Yantas - A Pretty Amateur WIP

[sangi39]

Ok, so, after a week of non-stop work in the real-world so that I can pay bills, I haven't managed to get too far, however, I think I can tell a few things about where this might go:

July (northern summer, southern winter)




January (northern winter, southern summer)



It looks like there might three monsoon zones, a troipcal monsoon on the eastern coast of Mistaya, a temperate monsoon on the eastern coast of Arenda (both in the northern hemisphere) and a second temperate monsoon on the far eastern coast of Sirden (in the souther hemisphere). There might be a fourth on the east coast of the large island to the south-west of Hungas (which looks like it could border a temperate or a tropical monsoon given the latitude).

If this is all roughly correct, my next step will be to use a method suggested by eternalsage here (post 28 of the thread) in order to set up precipitation levels. You can already probably guess some trends, e.g. the southern interior of Arenda and several areas of Sirden will likely be deserts, but I can't be any more specific than that right now

[Caenwyr]

I think it's time to remove that "amateur" thingy in the title. You're doing a great job, sangi!

[Pixie]

Looks pretty good so far. Looking for for the next installment.

Word of advice: stick to about 5 levels of rain and 5 or 6 levels of avg. temperature, as you can easily match your info with this part of Geoff's Cookbook: The Climate Cookbook

Geoff's choice of words is:
(... Very Cold / Cold / Cool / Mild / Warm / Hot)
(... Dry / Low / Moderate / Wet / Very Wet)

[sangi39]

I think it's time to remove that "amateur" thingy in the title. You're doing a great job, sangi!

Thanks, Caenwyr The more people say this the more I think the speed of my work is so low is just down to a lack of confidence. I've started working on the precipitation numbers so hopefully they'll be up soon

Looks pretty good so far. Looking for for the next installment.

Word of advice: stick to about 5 levels of rain and 5 or 6 levels of avg. temperature, as you can easily match your info with this part of Geoff's Cookbook: The Climate Cookbook

Geoff's choice of words is:
(... Very Cold / Cold / Cool / Mild / Warm / Hot)
(... Dry / Low / Moderate / Wet / Very Wet)

I was planning on 5 levels for rainfall from 1 (very dry) to 5 (very wet) (eternalsage's system has 0 to 5 with 2 as the middle value to work from, but that doesn't seem to work all to well given that there are then only two values below "moderate" but three above it, that's how I've started to look at it anyway).

As for temperature, I don't know why I hadn't thought of doing it that way before, i.e. 1 (very cold) to 5 (very warm). It does make a lot of sense, thank you

The more I work on this, and the more I finalise decisions, the more I enjoy working on it and posting stuff about it

[Raptori]

Thanks, Caenwyr The more people say this the more I think the speed of my work is so low is just down to a lack of confidence.

Then I'll say it too - definitely not amateur!

I was planning on 5 levels for rainfall from 1 (very dry) to 5 (very wet) (eternalsage's system has 0 to 5 with 2 as the middle value to work from, but that doesn't seem to work all to well given that there are then only two values below "moderate" but three above it, that's how I've started to look at it anyway).

As for temperature, I don't know why I hadn't thought of doing it that way before, i.e. 1 (very cold) to 5 (very warm). It does make a lot of sense, thank you

I was planning to do the whole levels thing again (i.e. I did it on the original map, was about to do it on the new version) ... but then remembered how much work it all was, gave up, and just did it by feel instead! I'll have to tidy up the map a bit before I post it though, it's a bit messy D:

The more I work on this, and the more I finalise decisions, the more I enjoy working on it and posting stuff about it

Great fun, isn't it! Reading your thread (and the couple of other similar ones around) really helps motivate me to keep going on mine

[sangi39]

Then I'll say it too - definitely not amateur!

Haha, thanks

I was planning to do the whole levels thing again (i.e. I did it on the original map, was about to do it on the new version) ... but then remembered how much work it all was, gave up, and just did it by feel instead! I'll have to tidy up the map a bit before I post it though, it's a bit messy D:

Yeah, I'll likely start out doing something way too overly complicated like normal and then simplify it later on when I realise I was probably doing too much work for the level of detail I was looking for

Great fun, isn't it! Reading your thread (and the couple of other similar ones around) really helps motivate me to keep going on mine

Reading your thread is similar, as well as reading Jalyha's thread as well. Full of handy ideas and maps the compare at different stages of development:

Q: Did I get the wind right?
A: Check what Jalyha and Raptori ended up with

[Raptori]

Yeah, I'll likely start out doing something way too overly complicated like normal and then simplify it later on when I realise I was probably doing too much work for the level of detail I was looking for

Yah, I'm having the same problem when it comes to planning out the cultures and civilisations on mine. Reading GG&S makes me want to start with human migration from their initial continent (complete with dates for the colonisation of each area of the continent to the nearest 1000 years or so), then decide where and when agriculture developed, how this impacted the surrounding areas, etc etc etc leading all the way to explaining why the world is in whatever state it is at the "present" ... but that's a ridiculous amount of work. Very tempting though.

Reading your thread is similar, as well as reading Jalyha's thread as well. Full of handy ideas and maps the compare at different stages of development:

Q: Did I get the wind right?
A: Check what Jalyha and Raptori ended up with

Hahaha yeah, mine is more like this:

Q: Okay, what's the next step?
A: Open Sangi39 and Jalyha's threads on the laptop, find relevant posts, then leave those open next to me while I work so I know I'm not messing up.

[sangi39]

Yah, I'm having the same problem when it comes to planning out the cultures and civilisations on mine. Reading GG&S makes me want to start with human migration from their initial continent (complete with dates for the colonisation of each area of the continent to the nearest 1000 years or so), then decide where and when agriculture developed, how this impacted the surrounding areas, etc etc etc leading all the way to explaining why the world is in whatever state it is at the "present" ... but that's a ridiculous amount of work. Very tempting though.

I haven't read Guns, Germs, and Steel yet, but it's been discussed a few times over on the ZBB and several users have pointed out a number of problems with it, or at least counterexamples to the general arguments made in the books, but it seems that it basically comes down to him having to make sweeping statements since he's trying to cover, well, the whole world. Counterexamples basically seem to point to areas where other factors came into play to mess with Diamond's hypothesis, although others have pointed out that the hypothesis might just be too simple

[Raptori]

I haven't read Guns, Germs, and Steel yet, but it's been discussed a few times over on the ZBB and several users have pointed out a number of problems with it, or at least counterexamples to the general arguments made in the books, but it seems that it basically comes down to him having to make sweeping statements since he's trying to cover, well, the whole world. Counterexamples basically seem to point to areas where other factors came into play to mess with Diamond's hypothesis, although others have pointed out that the hypothesis might just be too simple

Yeah I've seen that kind of discussion too. At the start of the book he specifically states that it's a general principle, and as such won't encompass all situations and might be off on some details. In spite of this a lot of the negative comments I've seen are people providing a couple of examples where other factors were more important, just like you said, and then arguing that this proves him wrong. However as a general principle it appears that there's nothing wrong with it - none of the people who disagree with it have come up with a viable alternative - and for a fictional world I think any errors brought forward would be fine. At least there'd be some attempt at explaining stuff!

It seems to be the same situation for his other book Collapse (which I have read); he presents it as a general principle and people attack it with the odd exception and ignore the dozens of examples where it works. We know for a fact that Newtonian physics does not work in a lot of situations, but is perfect in the right conditions. I'm pretty sure that's the case here. The idea behind Collapse sure as hell feels realistic to me, and I agree with most of what's in GG&S up to where I've read so far

But yeah, it'd take so long to work it all out

[sangi39]

Yeah I've seen that kind of discussion too. At the start of the book he specifically states that it's a general principle, and as such won't encompass all situations and might be off on some details. In spite of this a lot of the negative comments I've seen are people providing a couple of examples where other factors were more important, just like you said, and then arguing that this proves him wrong. However as a general principle it appears that there's nothing wrong with it - none of the people who disagree with it have come up with a viable alternative - and for a fictional world I think any errors brought forward would be fine. At least there'd be some attempt at explaining stuff!

It seems to be the same situation for his other book Collapse (which I have read); he presents it as a general principle and people attack it with the odd exception and ignore the dozens of examples where it works. We know for a fact that Newtonian physics does not work in a lot of situations, but is perfect in the right conditions. I'm pretty sure that's the case here. The idea behind Collapse sure as hell feels realistic to me, and I agree with most of what's in GG&S up to where I've read so far

But yeah, it'd take so long to work it all out

Well, when you thin about it, the same is generally true of the Climate Cookbook in that there's only so much you can account for when dealing with stuff on a global scale