Delco & Philly - The Delaware Valley

DELCO & PHILLY - THE DELAWARE VALLEY

All of Delaware County and Philadelphia, plus the New Jersey riverfront, on a Very Large 1:2 temperate map. The terrain comes from real USGS elevation data, so Chestnut Hill sits on its hill, the Wissahickon cuts its gorge, and the Delaware runs unbroken from the Bucks County line to Wilmington. Sub-Biome information is pulled from contributions to OpenStreetMap. The map is preconfigured with towns & industries, but no preexisting infrastructure so you can build out the Delaware Valley how you like, without having to beg Harrisburg for funding!

Some details

Scale is about 1:2.7 horizontally, with heights at 0.6x so grades stay buildable.

The Delaware and Schuylkill are fully navigable, along with the tidal mouths of the Delco creeks.

Creek valleys and parks are wooded, Tinicum and the John Heinz refuge are marsh, and western Delco is open farmland.

There are 38 towns. Philadelphia is built from neighbourhood towns such as Center City, South Philly, Kensington, Germantown and Manayunk that grow into one city, alongside Delco's boroughs and townships, the NJ river towns, and a few remote additions to fill in the gaps (Wilmington, West Chester, Moorestown, Marlton and Berwyn) for long-haul work.

Industries

There are 39 industries, most on real industrial sites from the region's history, from riverfront refineries and steel to textile mills, breweries and canneries. Every production chain on the map is complete. Where the region never had a supplier (coal, iron ore, crude oil, timber), fictional industries fill the gap.

The Logistics Puzzle

Industries never move, so every town starts with one short supply run and one long haul. The long hauls usually mean crossing the Delaware, crossing the Schuylkill, or going the length of the river. Fish only comes from the fisheries down by Claymont, so the northern towns need a long supply line. The remote towns depend on goods from the far end of the map, and steel is in demand from several factories at once.

Recommended Settings

Temperate climate. The map is designed around a start date of about 1900, but the economy works in any era.

CREDITS

Elevation: USGS 3D Elevation Program (public domain) Water, woods, wetlands and boundaries: © OpenStreetMap contributors, available under the Open Database License (ODbL)