I've rambled about this in other threads, and I guess I'm just going to have to do this again because I have a tiny hope that some feedback would be heard to Paradox as they polish up the random world generator. I'm going to focus on this map first.
The map shows two continents, a more populated one to the East and an another one to the West. Let's call them West America and East America respectively, and I'll call that smaller landmass Little America. Not very creative.
1. Deserts
The first jarring aspect is the equatorial desert. The latitudes around the equator sees the atmospheric convection rising up, and the wet air from the ocean will rise and create a lot of rain in this latitude which is why we get rainforests and jungles around the equator. Simply put, both East and West America's equatorial deserts don't make a lot of sense. The Northern desert in West America makes more sense because it's located around the right latitude: 30 degrees north and south of the equator sees the atmospheric convection falling to the ground, and as the air is then dry, which creates large deserts around this latitude. Sahara, Arabian deserts, Australia and Kalahari all fall into this latitude.
The deserts on both continents turn into plains near the coast. If this is design, and the developers thought coastal deserts won't make a lot of sense... I'm afraid they're mistaken since coastal deserts are perfectly natural. They are usually found on the western edges of continents near the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn. Atacama, Baja California, Mauritania and Namibia all fall into this category. Given the latitude, if anything, it is Little America that is going to experience coastal deserts to the West. Also notice that it's the Western Australia that is more desert than the East.
Another major contributor to desert formation is rainshadow created by the mountain ranges. The Rockies, for example, blocks much of rain from passing through it, leaving the Pacific Northwest very rainy and the interior rather dry, but not too dry to make it into a desert. The Himalaya and the Tibetan Plateau is responsible for the deserts in Tian Shan, but this one is also very far inland which makes wet air from the ocean hard to reach. It's kind of sad that the mountain ranges on all three land masses are fractured and make little sense, but the one on the Little America is likely to block the trade wind from the East, making it more likely to be desert on the west.
Even if Paradox isn't going to add plate tectonics, I hope they do at least a little bit about the climate since this can be rather easily done given the location of the provinces, and there are like.. three options? Plains, jungles and deserts (barring mountains and hills, which is another concern). Jungles near the equators, deserts around 30-50 degrees latitude, particularly on the western coasts of the continents, and higher likelihood of desert if there is a mountain range blocking the trade winds, and the rest plains.
2. Mountains
The mountain ranges are pretty.... random. And given the size of the continents, they're too few and far between.
Large continents tend to have one major mountain range tucked to one side of the continent: Australia and Africa both have long ranges to the East, and the Americas have the Rockies and the Andes to the West. This is because of the plate movement, where one side of the continent is getting squeezed. (North America also has the Appalachians, but this is a relic of a much more ancient geological process that is now inactive.) It's okay to have few smaller mountains and hills pretty much anywhere the randomizer decides to place, but having one major range per continent at least wouldn't be a bad idea.
Take the West America. This is a really huge continent, and it stretches north to south. It just cries for a long, major mountain range from the Northern tundra area to the Southern end, with the appropriate coastal deserts in the right latitudes.
Or, if we have a large continent like this, it could also be the result of two continental plates crashing into each other. This could cause huge mountain range by itself, in the Tibetan scale. The Alps is another example of this; the African plate and the Eurasian plate are colliding, slowly closing in the Mediterranean.
And when there is a peninsula, there is mountain range that goes along with it. Think of Iberia, Italy, Koea, Indochina, etc. And a peninsula often (not always) extends into sea, creating an island or two, or more.
3. Islands
I kind of like the three islands between East and West America, and they align themselves in a direction. But when an island chain aligns itself in a direction like this, it usually implies one of the two things: it's the plate boundary, or a result of the hot spot.
The Carribean islands from Cuba to the Lesser Antilles are an example of the plate boundary phenomenon. These islands are located right on the edge of the Carribean, North American and South American plate. Likewise, Japan is a volcanic island chain on the plate border between the Eurasian, Pacific and North American plates.
A hot spot is just some dumb random place where the mantle is uber-active and melts a lot of crust into magma. (I'm oversimplifying this and many other things, but hell the mechanical details aren't that important) It stays where it is, but the plate above it can move, popping up islands in the direction of the plate movement. Hawaii is a prime example of this.
4. Round vs Jagged Coastlines
The coastlines look pretty round all over, with a few exceptions here and there. Coastlines that are roughly round are completely O.K. and natural, like in much of Africa and Australia. However, when there is a mountain range very close to the coastline, it should be rather jagged like in Norway or Britain. Fjords are essentially flooded river valleys, and it can happen anywhere when lots of small river valleys from the mountain range flow into the ocean right away. The end of the last glacial age flooded much of the low-lying plains, making Sumatra and much of Indonesia into islands, Baltic became a sea, and the East Sea/Sea of Japan got connected with the Pacific.
As I said, round coastlines do occur naturally and it's not as jarring as the equatorial deserts, but it'd be nice to have some variety in the landscape. IRL, South America is mostly nice and round, but North American coastline is pretty wacky especially in the North. If there are two mountain ranges branching out in two directions, it'd look quite natural and realistic to make one into a peninsula and have an inland bay in between.
5. Rivers
I can't see any river on the map so maybe this part is unnecessary, but I hope the rivers don't defy gravity. That is, they should never cross a mountain range, nor should they split in two directions unless very near the mouth where they form a delta. If I ever see a river does that, it's going to appear even more absurd than Gotland conquering Russia. At least to me. Seriously.
Now, I tried to explain things with the assumption that more people on the forum are into history and culture stuff than geology, and I apologize if I sounded like stating the obvious. If anyone wants to contribute and point out other things that I missed this time, please do so, as I hope the constructive feedbacks will give us a more realistic looking new worlds.
The map shows two continents, a more populated one to the East and an another one to the West. Let's call them West America and East America respectively, and I'll call that smaller landmass Little America. Not very creative.
1. Deserts
The first jarring aspect is the equatorial desert. The latitudes around the equator sees the atmospheric convection rising up, and the wet air from the ocean will rise and create a lot of rain in this latitude which is why we get rainforests and jungles around the equator. Simply put, both East and West America's equatorial deserts don't make a lot of sense. The Northern desert in West America makes more sense because it's located around the right latitude: 30 degrees north and south of the equator sees the atmospheric convection falling to the ground, and as the air is then dry, which creates large deserts around this latitude. Sahara, Arabian deserts, Australia and Kalahari all fall into this latitude.
The deserts on both continents turn into plains near the coast. If this is design, and the developers thought coastal deserts won't make a lot of sense... I'm afraid they're mistaken since coastal deserts are perfectly natural. They are usually found on the western edges of continents near the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn. Atacama, Baja California, Mauritania and Namibia all fall into this category. Given the latitude, if anything, it is Little America that is going to experience coastal deserts to the West. Also notice that it's the Western Australia that is more desert than the East.
Another major contributor to desert formation is rainshadow created by the mountain ranges. The Rockies, for example, blocks much of rain from passing through it, leaving the Pacific Northwest very rainy and the interior rather dry, but not too dry to make it into a desert. The Himalaya and the Tibetan Plateau is responsible for the deserts in Tian Shan, but this one is also very far inland which makes wet air from the ocean hard to reach. It's kind of sad that the mountain ranges on all three land masses are fractured and make little sense, but the one on the Little America is likely to block the trade wind from the East, making it more likely to be desert on the west.
Even if Paradox isn't going to add plate tectonics, I hope they do at least a little bit about the climate since this can be rather easily done given the location of the provinces, and there are like.. three options? Plains, jungles and deserts (barring mountains and hills, which is another concern). Jungles near the equators, deserts around 30-50 degrees latitude, particularly on the western coasts of the continents, and higher likelihood of desert if there is a mountain range blocking the trade winds, and the rest plains.
2. Mountains
The mountain ranges are pretty.... random. And given the size of the continents, they're too few and far between.
Large continents tend to have one major mountain range tucked to one side of the continent: Australia and Africa both have long ranges to the East, and the Americas have the Rockies and the Andes to the West. This is because of the plate movement, where one side of the continent is getting squeezed. (North America also has the Appalachians, but this is a relic of a much more ancient geological process that is now inactive.) It's okay to have few smaller mountains and hills pretty much anywhere the randomizer decides to place, but having one major range per continent at least wouldn't be a bad idea.
Take the West America. This is a really huge continent, and it stretches north to south. It just cries for a long, major mountain range from the Northern tundra area to the Southern end, with the appropriate coastal deserts in the right latitudes.
Or, if we have a large continent like this, it could also be the result of two continental plates crashing into each other. This could cause huge mountain range by itself, in the Tibetan scale. The Alps is another example of this; the African plate and the Eurasian plate are colliding, slowly closing in the Mediterranean.
And when there is a peninsula, there is mountain range that goes along with it. Think of Iberia, Italy, Koea, Indochina, etc. And a peninsula often (not always) extends into sea, creating an island or two, or more.
3. Islands
I kind of like the three islands between East and West America, and they align themselves in a direction. But when an island chain aligns itself in a direction like this, it usually implies one of the two things: it's the plate boundary, or a result of the hot spot.
The Carribean islands from Cuba to the Lesser Antilles are an example of the plate boundary phenomenon. These islands are located right on the edge of the Carribean, North American and South American plate. Likewise, Japan is a volcanic island chain on the plate border between the Eurasian, Pacific and North American plates.
A hot spot is just some dumb random place where the mantle is uber-active and melts a lot of crust into magma. (I'm oversimplifying this and many other things, but hell the mechanical details aren't that important) It stays where it is, but the plate above it can move, popping up islands in the direction of the plate movement. Hawaii is a prime example of this.
4. Round vs Jagged Coastlines
The coastlines look pretty round all over, with a few exceptions here and there. Coastlines that are roughly round are completely O.K. and natural, like in much of Africa and Australia. However, when there is a mountain range very close to the coastline, it should be rather jagged like in Norway or Britain. Fjords are essentially flooded river valleys, and it can happen anywhere when lots of small river valleys from the mountain range flow into the ocean right away. The end of the last glacial age flooded much of the low-lying plains, making Sumatra and much of Indonesia into islands, Baltic became a sea, and the East Sea/Sea of Japan got connected with the Pacific.
As I said, round coastlines do occur naturally and it's not as jarring as the equatorial deserts, but it'd be nice to have some variety in the landscape. IRL, South America is mostly nice and round, but North American coastline is pretty wacky especially in the North. If there are two mountain ranges branching out in two directions, it'd look quite natural and realistic to make one into a peninsula and have an inland bay in between.
5. Rivers
I can't see any river on the map so maybe this part is unnecessary, but I hope the rivers don't defy gravity. That is, they should never cross a mountain range, nor should they split in two directions unless very near the mouth where they form a delta. If I ever see a river does that, it's going to appear even more absurd than Gotland conquering Russia. At least to me. Seriously.
Now, I tried to explain things with the assumption that more people on the forum are into history and culture stuff than geology, and I apologize if I sounded like stating the obvious. If anyone wants to contribute and point out other things that I missed this time, please do so, as I hope the constructive feedbacks will give us a more realistic looking new worlds.
