Creating a relief map in bigger scale from an outline map in small scale

[Pontus Bergman]

Hello!

I am participating in a german online simulation phenomenon, called virtual nations. In short: A lot of people create a virtual, fictional world with several countries and nations online, for the most part in forums and their "populations" (i.e. the forum's members) interact with each other (in a political, cultural or economic way). The countries (if they want to) are organized by a supranational body which provides a more or less rough, small scaled map. To provide more detailed, larger scaled maps lies in the responsibility of each country. At that point, I need your help.

The rough world map is drawn in a "scale" of 1px : 144km². That sounded weird to me when I first heard of it, because how would you switch a scale of area into a more common scale of lengths (for example, 1 : 25,000)?

I want to draw a new, more detailed, larger scaled map of "my country". First, to scale up that part of map to a common scale of 1 : 25,000 and edit it with Adobe Illustrator to a basic map for further usage (coastlines, borders, etc.).

Second, to make a relief map from that using Fractal Terrains 3 and give it a physical geography (mountains, plains, vales, rivers, lakes, then towns and cities, roads, railroads, etc.).

To begin with, I cannot solve the problem of scale. If I want to scale up the original map (1px : 144km²) to a scale of, like, 1 : 25,000, how am I going to proceed? The indication of pixel depends everytime from the resolution. Assuming that, after all I want to print the country map later in small parts, the scale should be 1 cm : 25,000 cm (that is the scale of offical topographic maps in Germany by which I orientate myself). Or, to be more realistic, print it out in a scale of 1 cm : 1,000,000 cm (should be look like that, for example, or even scales of 1 cm : 400,000 cm like that).

Can you please help me? It looks like a lot of work but I really, really want to make this happen. I hope I expressed myself in an understandable way... Thank you very much in advance!