Yugoslavia
The Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was an internationalist, one-party state which existed from 1945 until 1992. This map attempts to faithfully recreate Yugoslavia sometime around 1960 in roughly 1:45 scale using height map data.
For more maps, see my collection: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2972427447
Some edits to the heightmap have been made in a few places to smooth city locations as well as ensure river beds reach the required depth to contain water. The locally important rivers Drava, Drina, Juzna Morava, Neretva, Sava, Tisa, Vardar, and Velika Morava have been manually added. The Danube has also been added and widened to the point where boats from the small dock are able to transit the river and deliver cargo in both the upstream and downstream directions. These edits have been limited to the places where they were absolutely necessary and I do not think they seriously distort the heightmap.
This map contains 31 named settlements that were the largest population centers at the time, which contain a 13.5k starting population. Settlements are located in all eight of Yugoslavia’s political subdivisions and largely reflect their relative populations. Some names (cough, cough, Titograd) may seem unfamiliar and this is because historical names were given precedence over modern ones. There are also 16 border crossings. These are comprised of four medium and two large western crossings as well as five small, four medium, and one large eastern crossings. The border crossings represent most of Yugoslavia’s major international checkpoints and include the primary international rail linkages plus plenty of power connections. There are both eastern and western maritime borders.
The internal road and rail network is a slightly simplified representation of the situation in the 1950s. The main rail lines follow the routes of real world equivalents and single and double track segments largely correspond to the maps I could find, but narrow gauge lines (mostly in Bosnia and Montenegro) and some branch lines were excluded for various reasons.
Yugoslavia is rich in iron, coal, and bauxite deposits and is one of the few European countries to have a significant onshore oil industry. Coal, iron, and bauxite are found in the mountains while oil is found along the northern borders. Uranium is found in a few places in limited quantities, largely to reflect the limited nuclear program that Yugoslavia operated for most of its existence. All resource deposits largely correspond to real-world locations.
Historically, Yugoslavia was something of an enigma within the collection of Communist European states. Relations between Yugoslavia and the USSR were strained in the late 1940s by Yugoslav desires to annex Albania and their support for a communist insurgency in Greece. This led to a collapse in diplomatic relations in 1948 and Yugoslav engagement with the west. Despite maintaining a socialist economy, Yugoslavia would primarily trade with the west for most of the Cold War and adopt an assertive but neutral diplomatic posture as the leader of the non-aligned movement. The domestic economy was initially reliant on agriculture but heavy industry and complex manufacturing were gradually developed.
No matter how you choose to play, decentralized market socialism or central planning, competitive exports or autarky, ties with the west or the east, the vast resources of Yugoslavia should help you to overcome its geography and perhaps even avoid the economic stagnation of the 1980s and…. the, umm, the rest of it….
Disclaimer: All errors in mapping are unintentional, please don’t come to my house, I don’t have extra enchiladas….
