Tiles are meshes that make up the land and territory seen in-game.
Behavior
Tiles serve as what the player sees in terms of territory on the map. In the games source, they are meshes that are placed on top of the main globe mesh. On PC, players can "select" a tile (selecting all cities the tile owns, rather) by pressing Shift and clicking at the same time. Additionally, a map mode exists that allows players to view every single tile in the game separately, with each one being given a randomized color. In this map mode, the name of the tile (ex. "Germany.001") can be viewed by hovering over the tile.
The values of tiles is almost always dictated by the cities assigned to it. For example, whichever nation is shown as occupying a tile is determined by who currently owns the largest city in it. Other examples include the infrastructure level of a tile in the Infrastructure map mode being determined by infrastructure levels of the cities themselves. The same applies to city tier.
Some values, however, are assigned directly to the tiles themselves. These values include an assigned biome and type of terrain. The cores of releasables are also assigned on a tile level. Additionally, formables can require specific tiles, though the game refers to this function as owning X amount of cities instead of referring to the tiles directly.
Since the April 17, 2025 Minor Update, tiles occupied during war are depicted in a brighter colour than the nation occupying it. Before the update, occupied tiles had the same colour as the core territory of the occupying nation.
History
The in-game tiles were drawn by Hyperant in 2019 when Rise of Nations was in early development. Allegedly, these early tiles were drawn completely from Hyperant's memory in the span of a week, with no references be used beyond national boundaries. These early tiles were notorious for having numerous inaccuracies compared to real world subdivisions, with the most well known examples being the extremely low quality borders of 
Texas and the 
Confederate States of America. These borders were in place everywhere for three years, though Hyperant worked on reworking the borders over time. No changes were published into the game itself for a while beyond minor changes to specific areas. These changes include the addition of 
Puerto Rico, 
Antarctica and the 
Falkland Islands (both of which were previously ocean), and a tile update specifically for 
Serbia that allowed for the addition of 
Kosovo.
In October 2022, the first border rework took place, which focused on the 
United States and 
Canada. Over the next year, all of the in-game borders were updated, with the reworks concluding a year later in October 2023, which reworked the borders of some island nations and nations such as 
China. Since then, minor adjustments have been applied to specific regions, such as adding separate tiles for territories such as Labrador and Long Island.
List of tile reworks
This is a list of every single rework that has occurred to date. This does not count minor additions (ex. Newfoundland.)
| Date | Region(s) |
|---|---|
| 10/04/2022 | United States, Canada
|
| 10/10/2022 | Central American, Caribbean |
| 10/14/2022 | South America |
| 10/19/2022 |  United Kingdom,  Ireland
|
| 11/08/2022 | Europe |
| 11/11/2022 | Africa |
| 11/21/2022 | Middle East |
| 02/07/2023 | Central Asia |
| 03/29/2023 |  Russia,  Australia,  New Zealand
|
| 10/25/2023 | The rest of Asia and Oceania |
Other Map Versions
Tile Numbers
Tiles that don't fit:
- Hawaii.002, 003, 004, Hawaii, starting from the middle island then down, up
- Greece.017, 018, Crete & Rhodos
- India.002, Island west of India India.183, 184, 185, 186, Islands south of India.001
- Indonesia.018, island south of singapore
- Indonesia.072, island south of Indonesia.073
- Indonesia.078, island north of Indonesia.079
- Indonesia.082, Penang
- Indonesia.083, 084, 085, 086, 087, Islands west of Indonesia, up to down
- Philippines.034, 035, 036, islands between philippines and indonesia, right to left
- Japan.055, 056, 057, 058, 059, 060, 061, Islands between Taiwan and Japan, down to up
- Japan.063, 064, 065, 066, 067, 068, 069, islands around japan, starting west of Japan.006 and going clockwise.
- Japan.070, 071, islands between Japan.011 and Japan.017, left to right
- Russia.314, 315, Kuril Islands, down to up
- Spain.033, Spain.035, Balearic islands, left to right
- Tanzania.030, 031, 032, Zanzibar down to up
- UnitedKingdom.029, 030, North islands down to up
Atlantic islands use 'CountryExtra.000'.
Switzerland written as Swisterland
2021
Trivia
- The largest tile in the game is "Antarctica.002", which is roughly 4.7 Million km² and is owned by Antarctica.
Andorra, 
Liechtenstein, 
Macau, 
Monaco, 
Saint Martin, 
Saint Pierre and Miquelon, 
San Marino and the releasables of 
Nevis and 
Trieste do not have their own tiles, and are entirely situated within a tile owned by another nation.
Colombia is made out of Columbia tiles.
Switzerland is made out of Swisterland tiles.
Barbuda, 
Hawaii and 
Alaska are the only releasables with their names on their respective tiles- Svalbard is the only non releasable/national tile to have an original name,
Greenland and 
Iceland also had such tiles before their tiles were updated. - The
Spanish and 
Portuguese islands near Africa have their tile names as “SpainExtra” and “PortugalExtra” respectively.