New Map: Pangaea

[AStott]

Foodstamp: Interesting, I've never heard of Rodinia before. Wikipedia reveals all though, and gives some other possibilities for names. I think I'll definitely be switching sometime in the future. My map really isn't laid out like the "real" Pangaea anyway, so I don't really care too much about that part.

Wauthan: We played around for quite some time on the border lines. A flat line (no shading) doesn't work so well with the map having some areas that are very dark and some that are very light, so we went with the shaded line. The red border was added to help with the contrast, but I just tried taking it off, and it really works just fine without it. I also tried making the land borders just a little narrower and dropping their opacity just a touch, and I think overall it does look better.

You are completely right about the lack of chokepoints. I'm personally a big fan of chokepoints, but I didn't want to just lay down arbitrary ones that didn't match the terrain. We had intended to do a scenario so that we could customize the independants (we'd also thought about customizing the province names). I never thought about using particularly tough independants to create "barriers". That's a very interesting idea, and we'll definitely investigate.

Thanks for the feedback!

[Gandalf Parker]

I recognize that map. That actually IS the map of the real Pangaea which used to exist isnt it? Nicely done.

[Agrajag]

Gandalf Parker said:
I recognize that map. That actually IS the map of the real Pangaea which used to exist isnt it? Nicely done.

A quick search of Google Images turned up this map: http://www.calstatela.edu/faculty/ac...es/pangaea.jpg
Which doesn't bear much similarity to the one posted here.
Also, the following quote:

My map really isn't laid out like the "real" Pangaea anyway, so I don't really care too much about that part.

Would also lead me to similar conclusions.

[Foodstamp]

Gandalf Parker said:
I recognize that map. That actually IS the map of the real Pangaea which used to exist isnt it? Nicely done.

By geological accounts, I don't think it is an accurate portrayal of the real Pangaea.

Supercontinents had a tendency to be VERY arid. The land shape may be right (been a while since I had geology), but the climate and vegitation, particularly on the eastern part of the continent probably is not.

Pangaea was a harsh place, it killed off a vast amount of marine life and made a significant portion of those species go extinct. It crippled land based organisms and had adverse effects on just about every species of life on the planet.

But lucky for us, Dominions takes place in a universe far far away, so we can sacrifice historic accuracy for fun and gamplay

[AStott]

Yup, no attempt at historical accuracy here (theoretical or otherwise).

The map was made by taking a high resolution map from NASA's blue marble imagry, grabbing all the continents and slamming them together in some kind of plausible fashion, then doing some PhotoShop "magic" to get rid of the seams.

In retrospect I kind of wish we'd gone with a layout more like the pangaea map linked above, because it might have been a little more interesting than the landmass "blob" that we have here.

Still, I don't think we're going to go back and redo it. It was a pretty fair amount of work...

[Uh-Nu-Buh]

I appreciate the work you put into it! Looks very beautiful. I'll be giving it a try later this week.

[Gandalf Parker]

I didnt do an actual comparison to a real Pangaea but I did spot the real-world continents glued together (which is what Pangaea was if anyone is wondering, the world before the continents split). So I mistook it for the real one.

Still a great map. And a good example of what can be done by taking world satellite maps and putting provinces onto them.

[PashaDawg]

Fun map!