MWiF Map Review - America

[wfzimmerman]

ORIGINAL: Froonp

Here is this place in the world, after Norman & Jason input. Rivers & Lakes cannot be changed easily, so if they are done, this will be in the future.

So in the land of 15,000 lakes there is not a single lake visible on the map? and they pose no impediment to movement? as someone who has driven a car around that region, it does take quite a bit longer to get from point A to point B when you have to circle around a long lake to get there....

[Norman42]

The main concentration of lakes are represented by the swamps in the north. Most of the lakes in the region are under 2 miles across, so while they do make for a 'wet' landscape, they aren't large enough to completely block movement the way a full lake hexside would. Rainy Lake, which would be on the border hexside extending north west from the "P" in Pigeon is about the only lake large enough to cover a whole hexside and could be added I suppose.

The forests now covering the majority of the northern area is a fair enough representation of the movement difficulty through wood/lakes/moraines that any vehicles would have here.

[Astarix]

The only other lake that would warrant inclusion, is Lake Peppin on the MN, WI border as it is approximately 70 km long and about 10 wide

Otherwise, Norman has described why I requested the changes that have been made to the map. While there are many lakes, the problem is one of scale. The map scale is 89km, I think I read? Which means the larger lakes; Mill Lacs, Winibigoshish, Leech, and the Upper and Lower Red Lake resevoirs, while large, are not large enough to be represented on the map. The one possible exeption would be Red Lake. None of them are over 45km long or wide, which is the requirement to appear on a hexside.

Jason

[Froonp]

ORIGINAL: Astarix
You also may want to look into adding a couple of hexsides for the St. Croix river from the hexide that divides the label for St. Paul, then 1 hex to the NE and then maybe 1 more hex to the North.  The River in this area is wide enough to impede easy crossing.  The banks of the river are very steep in many places and generally are 30-40 feet above the river bed.  To the South of the Mississippi (at the hexide that divides the label for the Mississippi) you could reasonably add several Hexsides running generally SW for the Minnesota River, at least to where the location of Mankato is on a map.  The river valley in this area is wide and filled with marshy and lake filled lowlands.  In the Minneapolis-St. Paul region where it merges with the Mississippi the valley is over a mile wide with bluffs on both banks that are as much as 100ft high where it joins the Mississippi.

Jason, you depicted the St Croix River on your sketch map, but not the Minnesota River.
Would this be a correct drawing of both of them ?

[Froonp]

Still about the USA, but Oregon this time.
We already corrected the Willamette River Mouths, so that Portland and the river are better placed, but I fear that the upstream Willamette is not properly depicted.
The Below is the Willamette as depicted on the map, and the 2 other views are the Willamette as found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willamette_River. The center map shows Willamette River watershed, and the rightmost one show the tributaries of the Willamette River. According to the center map, our drawing is wrong, but according to the rightmost map our drawing could be the better one to depict the waterways that can block movement.

So, is the Willamette River right ?

Any Oregon inhabitant here ?

[marcuswatney]

ORIGINAL: Froonp

ORIGINAL: marcuswatney
Going back to Post 377, I think Dominica needs to be identified as CW, as it lies between two French possessions.

When the mouse is on it, there is "Dominica, British Antilles" written in the status bar of the game. Do you think that his would be enough ?

Also, who owns the islands between US Virgin and French Antilles (1 hex E and 1 hex NE of St Thomas)?

It is British Antilles too.

If inconsequential islets like St Eustatius are given an identifying '(Ned)' then I think larger islands like Dominica should be given something immediately visible without needing to hover the cursor.

But I also feel that at present the eastern Caribbean is very cluttered with large red names and many red political boundaries which all draw the eye away from the islands themselves and the terrain to be fought over.

One solution would be to perhaps keep the present red font for independent nations like Haiti and the Dominican Republic, but user a smaller one (or mixed upper and lower case) for colonies.

And why does tiny St Bathélemy appear when the dominant island in that hex is (British) Anguilla? Anguilla is an island well known to Britons of my age since we invaded it in 1969 with London bobbies. (And St Bathélemy is 100 km from Barbuda so a crossing arrow is inappropriate).

If we replaced St Bathélemy with Anguilla then the British Antilles would consist of six islands in a single sweep (plus Dominica), all a single territory whose control switches with St John's (surely not 'Saint Johns'?) That would make the map look a lot less confused.

St Kitts was called St Christopher in 1936, and St Eustatius is very close: the crossing arrow is justified, but please move the image of the island closer to St Kitts.

St Lucia is very British, yet it is identified as French because of a small amount of Martinique crossing over into its hex. St Lucia and Dominica are the same size, with Martinique just a little bit bigger. I would think all three should be one-hex islands, but if for game purposes it is desirable for Martinique to be two hexes (and there may be good reasons to invade it if it is Vichy French) then please shift the image east a little and have the second Martinique hex the one to the southeast.

The unnamed US Virgin islands are Isle de Vieques and Santa Cruz. The unnamed British Antilles islands at the northwestern end of the chain are Virgin Gorda (next to St Thomas) and Anegada.

Could we have a look at the depiction of the Bahamas and Bermuda please?

[marcuswatney]

How large does the population have to be before it is eligible to be classed as a city?  I estimate Fort-de-France was about 70,000 in the forties, quite a significant size for the Caribbean.

[Froonp]

ORIGINAL: marcuswatney
If inconsequential islets like St Eustatius are given an identifying '(Ned)' then I think larger islands like Dominica should be given something immediately visible without needing to hover the cursor.

I added "(Ned)" to St Eustatius because it was lost amongst French & British islands. I did not add the owning country's initial after all islands, because it would clutter the map too much.

But I also feel that at present the eastern Caribbean is very cluttered with large red names and many red political boundaries which all draw the eye away from the islands themselves and the terrain to be fought over.

One solution would be to perhaps keep the present red font for independent nations like Haiti and the Dominican Republic, but user a smaller one (or mixed upper and lower case) for colonies.

I prefer to have a consistent naming scheme, where a size & color means something.

And why does tiny St Bathélemy appear when the dominant island in that hex is (British) Anguilla? Anguilla is an island well known to Britons of my age since we invaded it in 1969 with London bobbies. (And St Bathélemy is 100 km from Barbuda so a crossing arrow is inappropriate).

This island was in a hex belonging to French Antilles, from the CWiF days. So, naming one of its islands for an English island looked weird. Moreover, this place is cluttered with lots of islands that the hexgrid can't show all of them properly with their rightfull owned country. So I chose to put the St Bathélemy place, that is famous at least in France for its rich visitors nowadays. I could have put St Martin too, which is in the same hex. But St Martin is both Dutch & French, so putting St Bathélemy looks OK.
The crossing arrow is not necessarily between St Bathélemy and Barbuda, it is between both hexes. It may be other islands.

If we replaced St Bathélemy with Anguilla then the British Antilles would consist of six islands in a single sweep (plus Dominica), all a single territory whose control switches with St John's (surely not 'Saint Johns'?) That would make the map look a lot less confused.

I prefer to stay minimalistic with the changes from the original map, and to leave it this way. The countries were decided in the CWiF days, and we inherited from them that way. I trust the original map designer here. His take is plausible, even if cluttered.

St Kitts was called St Christopher in 1936, and St Eustatius is very close: the crossing arrow is justified, but please move the image of the island closer to St Kitts.

On my 1940 map from the Collier Atlas, it is named St Kitts. Also it is shorter, and personaly I know it better with this name. Granted the drawn St Eustatius looks far from St Kitts, but this hex also houses Saba (not drawn) that is quite far. I think we won't redraw this just because St Eustatius is too far away.

St Lucia is very British, yet it is identified as French because of a small amount of Martinique crossing over into its hex. St Lucia and Dominica are the same size, with Martinique just a little bit bigger. I would think all three should be one-hex islands, but if for game purposes it is desirable for Martinique to be two hexes (and there may be good reasons to invade it if it is Vichy French) then please shift the image east a little and have the second Martinique hex the one to the southeast.

I think that this is too much work for little result here. I know St Lucia is British (it was French before), but the place here is quite packed tight, and shifting Martinique to the east as you describe would look weird.

The unnamed US Virgin islands are Isle de Vieques and Santa Cruz.

I'll add these names.
I have the latter as Saint Croix Island on my 1940 Collier Atlas map. Would it be good ? Saint Croix means the same as Santa Cruz.
I have the former as simply Vieques.

The unnamed British Antilles islands at the northwestern end of the chain are Virgin Gorda (next to St Thomas) and Anegada.

I'll add the former. The latter is already on the map.

Here are the Bahamas. Also they are shown in Steve's posts of page 18 in this thread. Bermuda are visible in post #515.

[Froonp]

For the records, we inherited from a map that looked like that from CWiF initialy.

[Froonp]

ORIGINAL: marcuswatney

How large does the population have to be before it is eligible to be classed as a city?  I estimate Fort-de-France was about 70,000 in the forties, quite a significant size for the Caribbean.

I have populations of 46k in 1940 and 52k in 1944 (from my 1940 & 1944 Collier Map Atlases & Gazetteers).
The population needed for a city is normaly about 100k, but many WiF cities are exceptions to this. I mean, not all 100k+ cities in the world are on the WiF map, and not all WiF cities are 100k+ real world cities.

[Froonp]

ORIGINAL: Froonp

For the records, we inherited from a map that looked like that from CWiF initialy.

And we made this into that :
And the Caribbean were a hell to do compared to other places.

[marcuswatney]

Could we just remove St Lucia then, so that hex is entirely Martinique?  It is better to choose not to show an island at all than to show it belonging to the wrong country.

Also, according to Wiki, at this time St Bathélemy was administered as part of Guadeloupe, so presumably the two are defined as one territory, with St Bathélemy falling with Basse-Terre?

[marcuswatney]

I see that St Eustatius is part of the territory of the Netherlands Antilles (what you call the Dutch West Indies) so presumably falls when Willemstad is captured.

Aruba was extraordinarily important as it had huge refineries that processed Venzuelan oil before shipping it on to the USA.  Until I understood this, the statistics seemed weird: a tiny island with vast imports of crude oil that seemed to disappear, and vast exports of petroleum that appeared to come from nowhere. I suppose there is no way of showing this, as a factory would benefit the Netherlands rather than the USA. But it would have been a target of considerable importance in the area.

And would it not be wise to name the 'Caribbean Sea' something more appropriate, like 'Southeastern Seabord'? I appreciate that it needs to be drawn this way so that a single convoy can get Venezuelan oil back to the USA, but it is very odd having Bermuda on the border of the Caribbean!

[Froonp]

ORIGINAL: marcuswatney
Could we just remove St Lucia then, so that hex is entirely Martinique?  It is better to choose not to show an island at all than to show it belonging to the wrong country.

This is the same case as Bornholm in the Baltic, Elba in the Med, Anguilla & St Martin here, and probably a lot more. I prefer leaving it as is than removing it.

Also, according to Wiki, at this time St Bathélemy was administered as part of Guadeloupe, so presumably the two are defined as one territory, with St Bathélemy falling with Basse-Terre?

Here St Bathélemy is part of a Territory named "French Antilles", independent from Guadeloupe.

[Norman42]

-St. Martin was the administrative center for the French Antillies(and a beautiful isle I might add, cruised there a few years back and the combined French/Dutch culture is truly unique), so I'd recommend changing St. Bartholemew, which in 1940 was very insignificant other then a few plantations, to St. Martin.  The fact that the Netherlands administrated part of the isle isn't important overall, the French took over security functions for the isle from 1919 onwards.

-The isle of Grenada has a typo, it is listed as Grenade (a very explosive place!).

-St. Croix, Virgin Isles is the better name for Santa Cruz; it has gone by St Croix for the better part of 400 years of its 500 year history, and has been known as St Croix since 1898.

-Also, having sailed to nearly every one of these isles of the Lesser Antillies, I have to wonder why only one of them is jungle. Every single one that I visited is mountainous and covered in dense greenery. From Guadaloupe southwards to Trinidad all are jungle covered mountains. Barbados was a bit more level, and clear is more reasonable. The Virgin Is east to Antigua are less dense growth but still fairly rough terrain.

-Puerto Rico, isn't really that mountainous, compared to the rest of them I think it has more flat area as a percentage of square miles.

[lomyrin]

Puerto Rico has a narrow flatland strectch along the coasts but  the interior is quite mountainous.
 
Lars

[Astarix]

Patrice,

Sorry, I forgot to upload a map with the Minnesota on it. Here you go. Also added the location of Lake Peppin, in case you want it. Its big enough for inclusion, but probably isnt that important of a place.

Also, I don't know if its worth the effort or not, but you might want to consider adding the city of Fargo. The Twin Cities of the North, Fargo-Morhead was an important rail junction and central collection and shipping point for Wheat, Sugar Beats and Corn. The Sugar Beats are processed locally and the Corn and Wheat were shipped to Minneapolis for milling or to Duluth and Superior for shipment east across the lakes. 1940 census for the immediate cities and suburbs was 80,000.

3 railroads ran west through those towns. The Great Northern, The Northern Pacific and the Chicago-Milwaukee-St.Paul & Pacific. And of course the rail line that runs North-South on the North Dakota side of the Red River up to Winnepeg. If you were to add Fargo-Moorhead, I would put it in the northern half of the southern most river hex of the Red River and move the rail line to go through the same hex. Fargo is and was the largetst city in North Dakota.

Anyway here is the map with the Minnesota River. It actually runs all the way to the MN-South Dakota border, but the western most sections, although fairly wide are not that deep. The sections I've drawn in are wide, and also include a lot of bogs and lakes, in the river bottoms.

[Astarix]

Those 2 hexes to the NE of the U.S. Virgin Islands are the British Virgin Islands.

Jason

[Joshuatree]

I've got a question about the Dutch West Indies and St. Eustatius. It says (NED) ... isn't that supposed to be "Dutch" or "Netherlands", "Neth" ?  Because "NED" is derived from the Dutch "Nederland".

[Froonp]

ORIGINAL: Astarix
Sorry, I forgot to upload a map with the Minnesota on it. Here you go. Also added the location of Lake Peppin, in case you want it. Its big enough for inclusion, but probably isnt that important of a place.

Anyway here is the map with the Minnesota River. It actually runs all the way to the MN-South Dakota border, but the western most sections, although fairly wide are not that deep. The sections I've drawn in are wide, and also include a lot of bogs and lakes, in the river bottoms.

I think I'll stay with only the first half of the Minnesota River depicted (see post #604), and no Pepin Lake hexside. I can't find the latter on any of my USA maps.