Albania (populated)
The People’s Republic of Albania was an isolationist, one-party state which existed from 1946 until 1991. This map attempts to faithfully recreate Albania sometime around 1960 in roughly 1:17 scale using height map data. There is plenty of flat land along the coast and in some of the river valleys, but most of the map is very mountainous and large scale agriculture is difficult.
This version of the map contains 19 named major cities with a starting population of 5.7k.
For the unpopulated version of this map: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2972361909
For more maps, see my collection: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2972427447
This map includes the Albanian highway and road system as it existed during the communist period. The rail network is very limited, consisting of only the mainline from Montenegro down the coast to Vlorë as well as a mountain line to Pogradec. The coast is well-linked by paved roads but the mountainous interior and the far south have only dirt tracks. All road and rail line paths are near-exact to the real world equivalents. Tirana International Airport is included as it opened in the late 1940s.
There are 12 border crossings on the map, one large, three medium and eight small. One medium and three small border crossings are western (Greece), the rest are eastern (Yugslavia, labeled on the map by province). The border crossings represent all of Albania’s major international checkpoints and include its one current international rail link as well as three proposed ones. There are both eastern and western maritime borders. Sadly hydropower is not in the game (the main source of Albanian electricity), but there are both eastern and western power connections.
Industry is basically non-existent and the vast majority of the population is engaged in agriculture. Some oil facilities exist along the central coast, but pumps are not placed in reflection of the ongoing technical impacts of war damages and the removal of Yugoslav advisors.
Albania is rich in iron and coal deposits and is one of the few European countries to have a significant onshore oil industry. Coal and iron are found in the mountains while oil is found along the southern side of the coastal plain. Some of the iron deposits technically represent chromium, used in the production of stainless steel, but this was a relatively logical substitution. A very limited aluminum deposit exists in the hills above the Tirana.
Uranium is a bit more complicated. Albania has no domestic uranium sources and in fact has never operated a nuclear power plant. However, I did add uranium in limited qualities to the map as a potential source of export revenues to reflect Albania’s significant nickel and copper industries.
Historically Albania was pushed by both the Yugoslavs and later the USSR into focusing on agriculture and textiles production rather than industry. This pressure, alongside territorial disputes over the status of Kosovo, Yugoslav desires of annexation, and resentment over limited food and technical support would lead Albania to side with the Chinese during the Sino-Soviet split and focus on heavy industry as the new basis of the economy.
No matter which path of economic development you choose, agriculture and light industry, or metallurgy and heavy industry, trade or autarky, Albania’s geography and resource constraints will present interesting challenges. If none of that sounds your style, just go the historical route and purge your advisors, break off trade ties and build concrete bunkers everywhere. It’ll probably fine for the economy, right….?
TLDR: I made this map as a fun challenge for personal use and spent so much time on it I figured I might as well publish it. I don’t speak Albanian and have never been anywhere near Albania, so apologies for any geopolitically sensitive geographic or linguistic errors contained in the map.
