How do you draw nation borders?

[Aenigma]

Well, as the title of this thread suggests, I'm wondering how ya'll draw borders on your maps?
It's something I find to be quite important on a map if there are several nations involved.

It'd be nice to see some examples
So. How do you?

[NeonKnight]

Not sure what you mean. Do you mean, how do we draw it on the map (colors, style, etc) or how do we place them/put them?

If you mean the latter, historically, national borders often followed geographical features. Rivers, Mountain Chains, Edge of a marsh/swam, coast or lake shore. After that, borders were more fickle, maybe loosely represented as a day's ride from this or that town/castle.

[Rythal]

they can also end up being straight if a border is decided by a higher power for the two nations. the example that I think of here is something I vaguely recall about how the Pope divided Brazil between Spain and Portugal and drew a straight border between the two.

I'm not an expert on south american history though, so if someone cares to correct me on this, feel free.

[Ascension]

I do mine like this (very rough and quick version, mind you):
1. Start with continent shape.
2. Draw big color blobs, each color on its own layer.
3. Delete the first color from all of the other layers, then repeat with the second color, then third, and so on.
4. Using the continent shape I delete the color outside of the landmass.
5. Reduce the fill of the layer then add an inner glow.
6. Using each color layer I make a selection of it, reduce the selection by a little bit, turn it into a path, stroke the path in a slightly darker color, then use the eraser with a wide spacing to cut out the chunks and leave a dashed line look.

[Aenigma]

Not sure what you mean. Do you mean, how do we draw it on the map (colors, style, etc) or how do we place them/put them?

I mean the borders themselves. Do you just draw a line? Do you use dots? Dashes? What kind of markings?
Pardon for not expressing myself sufficiently in the first post.

[tilt]

the map I'm currently working on (Mountain Realms) I haven't gotten around to borders yet - but I'll probably go with dotted lines as they are less obtrusive to the map if I make any, cause some maps don't need borders, by placing cities and natural dividers (rivers, mountain etc) it might be obvious where the border goes ... and sometimes the borders are a little flowing back and forth too

[Aenigma]

the map I'm currently working on (Mountain Realms) I haven't gotten around to borders yet - but I'll probably go with dotted lines as they are less obtrusive to the map if I make any, cause some maps don't need borders, by placing cities and natural dividers (rivers, mountain etc) it might be obvious where the border goes ... and sometimes the borders are a little flowing back and forth too

Nice. I've sometimes mistaken roads for borders on some maps (dashed lines), it's partly because of that, that I asked about the markings of borders in the first place

[Midgardsormr]

If I use a dashed line or something like that, I always make sure to include a legend to keep things clear. I really like the edge color technique seen on some of Mercator's maps, though:
Mercator-Hondius-1609-Ottoman_Empire.jpg

[Gamerprinter]

If I were going to do national borders, which I almost never do, rather have a given region with a defined geographic area and put the Kingdom Name at the Center, then do the same to every other "nation", which means borders are in dispute and only generally known.

However, if I were wanted to place real borders instead, this is how I'd do it, Xara Xtreme Pro 4.0:

1.Determine where the border is supposed to go, then create a line (in this case dashed) to place at the border, then cut the line (to put it in the cache).

2. Next I would "paste in place" the line and convert it to a solid red line (for example) then give it a slightly feathered edge - oh about 4-5 pixels. (In Xara there is a function "paste in place" that lets me copy/cut any object anywhere on my design, then I can "paste in place" meaning the object is pasted back at the same location it was cut, rather than to the center of the design - as with most other apps.)

3. Next I would "paste in place" that same line but convert it to a 0 point line, I would convert the red line into a shape, then combined the 0 point line with the red line shape, to cut it exactly in half. Then delete the bottom half.

4. I would "paste in place" another red line, convert it to a green line, then do the same operation as above; ie: convert to shape, "paste in place" line convert to 0 point, then combine and slice in half. Deleting the top half.

Below are the steps illustrated as a light duty tutorial...

GP

[Aenigma]

That's quite awesome I must say, Gameprinter