UPDATE: Here's the map (in development) https://www.warzone.com/SinglePlayer?PreviewMap=74413#

Hello all,

I'm back in mapping after months of inactivity. I've started making a huge map (2000+ territory) of the Holy Roman Empire and its surroundings, which includes every little pseudo-state that you can possibly imagine. Now, unlike the Ancient Middle East map before (which I might revisit and finish), I have all of the research/information that I need: Voltaire's Nightmare, an HRE overall mod of a game called EU4.

Now, I want to start taking ideas from you guys to see how this map can work out whilst developing it.

My idea is that the main map would be comprised of geopolitical bonuses and superbonuses, think places like the Balkans and Westphalia, their idea and borders of where it starts/ends depends on who you ask; they aren't concrete borders made by nations like say Italy and Switzerland. The concrete borders will come in through a timeline table made on the righthand side of the map; specific years like 1054 and 1618 will be shown, and the corresponding 40 nations for that time will be shown as bonuses for their borders at that time. Look and "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich," Germany's borders changes as time goes on. Also included will be a lot of rivers, mountain ranges, and other decorations.

So, what am I asking for from you guys? I want to know your input on what you think about my idea proposed, and any suggestions you want to make. Specifically, the idea of having geopolitical bonuses and understanding the playability of this map. Lastly, I'll add images later on today to show my progress in this map so far, and the reference images I'm using.

Thank you all for helping, and I hope that you guys will be supportive in the making of this map.

Edited 8/18/2018 23:39:47

Here are the images:

One part of the geopolitical borders I was talking about:


The territories of the map:


The rivers of the map:


A reference for decoration:


A reference for countries in the HRE for 1054:


The state of the map right now (the timeline bonus feature is shown; also, a 20x20 red circle near Catalonia):


Lastly, here's a bonus image of the territories of Alsace-Lorraine in 1871.


Edited 8/16/2018 15:19:48

Awesome idea! What years will this cover? I see lots of potential for a HRE map. I would also include special bonuses for controlling things such as all the free imperial cities and electors and other elements of the HRE system. If you ever finish this map and require play testing, feel free to invite me. Good luck :D

This will cover the years 1054 - 1871. About special bonuses, maybe, but things like imperial cities and electors change over the course of time. Feel free to also give me suggestions for what years you want to see as well (from 1054 - 1871). Thanks for your suggestion!

Another thing, I'm thinking of making it a diplo style map, meaning that each territory will have its own bonus, based on how developed the territory is. The problem is, some of my territories are so tiny that I can't fit a bonus and an army number in there. Any help?

Edited 8/16/2018 17:16:04

Perhaps put the small territory bonuses to the side? like maybe on the sea somwhere?

There's too many of them and they're too far out from sea, I don't think that could work.

Edited 8/17/2018 00:54:39

A historical timeline and geopolitical regions and every territory seems to many bonuses for each territory for me. I would pick two of those at most.
If every territory has a bonus, you don't need the geopolitical region bonuses anymore - especially not since the definition of those regions will change over time

Placing the bonus links is a problem if you have the smallest territories possible. You could work with bonus colours, where every colour has it's own value (green = 1 income, blue = 2 income, red = 3 income, etc.). In that case I would use at most six different colours and values, or it gets a confusing rainbow very fast. Another problem that approach has is that it's not customisable (as the bonus value is set in the map, not the settings).

The historical timeline serves as a guide for scenario makers to make realistic borders with countries. Since this map has so many territories in specific areas, people can be confused as to where the borders are. I'll have those bonuses set to 0.

As for not having individual bonuses for each territory, the problem arises that certain areas may not have much of an importance compared to others. Here's an example:
You can see that Paris is way more developed than its surrounding countryside. If Paris and the countryside were made into 1 bonus, however, I will have to find the mean value of all of those territories, undermining the territory value of Paris, and increasing the territory value of the countryside.

Geopolitical regions also reflect the ambitions that a nation has to conquer a specific region. For example, it could be Schwyz's ambition to conquer all of Switzerland (Schwyz was a tiny state that over time grew until it covered all of Switzerland). Same goes with Prussia and Germany, or France and uniting all of France.

If I were have to choose 2 out of those 3, I would choose including the historical timeline and the individual bonuses. I feel like people can understand enough as to know which region they want to conquer.

Lastly, as for the colors, the range of the importance between one territory and another is vast, so I would need many colors for that to work, which will be confusing.


I think what I'll have to resort to doing is to combine multiple territories into one, which will undermine the historical accuracy of the map, but will increase the playability of it. I don't see any other solution.

This all looks all fine and dandy until you notice this is basically Voltaire's Nightmare from EU4 turned into a map

It is, but they allowed me to make this map. I'll give all credit to VN for research.

Update: I think I've figured out how to make the bonus problem work, I'll implement something sort of like Belgian's version of making bonuses. Go to the map "Diplomacy World Huge" to see what I mean.

Update 2: I've got a map going, scroll to the first post to see the link.

Edited 8/19/2018 23:29:24