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Travel
Part of Map Making Tools
The Travel tool shows how long journeys take across your map. Click where a journey starts and choose how it travels over land: on foot, by wagon or by fast mount. The land is coloured by the days it takes to reach, a line marks the edge of each band of days, and the quickest way to the point under the pointer is drawn on the map with its time in the information bar. Rivers and the sea are crossed by boat and ship, whichever way over land you choose.
Like History, Travel is for exploring a map, not a step in making it. It sits in the Explore stage of the rail and no Next leads to it. Nothing on the map is edited while it is open, and leaving it shows the map as before.
Travel on the regional map, by fast mount from Mostadra in 1-day bands with the region fills off, and the way to Kansmarda drawn to the pointer.
Travel works on any map, but it is most useful on one with routes:
- Roads, sea routes and river trade routes are the map's own routes, by their transport (see Routes and pins). Routes made by Generate and routes drawn by hand count alike, and a route you delete no longer counts. Without routes, every journey crosses the wilds and every crossing of water is by small boat.
- Farmland is quicker to cross than the wilds. It comes from the last Generate run (its cleared land), so a map that has not been generated treats all of its land as wild. A regional map carries its parent's routes, which count, and a copy of its parent's run, whose cleared land it uses until it is generated itself. The villages and lanes of a fill-in (see Fill in) don't change the farmland, and lanes don't count as roads.
The first time the tool opens on a map, it works out the map's travel network, which takes a moment ("Working out the travel network…"). It does so again after the terrain, the climate or the rivers change.
Click the map to set where the journey starts. A click on a place (within a short distance of its pin) starts there, since a journey nearly always starts at a place; anywhere else, it starts at the point you clicked. The panel names the place nearest the start ("Near Ashby"). Click the map again to move the start, or Clear to remove it.
On foot, By wagon or By fast mount: the way over land. On a road, each goes at its speed (see Speeds). Off the roads, a mount or a wagon loses most of its lead over a walker, and farmland is quicker than the wilds:
| Off the road, on open level ground | In the wilds | On farmland |
|---|---|---|
| On foot | half the road's pace | 80% of it |
| By fast mount | 30% | 60% |
| By wagon | 15% | half |
Forest, marsh, desert and the like, and hills and mountains, slow every step off the road further, the steepest and roughest ground most. Hills slow a road too, but far less.
Days per band sets how many days each band of colour, and each line, covers: Automatic, or 1, 2, 5 or 10 days. Ten bands are shown, so a band of 2 days shows journeys of up to 20 days. Automatic suits the map's size, by its longer side: a day for a map under 700 km across, 2 days under 1,500 km, 5 days under 4,000 km, and 10 days for a larger map. The panel says what Automatic chooses ("Automatic (5 days)").
A day's travel for each way, in the map's unit (see New map):
| Speed | Preset (km a day) | Used for |
|---|---|---|
| On foot | 30 | Walking, on a road across level ground |
| By wagon | 25 | A wagon or cart, on a road across level ground |
| By fast mount | 60 | A rider, on a road across level ground |
| River boat, downstream | 60 | Along a river trade route, with the current |
| River boat, upstream | 20 | Along a river trade route, against the current |
| Sailing ship | 150 | Along the map's sea routes |
| Small boat | 40 | At sea away from the sea routes, and on rivers with no trade route |
Change a speed for this map in its field; Use the presets puts every speed back. The speeds are saved with the map.
- Ships keep to the sea routes. Away from them only small boats are found, so a long sea journey pays only from a port on a route.
- Going aboard takes time: finding passage takes a few hours at a town's harbour, and two days elsewhere on the coast. Coming ashore takes none.
- On a river with no trade route only small boats are found, so a boat goes no faster than a small boat, downstream or up.
- Times run one way, from the start outward: going up a river is slower than coming down it, so a return journey can take longer.
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 way of travel and the start ("Westmarch, on foot from Ashby").
While the tool is open and a start is set:
- The day bands colour the land by the time it takes to reach, palest nearest the start and darkest furthest away. They cover the land only; land beyond the last band is not coloured.
- A line marks the edge of each band, numbered once with its day. The numbers turn round the start from band to band, so they do not stack.
- A mark shows the start.
- The way to the pointer is drawn from the start to the point under the pointer, each stretch in the colour of how it is travelled: orange over land, green by river boat, purple by ship or boat (the colours of the Trade layer).
- The map's own regions, routes, pins and labels stay as they are, so the bands read against the roads that shape them.
The information bar gives the time to the point under the pointer: hours under a day, then days and hours ("2 days, 5 hours"), or a dash where no journey reaches. The Travel time legend below it shows the bands, each named by its last day, with the band under the pointer picked out, and the way of travel ("Days of travel on foot").
The map controls:
- Thematic layers: the day bands are drawn in the colour layer's place, so the colour layers are set aside while the tool is open and come back when you leave it. Opacity sets how strongly the bands cover the map. Trade can be shown beside them.
- Regions: region fills tint the bands; switch off Fills to see them clearly.
The way of travel, the speeds, the band width and the start are saved with the map, so the tool opens where you left it. The 3D view never shows travel times.
The times come from the same model of the land that Generate uses to place towns and roads, so they explain the network a run builds. The model divides the map into cells: on a world map, the generator's own cells about 25 km apart; on a regional map, where those would be few, finer cells about 10 pixels apart. Each step between cells takes a time from its ground, its route (if any) and the speeds, and the quickest way to every cell is found from the start. The bands and the time in the information bar blend between cells, so they change smoothly.
- Compare On foot with By wagon: a wagon is quick on the roads and very slow off them, so its bands stretch along the roads.
- Draw a road with Routes and pins and see how it changes the bands: a new road counts at once.
- On a world map, choose 10-day bands to see how long it takes to cross a realm; on a small regional map, 1-day bands show a day's travel from a town.
- Lower Opacity in the Thematic layers menu to see the terrain under the bands.
Related: History, Routes and pins, Generate, Map Canvas, Export