Proposal for New rules

[Kaiser Kirk]

More productively, how do we reconcile that provided 'districted' map with the desire of many parties - myself included - for a physically altered world, one with differing sea levels at the very least?

I'm still desirous of hearing the compelling need for a physically altered world.
I can see lots of negatives- the first being that we have lots of data on the current world, and would not have that for an altered world, hence I can see more work with the altered world.  I do not see the benefits to offset that. I really see no benefits.

Realism
I don't look for realism, I look for 'fairly closism' and 'evenhanded rules we all play by'.  

[Sachmle]

More productively, how do we reconcile that provided 'districted' map with the desire of many parties - myself included - for a physically altered world, one with differing sea levels at the very least?

I'm still desirous of hearing the compelling need for a physically altered world.
I can see lots of negatives- the first being that we have lots of data on the current world, and would not have that for an altered world, hence I can see more work with the altered world.  I do not see the benefits to offset that. I really see no benefits.

Realism
I don't look for realism, I look for 'fairly closism' and 'evenhanded rules we all play by'.  

I can agree with that assessment.

That is, in fact, not what I was talking about at all. My attempts to lobby for a completely new globe were shot down long before, and I very much dissaprove of the sloppy way the 'new lands' of the current Navalism were handled and have and continue to oppose the idea of repeating that experiment. The fine details of history that you're talking about don't interest me because they don't change anything really important... I'm more interested in thematic changes, preferably worked out with some rigor.

What I'm talking about when I say 'an altered world' is the idea of playing in a tilted or flooded earth. Thus, I'm asking if the 'district border' file is in a 'clean' image format that can be laid transparently over a mercator projection of expected flooding, or would territories need to be drawn in manually? Or if there are other complications I'm missing.

Tilted, flooded, frozen, thawed, whatever...it's still ALTERED. I don't like that idea on the whole. Earth is Earth. It's what we know and know how to maneuver. If you "tilt" or "flip" Earth, most society will not have formed the way it did, this drastically alters the world. Maybe not physically, but population/industry/civilization/resources will all be different than what we know. If you flood it, land locked areas become coastal cities. Good luck finding something more accurate than the ruler on Google Earth to measure distances with. I'm fine with changes to some things, just not wholesale change for the sake of change.

[Valles]

Tilted, flooded, frozen, thawed, whatever...it's still ALTERED. I don't like that idea on the whole. Earth is Earth. It's what we know and know how to maneuver. If you "tilt" or "flip" Earth, most society will not have formed the way it did, this drastically alters the world. Maybe not physically, but population/industry/civilization/resources will all be different than what we know. If you flood it, land locked areas become coastal cities. Good luck finding something more accurate than the ruler on Google Earth to measure distances with. I'm fine with changes to some things, just not wholesale change for the sake of change.

The bolded line is one of two primary design features of the approach I'm advocating. To someone who's coming to the game from a background in science fiction and world history, what you seem to be calling 'realism' looks perilously close to the kind of 'just-the-same-ism' that'd defeat the entire purpose of our being here.

Distance calculations are and would remain trivial. Eyeball which small town is in about the same place as your 'new coastal city', record its name, and substitute at need. It's neither hard nor complicated. Cultural and political repercussions should be somewhere between enormous and utterly transformative - as noted, that's the point - but with each player responsible for their own nation, it should be perfectly managable.

I do not want to merely imitate or tweak an extant historical state. I want to create, and as long as there's a "realistic" straightjacket in place, people are going to keep trying to limit that. A greatly perturbed setting can support 'familiar' societies without utterly breaking suspension of disbelief, while simultaneously giving those of us who want to do something interesting the room to work without people joggling our elbows. The reverse would not hold.

The other advantage of a setting with raised sea levels is that the greater fragmentation of habitable lands increases the difficulty of army action between separated states, and thus increases the relative importance of the naval forces which are our primary focus.

[Sachmle]

For what you're looking for, why not just take a blank globe, as is, and redraw ALL the borders? Now you can make nations where ever is deemed 'good' and they can choose who and how they interact with the rest of the 'world'. No preconceived rivalries or alliances. Clean slate. The only problem with this is you need a whole new world history up to start point. That is a lot of work. In case you've not noticed, that is not something that seems to fly around here. We've never really settled on a true history as it is. The 1905 hanwavium aside, there are still some holes you could sail a battleship through in a lot of the world history. Even where it is more detailed, new players have come in and either been unaware of the preexisting history of their nation, or plain chose to ignore it for their own ends.

[Kaiser Kirk]

I do not want to merely imitate or tweak an extant historical state. I want to create, and as long as there's a "realistic" straightjacket in place, people are going to keep trying to limit that. A greatly perturbed setting can support 'familiar' societies without utterly breaking suspension of disbelief, while simultaneously giving those of us who want to do something interesting the room to work without people joggling our elbows. The reverse would not hold.

I think that's the crux of the problem.  You strongly want to create fresh, and are willing to do additional work for that.  Others have little interest in creating or storytelling and just want to mechanistically run a nation. Then there are folks like me in between. I'm find altering nations, but I like to tie strongly to historic roots with some divergence.  I really don't want to do the work of creating, or figuring out which village is now the main port. Heck, figuring out what the ports in DEI were took some time in Wesworld.  

You see opportunity, I see work without substantive reward.

I wouldn't mind taking Gustav Adolphus's Kingdom of Sweden into the modern Era, or a Byzantium that didn't fall, or a Viking Vinland that prospered, an Incan Empire, a 1820s border Mexico*, or an Irish-Scot-Welsh-Breton-Brittany "Celtic" state with 1 fantasy city in Ys, ruled by King Asterix and his faithful advisor Getafix, but starting from scratch isn't too terribly appealing to me.

*North America with an 1830 Mexico, a Confederacy, French Louisiana Purchase, Canada and a N&E states USA for example.

Frankly, that's one of the things I saw as a strength of Navalism 3 - New lands and potential cultures for those that wanted to do more creating/storytelling.  Maori, Rohan, DKB, Rift, NS - several places for those types of players.

Edit :   An example of how I use history can either be seen in the references to the 1791 constitution in the Ukrainian bits, or over in Wesworld I built an entire timeline for the Netherlands from 1433 forward with points of departure noted...but even then many folks don't go reading other peoples histories in their encyclopedias, so folks don't *know* as well as OTL events.

http://wesworld.jk-clan.de/thread.php?threadid=3463&sid=6fb2ae0b0b5478e76331fec79a21906b

[Nobody]

I have nothing against an unaltered world.
Any change to the world makes using existing tools difficult. Take the tilted one for example, with ice were shipping routes are assumed and the other way around. On top of that it's confusing.

On the other had I have nothing against a "new" world with no relations to earth. However, there must be an easily accessible way to calculate distances.
Data about provinces etc. should not be a problem. Even if that great map mike pointed out is used I would still insist on filling it with rather "random" data e.g. for the population.

As a result I'm in the no changes or no relations group should that exist.

[Valles]

Frankly, that's one of the things I saw as a strength of Navalism 3 - New lands and potential cultures for those that wanted to do more creating/storytelling.  Maori, Rohan, DKB, Rift, NS - several places for those types of players.

The existence as a compromise system, yes? I quite agree, and I'm quite willing to adopt a compromise solution.

I'm speaking up, and will continue to do so, to keep people from misinterpreting the continuum. It doesn't run recent-divergence/distant-divergence/flooded-globe. It runs recent/distant/flooded/tilted/new-world.

For that matter, the suggestion I recall going around our previous discussion threads about mapping was that the flooding was a historical event in itself, rather than having been the case from earliest times - that the ice caps melted during the historical record, say, between 500 and 1000 CE.

[miketr]

Issues with world.

1) if you alter world, like say higher sea levels, then issue comes of map to show new coast lines.  I kind like the idea of inland seas and additional islands.  Problem is maps, details and distance.

2) New world issues of #1 but even more so.

There is a reason for the push for un-altered geography.

By 1880's start it was my recollection that was a tech level not a hard date so much.

Having fantasy nations using current geography is fine and I think nearly assumed depending on number of players.  The idea was to map groups of 4 or 5 player nations near each other (Europe, North America, East Asia, whatever).  We wanted to avoid problems like having Orange Republic in South Africa where it has huge logistic advantage down there by itself.  

For example having a Mexican Empire, Greater Kingdom of Sweden or whatever sounds fine.  Some effort at trying to somewhat rationalize the history would need to be made but it wouldn't need to be perfect.

Michael

Just my $0.02 worth

[ctwaterman]

Distance calculations are and would remain trivial. Eyeball which small town is in about the same place as your 'new coastal city', record its name, and substitute at need. It's neither hard nor complicated. Cultural and political repercussions should be somewhere between enormous and utterly transformative - as noted, that's the point - but with each player responsible for their own nation, it should be perfectly managable.

No Eyeballing wont do it and that seems to be a common misconception.

I pointed out the Eyeballing Distance between Foxy and Myself and Rocky on where the War was starting in New Zion.  Our Eyeball Difference were over 200 Km off and for a Land War in the Early 20th Century that is a huge distance.

2nd I took me what a Year to pin down the average width of the Rift Sea.  Its on the Map you Eye ball how Wide is it....   Is it 100 Km or 300 Km  or was that nautical miles.   How wide is the Southern Entrance to the Rift.   Is it 30km in which case the 12" and 14" Gun Batteries at the narrows at Blantrye on the map cover nearly the entire width of the narrows and anyships running them out of range of the guns would be in Orange territorial waters.  ;)

When you are moderating a war or Even planning for defenses you need a very very accurate map that everyone can agree upon.   And having to go around New Guinnea as an example adds significants amount of sailing time when sailing from say Australia to a theoretical point roughly 200 Nm East and slightly north of Wake Island.

I am with Kirk and Sam I think on the lets create some New Countries carve up the map a bit and leave lots of blank room to play in with some minor nations to roleplay and squabble with.  Lots of reasons for small wars and Naval skirmishs.  Plenty of opportunity to test our toys to destruction but not a reason to spend 6 months of real time covering major wars.   This all or nothing commitment to wars is suicide.  No real world nations does such things quite that way.  Well accept Japan but they fundamently underestimated the resolve of the United States to carry on the war.   

Charles

[Valles]

...Let's say that I want to know about where the 'new' city at the mouth of the Mississippi will be, in a hypothetical world where sea levels are, say, sixty meters higher.

I go to http://flood.firetree.net/

I set it to sixty meters rise.

I find the Mississippi River on the map and then scroll to where it meets the new Gulf.

I zoom in until I can read the name of the nearest town - West Helena, Arkansas, as it happens, though given that Memphis is only a few miles away, it'd probably get the nod in practice.

What is so hard about this?!

People've been very clear that they don't want to invest in creating new territories. I get that. I'd be damned if I let a 'new landmass' go as vaguely as we've seen ours so far, so I can sympathize with people who don't want to risk further problems along those lines.

But this IS our goddamn world. It's right there, every tool to tell you exactly what you'd want to know... and no one even wants to bother to look, to consider it.

I don't get it. I really don't, and it frustrates me to tears.

[ctwaterman]

I don't get it. I really don't, and it frustrates me to tears.

I think the problem is for every single measurement I want to make using say the Google Distance calculator I have to go back look at the Flood.firetree.net map and make sure the Distance calculator is going across the proper terrain.  The Sailing Calculator Port to Port works really also but only if you are going from port to port.   As an Example On our N3 World the Port of Blantrye on the Ophir Island off the East African Coast is a town located Miles Inland so doing sailing calculation took extra time.

What I want as both a possible Moderator and as a player is Keep It Simple Stupid.   And remember I am the person who Owns a program for building Fantasy World Maps of Entire Continents. ;)

We have a nice map that Mike has Found we can Color in the Territories to create the Player Nations and non player nations. [Or at least I seriously hope we can do so].

What you are finding is that most people are not interested in the Extra Work and hassle using a non real world would entail.   Most people would prefer less work not more.   Considering many of us are going to have to do Historical Research to help create our Nations well that is something some of us Enjoy Doing.   But fiddling with maps heck even when Im building a new Fantasy World for D&D or other game I dont enjoy playing with the map maker program its a necessary evil just like Spring Sharp is for this game. ;)

[Valles]

*sigh*

Well, if I'm outvoted, I'm outvoted. I guess that's it.

[Delta Force]

...Let's say that I want to know about where the 'new' city at the mouth of the Mississippi will be, in a hypothetical world where sea levels are, say, sixty meters higher.

I go to http://flood.firetree.net/

I set it to sixty meters rise.

I find the Mississippi River on the map and then scroll to where it meets the new Gulf.

I zoom in until I can read the name of the nearest town - West Helena, Arkansas, as it happens, though given that Memphis is only a few miles away, it'd probably get the nod in practice.

What is so hard about this?!

People've been very clear that they don't want to invest in creating new territories. I get that. I'd be damned if I let a 'new landmass' go as vaguely as we've seen ours so far, so I can sympathize with people who don't want to risk further problems along those lines.

But this IS our goddamn world. It's right there, every tool to tell you exactly what you'd want to know... and no one even wants to bother to look, to consider it.

I don't get it. I really don't, and it frustrates me to tears.

It's not so much a matter of how easy or hard it is to do, but more of what we gain by doing it. I'm not really sure what we would gain by having higher sea levels, or a different pole, or something like that.