I apologize for the lack of visual aids for this. I tried, but had some issues with the scanner to picture thing that I'll hopefully have worked out for the update to come on Thursday. Today is mostly a recap of what we have so far, but there are some questions to go forward with. On Thursday we're going to actually come into some of the civilization and country lines, so definitely hopefully we'll have some form of visual map.
The Super Continent
With only two votes for the last one, and them conflicting, I decided to try and mix the two together.
With that in mind the world has one super continent, but a scattering of Islands that surround it. The super Continent and other land masses cover about 40% of the planet's surface, leaving the other 60% is ocean and water.
In the middle of the super continent is a great sea, surrounded on all sides by a ring of mountains that 'protects' it from the rest of the land. The sea is a near perfect circle.
Off of the super continent are several islands, a few of them large enough to be countries themselves, about the size of Japan or Ireland but not much bigger than that. About a quarter of the world away from the west coast of the super continent is a ring of islands also in the shape of a near perfect circle as if it had been a continent of its own at one point until the heart of it was ripped out.
The Poles
There are no land masses at either poles. Just lots of ice and glaciers in enough quantity to be a faux-landmass.
Climate On The Continent
As it is a super continent there are likely to be several climate types on the main continent. So what are the primary climates on the north end, south end, and in the middle? Is it temperate? Tropical? Desert? Arctic? Tundra?
Along with the climate, what is the ground like? We have mountains around the middle of the continent but do we have them anywhere else? Do we have forests or jungle somewhere? A sandy desert? A tundra desert? Hills? Plains?
Finally, are any of these areas particularly rich with a particular mineral or other resource that would be of value? Obviously the mountains will have a good amount of stone and likely some of the best mining, but other places can have this too.
Remember, we're talking primaries here, which is a little over-simple perhaps but talk in the "general" type of this stuff for each 3rd of the continent.
Votes in by noon on Wednesday.
The placement of the mega continent relative to the equator is a big factor. If it's centered on the equator, you could make a case for either jungle or desert being predominent. If it's slightly off center, perhaps a lot of cloud forest around the central sea and a desert over the equator. If it's significantly removed from the equator, then you may have extremes of climate and biomes from north to south.
ReplyDeleteAs for the islands, I would go with temerate to tropical with lots of storms. The ring of islands may be especially prone to bad weather, or alternatively its center may be an oasis of calm amidst a turbulent greater ocean.
The overaĺl planetary mean temperature is also a bit determining factor as it can shift jungle to rainforest to mixed forest as the temperature goes down, thus enabling or preventing certain climates or biomes.
I prefer a centered mega continent due to the opposite ring of islands. Also, as I stated before, to keep the player acceptance levels manageable, I suggest Earth norm average annual temps.