have variant colours for radical politics, these are mostly intended to be available to depict civil wars and divided nations rather than to potentially have extra colours for every possible permutation of country + ideology.
Wallonia should keep the colour of Belgium. The reasoning, the French speaking Netherlanders are commonly scene as the major cause of the Belgian Revolution, ergo the French speaking region keeps the colour.
I'm not sure there's a good answer to the Belgian question at this stage
For Hungry, Malaysia, and Burkina Faso see the comment on Guyana and Belize.
Fair enough.
For Greece a colour for Mycenae for any really early timelines might be nice, the only other I can think of would possibly be Corinth. Separating Athens and the Byzantine I think would be a good idea. Lastly, I would as a note about using an outline of existing colours for things such as the Delian league and Peloponnesian league.
I have no problem at all with assigning Bronze Age Athens and the Byzantine Empire to the same colour, as they are separated in time by a considerable margin, and both are considered to be primary Greek state of their day.
As I understand it, the Peloponnesian league was built around Sparta, and the Delian league around Athens, each of which already has its own colour. Using these as an outline is indeed my preferred method for showing such alliances (such is also done for the EU). Similarly, the Corinthian League was built around Macedon. But yeah --- I probably need to read up a bit more on this area.
For South Africa I would say defiantly separate Zulu and Lesotho, a separate colour for Xhosa sound good to me.
Xhosa and Zulu colours coming up soon!
As for Japan see comments on Hungry, Malaysia, Burkina Faso, Guyana, and Belize.
Fair point. Still keeping options open though. In a test, I've found I can bring the Japan colour down to (235,235,0) and still have it look essentially "yellow" to my rubbish eyesight. But even that small change makes it noticeably easier to see the difference between that and the paler shade. Ethiopia and Celtiberia have similar issues, but because they haven't ever OTL (to my knowledge) had protectorates, the problem isn't so acute for them.
As side note something I would do is combined the religion colours to the country whose colour they share so that they are still there but you don't need the separate category. Also I think a good idea would be do the same thing with governmental systems, such as representative democracy, constitutional monarchy, absolute monarchy, elective theocracy etc.
If I merge religions into the main body of the descriptions, it would require widening that column. This would significantly increase the overall file size (which is a function of width x height). There's also the issue that it reinforces an association between a particular religion (or denomination) and secular state. While this is in some cases non-controversial (the Vatican is Catholic, right?), in others, it creates potentially awkward associations that I'd rather not flag up for attention (Iraq/Mesopotamia as the home of unified Abrahamic religion? Orwell's Eastasia as the home of Confucianism? The U.N. as the home of humanism?).
Making specific connections between a country and form of government is even more awkward. What country can sincerely claim to be the
ne plus ultra of democracy? Better to avoid that controversy altogether. I might at some future date make a colour scheme for it, but it would not intentionally re-use any 'national' colour for such a colour scheme.
I missed a colour for a unified and for a Communist Scandinavia which I had to use in my TL. Chose the "EU" colour for it as a scapegoat, as Sweden's colour might have been too similar to metropolitan France. I would also advocate a colour for Courland and a unified Baltics.
I've tried to avoid "unified multi-state region" colours unless they existed OTL, as there are far too many to consider for all possibilities, and in practice they tend to be dominated by one of their components (such as the historical Kingdom of Sweden and Norway, which rapidly saw Norway reduced to a little better than a vassal state). I'd generally opt to use the main colour of the OTL nation whose territory the capital falls inside in these cases.
