AnteriaBoard

Basics

You can view the Current Political Map here.

This Google Drive link contains many other maps used by the region, including a climate map, timezone map, as well as a map of several international organizations.

If you ever have a question or problem related to the map, feel free to communicate with the Cartographer (Currently Foxomexra).

The map is updated regularly - the exact time of day the update is posted varies.

Claiming Land

Before claiming land on the map make sure you look at the current political map for white areas - this means the area is currently unclaimed. I highly recommend you consider the Climate Map when looking for an area to claim, as this is what determines the general environment of your country. Land features within your claim such as mountains and rivers are up to you, but the climate itself is not so easily changed.

In order to get your claim added to the map you need to let the Cartographer know where you would like to claim. You can do this by sending your claim via telegram on NationStates, through DM's on Discord, or in the #map-submissions channel located in the Anterian Discord Server. The best way to send a claim is with an image, either circling the area you want or drawing the borders you want your country to have. When sending an image across a telegram it will be necessary to upload the image elsewhere then send the cartographer a link. Potential image hosting sites include Google Drive or Google Photos, as well as websites like Imgur - Sending images on Discord does not require you to use any other websites. If you are having difficulties getting an image sent you can also describe the area you want to claim, however the cartographer may ask for more information about the claim if needed.

Once the request is sent, and unless there is any issue with your claim, you will see your country on the map on either the next Saturday or Wednesday as that is when the map is updated.

Losing a Claim

The political map of Anteria is constantly changing, with new users being adding constantly. Your country will be removed from the map if your country Ceases to Exist (Commonly referred to as a "CTE"). The way to avoid Ceasing to Exist is by logging into NationStates regularly, as a country only CTE's after 28 days of not doing so. If you will be unable to log into NationStates for an extended period of time, you may want to consider enabling Vacation Mode in the "Settings" tab of NationStates, which changes the CTE timer to 60 days. If your country does end up CTE'ing, you will be removed during the next map update after 4 days have passed - these 4 days are the time you have to refound your country (which you do by simply attempting to sign in again).

If you are banned from the region for the violation of rules, your country will also be removed from the map.

You may also be removed from the map for being Inactive, as outlined below.

A user will be considered Inactive for the purposes of this rule if they have not participated in either
A. The Anterian Roleplay (by posting RP on the RMB or engaging in worldbuilding on the Discord server)
B. The Anterian Community (by conversing on the RMB or Discord server)
for a period of 5 consecutive months (150 days). A user who will be removed from the map will be contacted 2 weeks (14 days) prior to their removal from the map if they fulfill the above criteria via NationStates Telegram. Simply keeping your country from Ceasing To Exist (CTEing) is not sufficient to constitute activity.

If you are issued an inactivity warning you may inform the Cartographer that you do not wish to be removed from the map, which will ensure your country remains. If you come to fall under the definition of inactivity again, the Cartographer may remove you from the map regardless of any request.

Expansions

In order to expand you must submit a request to the Cartographer as you would a normal map claim. Generally speaking however, expansion requests are not approved. When you make your claim do not expect to be able to expand later on as territory is not treated as a simple commodity. Any expansion should have a reasonable benefit to the roleplay and worldbuilding of your country, rather than simply being a means of being larger or more powerful. An example of a justifiable reason would be if your country is landlocked, and you are requesting to expand to a nearby coastline. In this example the expansion provides a solid benefit to your ability to roleplay with others, which previously being landlocked may have prevented you from doing.

Expansions (Through Warfare and Diplomacy)

Firstly, it is important to consult the Anterian Roleplay Guide before pursuing any war roleplay. Any expansion, regardless of whether it occurs through war or diplomacy, is still subject to approval from the Cartographer. If you intend for borders to change during a war you must both agree to a territorial exchange, and submit the change request to the Cartographer - preferably before the war begins, although not required.

The Anterian roleplay is a modern tech world completely unrelated to Earth. That means that the roleplay takes place in the current year; 2021, and any real-life countries, as well as the Earth, Solar System, Milky Way, etc simply don't exist. But how does it work?

First things first

- The No. 1 rule in roleplay and worldbuilding is consent. So before you go and declare war on other countries, you need to understand that in order to include other countries into your roleplay, worldbuilding and lore, you have to get their permission to do so! That's why Anterian roleplay isn't just only acting and reacting, but often creating and discussing scenarios and events together with other members. Of course, foreign policy that includes other nations like for example travel bans, condemnations, or embargoes, which don't necessarily have to directly harm or generally affect the nation, are an exception.

- Since this is a realtime RP in 2021, please stay realistic, especially when worldbuilding and roleplaying military. If you don’t know what is realistic and what’s not, just ask the Director of Roleplay (DoRP), a Councilor, or someone with enough knowledge to advise you.

- In order for roleplay-posts to be canon, they have to be posted on the Regional Message Board (RMB), even if you already posted it in #today-in-anteria on the regional Discord!

How does one start roleplaying?

That is fairly simple. Whenever a new nation joins the roleplay, everyone acts like they have always existed. That way people are free to create their lore as they wish. If you don't know what to post or want to contact other roleplayers on a simpler way than having to write telegrams, there are several channels on our regional Discord server dedicated to roleplay and worldbuilding, which is why I highly recommend joining it!

On the other side, whenever a nation leaves the roleplay, may it be due to inactivity and CTEing (Nations "cease to exist" after 28/60 days of inactivity on NationStates, depending on if they are on Vacation Mode or not), leaving Anteria, or the player changing their nation in the roleplay, everyone acts as if the nation never existed in the first place.

If you want to add some spice to your worldbuilding, you can also create a wikipedia-like article about your nation on a website called IIWiki. Don’t know how it works or how to start? Just ask Registrars or people with knowledge for help and take a look in #wiki-requests on Discord. We already have lots of articles, including one about Anteria itself! When looking at the iiwiki-page, you might notice that Anteria is treated as a planet in the "Tendor System", which means that planets like Mars don't exist and that our system looks different. Anteria is the name of the planet, similar to how our planet is called "Earth" or "Terra". Same goes with our irl countries. As England doesn't exist in our roleplay, the universal language is often referred to as "Common".

Now we get to the most complicated part of Anterian roleplay: War.
Anteria works so well because we have the rules stated here. And that also applies to roleplaying warfare. To prevent newer players from jumping into the RP and directly trying to start wars or similar, we have several rules in order to restrict warfare. One of those being that you as a new player are not allowed to start conflicts like wars (including insurgencies and civil wars) for the first 28 days of your stay in Anteria. That way, we can ensure that people get to know our RP and rules well enough instead of heading right into low-quality and/or badly prepared warfare roleplay.
Additional to that, in order to start wars, there should be some kind of buildup and casus belli (so a valid reason for war), instead of just declaring it out of the blue.

Those are just some examples, so please make sure to read the
Rules of War!

When talking about war history, we do have worldbuilt our own equivalent to the two irl World Wars; The Great War. In order to participate, I recommend contacting Zhousheng (Discord Fjana#6634).

The Map

Of course, roleplaying and worldbuilding without having an idea of where nations are is almost impossible. That is why we maintain a map of Anteria. In order to get a spot on the map, you have to claim the area you want your nation to be. You can do that by either downloading it or taking a screenshot (The latest map is linked on Anteria's World Factbook Entry, as well as in the #map-submissions channel on Discord), marking your claim (make sure it is reasonably sized and consider other maps like climate, tropical storms, etc.), and sending the claim to the Director of Cartography, Foxomexra, either by sending a telegram or posting the claim in #map-submissions on Discord.

When you have claimed a spot, your nation will be added in the next map update, which is every Wednesday and Saturday

White spots on the map are unclaimed land. It is complicated on how much one can interact with it, as there neither a void, nor complete anarchy with no governing structure, but rather some kind of governments noone can roleplay with, since there is no player to roleplay with. That also makes expansion of territory into unclaimed land for roleplay purposes a complicated topic, but not an impossible one. If you have something like that in mind for a roleplay idea, just talk with the Director of Cartography or Roleplay.

Need more information? Just read the Map Guide

The essentials of your worldbuillding

What you definitely need are the population and GDP of your country. Those are one of the most defining factors of how your country is gonna look like. Since NationStates-stats are highly unrealistic, you will have to come up with your own. For that I recommend the following:

1. Ask the cartographer Foxomexra about the size of your claim.
2. Settle on a population density, taking climate and other stuff into account.
3. Calculate your Population (Pop. Density × Size)
4. Settle on a GDP per capita (if you plan on being as wealthy as European nations, anything in a range of 10,000-45,000 ACU range is recommended, 50,000 ACU and above is quite wealthy, and countries even wealthier than that are usually smaller in population, like Switzerland, Qatar, Norway, etc.)
5. Calculate your GDP (GDP per capita × Population)

Please be reasonable with your nation's population density and most importantly GDP per capita. Trying to be a world-dominating economic power like the irl USA will not work!
For population density and GDP per capita, I suggest taking real-life countries as a reference. If you are wondering what “ACU” (or sign ₳) is, it’s an abbreviation for “Anterian Currency Unit”. Though it’s not a currency but only a unit of measurement for international trade. 1 ACU is 1 USD. Similar concept extends to the so called “Anterian Wealth Unit” (AWU, ￦), which is equal to one International (Geary–Khamis) Dollar and is used as a unit of measurement for the Purchasing power parity.

Helpful Guides

Here are some very useful specific guides regarding different aspects of roleplay by Zhousheng!

Any other questions? Send a telegram to the DoRP Neuewland, or write a message to Olympian Inquisitor#5559 on Discord! Have fun and enjoy your stay!