Travel and Scale

[Devor]

I'm not sure, perhaps this should be in the World-Building thread. But I have a map of my country and I'm completely lost about size and scale and travel time, and I figure that's a pretty technical question. I may be redrawing it soon so I want to know more about whether there's any troubles with it.

Here's the map.

Right now, so far as scale is concerned, I have that you should be able to leave from "C" in the middle of the map, follow the road east and end up at "W" by foot in under a day. With a day of travel between each waypoint, it should take three days to get from "C" to the town at the bottom.

This is supposed to be a map of one relatively small country. Is that a reasonable size? How big is my country? And are the population centers too big/small for the scale? I get the feeling I have too many mountains and that cities are too big.

Thanks in advance for the help!

[Benjamin Clayborne]

I think the average healthy person can walk at a regular pace of about 3 miles per hour, and probably manage 8-10 hours a day, assuming clear weather, level terrain, and they don't have to stop and hunt (either they're carrying food with them or they can stop at inns/taverns for a meal). That means 25-30 miles per day.

To scale, that means your country there is about 100-120 miles across. That's a pretty big area to walk around on foot, but it's not what I'd call colossal. I don't know how big the population centers are, though.

[Hans]

That means 25-30 miles per day.

I agree, the distance measured as a "days travel" was about 30 km for a long period of time. It is not a coincidence that the distance between Caravanserais is ~30 to 40 km. It is about the same for oxcart or camel caravans.
This can increase with good roads or friendly landscapes and is less in mountains or swamp areas. But not as much as one might think.

[Ravana]

I usually figure that the basic size of a low-level political division will be about as far from its center of administration as one can get in a single day… at most. More often, though, I assume that it should be as far as one can make a round trip in a day, as the lord isn't likely to want to spend the night at some rat-trap on the edge of his territory. (This, of course, changes if he happens to own multiple properties spread out around his lands.) With good roads, this radius could be as much as 15-20 miles, though there are plenty of reasons it might be less… not the least of which is lack of "good" roads. Maybe a bit above that, if the lord normally travels on horseback. Also, that's distance actually traveled, not linear distance: the more the road departs from straight, the smaller the geographical radius.

It's probably even more useful viewed in reverse, however: the peasants shouldn't be expected to live farther away from the nearest administrative (or at least market) center than they can reasonably reach in a single-day round trip. Which doesn't mean there may not be multiple such centers within a single administrative region, spaced no more than twenty miles apart, and probably less. (Why, in a minute.) I'm guessing you haven't chosen to represent every single village with a market in it, though.

Unfortunately, this makes it difficult to answer the rest of your questions directly. Assuming the terrain is fairly open and level (I'm guessing the lighter green represents some such), and the roads are at least good enough you're better on them than off (which need not be the case: only wagons have to be better on them than off… completely different things), then your waypoints are probably about twenty miles apart, maximum. Covering sixty miles a day on foot is certainly doable, but most people wouldn't want to. Are you talking intrepid adventurers, or soldiers making a forced march? Then it could be eighty miles or more total. Are you talking peasants with little motivation to hurry, possibly not in the best of health or accompanied by children or elders, perhaps lacking decent (or any) shoes, maybe carrying a burden? Ten miles a day, maybe fifteen.

The rest depends on the scale you end up with. Can't tell you about the cities, since I don't know how big they are. (Their scale on the Civ-style map is definitely exaggerated. On the other hand, look at the size of that boat…! ) The "mountain" areas are almost certainly too small to be actual "mountains," but that's assuming you actually want them to be. (And assuming the geographical model you're after isn't central New Guinea—which has ranges so sharp you could cut yourself on them. There's a reason one-sixth of the world's languages are found on just the eastern half of that island.)

The overall size of the "country" is "reasonable" enough… depending on what you had in mind when using the term "country," and what other political entities exist on its borders that might roll over it if they were too much larger and took it into their minds to do so. As an independent monarchy, it would probably fall into the low end of the scale of historical Western European countries, though not necessarily by much: there have certainly been smaller. As an effectively autonomous state, possibly within a larger framework, it could be huge. Find some detailed maps of the Holy Roman Empire from around the 12th century onward and you'll see what I mean: it can be a real shock to realize that the largest single division on a particular highly intricate map is Luxembourg. (Even if it was about 40% larger back then.)

[FictionQuest]

On the subject of the mountains, you should do a little study on how mountains are formed. I'm not sure that you can just deposit them randomly. There needs to be some sense and order to them I think. I am not an expert and it may not bother anyone in the story, but if you are looking for authenticity then it's worth a little study.

[Devor]

Thanks for all the comments.

I think I'll cut the scale by about half, so that you can get from "C" to "W" and back in a day, so about 15 miles. That brings things closer together and should fix a few issues.

By extension, how far could you get by horseback in a day? Or in a wagon? If someone just wants to post a link that would be fine too.

As for the mountains, do they become more believable if there's a large mountain range which more or less ends just below the country? Could it be viewed as a large valley? I suppose the mountains aren't overly necessary and tall hills would suffice, at least in parts.

[FictionQuest]

To my limited knowledge, mountains are generally created along fault lines where one plate pushes over another. So you typically get a long, thin range of mountains. Not sure it matters exactly where it ends, whether near to the sea or not. Tall hills might be better, especially if your characters have to navigate them.

[Elder the Dwarf]

To my limited knowledge, mountains are generally created along fault lines where one plate pushes over another. So you typically get a long, thin range of mountains. Not sure it matters exactly where it ends, whether near to the sea or not. Tall hills might be better, especially if your characters have to navigate them.

That, or when two plates push together, both rising upwards. To illustrate put your fingertips of both hands against eachother and push together. I believe these instances create the largest mountains, although your story could be at the beginning, middle, or end of this process.

[Sheilawisz]

Hello Devor!! =) Your map is very beautiful, I was surprised by its colours and now I think that I should add colour to my own maps... because so far they are just black ink on white paper

The distances that you describe are short, considering that an experienced walking traveller can cover a distance of 40km in a single day or by walking all night- Travel by horse can be impressively fast, as here in Earth the mongol riders could travel for hundreds of kilometers so fast that they took people by surprise...

The best option for your map is to include a scale in it like 1:3000000 (1cm=30km) I have scales in all my maps and they help very much when I have to calculate travels =) About the mountains, if you want to have a "believable" geography you must be careful with where exactly you place them- That's not a problem for me because my worlds are very surreal and I don't care about having a believable geography!!

Sheila

[Devor]

Hello Devor!! =) Your map is very beautiful, I was surprised by its colours and now I think that I should add colour to my own maps... because so far they are just black ink on white paper.

Thanks. I did the outline in colored pencils and asked my wife to color it in crayon. It sounds a little simple, but having a colored copy on the desk in front of you helps to bring the place alive in my mind.

That, or when two plates push together, both rising upwards. To illustrate put your fingertips of both hands against eachother and push together. I believe these instances create the largest mountains, although your story could be at the beginning, middle, or end of this process.

Thanks for the input. I'm not extremely concerned about the mountains. The place has a magical history and the mountains can fit into that story easily. Most of them will also work as hills. I just don't want readers to be thinking about it before the story comes up. So if there's a specific feature which stands out as unreal or the most unreal maybe I can work on that, but as I mentioned the country is located at the tip of a large mountain range and I'm hoping they could be considered an extension of that range.