[agracier]

Another masterpiece of Agracier's workshop. Installed succesfully into my HSFX4.1 install.
It would be nice if somebody create larger set of historical campaigns on SCW maps,
I mean not only for nacionalists, but for International brigades, too.
The map which would be useful, is that around Madrid, I think.

Even if I for myself did not created any map, I dare to submit the following thought.
The cultivated fields, those rectangular areas of various textures on the IL2 maps,
should not be placed randomly over the map surface, but should surround the villages:
farmers cultivate the fields within the reach of their transport , not far from villages.

Happy new year to all the IL2 fans.
:drinking:

You're right about cultivated fields. They are a big headache to place and I've tried some different solutions.

First of all, in general they do not run up hillsides or mountains, or at least not all that much. You do find clearly fenced or delineated fields at 1200m in the Pyrenees but these are usually for pasture of animals. The same would apply to other parts of Spain as well naturally, all depending on the flatness of the countryside, not elevation per se. The meseta in the center of the country is often around 800-900 meters and yet flat giving the impression of being lowland, while it is actually quite high.

So that means that in map making you cannot always take height contours as a basis for designating cultivated field textures. In general it is a good idea to use lowlands for placing fields, but not always. You do have to have a basic idea of how the countryside looks more or less.

That is where a little tool called the find height tool is very useful. It allows for choosing areas between 2 altitudes: say land between 120 and 175 meters in height. With this, you can often delineate river valleys for cultivation in mountainous areas without having cultivated fields textures running up mountain cliffs and spoiling the map.

But with that all said as parameters that need considering for placing cultivated fields, in Spain one can correctly say that in most areas, however remote they seem, there is always some form of habitation that allows for farming in virtually any part of the country. In fact, it was in the late 1950's that many of the more remote villages became uninhabited due to depopulation or deliberate relocation of inhabitants for the purpose of building dams and water reservoirs for instance. So that means that now you will find less habitation in the countryside than would have been the case in the 1930's during the Civil War.

And villages were often quite close to each other in distance. Once again making most of the countryside easily accessible for farming, and that even so in mountainous and remote areas. Life in such places was of course very much different from that in the cities in terms of services and infrastructure, but it was enough to allow for intensive cultivation of arable land.