If possible be innovative and be the first mapmaker to make a decent map of Brazil! :D And by that I mean make all states a territory. Ain't that hard, it's just 26 (27 if you count the federal district with the capital). We got the world's 7th GDP, so it's definetely not a waste and the fifth land area so you have plenty of space for it!)

Maybe the northeastern states will give quite a headache, and maybe you'll have to merge some, but a good split would go like this (if you really need the space; and Bahia can be split into two since the inner parts of it is clay we *graciously* took from Pernambuco when they were getting too cozy with the dutch. The coast however is the only part of the state that matters, the one I'm in and where we have civilized big cities. Inner Bahia is basically small mountains and then a small desert):



On an unrelated note, I caught this abomination in Europe :P

I'm trying to get the svg uploaded with China included, which I did succeed in doing eventually, but it came at a terrible price lol :D It's probably going to take me ~20 minutes to fix it I'd imagine.

I'm probably going to finish up china once I get europe fixed again, then finish up Bhutan, Nepal, Korea, indochina, etc before moving on to south america. Then you can grill me about my terrible judgement on merging stuff in brazil :P

If you want to, I can just send you a good merge/split suggestion on a map :p

Sure, The less redoing I have to go through the better :)

It's past midnight here and I'm going to hit the sack. Mail me anytime, and around ~12am here I'll send you a division that does just fine.

Do specify some details, though; how many territories you want/expect, for example.

Edited 3/4/2016 03:18:02

Out of curiosity what criteria are you using to name the territories, I am looking at Mexico and some have the names of the State (like Veracruz) while others are names of cities even though its the whole state (like Tijuana).

In most countries, the territory is named after the largest city in the region. This isn't true for some countries, the big one that comes to mind is russia, where the territory names are named after the regions they're based on.

The example you cited is simply a case of Veracruz being the largest city in the veracruz state, Resulting in the territory being named Veracruz. There are inconsistencies in naming in that I used region names in some countries and city names in others, but all naming is internally consistent in that countries with region names are actually region names and not cities and vice versa.

Coloured is defineatly better, especialy this scheme where you have 4 colours that you cycle throigh. Are maps like these usually black, because it looks better on view selected territories or something?

Also, the new GDP bonuses look really good - a major improvement on the original idea.

The only possible advantage I can think of for all black borders is that it's politically neutral, and you can build your own nation pretty easily in a role-playing game. Taking for example Czech Republic, Munich, Vienna and Slovakia on a black map gets you what can be reasonably taken for a nation, since all the borders are the same color. Take those territories on my map as it is now, You get a red one, an orange one, a green one and another orange one.

I did do some test games and it isn't a huge problem since your color fills in the territory, making it very clear that all this land is unified, but IMO it still is a small disadvantage.

Not a big enough if you ask me.

you should add the principality of sealand to it

LOL no that would be a waste of space. ;)

Black borders would look better. Lots of colors tend to be annoying for diplomacy because it can make it hard to tell who is which slot at a first glance.

Definetely not... As long as you aren't using shitty temporary color changes.

Do what you want but if you keep the colors it's going to look like shit. The preview looks nice and fruity but with player colors, especially if players overlap multiple countries it's just going to look bad. World Nations is very popular because players keep their uniform appearance when they spread around.
The colored outlines can change the perception of the color.

If or when you test the map, simulate a chaotic diplomacy. For example, if India invades Pakistan, the territory in Pakistan will be an eyesore, not like a part of India. Test this map and I believe you will see exactly what I'm talking about.

Edited 3/5/2016 23:36:00

I did notice it while testing, which is what got me thinking about changing it back in the first place. I kind of want to change it to all black borders, but at the same time I see thousands upon thousands of game of thrones diplomacy games being played on the westeros and the free cities map, which not only uses colors, but doesn't even have single territory bonuses.

For anyone who's wondering, here's a sort of example of what we're discussing:

http://i1080.photobucket.com/albums/j338/bb3bb3/Play%20Risk%20Online%20Free%20%20%20WarLight_zpsum0eakni.png

Colors are fine

Honestly, no, it doesn't seem that bad to me.

Anyone who often plays on other diplomacy maps such as 30YW is probably already used to having conflicting player and border colors. It's a small detail that doesn't even cross my mind. Hell, if you sent me that picture without saying anything, I'd probably just say "nice! what's the scenario in play there?".

World Nations is very popular because players keep their uniform appearance when they spread around.

Untrue, that's some nitpicking there.

If you're going on nitpick mode, at least go deeper into it; both World Nations maps actually have different borders for different countries. Doubt it? Well, check this out!



It's really, REALLY clear that borders have a different width - national borders are very thin, while international ones are considerably larger. And nobody complains about it; you have to be really nitpicky to be annoyed by that. It's not really a big deal.

WN2014 is not known for that, it's known for:

1) Single territory bonuses makes it easy to balance and distribute
2) The map is general is fairly good
3) It's the easiest one to make custom scenarios at
4) Simple games with simple rules and distribution are very popular on Real-Time games

So, if you ask me, I say keep the colors. It looks great, and lets you get used to political borders much easier imo. On maps like this I'd probably not do things like thinking Balochistan is part of Iran...

You're nitpicking as well. Players only play maps with colorful borders because there are no viable alternatives to those maps, and those maps have multi-territory bonuses. That's not to say that they wouldn't prefer black borders provided those maps had single-territory bonuses.

Colorful borders are great for conventional games with multi-territory bonuses but make diplomacies messy. Something looks off when you extend into another color, it isn't good for nation building, and single-territory bonuses make colors obsolete.

Indeed it's a small detail, but if you had to pick colorful or black you would certainly pick all black for a nice clean look.

As for bold borders, those would look better trimmed up but they're not as awkward because they don't conflict with the player colors.

Edited 3/6/2016 04:45:29

Players only play maps with colorful borders because there are no viable alternatives to those maps, and those maps have multi-territory bonuses.

Occasus Universalis has colored borders and single territory bonuses and no one complains about it for a very simple reason - the colors not only look better on the map and fit well, they also help with distribution a lot.

Indeed it's a small detail, but if you had to pick colorful or black you would certainly pick all black for a nice clean look.

Nope, I'd definetely pick Colored because it looks so much better when making distributions and is less of a headache to make scenarios on. Specially for players just starting out - so they won't make basic mistakes in the distribution due to lack of knowledge in geography. I'm sick of opening an RT game, checking out the scenario and seeing people splitting Malaysia between Indonesia or Indochina because they don't know it's the same country.

Edited 3/6/2016 04:57:22