European Rivers Redrawn (Map Suggestion)

[jrgen3]

I was planning a series of map suggestions for Europe when I realised how abstracted the rivers in the game really are. I suggest making them a bit more accurate so they can be used for reference when drawing provinces. I have taken the time (so much time ) to redraw 99% of the rivers in Europe (not the Danish, Icelandic, Sardianian and Sicilian ones and the southernmost Norwegian one, while a couple of the Finnish ones are impossible due to how abstracted and wrong the Finnish lakes are drawn). I thought this would fit better as a suggestion on its own than including it bit by bit in the map suggestions I will eventually (hopefully) make.

Just to give an idea of the changes I've done, here's a screenshot of my redrawn Vistula in political map mode. In vanilla, the provinces follow the river.

Spoiler: Map of Vistula with redrawn rivers

Here's another one of the Danube. Same setup as the screenshot above. The provinces generally follow the river in vanilla.

Spoiler: Map of Danube with redrawn rivers

Here's the map itself:

Spoiler: Cropped river map showing only Europe (png instead of bmp)

Note: I have not and will not be making a corrected heightmap as that's near impossible due to the fantasy map projection used by EUIV. It contains at least elements from 4 different map projections in different parts of the map. 2 of them are Miller Cylindrical with different standard parallels (whyyyy?), I believe the southern half of South America is in the Robinson projection (I have not tested this to verify), and the lakes are drawn in all sorts of projections it seems.

I have attached the working file as a mod, as I thought that would be the most practical solution in case anyone wants to test the map [I hope this doesn't disqualify it as a suggestion and get the thread moved to the User Mods section].

Please let me know if there's anything I can improve.

 

[Sanguine Caesar]

Honestly the way the Sava and Drava are drawn is probably the number one reason why Croatian province borders are so ugly as they are currently. Great job!

 

[fr-rein]

I hope europatch could use river corrections.

 

[purplephoton]

Funny, I was looking at Central Asia recently and saw that not only the rivers, but the lakes as well, were misplaced (rather badly!)

EDIT: oh wait you actually commented on that post lol

 

[jrgen3]

Funny, I was looking at Central Asia recently and saw that not only the rivers, but the lakes as well, were misplaced (rather badly!)

EDIT: oh wait you actually commented on that post lol

Yes
The lakes in Europe are not really correct either. Especially the Swedish, Finnish and Russian ones (that leaves Lake Balaton, Lake Geneva, Lake Constance and Lake Peipus, which are a lot better). As an example, the lake in Sweden called "Storsjön" is supposed to be in the middle of the Jämtland province, not on the edge. It's off by about 35 pixels (or roughly 150 kilometres) from where it's supposed to be.

I might do one of these for the other parts of the map as well, but this one took me almost a week (my fault for focusing a bit too much on details), so it will probably take me a month to do the whole world . The map I used for reference also doesn't have the same density of rivers in the rest of the world as Europe and North America, which complicates things, but if I really want to, I can surely do it. It just requires a bit more work. I do have to find other reference maps anyway, as I have to redraw all the rivers in the world for a mod I'm developing that doesn't use the vanilla base map (however, I can easily share reference maps between it and vanilla with minimal modifications since they use similar map projections [but not the same one. The one I use doesn't have any of the random modifications the vanilla map has, so I have for example a formula for translating back and forth between real world coordinates and pixels on the map]). So when I have the updated reference map for the rivers, it's possible that I first make a river map for vanilla, and then modify that to fit in the mod.

 

[Wenceslaus II.]

Are you adding any new rivers? If so, consider Theia.

 

[jrgen3]

Are you adding any new rivers? If so, consider Theia.

Thanks! I feel a significant amount of shame from how long it took me to realise that Theia wasn't a river you wanted me to add
I think the river density in vanilla is pretty good, but if there are any specific rivers that anyone thinks I should add, I will definitely take those under consideration.

 

[Wenceslaus II.]

I feel a significant amount of shame from how long it took me to realise that Theia wasn't a river you wanted me to add

Wait. What?

 

[jrgen3]

Wait. What?

Look at the post you made. I took it to mean: If you're adding rivers, please consider adding Theia. I then started Wiki'ing (both on English and Czech wiki) and Google Maps'ing after the magical river Theia I really should have started with good old Google where it was the first result when I searched for Theia River

 

[Wenceslaus II.]

Look at the post you made. I took it to mean: If you're adding rivers, please consider adding Theia. I then started Wiki'ing (both on English and Czech wiki) and Google Maps'ing after the magical river Theia I really should have started with good old Google where it was the first result when I searched for Theia River

Yeah, Dyje or Thaya.

 

[jrgen3]

Yeah, Dyje or Thaya.

Wow That's kind of an amazing coincidence, as the thing I found was a site for water levels in rivers and lakes with a map on the main page. Not easy to use for reference, but I thought it was pretty cool to see the drainage basins of the rivers as overlays on Google Earth.
I found it now. It seems reasonable to add that one.

 

[Wenceslaus II.]

Wow That's kind of an amazing coincidence, as the thing I found was a site for water levels in rivers and lakes with a map on the main page. Not easy to use for reference, but I thought it was pretty cool to see the drainage basins of the rivers as overlays on Google Earth.
I found it now. It seems reasonable to add that one.

Yeah, I mixed it up with the proto planet.
But you're welcome!

 

[zajczev]

I just was thinking About one thing, while rivers here have different Flow as is now does that mean that they had that Flow back in 1444, i mean those things change masively over time, mainly deltas trought but with 600 yeasr of floods and human intervantion who knows

 

[Wenceslaus II.]

I just was thinking About one thing, while rivers here have different Flow as is now does that mean that they had that Flow back in 1444, i mean those things change masively over time, mainly deltas trought but with 600 yeasr of floods and human intervantion who knows

True, that's how the Czech republic keeps expanding. The border with Austria is defined as the middle of Dyje, but Dyje keeps rising and since our bank is more steep, we're actually taking "land" from Austria.

 

[jrgen3]

I just was thinking About one thing, while rivers here have different Flow as is now does that mean that they had that Flow back in 1444, i mean those things change masively over time, mainly deltas trought but with 600 yeasr of floods and human intervantion who knows

True, that's how the Czech republic keeps expanding. The border with Austria is defined as the middle of Dyje, but Dyje keeps rising and since our bank is more steep, we're actually taking "land" from Austria.

This is true.
However, the only river I have any sort of data on is the Yellow River. The changes it has gone through are astronomical in scale, and happens more or less instantly. The two worst natural disasters ever recorded by number of human fatalities are both caused by the Yellow River changing course. For other rivers, the changes are much slower. Here's a map from wiki showing the ridiculous changes in the course of the Yellow River: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3d/Yellow_River_watercourse_changes_en.png

Here's a gif from wiki showing the development of the Danube river delta: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/69/Danube_Delta_evolution.gif
As you can see, it didn't change much after 1300 (the river delta itself, the coastline did change a bit).

Another thing to take into consideration, and this is kind of important; the amount of detail the map can actually show. A pixel along the equator is about 7.1 km tall and 7.1 km wide. On the Czech-Austrian border, a pixel is about 5.5 km tall and 4.7 km wide, so in order for the change to be visible on the rivers map, the river would have to move at an average of 5-10 metres per year for the past 550 years to move a single pixel on the river map. That's quite a lot.

If you do find a map or another reference showing rivers clearly moving in a certain direction at a sufficient pace or in big enough leaps (caused by floods or similar), I'd be more than happy to adjust the river's course.

 

[Wenceslaus II.]

On the Czech-Austrian border, a pixel is about 5.5 km tall and 4.7 km wide, so in order for the change to be visible on the rivers map, the river would have to move at an average of 5-10 metres per year for the past 550 years to move a single pixel on the river map. That's quite a lot.

That was just an example I remembered, it moves like a cm a year.

 

[jrgen3]

That was just an example I remembered, it moves like a cm a year.

Yeah, I think that's more common. I just thought I should mention that the river would have to change its course considerably for the change to visible on the map

 

[Wenceslaus II.]

Yeah, I think that's more common. I just thought I should mention that the river would have to change its course considerably for the change to visible on the map

Well, that seems fairly obvious.