Hello everyone, I'm posting to indicate that, though progress on the update is good (and it's looking like a very fun turn) I will have to finish it after a significant work deadline on the 11th. So I'm estimating the update will be posted this weekend or a day or two afterwards, a bit of a longer wait than usual. I'd also like to say I'm enjoying the stories and world building.
Anyway, today I was able to finish some communications maps to give players an idea of the distance they can easily communicate and conduct diplomacy in a given turn.
Everything unshaded I would consider sufficiently close for easy and clear communications for the countries listed. The shaded area represents regions countries can reach with some effort, but could still maintain a conversation over a single turn. Everything in black would require an explicit order to reach and begin contact with - so a deal or a negotiation can't happen within a single year.
While there isn't any technical limit on the distance countries can trade and travel (any coastal country could send a boat to any other coastal country if they wanted) this is the usually travelled distance of your merchants/military. If an NPC received a message beyond in the black area, they'd respond by asking who the hell you are, for example, as information about your country would be more limited for them (and likewise for you). None of these maps necessarily indicate whether you get news updates from other parts of the world though, it's merely day-to-day communication.
The maps were made based off my memory of my trade notes and my knowledge of terrain and related factors in communication, so consider these a rough estimate that you can use to base conceptions of distance (I already feel I've underrepresented Arctic communications b/c I'm Mollweide-biased). Maps are organized by region, though some countries at the bottom have particularly unique distances of communication:
European Fog (all European states except Turkey, Russia and England):
East Coast Fog (Canada, UC, WU, Mississippi, Mexico)
West Coast Fog (Prairies, Cascadia, California)
South American Fog (all South American states except La Plata)
Middle Eastern Fog (Turkey, Egypt, Iraq, Arab Sultanates, Iran, Caucasian Union)
West African Fog (Algeria, Mali, Burkina Faso, Nigeria, Congo)
East African Fog (Ethiopia, Tanzania, Swahililand, Katanga, Zambia)
Indian Fog (Pakistan, Ganges, Maharashtra, Hyderabad, Odisha, Bengal)
South East Asian Fog (Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia)
Central Asian Fog (Kashmir, Kashgaria, Afghanistan, Tibet)
East Asian Fog (China, FER, Japan, Tohoku)
Australasian Fog (Australia, New Zealand)
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La Platan Fog
English Fog
Russian Fog
South African Fog