EuropeBoard

Three years after blowing past the 10th anniversary of NationStates, just a few of the old political orders and regions remain. After over 12 years of history and many changing lives and situations, many of the oldest amongst us have left or forgotten the ancient and storied pasts of ancient lands.

The start of this story begins before Twitter, Facebook, and the iPhone, as Europe is one of the oldest regions in NationStates. Its history, however, is shrouded in the fog of time. Tracing the exact age of the region is a problem which has eluded many a good nation and citizen of these storied shores.

To trace the history of Europe, we must also trace the history of NationStates. From this year, 2015, we must look back beyond the passage of the last WA resolution; the Delegacies of myself, Jenesia, Jeux II, Alsted, to Gallantaria; the creation of the World Assembly itself; the demise of Jolt; the rise of Unibot; the limit of 200 nations to a ban-list; the introduction of influence; the Delegacy of Kandarin in the Rejected Realms; the rise of the New Pacific Order; the conquests of Francos Spain; and into the aged documents of history.

Origins

We know that Europe already existed by 26 January 2003, as Europe's first forums attest to its existence. Since the forum, which was quite popular, was run by the nations of Grated Cheese and Schumania, we can also conclude that these are some of the earliest leaders in European history.

The first copy of the Region's page was taken 4 May 2003. Due to the changing nature of NationStates' URL format at this time, a number of different URLs have been archived by the Internet Archives. The early archives are separated into three sections: one which uses a 'pin=-1' input (the first document), one which maintains the 'page=display_region', and one which uses the current system.

The oldest publicly available record shows the nation of Grated Cheese as then-United Nations delegate. However, it does not show a founder of the region. If we are to recognise (1) Europe has had no attested re-foundings, (2) multiple persons have claimed that it has been in continuous existence, (3) Founder positions were granted by moderators in the past, and (4) Europe at this time was already home to 753 nations, it is very likely that Europe was founded before the creation of Founders in regions.

From this, Europe is a peer of other ancient regions like the Pacifics, Lazarus, Balder, the Rejected Realms, NationStates, and Canada, all of whom have histories which predate Founders.

However it is, we know that Europe likely originated very shortly 13 November 2002, when NationStates was released to the public. Testimony from members of Europe's off-site forum state that the region was founded in the days following NationStates's release to the public, so Europe dates to some time in November 2002.

The region was originally founder-less, like the region NationStates today. But the region had two founders appointed by moderator action after a number of illegal raids: Schumania and after he ceased to exist, EuroFounder.

History

After May 2003, with the introduction of automated logging software in the form of NSDossier, records are inaccurate (due to infrequent web scraping), but extant. For example, we now have today easily accessible records on population movements in Europe. Earlier data-points can be added manually, but information on non-numerical data is not as readily available.

Below is a chart of Europe's population with the best available accuracy from 4 May 2003 to 14 October 2019.

Original chart, to 5 June 2017

Below is a chart of Europe's population with reasonable accuracy from 4 May 2003 to 5 June 2017.

Since the United Nations and its successor organisation have pretty much always been part of the game, Europe has had a Delegate pretty much since the start of NationStates.

This line of delegates starts with Grated Cheese, the first recorded Delegate of Europe, starting his tenure in May 2003. Since the records are spotty, not much is known of his Delegacy or any accomplishments. Such is the same with many of Europe's Delegates until the start of Alsted's reign in 2009.

Following Grated Cheese, East Colorado took the Delegacy, who was followed by Nendeln (whose Delegacy accompanies an unexplained gap in July 2003). However, following Nendeln, Seo de Urgel took the position in late 2004. He was followed by Arthuria-Elizabetia in November, The County of Worksop in May 2005, Bachir Gemayel in March 2006, and Byzantople in April 2006.

Byzantople's reign of around 45 days was followed by a short term of instability, putting Monkecia, Kaihola, The Grey Messiah, Kaihola (again), Short Shorts, and Hexola on the Delegacy over a period of three months.

The stability of the region's leadership was stabilised by September 2006, when Short Shorts took control of the Delegacy for around 100 days, relinquishing it to Gallantaria in December 2006. Gallantaria was unseated in May 2007 for nearly a month before retaking the Delegacy in July.

After another unseating in September 2007 by Neueuropa, Gallantaria took the Delegacy in December for nearly more than a year before relinquishing it to Alsted on 2 February 2009.

Alsted, then known as the United States of Alsted, took control of the region with some 101 votes in the then-new World Assembly. Under his reign, Europe's population expanded from a low of 313 in July 2009 to its second-highest level ever, adding nearly 125 nations per month, and again breaking 800 and reaching 810 in November 2009.

By Alsted's retirement on 8 February 2011, Europe still remained at nearly 600 nations and under his tenure, and had become one of the most powerful voices in the World Assembly with nearly 300 Delegate endorsements. One of the greatest accomplishments of this time was also the creation of Europe's reputation of being one of the most prolific World Assembly vote stackers (voting early and strategically so that people who vote in line with the majority will vote in your favour) in history.

Delegates

This is a table of the Delegates of Europe with confirmed dates. Credible sources have provided all the dates for the reigns herein described. Information before 26 December 2007 is unreliable or missing, but if you can find anything, please telegram it to me forthwith.

The publicly available records of Europe begin on 4 May 2003. It appears that EuroFounder was made founder of the region sometime before 18 February 2004 after an earlier founder, Schumania, ceased to exist on 22 October 2003. However, the first records from May 2003 show no founder whatsoever, so the question remains to be answered. Some forum members state that EuroFounder was made founder by moderator intervention after a nasty raid, although this is unconfirmed.

The following is a chart from the start of Gallantaria's delegacy to 14 October 2019 that superimposes the Delegate at the time along with the population of the region and the estimated number of endorsements the Delegate had.

Chart to 12 December 2016

The following is a chart from the start of Gallantaria's delegacy to 12 December 2016 that superimposes the Delegate at the time along with the population of the region and the estimated number of endorsements the Delegate had.

Chart to 4 December 2015

The following is a chart from the start of Gallantaria's reign to 4 December 2015 which superimposes the Delegates at the time and the population of the region.

1: Draw a shape

2: Figure out your coastline requirements, i.e is it far north or far south? Maybe you need a coastline thats more rugged as if it were affected by glaciers.

3: look at actual maps of countries, continents and even small islands on google maps, apple maps, and take maybe 20 screenshots of coastlines that match your requirements

4: Using a program such as PaintNET or Procreate arrange those images in the rough shape of the shape in step 1 and when done, merge them all and fill in any blank areas with the same colour as the water in your google maps screenshots this gets rid of any gaps.

5: Select all the water area connected to the ocean this should all be a similar colour (i.e a light blue if you used google maps), do not select any land, to avoid this you might have to play with the tolerance.

6: Invert your selection which will select all the land even the islands, drag the land away from the canvas and then create a layer underneath and fill it with a solid green colour.

7: Then reselect the layer containing just the water and make it a solid blue.

8: Merge both layers, congratulations you now have a basic map.

Read on for making a 3D map:

9: Now you have your basic map you can make it 3D. First things first, think about your countries geography, is it hilly? Flat? Mountainous? High? Low?

10: Once you’ve got your requirements it is a good idea to search for heightmaps of similar places irl, we are going to use this to make a collage.

11: Once you have your images open procreate or paint.NET or some other program that allows layers. You will need to drag in your map you created in the previous steps as well as the heightmaps.

12: Now, first things first you’ll want to remove all colour from the map, replace all the blue with black and all the green with white, Paint.NET is great at this as it has a global fill effect which reduces clicking. This can also be done with procreate but much slower as islands will have to be “de-coloured” separately.

13: Next select the white portion of the map and delete it, again use the global setting to select all the white, it saves time. Then remove it by dragging it off “the canvas”.

14: You should be able to see the heightmap layers underneath the now transparent parts of your map layer. Now, depending on what you went with, the next part may vary in difficulty.

15: What you need to do next is to essentially move your selected heightmaps around until it appears satisfactory i.e by matching the lore of your nation’s geography or just your personal preferance.

(In my case I made my heightmaps from chopping up and duplicating parts of the Andes until it matched my lore).

16: Once you’ve aligned your heightmaps in such a way that you are satisfied with their location you need only merge them, do not yet merge them with the map layer.

17: Once merged you can look for any bits that might not blend to your liking and smudge or insert something else to patch up an area that might still be transparent when you look through the map layer. When finished export your map as a PNG and save it to downloads.

18: The next step involves taking it into a program that can read a heightmap, for this I use Azgaars Fantasy Map Generator.

19: Upon opening Azgaars map generator you will be greeted with a default map. What I tend to do is set the number of cells to a higher number (70-90k) then click new map to begin with.

20: Next head to settings whereupon you can then generate a new heightmap. There you should find a setting to import your own image. Import your heightmap to azgaars from downloads

21: Once imported you’ll be presented with a few options. Select the option to read a black and white heightmap. This should look like a circle, half white, half grey. Once done click complete conversion and then exit heightmap customisation.

21: The final step in azgaars is to open 3D mode. This mode allows you ti angle your map. Drag it around to find the best angle then export a jpeg or screenshot of it.

22: Now that you’ve got your 3D map, the next steps are up to you, For mine I drew simple lines over the contours and outlines of the lumps and bumps, but you could shade it, even do some fancy detailed work. Decorate it!