Geographical Features Overview

Geographical Features Overview lists every geographical feature on the map — every island, every lake and every ocean the heightmap produced — in one table. Use it to find an unnamed island, name it, reclassify a lake, or see how the landmasses compare by area.

Open it from Tools → Features, or press Shift + F.

What a feature is

A feature is a continuous area enclosed by a coastline or the map border:

• an island — any landmass, from a continent down to a single-cell isle
• a lake — a water body surrounded by land
• an ocean — water that reaches the map border

Features come from the heightmap, so they cannot be created or removed here. To add an island, drown one, or split a landmass in two, use Tools → Heightmap. This Overview changes only how a feature is named, classified and drawn.

Type, subtype and group

Each feature carries three labels, and they mean different things:

• Type — island, lake or ocean. Decided by the shape of the terrain, and not editable
• Subtype — the classification within the type. Generators read it, so it carries meaning: dry, frozen and lava lakes cannot be sailed and get no ports, isle affects how cultures and provinces form, and several subtypes affect where goods and markers appear
  • islands: continent, island, isle, lake_island
  • lakes: freshwater, salt, dry, sinkhole, frozen, lava
  • oceans: ocean, sea, gulf — by size, and the noun the generated name is built around
• Group — the SVG group the feature is drawn in, and nothing more. It decides appearance, never behaviour. Two lakes can share a subtype and be drawn differently, or share a group and behave differently

The subtype list is fixed: you can pick a different one, but you cannot invent your own. Groups are the opposite — you can create as many as you like.

Columns

• Locate (the target icon) — zoom to the feature. An ocean has no outline, so the zoom covers its cells
• Feature — the name. Islands use the culture of their first land cell, and lakes use a shore cell, with a one-in-ten chance of an English adjective instead. Oceans use an adjective or the side of the map they lie on (Azure, Northern) — the subtype (Sea, Gulf) is shown in its own column. Compatible older maps receive missing names on load. Type a name to change it; clear the field to make it Unnamed
• Type — the subtype, shown as Freshwater lake, Isle or Sea. Editable for every feature; the type itself (island, lake, ocean) comes from the heightmap and cannot be changed. Lake island is shown as plain text: an island is inside a lake or it is not, and that is decided by geography. Regenerating the world or the rivers classifies every feature again
• Group — editable for lakes only. Islands show their group as text, since sea_island and lake_island follow from where the island sits
• Area — the area in the selected units. A feature that reaches the map border (every ocean, and islands cut by the edge) continues beyond the map, so its area is an estimate marked with ~: the feature is assumed to keep its share of the map over the whole globe. Hover the value to see the area inside the map
• Coastline (the polygon icon) — open the Coastline Editor for this feature alone, see below. Islands and lakes only, oceans have no outline
• Note (the book icon) — edit free text notes (legend) for the feature
• Edit (the pencil) — open the Lake Editor. Lakes only; islands and oceans have no editor of their own

Click a column header to sort by it, and use the sliders icon in the header to show or hide columns.

Coastline settings per feature

The Coastline Editor (Tools → Coastlines) shapes every coastline on the map at once. The selector at its top switches it to one island or lake: the first change you make there gives the feature its own settings, and from then on the map settings no longer touch it. Use it to give one continent fjords while the rest of the world keeps its gentle shores, or to calm a single lake. The polygon icon in this table opens the editor with the feature already selected.

A feature with its own settings is marked with • in the selector, and the Reset to map settings button next to it removes them, so the feature is outlined like every other one again. In the table, the polygon icon of such a feature is drawn solid, a dimmed one means the map settings apply. While a feature is selected, the preview shows its real shape — rough stretches in orange, calm ones in teal, a magnifier on the roughest one — and the roughness along its own shore; the reset arrows next to the sliders bring a value back to the map setting rather than to the default.

Own settings are saved with the map.

Changing a subtype does not regenerate anything

Turning a freshwater lake into a dry one relabels it. It does not remove the ports on its shore, move the goods around it, or recalculate anything else — exactly like the other editors. Regenerate burgs, routes or goods yourself if you want the world to catch up.

Highlighting

Hover a row to trace the feature's outline on the map. Hover the map to highlight the row for the feature under the pointer. Oceans are not drawn as a shape, so an ocean row traces the edge of its cells instead — coastlines plus the map border it touches — which tells the oceans apart when a map has several.

Filters

• Search — matches the name (Unnamed included), the type and the subtype
• Type — narrow to islands, lakes or oceans
• Subtype — the options follow the selected type; with the type set to all, every subtype is offered

The filters are remembered while the map is open, and the footer shows how many features are displayed out of the total, with their combined area.

Buttons

• Refresh — rebuild the table, for instance after editing the heightmap
• Heightmap — open the Heightmap Editor, where features are actually added and removed
• Export — save the listed features as a .csv file

Oceans

Oceans have a subtype (Ocean, Sea or Gulf by size) but no group and no coastline settings of their own. You can name one and give it a note — useful when your world has a named sea — though the note will not pop up on map hover, since an ocean has no shape to hover over. Open it from the Notes Editor or the search bar instead.

Lake groups

New groups are created in the Lake Editor (click a lake on the map, or use the pencil in this table): pick a lake, click the plus next to Group, and give the group a name. Once it exists, it appears in the Group column here for every lake, and in the Style Editor under the lakes element, where you can give it its own colours. The group is saved with the map.

Removing a custom group in the Lake Editor moves its lakes back to freshwater and drops its style. The six default groups cannot be removed.