Creating and Managing Maps

Generating a New Map

Creating a New Map

On the "Create New Map" tool, select your preferred Generation Engine.

Important: The generation engine is only responsible for creating the initial base terrain. Once the base map is generated, all other tools (terrain brushes, biomes, hydrology, regions, infrastructure, and labels) function identically across all models. The only tool restricted by your choice of engine is the "Generate Regional Map" feature, which is only supported by the Standard and Flat engines.
Enter a map seed or generate a random seed, set the map resolution and the latitude range it represents, and click "Create New Map".

Note: If you have unsaved changes on the existing map you will be prompted to save or discard them.
[Optional] Select a grid to display. By default, the grid layer is disabled in the map canvas controls. To see the grid, simply toggle the grid icon in the map controls.

Creating a new map will procedurally generate a terrain, moisture and temperature model for the world, and calculate appropriate biomes. It is recommended that you work through each map tool in turn to edit the map — see Getting Started for a suggested order.

Choosing a Generation Engine

Standard: Creates endless, classic procedural terrain.
- When to use: Best for rapid prototyping, infinite panning/scrolling to find the perfect landmass, and when you intend to zoom in and extract high-resolution Regional Maps.
Advanced (Tectonic): Simulates tectonic plates that crash together to form supercontinents, ocean trenches, and mountain ridges, before upscaling and fracturing the coastlines.
- When to use: Best for creating realistic, massive world-scale maps with natural geological formations. Does not support Regional Map extraction or infinite panning.
Guided: Allows you to draw vector shapes using the "Add Land" and "Remove Land" (lakes/inland seas) tools. The engine generates procedural terrain inside your vector boundaries, resulting in landmasses where you drew them, but with highly organic, domain-warped coastlines.
- When to use: Best when you have a specific world shape in mind (e.g., recreating an existing campaign map or drawing a specific archipelago) but want the engine to handle the realistic texturing and coastal erosion. Does not support Regional Map extraction or infinite panning.
Flat: Generates a blank canvas just above sea level.
- When to use: Best when you want to hand-paint the entire world from scratch using the terrain brushes.

Generating Regional Maps

It is possible to create new, high-resolution maps based on a cropped area of existing maps. All terrain edits and vector features are preserved, and the new maps are nested as children under their parent map in the manager.

Note: Once created, the new regional map and the original map are completely independent of each other. Changes to one will not affect the other.

With the existing map loaded, select the "Create Regional Map from Existing Map" button at the bottom of the "Create New Map" tool. This will open a toolbar and display a crop window.
In the toolbar, change the resolution of the width of the new map (height will be calculated automatically).
On the map canvas, drag the corners of the crop window to resize it, and drag it into position. The toolbar will update to show the calculated map resolution and the new latitude ranges of the map.
Once you are happy, click the "Generate Map" button. You will be asked for a new map name. The map will then be created and saved. You can load it in the Map Management Tools "Manage Maps" tool where it will appear as a child of the original map.
Fine tune river positions, points of interest pins and labels.
- The additional terrain detail is likely to create new routes for rivers so you may need to edit the terrain slightly to allow rivers to continue their original paths.
- Points of Interest pins (infrastructure) and labels will be positioned at the same centred position of the original map but because the font/icon size is smaller (relative to the map) they will now be slightly offset.