The (Holy Roman) Empire (Maybe) Strikes Back

[Cyclotron]

Originally posted by foolish_icarus
would the transient nature of reality be disposed to let the good Bishop not-of-Worms miraculously recover from an axe wound to the shoulder ?

There's always a silver lining. I'd also forgotten I'm a patrician...of Venice!

This is true. This isn't the classical republican sense of "upper class citizen," however, but the late imperial/early medieval sense of "military strongman who we like, and is in in some respect - ceremonial, honorific, or actual - in charge of our defense." The Popes, for instance, commonly grant the title of "Patrician of Rome" to a local or regional duke or warlord who essentially rules the city (until the mob gets tired of him). Unlike the Romans, the Venetians probably mean the title in more of a ceremonial sense than an actual one.

[foolish_icarus]

Well I take it seriously. If someone starts bothering Venice I intend to head south straightaway, grab ol' Arnulf on my way down, and start personally bashing heads.

Seriously though. Kill von Mellrichstadt. I've lost two or three exemplary generals now and that git survives and never does me any good

Since it seems to be time to get this sort of thing out in the open, refresh my memory: Isn't Arnulf solely responsible for Conrad's death, or something silly like that? He did dump offal into the river upstream of the King's camp, right? Please justify how it's all just a hilarious misunderstanding.

[foolish_icarus]

How are you tracing the rivers? Show me the base map and tell me which rivers you want and I may have a way to put the rivers on with razor accuracy.

[Cyclotron]

Originally posted by foolish_icarus
Since it seems to be time to get this sort of thing out in the open, refresh my memory: Isn't Arnulf solely responsible for Conrad's death, or something silly like that? He did dump offal into the river upstream of the King's camp, right? Please justify how it's all just a hilarious misunderstanding.

Well, he did do that, and there was a plague, and the king did die. If you choose to assign causality to those events then I suppose that would be a possible conclusion.

Anyway, here's the map I'm working with now:

http://apolyton.net/upload/view/8613_blank.png

And let me see, list of rivers... the Rhine, Elbe, Danube, Oder, Vistula, Thames, Dnepr, Neva, Volga (if any parts show up on the eastern edge of the map), Ebro, Po, Loire, Rhone, Seine... yeah, that's about it.

Edit: and, time and effort permitting, the Weser, Drava, Dnestr, Garonne, and Tiber.

[Cyclotron]

Here is another possible map, with rivers. Give me your opinion.

http://apolyton.net/upload/view/8613_experiment.png

[foolish_icarus]

The second ones seems superior because it looks better. Do you know based on where you got them which is more likely to be the accurate projection?

[Cyclotron]

No, not really. The differences at the center (Germany) seem to be relatively minor between maps; skewing at the extremities (particularly Finland/northern Russia) doesn't bother me a lot.

[Cyclotron]

I'm working on the last map I posted. Because I had to blow it up, the edges are a bit rough (this will probably be the case no matter what map I pick), but they're much, much better than the blocky edges of the original map.

The rivers came out too pixelated in the resizing, but I'll re-trace them.

In the meantime, post!

[Cyclotron]

Map Preview

The new map is going along nicely. Here's Germany - not quite finished, but it gives you an idea of the final product:



I think I'll end up dropping the black coastal outline; it makes islands difficult to color and it never looked great anyway because of the map enlargement. Once converted it should go from this:



To this:



The rivers are a bit blocky, but they'll do for now - I can always improve them later, as they're on their own layer.

[foolish_icarus]

That is nice. Note that the black outline technically denotes water, not land--so if you get rid of it (a fine idea, to be sure), merge it with the oceans, not the land.

[Cyclotron]

I don't think that's a good idea - there are a whole host of islands that are black outline only and will be wiped out if I do that. Compare these maps of the Aegean, first with the black converted to land:



And then, with the border converted to ocean:



Though it needs a little trimming in some places to ensure islands aren't converted into peninsulas, I think you'll agree the first one is superior.

I mean, they both have their problems - in the current map of Italy below, you can see that it's a bit "fatter" than it should be because of the inclusion of the border - but this is only an aesthetic distortion, as opposed to the exclusion of the borders which would actually remove many lakes, islands, and narrow peninsulas.

Also note the cool new "wine-dark sea" effect.

[Cyclotron]

...and in case you wondered, here's the map legend.

[foolish_icarus]

Ouch. Neither of those options are good. I'll have to favor leaving the borders as they are. Anyway, I won't be up in arms if you stick with converting to it to land. Hardly matters in Franconia.

Everything else looks really good, though.

[Cyclotron]

Yeah, since nothing in this NES is based on the exact measurement of distance, I don't think the distortion matters much. Italy might be a little pudgier but it's still a lot better than the original HRE map, in which the terrain was apparently composed of massive squares.

I'm not going to keep the original borders, because a) they are ugly and b) they don't mix well with the various state colors and the sea color, but more importantly c) it's impossible to color in an island that's all black border, like many islands on the map are.

In an ideal world I'd like to make some sort of compromise, but barring something like that I'm going to side with a little extra land. It's by far the best option, and as far as Germany is concerned it hardly matters anyway. Considering that medieval people thought the world looked like this, you can attribute any inaccuracies to the woeful state of cartography since the fall of the Roman Empire.

[Cyclotron]

So it's been over a week since anyone posted besides foolish_icarus and myself. Once again, is there a real interest in this?