Could mountains arise like this?

Looks good. I'm going to guess the south is the agricultural big hitter then?

Yeah, hence why in the Ancient World the Greeks mostly traded olive oil and pottery with the Egyptians, who (along the Nile) actually had good faming land. Greece is a geographical mess.

Greeks did end up setting up colonies in the Black Sea region and around Italy, so they did get access to better farming land. Just not in Greece.

That looks pretty good as far as rivers joining and whatnot.

>Maybe. What bothers me is vegetation.
This user has a point. Assuming an Earth-type world that's round and spins (and the evident desert west of those large mountains) the forest should either be less dense on the west side, or there should be something west of the forest like higher land (i.e. the forest is in lower country than the lands west of it).

Add some hills to fill in the gaps around the mountains and it'll look a lot better. My only complaint is the islands which, depending on the scale, would usually either be more numerous or less mountainous since, by definition, islands are already mountains.

They could arise like this, but it looks as boring as possible.

Looks fine.
What scale are we looking at here?
How large are those islands?

It's one of the reasons why there economy was completely based on pillaging other lands.

Yes

Forest overhauled.

Like this?

Left Alaska. Right England.

...

The hills look good. Especially necessary on the larger island, in my opinion. Otherwise it looks a bit awkward, like a witch's hat.

Looks good user, totally plausible. Just need to add some stuff now, cities, castles, swamps, lakes, whatever.

My advice when asking question like this is: look at real life. Is there any country with a geography like this?
The Andes come to my mind

Is this good? I mean, the world's mythology literally involves the gods not knowing how to make a planet but I wanna see how far off I am.

Man, a few months ago somebody posted an incredibly helpful worldbuilding tutorial that started with "make some random tectonic plates" and worked all the way up from there.

Really kicking myself for not saving it.

There are too few rivers and forests shouldn't grow next to deserts.

I am by no means an expert world builder, but if the major wind currents are assumed to go est/west, then the world's spine mountains would prevent either the Al-Aakhir (if wind comes from the east) or the the Kajikaze (if from west) in forming, as the mountains inbetween will catch the moisture, leaving one side dry and the other wet.

Also, not to be a total asshat, but your maps looks similar to the Warhammer Fantasy world map - pic related.

I want to have a river bifurcation in my map.
Anyone have any idea where those happen?

Anything out of place here? This is basically !England in size and location. The deeper green part is supposed to be a marsh/swamp. I don't know where to place forests. The mountains at the very top don't actually exist.

This usually happens when a river hits a harder type of rock and tries to go around it. It's mostly only temporary though, and one stream becomes the main stream while the other one dries up.

It can happen in river mouths or when two or more rivers meet, which is quite common.

Your rivers are very straight, they usually meander a bit.
It also seems odd that your mountain range in the west isn't continuous.
Rivers can 'cut trough' mountains, but only if the the river was already flowing when the mountains were being pushed upwards.

How realistic is this map in terms of rivers, settlements, forests, etc? I would love to get some constructive criticism to further improve my worldbuilding skills.

Not really, unless the surrounding land is hilly (it seems flat, but that could be the lack of detail).

Mountains only happen through tectonic activity. (There are volcanic mountains, but those are the exception, and they're usually solitary.) Those clustered ridges should be connected and "point" in the same direction, a mountain range doesn't just suddenly 'stop' - it tapers off into hills. If those islands' mountains are tectonic, then it means the islands are themselves part of the mountain (the sea-level just cuts them off from the other ranges).

Then again, Gods smash things for fun all day erryday.

Lifeless isles should be further into the bay if it' s actually dead. That shit is a delta and is therefore an oasis for life.

Or magic did it. Whatever.

>If those islands' mountains are tectonic, then it means the islands are themselves part of the mountain

Like Iceland?

The lifeless Isles is ment to be the lingering reminder/legacy of a long gone Necromancer, so everything is dead in that area. It's ment to serve as a plot location in one of my campaigns

Iceland is actually a hotspot as well.
Double the fun!

The east end of the bay looks unnatural.
It looks too man made, too many straight lines. The coasts need a good reason to be parallel like that. Looks like someone took a long scoop out and created the bay.

If I wanted to keep the swamp for the sake of forcing multiple biomes for interest's sake what course of editing do you think would be the most plausible?

>1: removing the lower mountain, and running the higher one further north
>2: joining the mountains, and having the rivers come from the south
And third, because I don't know anything, would narrowing the gap between the mountains make anything more plausible?

I'll add more rivers, but the really big forest area next to the Al-Aakhir desert is supposed to be unnatural.

Okay, either of desert, got it. But does the Sahara sit behind a range?
>Also, not to be a total asshat, but your maps looks similar to the Warhammer Fantasy world map - pic related.
I don't see it.

Geologically it's all possible, so choose whatever suits your land best.

If anyone has a link to this, please posterino

If you want to have the river go west, the area to the south and maybe east of the lake should be mountainous or hilly, otherwise it would be strange for a river to go through the entire island like that.
Going by the size of the island (Britain), it's very strange for the river to split and meet up again the way it does. It wouldn't happen in real life.

The first option is definitely most realistic.
Not sure I understand the second one.
The third one would be very strange. It's not likely a river from inland would go from a non-mountainous area, through a mountainous area, and out the other side.

But then again, it's fantasy. Details are not so important. Just get rid of the river-split and none but the most pedantic people would care.

The second one is a way to have a continuous mountain range, but have a different origin for the rivers in the area.

Looks good, reminds me of the gulf of Finland.

It all depends on your balance between realism and fun.

1. Where is your planet relative to its star, is its orbit eccentric? is there an axial tilt? These will determine the climate.

2. Does it have moons? (These keep tectonic movement going and also cause tides).

3. What is the composition of your planet in terms of elements/minerals? Earth has an iron-nickel core which helps with a magnetic field. Lighter elements will float to the top of the molten ball, heavier elements sink to the bottom. The crust (lithosphere) cools and cracks, but is lighter than the (hotter, taffy-like) mantle and boom! you have plates floating on the asthenosphere. Next, there will be currents within the mantle (hot elements rise up, cool, sink, heat up all the while being pushed in a circular movement by earlier mentioned moon and the rotation of the planet around its axis). These will be your push-and-pull mechanisms for sliding plates around, powered by the (extremely slow) cooling of the planet.

4. Depending on the type of plates (you could have 2, like Earth) how do they interact? Heavier plates are pushed down by lighter plates (which are pushed up, creating mountain ranges). Heavier plates meeting do the same. A plate can also be ripped in two by the asthenosphere currents. It's one big recycling cycle: the solid parts get pushed down into the hot mantle, melt, get pushed around in the mantle, and float back to the top. This gets you mountain ranges, (oceanic) ridges, and trenches.

>Okay, either of desert, got it. But does the Sahara sit behind a range?
Yes, two actually. The Atlas Mountains and the Ethiopian Highlands.

bifurcation?
where two or more rivers meet?
so ... like a 4+ way intersection?
Actually two main rivers in europe start from the same lake/swamp
And where would harder types of rock usually be?
mountains? plains? Rocky deserts?

Rivers can cut trough mountain ranges though.
The Ardennes are a good example

Yes, but there should also be fjords and chains of islands where the mountains reach the sea, following the crustal uplifting that made the mountains off the continental shelf.

I see. Having rivers originating in the mountains and going down into the western coastal area and/or lowlands in the east and out to sea would definitely make sense.
Because of the rain shadow the mountains create it would also make sense that there is more fresh water coming down on the western side of the mountain, depending on the winds.

Which ones?
Mountain ranges are always your best bets of finding harder types of rocks.

Fjords aren't necessary though, depends on the climate

Sure, but if I'm not mistaken those rivers do not originate in the lowlands, right?

As your plates float, they diverge (go away from each other), converge (smash into each other), or transform (slide next to each other). This gives you a general outlook of the biggest features: oceans, continents, mountain-ranges (like the Himalayas) In general you have as much obduction as you have subduction: for every square mile of ocean that gets pushed under, it has to appear somewhere else (unless you'd like extravagant 19th century science like a shrinking planet or an expanding one, but then you'll have to figure out the rules yourself). In theory you could have (over a few billion year) all your continental mass pushed into gargantuan mountain-ranges, but gravity will make sure the planet retains its semi-spherical shape: the higher the mountain range, the more mass, the more it gets pulled down, eventually it will simply collapse under its own weight) that's why Earth is so flat (Everest is only 0.13% of the radius of the Earth, it's a beautiful smooth ball - meanwhile Olympus Mons makes it to 0.73% of Mars' radius - how bumpy! - because of Mars' lesser mass)

Some of the smaller ones do, but the main ones don't, off course

Well a side arm of a main river that is.
The Neckar that flows into the Rhine, and the one of the two streams that turn into the Danube.

They start 150m from each other.

It's not as bad as it might seem nowadays, roads really do help out.

t. Messenian

The next step (once you've settled on the overall position, direction, and size of your continental and oceanic plates, and the resulting mountain ranges that follow from that) are the elements light enough to not be solid (and being lighter, they float even on top of the lightest solids, creating the atmosphere). Depending on the age of your world and composition, there will be massive amounts of CO2, these will have an enormous impact on the heat mechanisms of your planet (it's all about heat in/heat out: the closer to the sun, the more heat gets pumped in, the less fast the planet ('s core) cools, CO2 causes a greenhouse effect, so you could have a Venus-like world) We'll assume your planet is heavy enough to capture and hold all these gases - if not, it becomes a Mercury-like barren wasteland.

Next step (or concurrently): Water! Determine how much your planet has. Water is a fluid so, in general, it floats on top of the solid rock. This will be your initial sea-level. Now you have a climate: determine how much heat the sun gives to your planet (having an eccentric orbit could make for some interesting times) and at what angle the sun hits your planet (axial tilt). You'll get massive evaporation along that band (equator and tropics in our planet's case). Water evaporates and floats up, The spinning planet causes the first winds (along with the present atmosphere), just like in the asthenosphere cycles: the clouds are pushed by these winds, and as soon as they cool they pour down again. Keep in mind that the clouds have to be kept evaporated - reflection from land or sea can make a big difference. Mountains 'block' clouds if they are high enough, also causing them to condense. There is a corriolis effect due to the randomness of the winds, causing clouds to float north or south. In general: the wettest parts will be around your planet's equator, if there's an axial tilt then this can seasonally shift. (That's why the biggest desert is Antartica)

...

Could this map work on a continental scale?

So now you have a simple climate system: rain will erode your mountains. Cool puddles of water will freeze, expanding, cracking rocks, rocks roll down, get eroded further into pebbles until they're light enough to be carried away by the water flowing down from the mountains. Now you have sand.

Meanwhile, some areas of the world will have freezing temperatures more than they have heating temperatures - this causes the moisture in the air to condense, slowly solidifying into glaciers. These are the true mountain-wreckers. For fun, have your planet experience ice ages: impossibly large parts of it are covered in ice, which seasonally shifts, causing it to slide towards the still-liquid oceans, slowly grinding the mountain folds they're passing through to fine sand and boulders, dragging it all with it. Eventually the planet warms up, glaciers melt, massive flat plains filled with sand (hello Denmark and the early Netherlands).

Water falls down and flows downhill, you get rivers in the mountains and plains. Rivers erode, slowly snaking back and forth, flattening plains even further (or creating nice hills). If rivers meet, they make a bigger river. If a river reached a bowl, it makes a lake until it spills over and makes another river. If you have enough sand and clay by now, the water could drain through those, spreading and creating a water table. Rivers' size depends on their sources: when the snow in the mountains melts, they grow to torrential sizes, but in late winter they could be brooks. Depending on the type of rock your rivers pass, they could carve it or simply hollow it out (underground caves - also due to movement of the mountain ranges)

Now you have oceans, continents, mountains, rivers, lakes, deserts, and glaciers.

Why isn't europe a desert?

Gulfstream: hot water from the gulf of Mexico flows north-eastward, hitting Europe from the west. That's why the western parts (British isles, Norway, Netherlands/France/Portugal/Galicia) get so much rainfall, which continues through the Baltics to Germany/Poland

In a similar fashion, the Mediterranean/Adriatic provides for Italy and the Balkans.

In addiiton, the meltwater from the Alps keeps the rhine and danube flowing, irrigating much of the inner parts of the continent. The further you go towards Asia, the less water you get (though never so low as to become desert-like). Europe is just between desert zones (Arctic and Northern Africa)

Some regions get less water and are semi-deserts though, like Spain.

Here's a draft map for criticism. Any areas which are suspiciously devoid of trees are areas that have been deforested and where villages and towns will be situated.

Can't find any actual flaws with it other than it looks a bit cluttered in the hilly regions with trees.

Just made this by using incarnate

I'm working on it, but does the composition make at least a bit sense?

Doesn't have to be 100% geological accurate though, just want to hear a few different opinions

you would be surprised how much you can farm on a steep hill

mostly Barley, goats, sheep, grapes, olives, and some lentils if you had the right type of soil.

farming on mountains is a fucking chore though, hence wanting to get on a boat and leave. most greeks Lived in coastal fishing villages anyways.

those mountains really ought to make a rain-shadow desert in the north west of the main continent.

the Kajikaze Desert really ought to be a steppe and not a desert, it has access to rain if there are any prevailing winds, and those mountains ought to create a few rivers in the area.

The light green i assume is level plains and some rolling hills, so the area of slaughter mountains should probably have a forest to the west and north, also you really need rivers coming off these mountain ranges.

Yes. Looks like a basin and range structure.

And there we have a name for the island

Hey, I know a bit about geology. Your map looks a lot better than most I've seen, but when creating mountain chains you should take into account how they've been "pushed" and what lines they make. The mountains within the red circles all point different ways and would look better if straightened into the same angle as shown by the black lines I've made. Imagine how a table cloth folds and creates ridges on the table when pushed together from one side. Also take into account that your mountain should push further into the water and create water straights between them.

Have a look at the Falklands and see how the areas around mountain chains are formed. Your map has chains with flat land on one side and water on the other which makes little sense.

I'd put so shit like sandbars and reef around the bottleneck so that only the most skilled sailors could pass through there without breaking their ships, anyone else would have to take the eastward route where the sea is safer but piracy is a concern. Place a smaller island around B-7 so that ships can resuply.
I'd also put a town around F-4 where the river could be worked with flat bottomed boat but then again raiders operate in the area

>those mountains really ought to make a rain-shadow desert in the north west of the main continent.
How can I rearrange the mountains of winds to prevent this?

Yellow is Mediterranean btw.
>the Kajikaze Desert really ought to be a steppe and not a desert, it has access to rain if there are any prevailing winds, and those mountains ought to create a few rivers in the area.
>The light green i assume is level plains and some rolling hills, so the area of slaughter mountains should probably have a forest to the west and north, also you really need rivers coming off these mountain ranges.
Got it.

>mountains of winds
Mountains or winds. They're not called the Mountains of Winds.

I get your criticism and I also think, that for example the mountains at the right side of the middle "continent" look a bit out of place, but regarding your comment isn't South America having the
water - mountains - flat land - water - structure?

(Pacific - Andes Mountains - Amazonas delta - Atlantic)

That idea with F 4 is noted, but I made some stuff already up for the rest. Thank you nonetheless

sorry for jpeg didn't notice

I don't have any issue with coastal mountains, personally. Maybe add a little bit of a continental shelf around some of them? Also, you might want to try varying the color of your mountain ranges to imply different geologies (gray granite plutons, black basalt volcanoes, gray limestone karsts, white chalk cliffs, etc.).

I'm not really convinced by that desert. Maybe take a look at the Arabian peninsula or Australia for some inspiration. Maybe stick a river or two that run from the mountains through the desert? Like the Nile or the Colorado river.

Also, I feel like the landmasses are a little bit too rounded. Try putting some jagged fjord coasts, or some narrow barrier islands.

Did my best

Also, varying the colour of the mountains is not possible in the inkarnate beta, maybe I'll do that later by myself as a nice final touch

I wish it was that simple, but no. It isn't. Sorry.

Scandinavia's coastline, for example, is the way it is because it's still affected by the ice age. It wouldn't be able to occur naturally farther down south, and not without an ice age.

More southern archipelagos are usually the result of volcanic islands, or mountainous regions that became islands as the levels rised after the ice age.

With this input I have improved the map in all ways except graphically.

good show!

are these mountains possible? I live in a valley similar to this so I should know, but I'd like to show my map off anyway, it's very smallscale, meant to be almost 1:1.

my first map, the tool is alright I guess. Not finished yet btw.

Mountains are either where tectonic plates currently collide, with the top layer being pushed up (the mountains), or they're where tectonic plates collided at some point in the past.

What should I to make it appear more natural?

Less artificial shape.

Like how the desert area in
isn't so smooth.

Americas + Australia?

But how should I got about making it less artificial? Should I make it more jagged anything like that?

Your map reminds me a bit of FF2's map with those colors, I like it.

Wouldn't it be possible for them to be pushed different ways because a corner of a tectonic plate is pushing inwards there?

I mean even the falkland isles in the very next post have a lot of different mountain ridge lines.

What. How? My mountains had a different, more rocky color.

To answer instead of him: Yes

Remember, most pieces of earth fit together real nice like a big puzzle because pangea. Where would Tika all the way over there fit in if its not the result of extra-physical interference.

Is this less artificial now?

>desert area in
that's not meant to be a desert area it's meant to be fields

Do these Roads an Settlement locations seem plausible?

It's meant to a map of a larger region with a few different countries, signified by the road networks.

Rate my map, Veeky Forums

what program is it made with?

Inkarnate

Are they dirt roads? Water travel seems more reasonable both in sea and in north western rivers.

I know, I'm just not entirely sure how one would signify water travel on the map.

It's literally the result of extra physical interference, so I'm not gonna be too hung up on it.

Dotted lines? But you need map legend for this.