Lakes

Lakes is a 256x256 standard-difficulty map that presents players with a landscape dotted with multiple lakes and interconnected waterways. The map's description notes that "areas rich in lakes and rivers are scarce" in the post-apocalyptic world, making this region a rare find that still shows hope for Earth's recovery. The terrain features many small basins and channels that naturally distribute water across a wide area, creating abundant irrigation opportunities. This layout gives players numerous options for where to establish farms and settlements, as water access is available from multiple directions.

The multi-lake layout of this map introduces interesting water management challenges that go beyond simple river damming. Instead of a single main river to control, players must manage water flow through multiple interconnected basins, deciding which lakes to dam, which channels to block, and how to route water most efficiently. During Droughts, the distributed water supply can be both an advantage and a disadvantage: while many small reservoirs mean that water persists in scattered locations, none of them may be deep enough to last through a long dry period without deliberate reinforcement. Players should prioritize deepening and connecting key lakes with dams and channels to create reliable storage.

Lakes has been tweaked over time so that the map plays better after the removal of district limits, allowing players to spread their settlements more freely across the multiple lake basins. The generous 256x256 size provides plenty of room for expansion, and the distributed water features support multiple semi-independent district clusters. During Badtide events, contamination can spread through the interconnected waterways, requiring careful floodgate placement at key junctions to isolate clean reservoirs. Both Folktails and Iron Teeth can thrive on this map, with Folktails benefiting from the extensive irrigable farmland and Iron Teeth leveraging the multiple water sources for industrial power generation.