For wilderness have you considered just using "off-boxes" http://www.variantbank.org/results/rules/y/youngstown.htm
So there would be centers of civilization connected by off-boxes and just have a bunch of interconnected smaller maps

sounds cool. I like how it will create the game-within-a-game effect like the WWIV map.

One thing to watch out for is making the intermediary (dark) areas too vast. They can be sparse in valuable supply centers, I would only say to envision diverse and playable terrain in these areas when creating the map. (Perhaps with the careful use of mountain passes and rivers). This would be to avoid a flaw similar to the 'seas being too easy to stalemate' flaw we found in the WWIV map. I also think that geographical features could play a role in the Fog of War aspect. (i.e. can't see over impassible mts or through dense forests.)

I was really just offering my ideas to the set of people on here who seem to create all of the variants. I was not thinking of off-boxes, but whatever seems most practical to you. My complaint with most attempts at big games is that they have trouble dealing with areas having different values. While am a bit of a Kievian Rus history buff and do know how fearsome the Khazars were before the Mongol Invasion, neither of these groupings were even really a threat to conquer Georgia, much less Persia in the 10th Century. A leader who united all of the Turkic nomads could be a threat to China or Persia, but only if he united all of the nomads first.

WWIV without all of the islands would probably handle the stalemate problem.

I will look into it, sometime but I'm a lot more familar with (1100s-2000s) European History

And here I thought you were obsessed with Indonesia.

out of interest for myself and some future variant making - would you like to rattle off some names for me?

Start with the cultural clusters, and then we can work out the individual powers within those regions.

what would be a very interesting idea is a world map starting in 1500 ad for the colonial European powers.

Spain, Portugal, and a hypothetical Americas immune from smallpox. (plus Asia)

Africa
Almoravid, Egypt
Middle East
Byzantine, Seljuk Turks
Europe
England, Holy Roman Empire, France, Spain, Russia
Asia
India, Khmer, Song, Liao

Has anyone considered making a WWV variant? WWIV with smaller sea areas?

Can someone help me with find maps :/
The only reliable site I use is Euratlas

I'm agnostic about time

Western Europe:
France
Asturias?
Cordoba?
proto-English state?
Venice
Sicily
Denmark

Near East:
Egypt
Byzantine Empire
Seljuk Turks
Baghdad
Sassanian Iran before the Conquest
Georgia or Armenia

India:
(my Indian History is sketchy)
Gujarat
Sind
Punjab
Kerala
Palas
Chola

China:
(no clear idea how or when to divide it up)

In Between:
Ghana or Mali
Axum
Something in Southern Africa (Khoi Khoi or Zimbabwe or proto-Bantu state further North)
Khmer or Thai
Indonesia
Rus
Khazars
Afghans or Turkic tribes across the Hindu Kush
Mongols
Uighars
Magyars or Bulgars

I think with the in between states we could have standing neutral armies - kind of a 'block/disincentive' to expand via these regions too early and risk being attacked by your local cultural grouping.

As for china - why not use the mandate of heaven nations? save us reinventing the wheel and India we can use the Maharajah map.

I liked the idea of Barbarian Invasion as a possibility.

The Warring States Period in China ended around 100BC.

Chulo in India is around 1000AD.

I was meaning the rough outline for a map - not really the nations themselves.

I'll post my map idea on my tab and update periodically

keeping my eye on it :)

China:
Southern Song
Jin
Western Xia
Tibet
Korea
Dai Viet

I see Southern Song already pushed out of the Yellow River Valley by the Jin and the area South of the Yangtze being relatively open to Dai Viet and Indonesian invasion. With maybe a proto-Manchu state between Jin and Korea with Mongols over the horizon possibly uniting the steppes. I see no reason why powers have to be balances by material. Song and Jin can be more powerful and just be balanced by position. Does anyone see a role for Khmer? Song needs to face some sort of threat from the South or the sea.

Does anyone know enough Indian History to design balanced and not too historically inaccurate regional Indian Powers open to possible barbarian invasion from the steppes?

I offer as the possible title for this variant "Prester John" given the global nature and what i hope will be the dynamics of a BIG FoW map.

I say that for the Chinese map, we also include the Mongols for it was them that destroyed the Jin... and the Jin is also a Manchu power, so...

I don't quite get the Prester John reference.

You have to ask people that you can't see on the other side of the map what is going on.

@BenGuin, I kind of wanted the Mongols to be out on the steppes with the Uighurs and Afghans and Khazars or Pechenegs possibly growing to be a threat to China or Europe or the Middle East. And yeah, I know that the Jin superseded the Liao, who moved West, but I was trying to think about playability. Song is strong and might just overwhelm the rest of "China".

nope still don't get it.

You don't understand a reference to Prester John at all or how it applies to the variant?

Prester John. I don't want to resort to the wiki.

gopher and kaner get a room ... all of us here must have some sense of history or we wouldn't be doing this all ... so the mythical christian pursuit of the Polos coulod certainly fit into this one as a realityof the mindset of the times but could be left out as well as a historical and geopolitical fiction

Prester John was a supposed Christian King of some Kingdom on the other side of the Muslim Realms from whom several letters were "received" over the course of a few hundred years. He was at times from India (the Thomasite or Nestorian Christians around Madras), in other versions he was from the steppes of Central Asia or most famously he was Ethiopian. The first news to arrive in Europe via the Crusader States of Genghis Khan claimed that he was Prester John's grandson. He was this basically mythical Christian King who was behind the Muslims and was a kind of Deus ex Machina ally who could save Christendom from Muslim domination.

Would an epic 50 nation world map be impossible to get going? Does that sound cool to anyone?

If I thought that it could last without being thrown off by massive civil disorder, then yes, an even huger game would be cool.

This is looking like a 35 player game.

I think Haven is the biggest variant that I've seen be relatively consistently unmarred by CD's. There still is some, but it's not crippling usually. Every WWIV game I've done has been brutal from CD's.

What is wrong with wiki? it is just an encyclopedia

I think he just did not want to have to look it up.

I wonder if somehow we could implement a system that relies on people's reliability rating to join? For instance during setup you could stipulate that only people with a reliability rating of >x could join.

(and no there is nothing wrong with wiki - gopher is right, I didn't want to look it up - how lazy am I :? )

@kaner: I'll add this option soon.

@airborne: Try looking here:
http://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=25312

O-O thanks oli!

@kaner - check out those maps.... urgggghhhhhh (Homer Simpson drooling style)

A wet dream for variant creators. I'm bookmarking that baby!

could myou please make a map with the roman empire ?

@Ambassador - yeah I know, I thought I'd share the love.

(I had wet dreams when I stumbled upon that site ;0

*myself.