Alright. So nine days short of a year working on this project, I finally have it in the testing phase. Here is a link to the map:

https://www.warlight.net/Play?PreviewMap=43909

For those of you who are more familiar with this world, you will notice that the map is actually a timeline of sorts, since It includes all regions that existed from the beginning of the second age until the beginning of the fourth.

For example. not only was Gondor founded after the fall of Numenor, but the gondor bonus on this map only includes the land that Gondor controlled at the end of the war of the ring, not Gondor at it's greatest extent.

I need some volunteers to help me test it, post below to let me know if you're interested :)

Yay! You made a good looking, realistic map of Arda.
Firstly, some serious Lotr fans are probably going to be angry that you squashed 3 ages together however, with the lack of place names in the second age, I think that is fine.
However, more on a warlight based note, you made the bonuses generally very small and similar sized- not much variation for stategic bonus taking.
On a side not, are most non-Middle Earth/ Numeror territories just made up?

Great map! I really like the design. I would wish to test it.

nice map of Arda, however I never heard of a continent south of Far Harad, what is your source?

visually appealing. It looks very nice. For better gameplay I would suggest to set more water way connections.

Edited 5/21/2015 13:32:27

Looks great! I'm not up on my lore outside of LOTR, but the map looks good and I'm looking forward to testing it.

I second Ranek on adding sea connections, especially in the south half.

Edited 5/21/2015 13:46:03

nice map of Arda, however I never heard of a continent south of Far Harad, what is your source?

The source is a map made by tolkien that can be found somewhere in HoME(the Ambarkanta maybe?):

http://img1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20120212234857/lotr/images/b/bd/Arda001.gif

However, more on a warlight based note, you made the bonuses generally very small and similar sized- not much variation for stategic bonus taking.
On a side not, are most non-Middle Earth/ Numeror territories just made up?

Some people may disagree with the bonus Scheme, but Most people will agree with it. I feel that there is enough variation in the terrain to balance out the minor variations in bonus sizes.

And yes; Most of the names for Harad, Rhun, and the Dark land are completely non-canon. In fact, If you look up the translations for them, mostly they're just complete nonsense. I did use what little names were given for the eastern lands, such as hildorien and cuvienien.

If you're is interested in doing so, I used mostly Neo-khuzdul and Adunaic for Harad and rhun, and mostly Sindarin for the Dark land.

However, Valinor uses no non-canon names, although the borders may not be quite accurate. I used the description from the valaquenta to set up Valinor. The Land of the Sun in the far east is also almost canon, since it was stated to be an empty land.

visually appealing. It looks very nice. For better gameplay I would suggest to set more water way connections.

I think I will do this, possibly before I set up any test games. I've been debating setting up a haradrim/numenorean voyage to avathar. It would definitely not make sense in-universe since Aman was really hard to reach, but I think it may improve gameplay.

Edited 5/21/2015 18:31:41

One other bit of gameplay feedback. I really like maps with super-bonuses that contain continents or regions that were unified at some point. Could you add super-bonuses for Valinor, Land of the Sun, north and south Middle Earth, etc?

I was just thinking about doing that, and Yes, I will do that for sure.

Alright, So I've added an additional Ship in the south, and some super bonuses. Let me know if you think any other super bonuses should be on the map.

I'm hoping to get a test game going tomorrow night, here's the list of testers:

The Good Adolf Hitler
Angry Panda
Judeburger


If anyone else wants to test, just let me know!