Frequently asked questions
What is this site?
A map of The Campaign for North Africa (SPI, 1979), read hex by hex from a scan of the original printing, where anyone can say what terrain they think a hex should have. On the map, the ? beside the zoom buttons explains the labels and how a hex gets its terrain.
What is it for?
The end goal is an engine that lets AI agents play The Campaign for North Africa. The engine plays on this map, so every hex needs the right terrain, and your votes on the doubtful hexes help get it there.
Why is a hex that looks mostly Clear marked as another terrain?
A hex takes any fill other than Clear that covers at least a tenth of its land, so a hex can be mostly Clear and still count as Rough. The rules don’t say how to class a hex printed with two terrains; this is our reading of them, and you can vote if you would call a hex differently.
Why does a coastal hex count as land and not Sea?
The rules never say so outright, but it follows from them. Addendum 1 goes through the steps.
What happens to my vote?
It counts in the hex’s tally straight away. Votes don’t change the map by themselves: the maintainer goes through them and may change a hex’s terrain in a later update. You can change or withdraw your vote at any time from the same browser. If you clear your cookies or switch browsers, the site can no longer tell the vote is yours.
What does the site keep about me?
When you first vote, your browser gets a random code in a cookie that lasts two years. Each vote is stored with an id derived from that code, the hex, the terrain and the time; there is no name, email or account. Your network address is used only to limit how fast votes can be saved and is not stored with them, though the hosting service may keep it in its request logs. Your browser also remembers your layer choices and whether you have seen the help, in its own storage. The site counts visits with Vercel Web Analytics, which sets no cookies: it records the page, the site that linked to it, your browser, device type and rough location, and tells visitors apart by a code that is thrown away after 24 hours. There is no advertising.
How do I contact the maintainer?
Email (the address appears once the page has loaded) with corrections, questions, or anything you would like changed or taken down.