Unified Map Project

The Unified Map Project (UMP) is a community project on CivClassics dedicated to "see[ing] to the popularization of knowledge of the world in which we all live". Initiated on January 11, 2021, the project coordinates and combines efforts from many high-profile mappers, as well as the CivClassics community at large.

Goals
The UMP identifies five goals for itself: - The creation and maintenance of a democratic and reasonable political map - The realization of an accurate and oft-updated terrain map - Thorough in-game marking in order to streamline and simplify navigation across the server - The amassing and publicizing of smaller-scale "local" maps of the server's cities and other points of interest - The provision to all of an accurate infrastructure travel map". Though four of these goals are similar in process - collecting and producing maps from relevant information - in-game marking is the project's black sheep, having been inherited from the never-realized CivClassics Marking Project. It completes these goals through a combination of communal and executive information-provision and labor. Though not officially affiliated with the CCMap, most of its efforts are directed towards it. The UMP invites Classics players to provide it with relevant information, such as maps of a city or claim, or rail journey logs (to substitute for the defunct ClassicRail Discord server).

Products
The UMP currently claims two major accomplishments: 1. The consistently-maintained polygon-formatted claim map visible on [ccmap.github.io the CCMap's "land claims" layer], and 2. SleepingFox's TravelBot-affiliated rail data, visible on [ccmap.github.io the CCMap's "rail" layer]. Its in-game markings are extraordinarily numerous, but a summary of them can be found in the UMP's Discord server's #mk-progress-updates channel.

Contribution
The UMP solicits and functions on contributions from Classics players of all sorts. As such, it considers all Classics players in its Discord server to be project members, and seeks to foster a mentality of mutual benefit around contributions to its five goals. The UMP encourages all who wish to contribute to join its Discord server, but as contribution to the project can be anything which forwards any of its goals - as simple as sending a mapmaker a VoxelMap cache or marking a border - this is not required. The UMP also maintains a constant state of request for all nations to submit official maps of their territory, to aid in the construction and maintenance of the political and local maps.

History
1/11/21 - The UMP is created out of the CCMP following a brainstorming session in the HC Discord server.

Trivia
The UMP's Discord server started with approximately 30 channels, but this was reduced to 15 as most of the project's founding members clamored for channel cleanliness.