I have two questions to ask for a project I'm working on. I've been thinking about them for a few days and have not come up with any good answer, so now I'd like more opinions. https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1mWiSu1QNEuwA66f8YFVclJs_lqmMm8QdizowznpZXUk/edit?pli=1
Thank you

Done.

Thank you for your detailed answer. If you don't mind, I would like to know your reasoning for question 2, especially about the jungle, Himalayas, and Sahara. I would rank all those to be harder, which is why I'd like to know your thought process.

Done it too. I tried not to, but I think I have been somehow influenced by politics of the region (example: Australian Desert less dangerous than Sahara), anyway hope that's ok.

@Georg Friedrich Ferdinand, Prinz von Preußen

Jungle: If you hear jungle, you tend to think of the sparsely populated jungles of South America, right? They are however more the exeption, than the rule. Many places of India are jungle after all. You see the Central African Jugle from a European explorers perspective. Yes, there are deadly disseases than historically hindered colonization by white people - but sub-saharan Africans are adapted:

"The sickle cell trait provides a survival advantage against malaria fatality over people with normal hemoglobin in regions where malaria is endemic. The trait is known to cause significantly fewer deaths due to malaria, especially when Plasmodium falciparum is the causative organism. This is a prime example of natural selection, evidenced by the fact that the geographical distribution of the gene for hemoglobin S and the distribution of malaria in Africa virtually overlap. Because of the unique survival advantage, people with the trait become increasingly numerous as the number of malaria-infected people increases. Conversely, people who have normal hemoglobin tend to succumb to the complications of malaria.
The way in which sickle cell protects against malaria is attributed to several different things. One of the more common explanations is that the sickle hemoglobin inhibits the plasmodium parasite from infecting the red blood cells which reduces the number of malaria parasites to infect the host. Another factor is the production of heme oxygenase-1 (HO-1) enzyme, which is highly present in the sickle hemoglobin. This enzyme produces carbon monoxide which has been proven to protect against cerebral malaria." [from wiki]

CC BY-SA 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1337145 An example of the advanced kingdoms and states in the region.

Edited 9/1/2021 09:37:33

@Georg Friedrich Ferdinand, Prinz von Preußen

Himalayas: That region may have the highest mountains in the world, but the valleys are highly populated. Even thou the majority of Nepals area are frozen peaks, it has more than double the population density of Spain (not exactly a hostile environment there!).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nepal

In fact, the high mountains hold the monsoon clouds and give the land way more water that it needs.

Some pretty pictures:



The capital Kathmandu.



Rural regions.

@Georg Friedrich Ferdinand, Prinz von Preußen

The Sahara may be the largest desert in the world, but it is far from being as hostile as Antarctica or the Atacama. Its varying geography makes it rather diverse and it therefore has many oasises that are quite livable. The total vegetation- less sand sites may be nice photo or filming sites, but they are not the norm.

Many places there look like this:



With the valleys between mountains more like this:



"The Garamantes (Berber: iɣerman, "castles, cities") were an ancient civilisation based primarily in present-day Libya. They most likely descended from Iron Age Berber tribes from the Sahara, although the earliest known record of their existence dates to the fifth century BC. Little remains of their civilization, as their epigraphy is nearly indecipherable; much of what is known comes from contemporaneous Greek and Roman foreign accounts and modern archaeological findings.
The Garamantes emerged as a major regional power in the mid-second century AD, establishing a kingdom that spanned roughly 180,000 km2 (70,000 sq mi) in the Fezzan region of southern Libya. Their growth and expansion rested on a complex and extensive qanat irrigation system (known as foggaras in Berber), which supported a strong agricultural economy and large population. They subsequently developed the first urban society in a major desert that was not centered on a river system; their largest town, Garama, had a population of around four thousand, with an additional six thousand living in surrounding suburban areas.
At its height, the Garamantian kingdom enjoyed a "standard of living far superior to that of any other ancient Saharan society." The Garamantes annexed and dominated surrounding tribes and relied heavily on enslaved people for their prosperity. The state began to decline in the fifth century as their source of water diminished, causing their kingdom to fragment and ultimately become annexed by surrounding powers.
Until the mid-20th century, the Garamantes were believed to be a small and minor desert tribe. Beginning in the 1960s, archaeological excavations have revealed that the Garamantes were "brilliant farmers, resourceful engineers, and enterprising merchants who produced a remarkable civilization." [from wiki]

Edited 9/1/2021 10:01:27

Demographics of selected regions/states for the year 1700:

Tokugawa Shogunate: 91,66 pop/km2
Mughal India: 39,6 pop/km2
Kingdom of France: 39,47 pop/km2
Kingdom of England: 33,83 pop/km2
Qing China: 23,94 pop/km2
Malla Dynasty Nepal: 20,77 pop/km2
Habsburg Spain Proper: 14,62 pop/km2
Ottoman Anatolian Core lands: 10,72 pop/km2
Kingdom of Kongo: 3,86 pop/km2
Kingdom of Sweden: 3,3 pop/km2
Safavid Iran: 1,6 pop/km2

Edited 9/1/2021 12:06:07

@ Kretoma

Wow. Thank you very much for all this information. I didn't know the Himalayas and Sahara were able to be so settleable.

You are welcome!

I still hope, i gave you not wrong or biased information. What are you doing with it exactly? If you are planning to do a map, i would advise to make the bonuses rather diverse. i.e. in the Libyan desert: Coastal area- postive bonus -> negative bonus -> oasis - positive bonus -> negative bonus. and so forth. There are huge differences in how valuable the locations are, some oasis are just a dozen trees in a valley, others have millions of trees, big lakes and towns. The same goes for the harsh places. It makes a huge difference if you have shrubs and grass following your trail or not. If there are caves or not. The same is true for mountains and jungles.

If you are doing a military map, the question is way more difficult. As i have shown before, Iran in 1700 (and today!) is vastly underpopulated compared to India. Still, there was historically one(!) sucessful Indian invasion of Iran and dozens the other way around. Clearly living in Iran made men better warriors than living in India (for a ton of reasons i will not show here).

Never mind, if you still have questions, just PM me. ;)

Have a nice day! :D

I'm only creating a game at the moment. A map would be a good idea and I'll probably implement that in my two map ideas. Thank you for giving some much detailed information.

To whomever replied "10 Texas because it's full of uneducated people :(" for the first and "wow, that's alot of places better than Texas" for the second: I am requiring serious answers. This is not a political or slanderous thread. Take it elsewhere.