Tuesday, December 11, 2007

Tis the season........

Tis the season to be............ mapping! I do hope that no one will be upset if I say I rather miss a map of Europa to consult and find the countries of my fellow bloggers. Have we reached any consensus over the commissioning of another map? Is anyone willing to have a go? Are we too large a group and happily geographically carefree to produce a map? Let me know what you are feeling ....................

2 comments:

Fitz-Badger said...

A well-crafted map can be a thing of beauty. On the other hand mapping everything out can be restrictive. I think it suits this group better to have nebulous boundaries/locations in the grand scheme, but maybe more detailed and accurate maps at a more local level (within country or sub-country level or just enough territory to cover what is needed for a given circumstance)?
That way games/battles and other events can happen whenever and wherever and between whomever as it strikes anyone's fancy.
No need to argue whether Stagonia and/or Frankzonia could invade (or protect) Offenbach without crossing other territories and causing other battles with no one to play.
Then, too, mapping starts to imply more bookkeeping, tracking of movement, supplies, resources, etc.

I do love maps, though. :-)

abdul666 said...

I'm far from certain that a 'quasi-real' map would be really retrictive or a burden.

To deal with the problem of 'trespassing' borders and third party territory to reach your 'hostile target':
-several 'countries' correspond each to a 'bubble': e.g. with reference to Poruchik's map, the Soweiter League actually 'covers' also Batrachia (± French-speaking Belgium?), Stolen 'covers' Zichenau, Wittenberg 'covers' Monrovia (+ Fenwick and several minor States), &c... This means that to 'trespass' a 'bubble' you may have the choice between several routes crossing different countries of different alignement. One can suppose that one at least will grant you free crossing.

Anyway it's not written in the stone that the Map of Urope at any given moment shows *all* countries: new ones appear, preexisting (logically) but up to now 'neutral' and ignored by the Players of the Great Game. This implies that 'bubbles' are not contiguous, at least not along the whole of a common border: thus a army can 'slalom' to reach its objective.

And chiefly, in our 'educated' Uchronia, armies in the move do NOT loot, on the opposite pay high price for what they consum, are polite and disciplined, so no neutral third party would object to their passage...

As for taking into account movements, supplies... This can be done, perhaps in some cases is already done, at the leval of a campaign within a 'bubble'; or between Gallia and Hesse-Seawald?
But if Scandalusia sends an army to conquer Vulgaria, who among us (apart the two 'rulers' directly involved) will check for the movement rate or the logistics of the Scandalusian army?

I feel that we can combine a 'rough' map of the kind we already have with our current freedom and relaxed approach.

It is of importance that 'traditional enemies' can meet easily -i.e. that the countries of members that regularly meet are close to each other on the general map. Thus Gallia and Hesse-Seewald need to have a 'boulevard' to invade each other, Monrovia need to be close to Wittenberg, Saxe-Bearstein, Mieczyslaw and Norden have to form a sort of immediate triangle, &c... In case of more 'occasional' encounters of the, say, Hesse-Fedora vs Zichenau, we'll agree to suppose that somehow
the army on the offensive was given unrestricted passage....

And, 'rough' and vague as it may / must be, a map displaying all 'our' countries gives a sense of reality and of 'sharing'.


Best to all,
Jean-Louis