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I personally think that this question is only slightly more suited for Worldbuilding Main rather than the Worldbuilding Meta, but I'm not sure where else to ask.

Is there a website that I could use that could generate entirely-new countries and their respective Earthly land boundaries on a map of the Earth - something where I could, say, press a button and have the United States get replaced with three smaller countries with random names?

I have been able to find somewhat similar tools, but they don't randomize anything.

KEY_ABRADE
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  • @ARogueAnt. Yes, but a lot of those are focused on building an entirely new world. I'm looking for new countries and civilizations on top of a real Earth, and have been unable to find something that can accomplish that in the worldbuilding resources. – KEY_ABRADE Jul 28 '21 at 23:39
  • Check the grand strategy gaming community. Games like Europa Universalis have a random country placement setting. It overlays the world map with existing countries at random (either keeping the relative power or not). The game is heavily modifiable and there may be mods to do what you want. – Allan Jul 28 '21 at 23:49

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The open source photoshop clone, Gimp can fill this need. Just start with a continental outline map and use the free-select tool to highlight rough border of your alternative country, then choose a fill color and click the flood-fill tool (the bucket) inside of the selection. The selected color will flood in, respecting the black continental borders, any previously filled countries and the selection boundary.

enter image description here

Henry Taylor
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While not a tool, I think an interesting technique is to ponder political division of nations based on watersheds. I think this is becoming more important in the face of water scarcity in the South-West USA.

So using the principle of counterfactualism, what if the states were based on watersheds or river basins? What if the surveyors and founders of the United States had a modern understanding of watershed management and GIS mapping skills? Well, the United States would look like Fig. 1 where the states would take on the shape of the majorriver basins.

see: https://www.wrc.udel.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/What-if-the-United-State-of-America-were-based-on-Watersheds-2002.pdf

This link has a full repartition of the USA based on watersheds as well as hypothetical state names.

or for an old map with a similar idea, check out:

enter image description here

JonSG
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Google image.

alternate n am maps

My search term was alternate North America maps. I got loads and loads of them. I tried "alternate Indonesia maps" and got loads of those too. If you want different political boundaries in existing geographic features, you can have plenty.

Now, they won't be random. There will not be funky fractal borders. But variety, yes. And many come with names.

Willk
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  • This rather feels like saying "just steal from somebody else" - the fact that you found it in a Google search doesn't mean it's been freely donated to use however you like. It also rather begs the question: given that there are all these alternative maps out there, is there some tool or technique that people used to make them? – IMSoP Jul 29 '21 at 23:29
  • @IMSoP - I am sure that the maps that turned up were all lovingly rendered by their various creators using various methods. The OP specifically does not want to lovingly render - he wants to press a button and get a map. For fictional maps of North America I think this is the way to get them at the touch of a button. It is not stealing to touch a button and look at an image and the OP does not specify what is next. – Willk Jul 30 '21 at 00:02