So you want to learn how to map, huh?

Mapping itself is pretty simple once you get the hang of it, while I wont go too far in depth into the specific controls and tools, this should give you enough information to start making a good quality map.

A couple of things I will personally be using:

• paint.net (free)[www.getpaint.net]
  
• Historical references and order of battles (they can usually be found via wikipedia, especially for more modern conflicts involving state-actors)
  
• Geographical maps pretaining to the map I want to create

For more "in-person" help and assistance, you're welcome to join the Armchair Development Co-op[discord.gg].

Edit tile country: By default, all tiles on the map are assigned to the nation of Switzerland.
Edit terrain: Edits terrain, high mountains cannot be traversed, factories, villages, oil add manpower, industry, and oil respectively.
Add soldiers: Add and remove soldiers, naval units cannot be placed on any tile except for water, and fortifications (such as bunkers, coastal bunkers, etc.) cannot be placed on water. Placing ground units on water by default will turn them into transport ships.
Assign veterancy: Self explanatory
Assign unit size: Self explanatory
Add city: Add and remove cities, by default these cities will have one defence, one population, and one industry. Assigning this to a water tile turns it into a port.
Assign city airport: Level one airport only grants strafing runs and bombing runs, level two grants paratrooper drops, level three grants strategic bombing.
Assign city nuclear: Level one grants the ability to construct atomic bombs, level two grants the ability to make hydrogen bombs.
Assign city defence: The higher the value, the more HP your city has. Damage is split between any unit dividing the city and the city itself, and health of the city is regenerated every turn.
Edit game settings:
1. Edit country information
Edit's all the values regarding a country, technology, manpower, industry, faction, flag, and atomic weapons.
2. Player country
Changes the nation that the player is playing as, note that this list does not get updated with custom flags.
3. Victory conditions
Changes from capture/hold objectives, the game is won by the player in a conquest map by taking all strategic objectives in a number of turns, while a hold map is won by holding ALL objectives for a specified number of turns.
4. Round limit
Specifies the number of turns that a map has. The round only finally ends after every AI has made its turn after the player.
5. Maximum generals
Specifies the number of generals that the player can assign to their own units. For challenge maps or maps that use historical order of battles, I'd suggest setting this to 0.
6. Introduction general
Select a general here to give a introduction. This can include custom generals.
7. Enemy ai attack threshold
Specifies the amount of tiles that an enemy unit can attack from. If this value is set to 10 tiles for example, enemy units will only attack targets that are 10 tiles away from them.
8. Allow reupload
Allows the reupload and editing of the map if it is published to servers.
9. Disable diplomacy
Disables giving resources to allies, as well as disabling declaring war on neutral countries.
10. Introduction
This is an introduction given at the start of the map. If you want to provide more information, you can also do a event. The event will appear above the introduction.
11. No Allied Resource Penalties
Disable any penalty that comes out of declaring war on allies.
12. Override player tech tree
Any tech assigned to the player nation will override the player's own tech tree.
Assign strategic unit/city
Gives the mandatory objective to complete at the end. If your assigning this to a unit inside a city, the city will always be granted the status and not the unit.
Assign general
Self explanatory.
Event creator
1. Round Dropdown menu
Allows you to select events, this is ordered in oldest to newest events created.
2. Target country
Selects the country that is targeted by the event.
3. Action
You can select between diplomacy, manpower, industry, fuel, health, veterancy, and begin nuclear war. Beginning nuclear war only means that the AI will use nuclear weapons.

Use the top bar below the effect to give your event a title, and the box below that the text that appears when the event occurs.
4. Trigger round
When the round is reached, the event is fired. This overrides any condition that comes from the Trigger conditions.
5. Add or Remove event
The + button adds an event, the - event removes the event.
6. Trigger
The event is triggered whenever a port or a city is captured.
7. Delete events button
Deletes all events.

Lock AI movement
Locks any unit that is controlled by an AI nation, preventing it from moving any tile.

The map names are vague at best, and unfortunately there's no way to generate an exact hexmap.
You can use Hexgrid[hamhambone.github.io] to plan out your map.

The height and width for every hexmap template is as follows: