Maps are cool,
Hear, hear!
A nice idea, but the two times I've attempted it failed through player apathy,
is to give each player/country a terrain budget. e.g. the master map will be
on hexagon paper. Each player gets a sheet & designs his country.
What goes onto (or in the case of rivers alongside) the hex costs.
Barren desert = quarter of a point, City= 20 pts, Mountains =5pts.
Rivers = 1pt per hex side. Good roads = 2pts per hex. & so on.
Player a) is Greek Hoplite based, so has several cities, lots of mountainous
terrain (clear hex between = pass) Rivers, & good roads.
Therefore his country is relatively small.
Player b) is Nomadic Arab based, so lots & lots of barren desert, no cities,
roads or rivers, but the occasional oasis. Result is that his country covers
a lot of map hexes.
Once the players hand their maps to the umpire the fun begins.
1) mess around with the countries (I used blue-tac ) until 'happy'
Players don't decide which way up their country is.
2) There will be gaps between the countries, well this isn't a jig-saw puzzle.
The gaps get filled with:-
Mountain ranges, thick forests, seas, even 'independent' little countries.
If the umpire wants he can stretch a players country for a better fit, but
I never needed to.
3) Either give players an accurate master map, or one based on what they
are likely to know, and play the campaign.
As I said, I failed twice to get this off the ground, but I did have fun with it.