First to emphasize this is a PREVIEW. While I am including a map for people to look at it is FAR from a finished product.

First, the minimap.

http://www.knightscode.com/~greathall/images/me_map_prev4.jpg

Look so small and cute and innocent. awwww.. NOT!

This is a monsterous beast which will sneak in during the night and... well you get the idea.

I guess I'll take the comments one area at a time. In general there is a great amount of detail left open to speculation. Let's take Gondor for example. While there fairly detailed maps, those maps do not indicate what kind of terrain should be there. Leaving open the possibility of grasslands or plains etc..

Other lands to the far north, east and south have very little details known about them period.

Beleriand:
The mountains and rivers are in but that's about it. The climate seems to be warmer than the lands to the east (mainly Forodwaith). The types of terrain (as with most lands so far) must be infered. I'm thinking mainly grasslands and a few plaings. I haven't identified any city locations here yet.

Right now the biggest question I have with this region is the Bay of Balar which on the more close up maps comes in much farther east than on the map of Arda. The problem of course is making it too big. However there doesn't seem to be any significant cities between the bay and the Blue Mountains which makes it easy to do if I decide to take that route.

Arnor/Eriador:
A bit more done here. Goody huts so far mark approximate locations of the Shire/Hobbiton, Bree, Weathertop, Rivendell, the gates of Moria and Isengard.

Most of the terrain is in. Not sure how much more work the area needs. Probably a few plains mixed in with the grassland.

One problem with this area is the tight fit with some of the cities. As it stands for this map I would make Moria a resource rather than a city. The isometric view of the map has the effect of squishing the map vertically which doesn't leave a lot of room for Moria.

Lot of other cities I'm not seeing on the maps. I'm assuming they are there however.

While I am trying to make this as close to the Tolkien maps as I can there is still a little room to play and I'm considering moving the Lake of Nenuial (aka Evendim) further north to accomodate the old capitol of Arnor which is on the south shore. Otherwise we run into the same problem as with Rivendell and Moria.

The question here is do we want to make sure there's room for the city of Annúminas (Arnor's capitol)?

Rhovanion:
No major issues that leap to mind at the moment but I've only identified 2 city locations at the moment. Caras Galadhon, and Dol Guldur. Though they are fairly close for comfort as far as an enemy city next to a elven capitol (?).

Rohan:
I was thinking about making this mostly plains. My main concern here is the overall size of Rohan doesn't reall accomodate very many cities. I have marked off locations for Helms Deep and Edoras. The civ will have to expand northwards, and probably some to the west past Isendgard.

Gondor:
Land of many rivers! Marked city locations for Dol Amorath, Linhir, Edhellond, Ethring, Calembel, Erech, Osgiliath, Minas Tirith and Pelegir. Pretty much ever city I could find I managed to place.. plus there's some room for a few more. Plus South Gondor is wide open still.

No real complaints so far.

Morder:
Muhahahahaaa.. no complaints for Mordor. Have Minas Morgul right at a small gap where the gates of Morder should be. For once I was able to get have decent information on the land's geology. Lovely desert on the plat of Gorgoroth.. however the lands of Nurn to the south are "fertile".. plus the sea of Nurn which can fit a few cities around it.

I read the sea of Nurn is where Sauron estabilshed slave camps. I thought it would be interesting if these were luxury resources allowing for a slave trade. I'll put my resource ideas in another post.

Now we get to lesser known lands. Gondolin & north, Forodwaith & the northern wastes, Rhun, Hildorien, Khand and Harad & Far Harad.

Northern Wastes:
Very little detail given on maps for these areas and very little spoken of the geography. The Northern wastes seem to cover the "frozen" land of Forowaith (east of Beleriand and north of the Grey Mountains) and including the area north of the Iron Mountains.

It's possible this cound extend all the way to the east. With the inland sea of Helcar and beyond. The meaning of Helcar being "ice cold"

The area clearly covers a lot more room than the few civs in the area would need. The strategy I'm thinking of then is to mix in plains here or there and not make cities allowed on Tundra. Effectively dictating possible city locations to spread them out over the wastelands and forcing the civs in the region to clash more with their neighbors.

Harad & the Great Desert:
The only description I could find of Harad's geography so far is "sun baked". This land effectively covers everything south of Gondor and Mordor. Like the Northern Wastes this is a significant piece of the continent. I plan on taking a similiar strategy with the desert as I'm considering with the wastelands. Even more so considering there is only 1 civ down there to take up that entire south portion of the map.

The Easternlands:
No geography data to speak of. In fact there is an ellusion to the possibility that there may be another inland sea that's not even on any of the maps. For the most part I'm thinking the western lands will have more grasslands then plains.. while the eastern in general will have more plains than grasslands.

The upside to the lack of data and lack of detailed maps is that I'm free to throw things in as I see fit to make things more interesting.

Last but not least
Numenor:
The only sea faring civ off the coast of Gondor. All I've done here so far is place a land mass where Numenore is going to go. I haven't even shaped the coastline yet. I expect however that the island will be plenty big enough to accomodate the 1 civ. It won't have room for the max 42 cities but it will have enough for quite a few. I expect this to be a fairly fertile land with a high production capacity.

For those wondering why I haven't mentioned the fields of Dagorland. Well I haven't really put much attention there yet. If memory serves this is all turned to marsh. I was thinking of using pollution for marshlands if it's possible to disable global warming. It would of course need a new graphic and pollution would probably need to be disabled.

Well that's about it from my comments. I suppose some would like to actually look at the map more closely with an editor. So here it is..

One of the problems I've noticed with maps of this size is they are more than large enough for 16 civs to place the max of 42 cities and STILL have room left over. Having played one such game start to finish.. there was not one single conflict that broke out.

As the preview stands, and not allowing cities on desert or Tundra the map would allow for say.. 14 civs to be able to fit comfortably.

I understand the mod will require at least PTW and possibly the upcoming expansion?

I've already mentioned my line of thinking for the northern wastes and the great desert. I will try to do something similiar with the eastern lands. Most of the western lands the civs are pretty tight to begin with so I'm not so worried about that.

Another strategy is the placement of resources. I'm thinking certain resources will only be available in one or two spots max, unless it's more common. So civs would be required to rely more on trading and conquest to get what they want.

I see there's already a lovely resource list so I'm open to placement suggestions. Some I can figure pretty much already.

Mithril will go in the area of Moria.
Pipeweed in the location of the Shire.

If gold is to be a luxury then I suggest limiting it to only 2 or 3 supply locations. One of which being Smaug's lair.

Which actually brings me to my own ideas regarding one of a kind resources. These would be resources that either..

1: Serve a unique and special purpose.
2: Serve no purpose at all except make the map look pretty. :)

I'm mainly bring it up here because I feel it is relevant to creating the large map.

One of the major ideas is to have what I will term "flavor resources". Example: Mt. Doom. Rather than having a normal looking mountain standing all by itself.. have a resource that actually LOOKS like a volcano, with bonuses that simulate a mountain. Then perhaps make it a resource required to be in the city radius to build a unique wonder like the tower of Barad-Dur or some kind of production boosting wonder that can only be built there. etc.

Or perhaps do this with Isengard to give the 1 city civ a boost so that it can compete better.

Other unique "flavor" resources I'd like to see.. The Lonely Mountain, the Argonath, Gates of Moria (for situations where a city is not feasible), any real significant location/structure that isn't a city.

I'm open to suggestions on how to limit certain strategy resources such as iron. If that's realistically possible.

I need to go over some of the other Middle Earth threads and figure out what's already in place with Civs to work out starting locations.

nice job, but too big for my purposes...

Well the big ones are nice if you like those games that take 2 or 3 full days to play out. :D Besides it's the only way to fit the entire continent in there. :) Hey I told you guys I was insane. ;)

Besides it's the only way to fit the entire continent in there. This is my main concern. AFAIK the eastern half of ME was concocted by some role player with more imagination than what's healthy for you. As for me, I only want to play in the world I've read about, if I want a random map, I play on an ordinary random map. This is the map from the books, stretching a bit more south and east, to give room to the Easterners and the Southrons, but not much. It would also include Beleriand (not for the Quest map, of course :)) and Numenor. I've cropped your map to give an idea of what I mean.

I'm trying to not shoot you down in flames, but this doesn't fit my bill, at least. :)

To be a hundred percent honest...

I agree with mrtn...

But good job so far by the way!

Well I did ask before I started on this thing. Nobody replied. So tough cookies! I'll play it if nobody else does. :)

I can't very well just crop the map I'd have to start over entirely. Then the question would again be map size plus size of the land mass.

With not allowing cities on desert or tundra you must remember that it effectively cuts the amount of usable land down considerably. So the actual size of the map itself can be misleading in terms of how it plays.

Ok.. how badly do you guys want a smaller version of this map? I may consider making one after I finish this. If there's enough interest.