Collection · Five parts
Creating the map you want
The creation screen is the first thing you meet and the only thing you cannot revisit. Everything you set there becomes the physical world your network is priced against — the distances, the crossings, the gradients and the places worth connecting. This collection explains what each choice really decides, and how to aim at the country you had in mind.
The rules of this screen
- 01One screen, one chance
Almost everything here is fixed for the life of the save. A handful of things — province boundaries, new settlements, every name — stay editable, and knowing which is which decides how carefully you set them.
- 02Area prices everything
Total area becomes the size of a map cell, and the cell becomes every kilometre you will ever pay for. It is the single most consequential number on the screen.
- 03Terrain is a bill, not a backdrop
Height differences multiply construction cost up to fivefold, and steep ground repels the settlements that would have justified the road. Mountains charge you twice.
- 04The seed is only part of the recipe
A seed reproduces a map only alongside every other parameter, and only within one generation version. What makes a map shareable is the parameter file, not the number.
Map creation collection
What the map decides
Which choices are permanent, which stay editable, why total area prices your whole network — and why there is no preview.
Land and water
The height field, the sea level solved backwards from your water target, coastlines, islands, which land ends up yours, and what crossings cost.
Terrain is a price list
How height differences become a construction multiplier of up to five, why mountainousness and maximum elevation are different controls, and how rivers and vegetation are decided.
Where the people go
How density scales settlement size and count, how places are ranked and spaced, what each distribution favours, and why the pattern is your demand map.
Seeds, parameter files and reproducibility
What a seed does and does not guarantee, the parameter file you can export and share, the checks that reject an invalid one, and why generation versions matter.
Alongside this collection
Map creation parameters
Every control, its exact range and its effect — the lookup table this collection deliberately does not repeat.
Redrawing province boundaries
The one piece of the generated map you can still redraw afterwards, and every rule that refuses a change.