I will test.

beautiful map, good color coordination, good connections and good accuracy, i like it and would be happy to test
which colonies will go in all the lower boxes? maybe you could make a few more connections from europe to the north american colonies like connecting england to the english antilles and then the english antilles to the american colonies, also maybe a more direct connection from spain to say snato domingo, instead of having to go through the canaries and venezuela

I would like to do that, but if connections to colonies start to look very messy if too many are added, so I need to be careful where they go. Notwithstanding, I will be adding some more connections.

The third large box is Brazil and Guyana.
The other two Atlantic boxes are the Azores and the Gold Cost.
In the Bottom left, it's the East India.
The other two are India, one around Gujarat, and the other is the tip of the Peninsula and Ceylon

Remember to think strategically about where you put the connections e.g. not to create a place where you have a really effective choke point, as anyone on the smaller side of it would be more likely to win, which could happen if you don't have many inter-box connections

You didn't respond to my question about the Mega-bonuses

I don't like how you've named some of the British territories, a lot of places you haven't included had a larger population and were a lot more important back then. Also the positioning and bonuses of some places aren't correct:

England:
-Canterbury instead of Dover
-Colchester >> Harlow
-Chester >> Warrington
-King's Lynn >> Swaffham
-Cambridge >> Peterborough
-Lincoln >> Grimsby
-Basingstoke >> Alton (or I guess even Reading?)
-Wooler >> Alnwick
-Salisbury >> Southampton (Give Isle of Wight to Portsmouth)
-Coventry >> Birmingham
-You've placed Wales too far east, half of Newton should be English territory and Shrewsbury)
-Oxford >> Witney
-Aylesbury >> Oxford
-Brighton >> Hastings
-Durham >> Hartlepool
-Carnforth - Lancaster?

Wales:
-Wrexham >> Deeside
-Aberystwyth >> Borth
-Bangor or Caernarfon >> Holyhead
-I don't think Newton should be a territory. Half should eb given to wales, half would become Shrewsbury.

Scotland:
-Sanqhar should be Sanquhar
-Edinborough should be Edinburgh
-Stonehaven >> Aberdeen
-Stirling >> Dumfermline

@ Apollo, some of those towns you want to get rid of had a greater significance back then than they do now and some of your new suggestions have a lesser significance back then than they do now. For example, Salisbury used to be one of the largest cities in England (which is why it has the largest spiral cathedral in the country). Lincoln should stay ahead of Grimsby, the clues in the name of Lincolnshire. Lincoln is the county town of Lincolnshire, which makes it very evident of its greater historical significance than that of Grimsby.

I don't want to spend ages going through every example you've listed, but for historical maps, like this one, please try to ignore the modern significance of the towns in question and please refer only to their historical significance.

I'll think you'll find that actually it's the opposite way around. My suggestions are on the left not the right. Sorry it's a little confusing.

I indicated this by the first change: Canterbury Instread of Dover. For the following I added >> to replace "instead of", to save me writing it out every time. I thought everyone would recognise that?

Edited 2/8/2015 19:19:22

Ah ok, I just interpreted it as an arrow (i.e. going to).

Not keen on the bonuses of England either:

-Black county didn't exist until 1840s
-South Anglia? Is it?
-Midlands is a bit to low I think.
-Wessex? I don't think it was called that in 1600's. Maybe South West England and Hampshire?

It's Black Country not Black County, but if it's wrong, I'll remember to change it.
The region I called South Anglia was labeled as such somewhere, but it would seem this isn't a particularry good name, so I'll see if I can find a better one. As for Wessex, it's actually where I live at the moment, and the name is still used quite a lot around here even today. Examples include Wessex Water and Wessex Bus.

I think you made two mistakes there.

1: 'Spanish Town' during Spanish tenure in Jamaica island. I found St. Jago de la Vega as the original name.

2: France in Hispaniola island by 1618 and Port-au-Prince founded. I guess you can go with it as this is a better distribution than Spain controlling all Greater Antilles.

2.1: But Port-au-Prince was certainly less important than Santo Domingo (current Dominican Republica's capital).

Btw, loved your job. Will Spanish Empire's territories in Americas make an appearance (Viceroyalty of Peru, Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata, Viceroyalty of New Spain etc)?

EDIT: Because of the thread name I thought you would make all colonies. Now I got the Thirty Years' War thing.

Edited 2/9/2015 01:28:19

Well this map isn't really 1618 anymore, it's some time between 1625 and 1635, as shown by the colonies. The problem is, Spain often ends up really OP in these sorts of maps, because it had loads more territory than all the other nations. That's why I've tried to miss out New Spain, Peru and the others.

Edited 2/9/2015 02:07:19

It will be an excellent map. Maybe the first one wich can represent the HRE in its complexity. And it can fulfill the WL playability and historical accuracy as well. Great job, I would like to test it.

If you need it I can help to find source for contemporary eastern european administrative divisions. For example the captaincies of the Habsburg occupied Hungary, vilayets of Ottoman Europe, counties of Transyvania, or Vlach, Moldovan, Polish-Lithuan stuff.

Are you going to leave north America how it is?Maybe it would be good to add some idian lands

Is there any particular reason why you have chosen to include so many Imperial cities? With this many, it might make that area a bit overpowered (i prosume they aren't the final bonus values though). Also Milan should be included as a city.

If you made Scotland a diferent coulour due to it being a personal union, shouldn't you make Portugal a seporate coulour too?

Urfang: The Map I'm using at the moment, rather amazingly, shows all the administrative regions, so I'm mostly okay to be honest. However, it doesn't show border for the various Russian Principalties or the three Ottoman dependencies in Europe, Wallachia, Moldova and Transylvania. If you an find any of that, then I would be very grateful. One other thing, those two territories just east of Pomerania, do you know what they are part of? I can't find out.

Lionheart: I'll probably end up including North America tribes. What I normally do with maps is do the essential stuff first then add other things that might make it more interesting. For example, I wasn't actually going to include Kievan Rus' on A Tale of Four Cities at first.

MrOobling: I'm glad you brought this up actually. As you may or may not know, the Thirty Years War mainly took place in the HRE, where there were valuable yet divided states. I want to reflect this in the map by making the armies-to-territories ratio high, but at the same time have (almost) every last duchy, bishopric, county and so on. This should force the hosts of diplomacy games to set it up well.

Colours are supposed to represent where the real power lies. In Iberia, the real power was with the Iberian Union, as it was a very close personal union. It was similar in Austria, where it is also all the same colour. However, with the Stuart Domains and HRE, the power was mainly with the individual kings (former) and duchies etc (latter), so they are all different colours. Does that explain it?

Edited 2/10/2015 01:44:37

The question is what is the year what you want. Wallachia and Moldova was relative stable, but the borders of Transylvania was very liquid in this period. The principals of Transylvania have changed their dependency between Habsburgs and Ottomans, thus the western borders have changed in East Carpathian and East Great Plain too, so it matter that the year is 1618, 1648, or between these.

As I know in east from HRE the area of Gdansk was part of Poland-Lithuania and from Königsberg to Memel was part of Prussian Princedom.

And there are swedish lands in West Pomerania near Lübeck and in East Frisia near Bremen, but just since the peace of Westphalia, so the time is the question.

I suppose I'm just looking for the official border before the Ottoman-Hapsburg wars ended. Like this:

There is a missing connections in Quebec and another one territory north of Montreal.

Edited 2/10/2015 17:51:12