New nations, objection?

[XYZ]

Hi,

I want to create a bunch of new nations and already created all flags and shields but before I continue editing the rulesets I wanted to know if there is any objection to one of these nations:

-Austria-Hungary
-Braunschweig
-Congo Free State
-East Prussia
-Hessen-Darmstadt
-Masurians
-Rhodesia
-Saar Protectorate
-Schaumburg-Lippe
-Spanish Republic
-Waldeck-Pyrmont

I mainly want to create them to replace placeholder nations I had to use in scenarios like Belgium instead of Congo Free State in the Colonial Africa scenario,the Castillians by the Spanish Republic in the Spanish Civil War scenario or add more german states to the the German States scenario.

[dunnoob]

Braunschweig

Birthrights, really? Nothing against the Welfen, if that's the correct English word, and if you have a valid SVG-flag, why not, but I'm not exactly tempted to play Braunschweig as a Freeciv nation. But I'd read the story (ruleset info).

Likewise Bückeburg or whatever the capital of Schaumburg-Lippe used to be. Waldeck-Pyrmont, LoL, but okay, following your logic that's also justifiable. Hessen-Darmstadt, ditto. Please don't start with all those former Thuringian states (Reuss-this, Reuss-that), it's a zoo with a zero fun factor from my POV.

Saar Protectorate and Saarbrücken (nice town, I lived there as kid for two years), sure, they even had stamps. Let Oskar Lafontaine be king (I'm kidding).

Rhodesia, why, in addition to Zimbabwe? The Griqua could be interesting, if you want more former South African "nations".

-Congo Free State

It does get political at some point, dewiki article about a beverage honoring Lumumba. Same question as for Rhodesia, why, in addition to Congo? And why not Zaire?

-East Prussia

That does not match my idea of former nation, unlike Gdansk/Danzig. There's a reason why only Texas (as now-US state) made it as nation into Freeciv, as soon as you add East Prussia all states of all nations could be qualified.

Remotely related, Freeciv had a Fantasy modpack. Lots of non-free (still copyrighted) nations, Harry Potter, LotR, the works. BUT Oz should be free (out of copyright, author died before 1923), how about adding it to the mainstream imaginary nations?

[XYZ]

Please don't start with all those former Thuringian states (Reuss-this, Reuss-that), it's a zoo with a zero fun factor from my POV.

Thought the same thing Their flags are anyway very similair (excepts the ones from the Reusses) and would even have the same colours like saxony if it used the white and green flag...

The whole excercise is to get all states/provinces from 1871 or equivalent landscapes. Danzig would be enough for me as a substitute for West Prussia Province, Greater Polish for Posen Province. (will be added with the next update)

I asked because East Prussia seemed to be a special case since it is the "core" Prussian state, being part of Poland in between, not being a part of the (neither nor) Holy Roman Empire for some time and later became a german exclave before being divided between Russia and Poland.
But I understand if it doesn't fit the requirement.

Rhodesia, why, in addition to Zimbabwe? The Griqua could be interesting, if you want more former South African "nations"

Rhodesia for several reasons: It is a prominent and special case of African decolonisation. Its flag, city names and leaders differ from current Zimbabwe. It isn't a South African nation or Bure "nation" but a mainly modern british-white-minority controlled state that existed for some time. It is therefore unique (not like Schaumburg...) I could use it for a future independence struggle bush war scenario.

"It does get political at some point, dewiki article about a beverage honoring Lumumba. Same question as for Rhodesia, why, in addition to Congo? And why not Zaire?"

No politics intended! I simply have interest mainly around WWI history plus colonies. Rhodesia and Congo Free State just stand out and later I lose the oversight. Covering all African state gets difficult from that point on so I rather focus on those two. Btw who hasn't read Joseph Conrads Heart of Darkness?
Zaire has probably the same city names as the Democratic Republic of the Congo the only difference would be the leaders and flags meanwhile Congo Free State would fit into my Colonial Africa anno 1900 scenario.

Edit: Not admitting "evil" states isn't an answer to history.

Remotely related, Freeciv had a Fantasy modpack. Lots of non-free (still copyrighted) nations, Harry Potter, LotR, the works. BUT Oz should be free (out of copyright, author died before 1923), how about adding it to the mainstream imaginary nations?

Why not

[dunnoob]

East Prussia seemed to be a special case since it is the "core" Prussian state, being part of Poland in between, not being a part of the (neither nor) Holy Roman Empire for some time and later became a german exclave before being divided between Russia and Poland.

How about an earlier period, Teutonic Order should be okay, capital Kaliningrad/Königsberg matches East Prussia. Freeciv already has Courland.

Rhodesia for several reasons: It is a prominent and special case of African decolonisation.

Compared with South-West Africa, Rhodesia had no Walvis Bay and no Penguin Islands.

About Leopold's Congo:

Not admitting "evil" states isn't an answer to history

Anyway not the job of a game, and the flag is nice, a blue variant of the Aleut flag.There's a fine distinction in enwiki, they list Katanga and Rhodesia as unrecognised, unlike Belgian Congo. OTOH Freeciv has Sahrawi (recognized) and Somaliland (unrecognized), so I fear that leads nowhere, or rather "do what you like".

About Oz:

Why not

IOU one Heligoland for your Zanzibar.

[XYZ]

Compared with South-West Africa, Rhodesia had no Walvis Bay and no Penguin Islands.

It is has no own flag and was a de facto a puppet state of apartheid SA... Rhodesia at least has Victoria falls!

Anyway not the job of a game, and the flag is nice, a blue variant of the Aleut flag.There's a fine distinction in enwiki, they list Katanga and Rhodesia as unrecognised, unlike Belgian Congo. OTOH Freeciv has Sahrawi (recognized) and Somaliland (unrecognized), so I fear that leads nowhere, or rather "do what you like".

Being recognised in that period by imperialist powers isn't a really a quality sign, same with Manchukuo if a bunch of Axis countries are your sponsores... Rhodesia and Somaliland at least meet or met the "de-facto" criterium of being a country for several years with sovereignty and if not offical at least unofficial diplomatic relations.
But where to go with countries like the Republic of Ezo (existed for one year, no recognition, no official flag) and the Principality of Sealand (complete bogus) wich can always get off the hook be saying its fantasy.
Concluding I guess the limiting factor is the effort you have to put in to them to produce them.

But I have to warn I need to create another saxon state to get a substitute for prussian saxony province. No more countries afterwards, promised!

[dunnoob]

It is has no own flag

Oops, you're right, I missed that, the enwiki page shows an unofficial draft. No flag is a killer argument.

Republic of Ezo

Interesting, but fails in the just established flag test.

Principality of Sealand (complete bogus)

Sadly passing the notable nonsense WP:42 limits on enwiki, too many independent 3rd party references, ignoring the required reliability. And all those fans on enwiki... Fortunately I killed my 1st enwiki account in 2005 (password scrambled beyond repair), and after creating a 2nd account in 2011 I blanked that temporarily in April, so at the moment I have no obscure "Sealand" on a watchlist. "Micronations" are horrible, it starts with SMOM, and from there it only gets worse.

[XYZ]

Another question and I know I'm bugging but how do we handle nordic crosses in shields? Their aspect ratio gets kind of lost in an almost quadratic shield (see Norway) on the other hand flipping it be 90 degree might someone think its another flag (see Saar Prot.). Saw the flipping here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saar_Protectorate Personally I don't care how we handle it.
Related to that question: Saxony has his coat of arms without the flag in the shield. Is it an option if a coat of arm gets to small in a shield or an exception?

[XYZ]

coat

[dunnoob]

Sorry, I don't understand what you're asking. AFAIK there are no open bugs or pending patches about Saxony.

For Norway see patch #7417, it's an ordinary "refresh from Commons" to get a valid SVG. The blue cross in the new SVG is a slightly different blue, and if you want a new set of four PNGs for Norway you could attach them to patch #7417.

At the moment Norway (7417) is still listed as "no obvious problem" on patch #7393. Flipping it to the third group ("needs serious review" and/or "needs new PNGs") would take a comment on patch 7393. The large Norway shield you have attached here is the same as in trunk (574 bytes, MD5 8A607CAE84CB25F8ED4F73652E09BCA7)

For the Saar Protectorate there's no hint on the enwiki page or the two SVGs that the blue in the CoA described as "lichtkobaltblau"/"bleu clair" should be different from the blue in the flag. Best guess: In 2006 user:Madden flipped the blue in the flag from "matches CoA" to "matches France", and the resulting inconsistency can't be as it should be. You're free to use whatever you like better, but please use the same idea of "lichtkobaltblau"/"bleu clair" for both on one valid SVG flag. No valid SVG is a strict non-starter as far as I'm concerned, there are already 193 (+existing patches) invalid SVG flags in trunk.

how do we handle nordic crosses in shields?

If you're using convert-png you get whatever it does, untested, maybe it just extracts 19x19 or 14x14 at the centre of the (large) flag, and masks it with mask-large.png or mask.png to get the shields. That won't give you the top of the Saar Protectorate CoA, because it isn't in the flag, let alone in the centre. And 14x14 is far too small for any optional details, let's just ignore the real CoA and stick to the SVG flag as source if there's no special reason to get a better shield.

I'll create my own "convert" procedure, so far I have

• rsvg-convert.exe (SVG to PNG),
• crop2pam.rex (add or substract pixel rows or columns at the top, bottom, right, or left, where "add" can be "copy pixel" or "fully transparent", but for flags only "copy" counts) to get a huge 3:2 PNG
• imagew.exe (scale down to 45x30, 30x20, 21x14)
• crop2pam.rex again to get 44x30, 19x19 via 29x20 based on 30x20, 14x14 based on 21x14
• Mask shields with derivatives of mask-large.png (19x19) or mask.png (14x14)

Also see nation flag image on the Wiki (and fix it as you see fit, when I try to create or update manuals it does not mean that I know what I'm talking about )

Update: Issue reported on commons, expecting a swift reply before 2036-09-01.