Here is my map of scandinavia and Northern europe in 1730:

https://www.warlight.net/Play?PreviewMap=50074

I have around 100 territories done, out of 300-700 that I'm aiming for.

I'd like to get some feedback on the idea of the castles, and if I decide to continue it(most of the time I abandon map projects after drawing a few territories for one reason or another :P), Some volunteers to test it out.

Edited 12/1/2015 05:56:10

Looks awesome. The castles seem fine. Typically, you'd see something like that with a territory embedded in another territory, but your style allows the castles to be represented artistically, so that's a nice touch. It could perhaps be slightly confusing on the first play of the map that the castles appear to touch other surrounding territories, but the little yellow roads are easy to spot and understand.

Just curious, are the placements of the castles and the little roads geographically 'correct' or are they just connected to a randomly-chosen (by you) neighbouring territory. E.g. Is the castle Indalkirck really located nestled between Alfine, Frosso Nolder, and Aas, and you just decided that you can only get there from Aas; or is the castle actually properly located inside Aas, and you just nestled it there to fit the castle artwork nicely in the map?

[P.S. If you find yourself often starting and never finishing a bunch of projects, and this is a chronic life-long problem for you, you may want to get checked out for ADHD (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attention_deficit_hyperactivity_disorder), or perhaps it could be a different condition with similar symptoms (e.g. depression, anxiety, etc.). I have ADHD myself, and didn't find out until just a few years ago, which is why I mention it.]

Looks good, the castles are cool :) Would be happy to test!

Looks amazing, would love to test

Just curious, are the placements of the castles and the little roads geographically 'correct' or are they just connected to a randomly-chosen (by you) neighbouring territory. E.g. Is the castle Indalkirck really located nestled between Alfine, Frosso Nolder, and Aas, and you just decided that you can only get there from Aas; or is the castle actually properly located inside Aas, and you just nestled it there to fit the castle artwork nicely in the map?

In that example Aas, Alfne, and Frosso Nolder are just nearby villages, all of which are located to the southeast of Indalkirck. The castle its self is actually located within Indalkirck, or possibly surrounding it, I'm not exactly clear on that one.

I actually made only one connection out of the castle to reflect the fortified nature of castles.

Here is the map I'm starting from, so you can take a look:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e5/1730_Homann_Map_of_Scandinavia%2C_Norway%2C_Sweden%2C_Denmark%2C_Finland_and_the_Baltics_-_Geographicus_-_Scandinavia-homann-1730.jpg

So even though on my map Alfne, Frosso Nolder, and Aas are depicted as pretty much completely surrounding Indalkirck, on a real map all three are actually towns located to the southeast of it, and a good deal away.

(strangely enough, I'm not really affected in any other areas of my life too heavily, the place where it's most notable is with warlight maps; I've worked on around 40 projects, but only ever published 9)

Edited 12/1/2015 15:18:03

So even though on my map Alfne, Frosso Nolder, and Aas are depicted as pretty much completely surrounding Indalkirck, on a real map all three are actually towns located to the southeast of it, and a good deal away.

Ah. If you wanted to make it a bit more geographical in that example, you might have the castle linking to Frosso Nolder instead of Aas. But I understand that it may work better as a game map with not-exactly-geographical connections.

Also, I just noticed a mis-spelling. I thought you typoed Alfne in your reply, but then saw that the original map also has Alfne. So I thought *I* had typoed Alfine, but checking your map, it is indeed mis-spelled Alfine on your map.

Edited 12/1/2015 19:42:54

Hmm, i'm not sure why I got it right in my reply and not on the actual map, but thanks for letting me know about it :)

Looks fun.

I think this could be a great map, but two things truly bother me much: The Latin names (a Nordic feel, with all Swedish tongue place names, or autonyms.) and the castles are drawn weirdly. I think it would be better if they were more like Apollo's Greater England map.

Examples of the names that bother me:
Scania -> Skåne
Bieking -> Blekinge (and this isn't even right in Latin - the Latin is Bleki(n)gia)
Smalandia -> Småland (again, not even right in Latin - Latin is Smolandia)
Gotteborg -> Göteborg (Latin Gothenburgum/Gothoburgum)

And if you are going to do Latin, at least do the Latin right. I can help fix the names.

I'm not actually trying to do latin, i'm just using the names that the author of the original map(see link above) used. The Original author was a German guy, and maybe he spoke some kind of weird dialect of latin where the Names are actually correct? I'm not really comfortable changing the names on the map to the latin I & other modern people know, since there may be some archaic reason it's written the way it is.

And it appears that Smalandia is actually not Latin, but Polish. I honestly could not tell you why there are some latin names and some Polish ones on the map, But perhaps this is the case for some of the other examples you cited as well?

https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smalandia

As for the Castles, I think it's mostly subjective; A few other people in this thread seem to like The Way I have it right now. Personally, I want the castles to really pop out, which IMO they don't really on Medieval England.

I understand, but then make it look like an old, antique map. More inner detail would be nice (such as the great Swedish waters, the Karelian-Murmansk swamps. In the map, they use ſ instead of s in most places. In the top left title, it's trois, not trojs. I really doubt it's trojs, just the font the map's maker was using made I seem like J. Covron -> Covron-. Sueciae -> Sueciæ. Dania -> Daniæ, Vegia -> Vegiæ,

What was your criteria for making castles?

Two cool things I think you should give to your map. 1: Use nonentity labels on the map, if you style this right, it can look really great. Something like this was originally going to be put on to the Latin Eurasian map but ran out of memory to do it. This can be done at the end, it's least needed, and might have to be cut.

2: Make a smaller river minimap that connects castles together. Perhaps you can make a smaller forts and citadels that are connected to the map. Anyhow, I'm thinking in a style like that Netherlands map, but it could be much more aesthetically better.

I'm actually pretty bad at doing art for maps, which is why basically the most complex thing you'll see in any of my maps is a blue background. I'd love to make it look really old and antique, But I'm just not really sure how to tbh.

There are probably quite a few of these spelling mistakes on the map, since I have a pretty hard time reading the Fonts on old maps.

I like to use Only latin characters on my maps since It's a whole lot easier, but Now that I think about it it seems like a pretty important thing for this part of the world, so i'll go back and Fix those. I'd appreciate it if you could let me know about any other ones you see.

EDIT: Æ looks really dumb in the font I'm using for the Top text, so I guess I'll stick with AE for now.

For Castles, I used the cities that had the three building castles icons next to them on the Original map when possible, but If there weren't any, I used the two-Building ones, and if there weren't any Castles at All, I used the Triangular icons, which I believe represent Fortified villages on the original map.

I probably sound like a noob for saying this, and I did honestly try to look it up on the internet before asking, but what's a nonentity label?

Edited 12/2/2015 02:56:09

I haven't really made a map, so I'm not too sure either on "artwork". Ask zxctycxz, I think he'd be your best ask, or lionheart or Urfang.

I think this is just a problem with your eyesight (no offence), I think if you greaten the picture's contrast a bit, it could help. Be sure to zoom in as well. At this resolution, it's not really a problem for me, anyway.

ſ was a letter in the English alphabet, Wiktionary says it's now archaic (but not obsolete). It is a Latin letter, though. It's the older form of the ß (if you know some German). Other than ſ, watch out for æ and œ, and even ß (Rußa near Novgorod's hub).

Just change fonts.

Those are really hard to see. Just beware that following your plan might mean something is skipped. I'm not even fully sure since I can't really see them, but wouldn't "Petersburg" be a fort there as well? Think about doing castles independently of the map.

Nonentity label - I just meant this as not something (an entity) that you can click on. Just making some nonclickable labels "Muscovitum Mare", "Mare Album", "Gothland I.", so on over the waterbodies (under the islands) or the landbodies (but not in a blocking way).

What do you think of the river minimap idea?

No offense taken, I actually wear glasses, and I haven't gotten new ones in several years, so my eyesight is pretty poor.

It isn't obsolete, but it isn't on my keyboard either, which is what I meant.

I'll definitely put some nonentity labels on if I have space after I finish drawing territories, but currently I've already used up around half of the available 2 mb.

I kind of like the Mini-map idea, I'm just not really sure how to implement it on this map. Maybe jsut Overlay it on the southeastern corner of the map?

Wow, that looks pretty good. That's a large range for territories, though.

Edited 12/2/2015 04:23:31

This was the Holland map I was referring to earlier.

https://www.warlight.net/Play?PreviewMap=14225

Something like the bottom right corner, but put into its own rectangle, with the title Camini Fluminum (Waterways, literally the Burns' Paths) (Latin, which seems to be the tongue used for the most important map bits) , and with circles at each vertex making their own port territories (or maybe being the same territory as the fort) to see the outlook better. Also, I suggest making water connections only noding castles through seas (as well as through burns), or perhaps making the same plate system that 1066 map had (but still noding only at the castle-forts).

https://www.warlight.net/Play?PreviewMap=19414

Just shortcut any diacrits not on your keyboard, or just have it on your clipboard, or save it on a document.

I really like the plate idea, and I'll probably put it in, but I'm a bit uncomfortable with taking a huge chunk of russia out of the picture like that with the Waterway minimap. This isn't an issue on the Netherlands map you linked since it has a bunch of land around the edge of the map that's just empty. However, this isn't really the case on my map. I'm planning to use all the land i've drawn for territories, and my initial vision for the map had 1500+ teritories. This gradually decreased from various factors, and Now i'm only anticipating having 500 or less, and I'm don't really want to decrease this anymore, even if it does exclude some functionality.

Now I could see just taking out the title text and sticking it up in the top-left corner, and I may experiment with this further into the development process.

Edited 12/2/2015 13:46:07

I really like the plate idea, and I'll probably put it in, but I'm a bit uncomfortable with taking a huge chunk of russia out of the picture like that with the Waterway minimap. This isn't an issue on the Netherlands map you linked since it has a bunch of land around the edge of the map that's just empty. However, this isn't really the case on my map. I'm planning to use all the land i've drawn for territories, and my initial vision for the map had 1500+ teritories. This gradually decreased from various factors, and Now i'm only anticipating having 500 or less, and I'm don't really want to decrease this anymore, even if it does exclude some functionality.

Well, I thought this went without saying, just put it somewhere in the North Sea or some other great waterbody with loads of space. Extend the map east/northward if you have to (groundedly, though).

I was actually doing some thinking about the mini-map idea, and I decided that there may be a major strategical problem with implementing it in this map.

All of the castles are their own bonuses, and right now you basically have to take a whole bunch of non-castle land in between the castles in order to get the castle bonuses. However, if there was a network connecting the castles together, there's basically no point to anything besides the castles, since if you own all of them you can basically crush everyone else.

As it stands right now, if you take all the land needed to reach a castle and the castle, you basically have a little bit less than a 1:1 army to territories ratio, with say 62 income for 67 territories. If you connect the castles together, this can possibly increase to 3:1.

This was actually a problem with the plate system, but in the end I mitigated it by adding ships in the middle of the plates and making them negative bonuses. However, I'm not really sure how I would fix the land ones. Any suggestions?

Scotland is a part of Scandinavia.