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History
Part of Map Making Tools
The History tool shows your map as it was in its earlier ages. When a Generate run passes through several ages, it keeps each earlier age in brief: its realms, its towns and castles, its roads, its names and its peoples. Choose an age and the map is drawn as it was then, with that age's realms, places, roads and names in place of the present's.
History is for looking back, not a step in making the map. It sits in the Explore stage of the rail, after Finish, with Travel, and no Next leads to it. Nothing is edited while it is open, and leaving it shows the present map again.
History on the tutorial's world in Age 1, with that age's realms, towns, roads and names.
The tool needs a run with more than one age. Add ages in the Generate tool's Ages section and generate again (see Ages). With no run, or a run of one age, the panel says how to make one.
Every age of the last run, oldest first, each with its era and strife. The last is the present. Choose one to see it. The tool opens on the age you chose last (at first, the age before the present), and your choice is saved with the map.
The age's era, strife and culture event (if it had one), and how many realms, places and castles it had, with its population.
The age's realms, most populous first, each with its colour, name, capital and population. Click a realm to centre the map on it.
A realm with the ⊗ mark is gone by the present: no realm of today carries it on. A realm carries on as the present realm that holds its capital or, failing that, most of its land.
For an earlier age, what changed by the age after it; for the present, since the age before:
- Realms that fell and Realms that rose, by name;
- Places founded and Places lost;
- with cultures, each people's share of the land then and after ("19% to 49%").
Export to PNG saves the map as the tool shows it, through the same dialogue as the Export tool. The image is named with the age ("Westmarch, age 2"), so a set of images can tell your world's story. The present can be exported here too.
While an earlier age is shown:
- Realms are drawn as the map's own realm level is: its fills, borders, territorial waters and label look. A realm that carried on to the present has that realm's colour and name, so a realm keeps its look from age to age; one that did not has the name the generator gave it and a colour of its own.
- Places are pins in the map's styles for their tiers: a realm's capital, city, large town, town and castle. Each has the name it had then. A town that lasts keeps its name through the ages; one gone by the present was named in the language of the people living there at the time.
- Roads are drawn in the map's Main road style. The run keeps only an earlier age's roads, not its river trade or sea lanes.
- The present's regions, routes and pins are hidden. Terrain, rivers, contours, the grid, cartography and your own labels stay.
While the present is shown in the tool, the map's regions and pins are drawn as usual, but its routes give way to the run's roads in the Main road style, so every age's roads look alike. Leaving the tool brings the map's own routes back.
The map controls work as usual:
- Regions: Fills and the realm level's row apply to the age's realms.
- Detail and Symbol size apply to its places and names, and Avoid overlaps to its names.
- Thematic layers: Culture shows the age's peoples (each place wholly its main culture, since an age keeps no mix). Population, Capacity, Cleared land, Danger and Trade are kept for the present only and cannot be chosen; the layer you had chosen comes back when you leave the tool.
The information bar names the realm under the pointer.
- A run with a culture event (an arrival or an invasion) shows the most change: choose Culture in the Thematic layers menu and step through the ages to watch a people spread.
- Lower the Detail level to see an age's realms and great cities on a busy world map.
- Export each age in turn to make a series of maps for your players.
Related: Generate, Cultures, Map Canvas, Export