Showing all the territories, as they expand and contract, would be much more information. Also, the smooth growth of empires just isn't the way it happens. The

Showing all the territories, as they expand and contract, would be much more information. Also, the smooth growth of empires just isn't the way it happens. The quick snaps of change would be both more accurate and dramatic. The time constant is an interesting aspect. If it were tunable, you might get bored in the past and overwhelmed as time progressed to modernity. Globally, it would be interesting to see colonization through the end of the cold war. Another interesting map might be a heat map of home prices over an area like NYC's 5 boroughs. Lots of people treat gentrification like some kind of war, so using a similar visualization would be appropriate. Another map that would be interesting, even over the same time period and region, is total or per capita wealth within an empire. The best visualization would involve the area of the territory shrinking or growing like these scaled cartograms: http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mejn/election/ http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mejn/election/ http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mejn/election/countycart3070large.png http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mejn/election/countycart3070l... update: Normalizing wealth per capita by the number of slaves would be an interesting measure ancient productivity