Caricatures of Reality, that really is how I view my maps.

When I make maps, I try and get a sense of the place. Maps for Transport Fever are rarely 1:1 scale, so using plain unaltered reality usually just doesn't work. I will start from a height map and then focus on what story I want to tell.

I will start with 'reality', then raise mountains to convey their mass, widen rivers to allow navigation, sculpt mountain passes to make them practical & to better tell the tale. I choose towns in the same way, they are there to tell the story and support exploring the map. This means some liberties are taken with town sizes, but this is to mould reality to the game's engine better. Next I place industries, usually this entails hours of research into the history of an area followed by a lot of pencil & paper sketching to figure out industry trees. If necessary a light sprinkle of auto-generated industries are added to fill out the map a little bit. Then I add roads, first auto generated, then manually if there are specific real world roads that I wish to emulate.

Finally comes the longest part of the process, painting and sculpting. If I didn't have to work in the day I would spend even longer than I already do. First comes the forests, both real and imaginative; then come the fields, lakes, snowfields, finally I create places of interest around the map (dams & reservoirs, natural wonders such as the White Cliffs of Dover on my London & Paris map or Mount Shasta on my Golden State map... that sort of thing).

I play and upload my map then for you to enjoy. I am always open to feedback and I routinely tweak my old maps based on your input.

Thanks,

Pat