HOME | DD

Description

Hello everybody!

This is my first attempt at map-making, after years and years of lurking in the map-making community.

The map is obviously very BMunro-like/QuantumBaranching-like (as much as I could with my abilities), a style of mapping I find very good at displaying interesting scenarios on a world scale.
The scenario depicted by my map is not original, and is instead an effort of many people combined; my contribution in world-building was very low, but I'm gonna give everyone their due at the end.

To explain the origin for this map, we should embark in a little history lesson.

Many years ago, inside CivFanatics Forum, a community of people coalesced around a sort of "pen-and-paper" strategy game, called NES (as in Never Ending Stories).

It was heavily inspired by Civilization, obviously, but it quickly expanded to a "style" of gaming well suited for playing out alternate history scenarios, and far more.

Each NES had a Mod that writes up the rules for its game, the stats for various nations/polities, took in orders from the various players and writes updates, playing out the orders with varying degrees of creative freedom.

As far as I know, the first NES was made by a man (nick)named Das, who remained one of the foremost mods in the community, thanks to his updating style, interesting scenarios, and a good ability to interpret players' orders in an interesting but believable way.

My map depicts one of such NESes, the first one in which I actively participated; Called AFSNES, (Advanced Fresh Start NES), its mod was Das, in his last NES as far as I remember, and was a little experimental as it tried to combine a "Fresh Start" NES (starting from the Bronze Age) with a NES based on pre-made scenarios.

Thus, it was divided in two halves: the first was more narrative, without actual stats for player's states, with a quite greater scope (around 2000 years), and with the players guiding kingdoms, their eventual successor states, or even whole cultures.

The second half instead was more traditional, focused (70 years), and marked by near constant wars between players.

I mapped the starting situation of the second half of the NES, with the world at 700AD, just after TTL Dark Age. Very creative player inputs and a fantastical moderation by Das resulted in a (at least in my opinion) very interesting world, multipolar and somewhat realistic.

This world has been like OTL until at least 1200BC, then diverged wildly. Pharaonic Egypt existed, but was supplanted by nomadic people from Mesopotamia, the Karung; the Celtic empire of Tartessos was the main western European power and shattered Rome many centuries ago, then endured until Germanic people and Nubians conquered it; Mesopotamia was always the centre of a Urrian or Akkadian empire, much like our China, while this China never really united, divided between Xishans, Nanshans, and Turkic people; the Avyaktagaran civilization arose from the ashes of Harappa, creating a far reaching mercantile network in the Indian Ocean and founding uncountable cities on its shores; the Olmecs of Danipaguache left deep impressions in a quite wider area than OTL, with colonies in Cuba and Ecuador.

The Religious landscape is also diverse and integral to the understanding of this world, and I decided to show it directly on the map; the Nubian religion called Ashaism and the Urrian one called Agade Dag divide the Mediterranean, and religious wars would eventually engulf this part of the world in the second half of the NES. In the Indian ocean, and beyond, Paramantism would emerge from Hinduism, and spread far away, even integrating elements of Jewish belief, as the Israelite diaspora disseminated from Saba to Madagascar.

Empires fell and arose: Danipaguache, the Moches, Tartessos, Karung, Nubia, Watchur, the Hellenic Empire, Paphlagonia, Hessonia, Tartaria, Samarkand, Nyayana, Girnar, Luoyang, Xinshan, the Xiongnu; the dynamics of state building and deterioration where simulated well.

Other points of interest abound: The Celtic Tigranist nations facing off with Scandics from across the North Sea; the Greek nations from Apulia to Asia Minor divided by religion; Indian nations ready to fight against the Huna Sitivasas Kingdom; Chinese and Turkic banding together to fight the never-ending religious wars of the Tibetan Empire.

This scenario always had a soft spot in my heart, as I liked it quite a lot and I had a hand, albeit small, in its creation (feel free to try to guess which state was mine). Many years passed, but as I finally decided to create a map I could show to a wider audience, I thought that a world I knew well, and that I found quite interesting, would have been the best option.
I hope the same will be true for you.

CREDITS

Das – Moderator, curator of the whole scenario

Kal’thzar – Nubia, Ashaism, Watchur and its successor states, Tarekid Amsurate

Israelite9191 – Israel and the Diaspora to the Indian Ocean

Azale – Samarkand, Jomon

~ Darkening~ - Tihuanaco

JoesfStalinator – Arecoman Celts, Caerix and Tigranism

North King – Zapotec and Mesoamerica

Insane-Panda – Tartessos

alex994 – Xishan, Zhongshan and Guangling

Silver 2039 – Maghada, Buddhism and Tibet

Toltec – Paphlagonia

ThomAnder – Luoyang, Kingdom of Nam, Mohism

Disenfrancised – The whole Avyaktaraga civilization, Paramantism, Zuubhrabhanu

Luckymoose – Colchis, Georgian civilizations

Dachs – Latins, Rome, Thuringia

Thlayli – Parthenian Republic, Greek poleis, Corcyran League

Niklas – Ur and its various empires, Agade Dag

Nuka-Sama – Racadonia

Littleboots – Athanoi

Shortguy – Mitanni, Frisians

The Farow – Millwanda

Neverwonagame3 – Karung and Karrism

LightFang- Sardinia

Daftpanzer – Odrysa and Thracians

Altair – Liguria

erez87 – Caeon

Oruc – Khitans, Neo-Khitan Empire, Xiongnu,

The13thRonin – Hessonia, Hessonian Greeks and Delphian Empire

Abaddon – Chachitlan

j_eps – D’mt, Axum, Liths

Description

Hello everybody!

This is my first attempt at map-making, after years and years of lurking in the map-making community.

The map is obviously very BMunro-like/QuantumBaranching-like (as much as I could with my abilities), a style of mapping I find very good at displaying interesting scenarios on a world scale.
The scenario depicted by my map is not original, and is instead an effort of many people combined; my contribution in world-building was very low, but I'm gonna give everyone their due at the end.

To explain the origin for this map, we should embark in a little history lesson.

Many years ago, inside CivFanatics Forum, a community of people coalesced around a sort of "pen-and-paper" strategy game, called NES (as in Never Ending Stories).

It was heavily inspired by Civilization, obviously, but it quickly expanded to a "style" of gaming well suited for playing out alternate history scenarios, and far more.

Each NES had a Mod that writes up the rules for its game, the stats for various nations/polities, took in orders from the various players and writes updates, playing out the orders with varying degrees of creative freedom.

As far as I know, the first NES was made by a man (nick)named Das, who remained one of the foremost mods in the community, thanks to his updating style, interesting scenarios, and a good ability to interpret players' orders in an interesting but believable way.

My map depicts one of such NESes, the first one in which I actively participated; Called AFSNES, (Advanced Fresh Start NES), its mod was Das, in his last NES as far as I remember, and was a little experimental as it tried to combine a "Fresh Start" NES (starting from the Bronze Age) with a NES based on pre-made scenarios.

Thus, it was divided in two halves: the first was more narrative, without actual stats for player's states, with a quite greater scope (around 2000 years), and with the players guiding kingdoms, their eventual successor states, or even whole cultures.

The second half instead was more traditional, focused (70 years), and marked by near constant wars between players.

I mapped the starting situation of the second half of the NES, with the world at 700AD, just after TTL Dark Age. Very creative player inputs and a fantastical moderation by Das resulted in a (at least in my opinion) very interesting world, multipolar and somewhat realistic.

This world has been like OTL until at least 1200BC, then diverged wildly. Pharaonic Egypt existed, but was supplanted by nomadic people from Mesopotamia, the Karung; the Celtic empire of Tartessos was the main western European power and shattered Rome many centuries ago, then endured until Germanic people and Nubians conquered it; Mesopotamia was always the centre of a Urrian or Akkadian empire, much like our China, while this China never really united, divided between Xishans, Nanshans, and Turkic people; the Avyaktagaran civilization arose from the ashes of Harappa, creating a far reaching mercantile network in the Indian Ocean and founding uncountable cities on its shores; the Olmecs of Danipaguache left deep impressions in a quite wider area than OTL, with colonies in Cuba and Ecuador.

The Religious landscape is also diverse and integral to the understanding of this world, and I decided to show it directly on the map; the Nubian religion called Ashaism and the Urrian one called Agade Dag divide the Mediterranean, and religious wars would eventually engulf this part of the world in the second half of the NES. In the Indian ocean, and beyond, Paramantism would emerge from Hinduism, and spread far away, even integrating elements of Jewish belief, as the Israelite diaspora disseminated from Saba to Madagascar.

Empires fell and arose: Danipaguache, the Moches, Tartessos, Karung, Nubia, Watchur, the Hellenic Empire, Paphlagonia, Hessonia, Tartaria, Samarkand, Nyayana, Girnar, Luoyang, Xinshan, the Xiongnu; the dynamics of state building and deterioration where simulated well.

Other points of interest abound: The Celtic Tigranist nations facing off with Scandics from across the North Sea; the Greek nations from Apulia to Asia Minor divided by religion; Indian nations ready to fight against the Huna Sitivasas Kingdom; Chinese and Turkic banding together to fight the never-ending religious wars of the Tibetan Empire.

This scenario always had a soft spot in my heart, as I liked it quite a lot and I had a hand, albeit small, in its creation (feel free to try to guess which state was mine). Many years passed, but as I finally decided to create a map I could show to a wider audience, I thought that a world I knew well, and that I found quite interesting, would have been the best option.
I hope the same will be true for you.

CREDITS

Das – Moderator, curator of the whole scenario

Kal’thzar – Nubia, Ashaism, Watchur and its successor states, Tarekid Amsurate

Israelite9191 – Israel and the Diaspora to the Indian Ocean

Azale – Samarkand, Jomon

~ Darkening~ - Tihuanaco

JoesfStalinator – Arecoman Celts, Caerix and Tigranism

North King – Zapotec and Mesoamerica

Insane-Panda – Tartessos

alex994 – Xishan, Zhongshan and Guangling

Silver 2039 – Maghada, Buddhism and Tibet

Toltec – Paphlagonia

ThomAnder – Luoyang, Kingdom of Nam, Mohism

Disenfrancised – The whole Avyaktaraga civilization, Paramantism, Zuubhrabhanu

Luckymoose – Colchis, Georgian civilizations

Dachs – Latins, Rome, Thuringia

Thlayli – Parthenian Republic, Greek poleis, Corcyran League

Niklas – Ur and its various empires, Agade Dag

Nuka-Sama – Racadonia

Littleboots – Athanoi

Shortguy – Mitanni, Frisians

The Farow – Millwanda

Neverwonagame3 – Karung and Karrism

LightFang- Sardinia

Daftpanzer – Odrysa and Thracians

Altair – Liguria

erez87 – Caeon

Oruc – Khitans, Neo-Khitan Empire, Xiongnu,

The13thRonin – Hessonia, Hessonian Greeks and Delphian Empire

Abaddon – Chachitlan

j_eps – D’mt, Axum, Liths