@emoose: http://www.enchantedlearning.com/egifs/Earthsplates.GIF

At least now I know how clueless I am about geography (hopefully I at least have the subject right)...

Although starting with an SVG template that already has most things in place sounds nice, it seems a bit troublesome, and since drawing the territories and borders myself gives me the experience needed to properly edit the map anyways, I think I'll continue doing it that way.

One problem I'm noticing though, is that when zooming in/out, territory lines become jagged or slightly distorted in very weird ways. This doesn't really make sense to me, especially since it's *only* happening on the WL version - the original SVG on my computer has absolutely no problem of the sort. Anyone able to enlighten me? If it matters, I'm drawing mostly using the freehand tool, with a little use of the node editing to make small fixes.

Here's the public map link if you want to check the problem, or if you just want to follow my progress: [Large Earth](http://warlight.net/SinglePlayer.aspx?PreviewMap=7440).

instead of continental bonuses, bonuses could be based on either the territories or bonuses of the current earth maps. id also say that territories should all be around the same size in a decent map, so one country = one territory would not work. if you want to include small countries you definitely have to divide the larger ones up.

i think you should base divisions of countries on maps rather than things like individual military bases, unless you could find a map of them. otherwise, as well as all the research, you would have to draw it by hand, and the territories that would produce might turn out to be bizarre.

|> One problem I'm noticing though, is that when zooming in/out, territory lines become jagged or slightly distorted in very weird ways. This doesn't really make sense to me, especially since it's only happening on the WL version - the original SVG on my computer has absolutely no problem of the sort. Anyone able to enlighten me? If it matters, I'm drawing mostly using the freehand tool, with a little use of the node editing to make small fixes.

There is a page on the [Wiki](http://wiki.warlight.net/index.php/Inkscape_tips#Simplify) specifically about Inkscape tips. It mentions performance issues when borders contain "an excessively amount" of data. Your territories sure look very detailed (that's another way of calling them beautiful :) ), so you're going to run into that problem sooner or later; might as well warn you now.

The problem you describe also has to do with territory borders. I have no idea if the issues are even related, but they might; doesn't hurt to try, right?

From the wiki:

|>Sometimes territories can contain way more data than they need. One example is after drawing territories with the pencil tool, if you view the vertices (F2) you'll see it has an excessive amount.

|>This is easy to fix simply by selecting Path -> Simplify (Ctrl+L). This reduces the number of vertices drastically, and in most cases, doesn't alter the appearance of the object at all:

|>Not only does this make the object easier to work with and increase the performance of Inkscape, it also reduces the size of your resulting WarLight map which makes it load faster and allows you to fit more objects into your map.

Believe it or not, the territories actually have far fewer vertices than you might expect, even at that level of detail (the map is also 3330x1741 px, so there's a lot of room for detail - not yet sure how it'll affect the file size). Also, the performance issues you mentioned are indicated by the wiki to be only in InkScape and like I said, this issue only appears when I upload the SVG to WL, not when I run it in InkScape.

---

|>The problem you describe also has to do with territory borders. I have no idea if the issues are even related, but they might; doesn't hurt to try, right?

I'm not really sure what you're trying to say here, care to elaborate?

Edit: I had a file size error when I tried uploading the unsimplified line (44k nodes... lol) for the east coast of North America, which means I'll have to scale down and reduce detail.

I started with a fresh map family to fix the scale more easily, so [**this**](http://warlight.net/SinglePlayer.aspx?PreviewMap=7600) is the new link.

Richard gave me the idea (not sure if this is what he meant) of turning the oceans into territories. I've seen this on a map before and didn't like the way it looked at all (it's hard to visually distinguish that it's on water), but I'll give myself a chance to make it work more nicely. The three options I'm considering:

- Paint the ocean a static color and have an army dot in the middle

- Create full territories, but have a painted blue border on all coasts to distinguish them.

- Create groups of stripes, alternating between player color and painted blue, with a thin player-colored outline to show the borders.

Thoughts on this are much appreciated.

Still beautiful, nice job! :)

For the ocean territories, how about doing one or two in each style (on an otherwise incomplete map, that's okay) and do a few test-games on it. This way you can more or less estimate how much work it will be (especially that last idea sounds like it might take a lot of work; estimate what you're getting yourself into) and how it works in a real game. That should make it a lot easier to decide which version to use for real. (If making such a testing map is a lot of work, remember, making the real map would take much, much more work...) Only real feedback I can give you at the moment is that all three sound promising and could probably work, but without seeing it "in action" it's difficult to decide.

One problem with having oceans as territories on your map is that if you want to have a connection between ocean and every territory bordering with it, that would make a huge amount of connections for most of the oceans (except maybe Arctic Ocean). This would make oceans into major chokepoints. I guess you'd have to split oceans into smaller territories. Also, what about seas? You could turn Mediterranean, Red Sea, Baltic etc. into territories too, that would make it even more interesting to play.

But frankly, I believe having connections between major ports is better. Turning oceans/seas into territories makes map "flat" - every territory is connected to all territories around it - that's boring :]

As for the looks, all options sound good. (3) is interesting, I've never seen a territory made like this. It might look good, but it would be much more tedious to draw than the first two.

i like the way the diplomacy map deals with its marine territories.

Apologies, the ocean territory idea came from Yuanshuai, not Richard.

---

@RvW: I expect to have 6 (2 variations of each option I listed) different types of ocean territories on the first test map. As for the amount of work involved, I'm willing to put almost any amount of work in, but as I'm still only able to work on the map during spare time within my spare time, extra work means a noticeably delayed public release. The goal is to create a map that people enjoy playing, so even a month or two of added work is, for me, worthwhile to accomplish that.

@charfa: I do plan on splitting the oceans into several territories each. As for seas, any body of water that presents an additional strategic factor to the defense or conquering of surrounding territories will itself be made into a territory.

I like the idea of water territories only having connections to ports, and if anyone wants to contribute by posting either a list of ports or links to lists of ports, the info would be much appreciated.

|> Talk about dedication...! :o

Does this help:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_seaports

I found that through http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port#Lists which also has some other lists; I think you know best which list is most suitable to you. (Given the size of your territories, whole countries, I assume exact locations of ports don't matter to you?)

Just noticed I messed up my last post, the first line should be replaced by:

---

|> even a month or two of added work is, for me, worthwhile

Talk about dedication...! :o

Emoose, two thing about the territory names:
1. You now call the Netherlands just "Netherlands", I'd adjust it to "The Netherlands"
2. Both Western Sahara and Madagascar are unnamed.

@RvW: Thank you for the link, although it looks like it'll take me quite a while to read through that and decide which list(s) to use.

@Moros: The problems have been fixed. I noticed that Western Sahara doesn't have it's name in capital letters (to indicate that it is a political country) so I looked it up on [Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Sahara). I find this rather interesting since there's no clear support for either side, whereas most other border disputes seem to have strong support for a single side. I'm thinking of adding a specific bonus for controlling Western Sahara, Morocco and Mauritania to signify the clearing of the dispute (regardless of which group "won").

That map is really pretty. Are you tracing it all by hand?

Also, have you tried using my centerpoints creator? http://warlight.net/Forum/Thread.aspx?ThreadID=2452 I'm also working on a connection maker, so you could probably save yourself some work using these two :)

Also, personally I wouldn't add any ports. A good map should have a few real chokepoints, and the Earth is just about perfect in this matter (while, for example, the [Middleearth](http://warlight.net/SinglePlayer.aspx?PreviewMap=1734) map creator had to create some "artificial" ones, by including some rivers or mountain ranges as unpassable terrain); ports greatly increase moveability of armies, and IMO should only be used for maps like [Japan](http://warlight.net/SinglePlayer.aspx?PreviewMap=2435), where without them just about every territorry would be a chokepoint.

emoose...

I noticed there was no Monaco, Andorra, Vatican City or San Marino. I understand these are very small so can see the difficulty of including them. Do you plan to do so later?

Must say, was quite surprised to see you used Burma as the name.

@Matma: Yes, I'm tracing the borders entirely by hand and smoothing with node-by-node editing. I'll give the centerpoint generator a shot, but due to the shaping of several territories and the inclusion of numerous multi-piece territories it's likely that I'll do the centerpoints manually. Same goes for your connection generator, if you finish that before I get to the connections stage.

I think you misunderstand the ports subject a little. I don't intend to make a network of port-to-port connections (am I the only one thinking P2P and laughing?), the idea is to have territories representing different chunks of water, but rather than having the water connect to all neighbouring territories, only allow it to connect to territories where there is a port in real life. This means that, for example, there will be one water territory representing North-East Pacific, that will connect to any ports along the west coast of Canada and the U.S. What this essentially translates to is moving the current coastal choke points of the Earth maps off of the coasts themselves, and into the water. I like the idea of water territories because ships have been used in wars for centuries, and in many cases are the only reason war is even possible. It can be argued that aerial warfare should also be included, but that would make almost every territory accessible very quickly from anywhere on the map, which ruins the fun of the game for the same reasons you argued against ports.

If you're still not convinced, please hold your arguments until the first test run of the map, which will focus on on the territory aesthetics as well as the design and inclusion of the water territories.

---

@Richard: Indeed - Monaco and San Marino are both so small that their borders aren't shown on the map I'm using, so I never would have noticed them. I did realize Vatican City is a country, but as it's only the size of a city block I left it out intentionally *for the time being* (keep reading for my reason). Andorra does have visible borders on the full-size version of the map I'm using, but with the scaled-down version I'm tracing over it's barely a dot, so I overlooked it. I will say that currently I don't expect very small countries like those to be included (if you noticed my inclusion of Singapore, that also has an off-shore island I can include which will make it much more distinguishable once added). However, their inclusion will be revised after one of the first few rounds of testing, where I will decide how much of RvW's enlargement suggestion I can include. Too many enlarged territories will make the map crowded and hard to play, not enough enlargement and some territories will be too small and the map once again becomes hard to play. I'll *consider* crude enlargement for such territories (throwing in a large dot to represent each one) but part of the goal is to keep it geographically accurate, so I'm not keen on that. I'll recommend holding further thoughts on the subject until I get to the enlargement testing and can focus it on more exclusively.

As for Burma, that is the name present on both the 2008 map that I'm tracing, and the 2011 map that I may switch to. Is there a significance to using Myanmar or some sort of compromise instead?

Obviously you may have to fix some centerpoints, but according to my tests (I tried it out on some old maps of mine) it gives pretty good results. (I was surprised myself.)

You are right, I misunderstood your ports idea. It is quite interesting, but, unless you create almost as many water territories as land ones, it would still allow to travel from Japan to East Africa in just a few turns (essentially turning oceans into one, huge, interconnected chokepoint). But you're right, it should be tested.

I'll get cracking at the connection maker tomorrow.