November/December 2013 Lite Challenge: Virtù et fortuna

[Azélor]

Ok I did not see you where Italian. You are probably right then.

The reason France overpower Burgundy is because it's a lucky nation and receive bonuses. The Netherlands is also lucky but you need to unite it first because Brabant, Gelre, Holland... don't get bonus.

Yes it's Portugal. The reason I control all these land is because I was there first and I conquered a lot of provinces too along the way.

[Azélor]

Some progress

###LATEST WIP###



and three questions: how should I do the coastlines ? I did some test with the style I but no succes : http://www.cartographersguild.com/ge...ne-styles.html
should I add effects to the names so they would be more visible? (look around Madagascar)
does anyone knows is there is a place in photoshop where I can see how many layers there is in my file?

bonus : Here’s a condensé of the sixteen tome of : A Portugese history by Luciano Medeiros



But Felipe is not idle: King Filipe I of house Avis was crowned in 1713, it's only been 4 years and Portugal has just finished rebuilding his fleet ( more than 900 ships)

[Falconius]

I love that font. Really clean and graceful.
The shadow you put around Mauricius (isn't that supposed to be Mauritius?) is way too heavy though. The white around Reunion could work but I think just plain it looks really good anyways. Maybe if you made the font hue very slightly darker or brighter it would also work instead of giving the text shadow.

[Azélor]

###LATEST WIP###



I Think the font color problem is mostly relevant with Spain so I will make is color darker and you are right it's Mauritius but it's the same prononciation. I still need to tweek some colors and some adjustments.

and the compass rose:

I also started to work on the map border. I'm probably going for an oval map.

[Falconius]

Reunion is still easier to read than Mauritius, but that could be just because its in the ocean instead of on the pale coloured land. Both look just as good though.

[Lingon]

The compass rose is awesome! But if I recall correctly, it'd not be strictly correct to have a rose on this map, since the projection doesn't preserve bearings. I think it was Hai-Etlik who explained it to me some time ago. Basically, if you don't have 90 degrees between any latitude and longitude, a rose is meaningless since it's only correct in the exact spot where it's drawn, and meaningless in the rest of the map.

The rest of the map is looking nice though. I think many of the nation colors, especially in Europe and their colonies, are a bit too strong and could do with some lower opacity and saturation. I like that you are using the nation colors for the labels, it makes it very clear and distinct.

[Azélor]

I was thinking that the compass was not a good idea because it was a full map and not just a regional map. That it was useless since it's easy to know where the north is.
But you have another point Lingon, it's not a conformal map. But it preserve the 4 cardinal directions (N,S,E,W) because it's molweide projection and not hammer !?

I think the colour problem is caused but the small size of most European countries.

[Lingon]

It only preserves east-west actually. From the center, north is up, but from the outer edges, it's diagonally up.

[Azélor]

Yea I just thought about that, but you where quicker. Never mind.

[Azélor]

I played with the colours and I think it's better.

###LATEST WIP###



I was not sure about the map border so I took one in illustrator
The rest (the white parts) is also a problem because I can't have a png that big.