The Map

Atomic Dawn is played on a three-dimensional map of the world, built from real geography rather than drawn by hand. It holds more than twelve thousand land provinces, plus lakes and seas, grouped into more than 1,300 Regions and 21 continental Theaters. Every province belongs to a country, every country belongs to a camp, and the map is how you read all of it.

Reading the map

The map tells you what you're looking at when you point at it.

Hover a river to see its name, and a road or railroad to identify it.
Hover a province to see its name, its owner and its region.
Hover the archetype chip in a province's panel to see what its specialization does for growth, education, unrest and population.

Labels change as you zoom. Far out, the map names countries. In the middle distance, it names regions. Close to the ground, it names provinces. Hovering and clicking follow the same tiers, so in the regional band a click selects a whole region and lights up every province in it. Clicking an already selected province or region drills through to the country that owns it.

Mouse-wheel zoom keeps the point under the cursor fixed, and Q and E zoom straight up and down. The minimap in the corner shows where you are in the world, moves the camera when you click or drag on it, and holds the map mode buttons.

Names change with the owner

Some provinces carry a different name depending on who holds them. Saint Petersburg is shown as Leningrad for as long as the Soviet Union owns it, and goes back to its old name when it changes hands. History is written into the map itself, not just into the country list.

Every province has a character

Many provinces have an archetype, an enduring local specialization. Some examples:

Oil provinces grow quickly, but their concentrated wealth breeds extra unrest and does nothing for education.
University towns lift Education and calm unrest, at a small cost to growth.
Mining towns grow but hold education back.
Financial hubs, industrial centres and port cities drive the economy.
Naval bases, air bases and garrison towns carry military weight.
Regional centres draw people in from the surrounding countryside.

There are fifteen archetypes in all. Others include agricultural heartlands, company towns, resort towns, administrative centres and closed cities. Archetypes feed into each province's economy and population.

Land, water and infrastructure

Lakes are provinces of their own. A lake surrounded entirely by one country belongs to that country, and a lake shared between neighbours is international water. Roads show how developed the country that controls them is. They're unpaved dirt where it has researched neither Gravel Roads nor Asphalt Roads, gravel once it has Gravel Roads, and asphalt highways once it has Asphalt Roads (see Infrastructure).

The map reflects the Cold War as it happens

Wars: borders between countries at war glow and pulse instead of lying flat.
Occupation: occupied territory is marked with diagonal stripes in the occupier's colour.
Empires: a colonial empire's possessions all share its overlord's colour until independence changes that.
Closed borders: where a country seals its frontier, a strip of barbed wire runs along its side of the border. If both sides close, there are two strips.
Armies: brigades stand on the map as miniatures. Zoomed out, each owner's units in a region share one nameplate with the regional total. Drag a box across the map to select your own Brigades.

1946 opens in an unsettled postwar order

The campaign doesn't start from a blank board. Germany and Korea are divided into occupation zones, and Iran and Manchuria are still under foreign occupation. Civil wars are under way in Greece and China. Every country's starting forces come from historical force sizes, placed automatically across its own land and its occupation zones, weighted toward borders, capitals and cities. As the timeline advances, events bring later conflicts and their forces onto the map.

Map modes

Political colouring is only one view of the world. Other Map Modes colour the map by spheres of influence, terrain, regions, GDP, education, population, war damage, flashpoints, threat, party support and dominant factions. They change only what you see, never the game itself.