ProFantasy Community Forum

Military Maps

The CartographistThe Cartographist
in Show and Tell
After vowing I wouldn't involve myself in any more forums, I decided to cancel all the others which I joined in favour of this PF one and the NBOS forum. I've recently been commissioned to produce military maps for a well-known British military historian who is producing a series of books on the Peninsular War (1809 - 1814) in which British forces cooperated with Portuguese and Spanish troops to eject the French from the Iberian Peninsula - which they achieved by the end of the war. This decade being the 200th Anniversary of the war, I thought I'd put up one of the maps and invite cooments. The style is one I developed with the author and represents something for which CC3 is ideally suited but which, I believe is different from the usual style of military mapping.

I've chosen the Battle of Bussaco (27th September 1810) to illustrate the style. The map is only half the battlefield but, if anyone is interested, I'll add the second half later. I've used the .fcw file to meet the forum's file size limitation please note that the map is copyrighted but that no PF intellectual properties were distributed to third parties in the publication of the finished map. You'll need to switch on the Sheet Effects. Comments welcome (be gentle, please).

Mike
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Comments

  • 1 month later
  • SvenSven
    I like it in general, but I would go for a borderless style as the present border detracts from your over-all look. I would also create icons using the standard military designations with the diagonal bars etc, so as to more readily distinguish types of units (Infantry, cavalry). Lastly I might add a little texture to your elevations so as to give it a rougher feel. These are all minor - overall it's great!
    Sven Lugar
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  • 19 days later
  • Old FritzOld Fritz
    edited July 2011
    As a long time historical wargamer I found ProFantasy programmes useful, but very limited in their styles and icons, particularly where military units are concerned. I think historical wargamers are rather badly catered for by ProFantasy in this respect, though perhaps I shouldn't complain, after all the title of the company is Pro"Fantasy".
    In which case I designed and produced my own icons for "real" military units (infantry, cavalry, artillery etc. including Horse Archers for use with Turkish armies). They are very simple and generally are copies of ones I found in books. However, I needed to design things like redoubts, supply trains, infantry squares and limbered artillery from scratch
    A couple of years ago I was even asked by Linda Kekumu to send her a copy of my symbols, but I got no feedback from her and nothing appears to have came of it - which was rather disappointing - possibly because the symbols weren't "jazzy" or colourful enough for what she had in mind.
    All my military maps now appear with my own symbols, and they look just like the ones I'm familiar with in my military history books - no orcs, wizards, towers of evil or heros with winged helmets anywhere - just simple, clear and concise army symbols.
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  • 5 months later
  • mattchismattchis
    Looking at the dates, this is probably too late to help...
    But for my money, the best Napoleonic game I ever owned/played (well... set up a lot) was "The Struggle of Nations"

    The counters in there would make an excellent base for an icon set.

    http://www.boardgamegeek.com/images/boardgame/5021/the-struggle-of-nations

    Great stuff, btw.
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