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Comment by goodoldneon | Hacker News Reader

If I've learned anything from the Civilization games, you need to have top-tier resources in the desert hexes. Otherwise, the gameplay is too unbalanced

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hah ha.

but to be fair, calling Iran a desert is like calling the United States a desert.

https://www.knowiran.com/iran-landscape

Huge vast swaths of Australia and the United States are effectively deserts, but they don't "define" the country. It mainly comes down to what pictures you see in the news when something happens, and Iranian cities look "deserty".

There's also a tendency in the US to conflate Iran with Arab countries.

<Alien Guards>: "What's going on? The prisoners should be powerless against our anti-arab ray!"

<Iranian Rick>: "I'M PERSIAN, MOTHERFUCKEEEEERS!" destroys the prison and flies away

lol

This is the real reason, and I am guilty of it, it's because of the Persian cultural influences and some pictures, people just assumed, it wasn't until I saw some travel shows or more social media that I realized its closer to what I saw in Turkey.

I most definitely would "define" Australia more by it's desert landscape than I would Iran.

I knew Iran was diverse, but those were some incredibly beautiful photographs. Thank you for sharing.

I just cross referenced that against Google Earth and your comment is completely misleading/incorrect. I’m kind of irked by how interesting your claim was compared to how wrong it turned out to be. It is completely dominated by an arid climate with tiny swathes inlaid into it.

The climate map shows how it is comparable to the most desert regions of the United States, such as Arizona, New Mexico, or Nevada.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geography_of_Iran#/media/Fil...

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a6/Koppen-G...

Apologize if I over-stated its diversity. California might have been a better comparison, but I do not think it is completely misleading and incorrect.

Put the Koppen map of California next to Iran for comparison… Maybe if you limit it to just Southern California you can get close to the same proportion of arid/desert. But I think that pretty much matches the common conception of Iran.

Virtually the entire country is arid / steppe except for a few tiny strips, where the (beautiful) videos you shared were taken.

Contrasted with the United States which does have a lot of arid space (30%?) but is dominated by temperate climates. Not even including Alaska. Your claim that Iran is comparable to the United States in that respect is just totally wild lol

And you've gotta build Petra, of course.

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