Understanding world regions

CityDrop's location settings let you play the world, a single continent — Africa, Asia, Europe, North America, South America or Oceania — or a single country from the playable list. That mirrors how the map is actually organised, and it is a good sign of the level you should be thinking at: continent first, then sub-region, then country.

A few countries straddle the line. Russia spans Europe and Asia, Turkey and Georgia sit on both sides of the Bosphorus and Caucasus, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan reach into Europe, and Egypt's Sinai is conventionally Asian. The Ural Mountains, the Caucasus and the Bosphorus are the usual dividing lines.

• Nordics — Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Finland and Denmark, plus Greenland and the Faroe Islands. Long coastlines, high latitudes, islands everywhere.
• Baltics — Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania — the three small countries on the eastern Baltic coast, south of Finland.
• Central Europe — Germany, Poland, Czechia, Slovakia, Austria, Switzerland, Hungary and Slovenia. Landlocked except Germany and Poland, with the Alps and Carpathians in the south and east.
• Western Europe — France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Ireland and the United Kingdom.
• Iberia — Spain, Portugal and Andorra, cut off from the rest of Europe by the Pyrenees.
• The Balkans — Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro, Kosovo, Albania, North Macedonia, Bulgaria, Romania and Greece — a peninsula of small countries with a lot of coastline.
• Eastern Europe — Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova and the European part of Russia — the wide plains east of Poland and Romania.

• Middle East — Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Palestine, Jordan, Iraq, Iran and the Arabian peninsula (Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Oman, the UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait).
• Central Asia — Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, with Afghanistan usually grouped alongside them. Landlocked, dry, and framed by the Caspian Sea in the west.
• South Asia — India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, Sri Lanka and the Maldives — a subcontinent separated from the rest of Asia by the Himalayas.
• Southeast Asia — Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, the Philippines, Brunei and Timor-Leste. Mainland and maritime halves.
• East Asia — China, Mongolia, North Korea, South Korea, Japan and Taiwan.
• Siberia — Russia east of the Urals — the largest sparsely populated area on Earth, and the reason 'northern Asia' and 'Russia' often mean the same thing.

• North Africa — Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya and Egypt — the Mediterranean strip and the Sahara.
• The Sahel — Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Chad and Sudan: the dry band running west to east just below the Sahara.
• West Africa — Senegal, Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana, Togo, Benin, Burkina Faso, Nigeria and Cape Verde.
• Central Africa — Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Gabon, the Republic of the Congo, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea and São Tomé and Príncipe.
• East Africa — Ethiopia, Eritrea, Djibouti, Somalia, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Tanzania and South Sudan — the Great Rift Valley runs right through it.
• Southern Africa — Angola, Zambia, Malawi, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Namibia, South Africa, Lesotho and Eswatini.
• The island neighbours — Madagascar, Mauritius, the Seychelles and the Comoros sit off the continent's east and south-east coasts.

• North America — Canada, the United States and Mexico, plus Greenland, which is politically European but geographically North American.
• Central America — Guatemala, Belize, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama — the narrow land bridge between the continents.
• The Caribbean — Cuba, Jamaica, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, the Bahamas, Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados and the Lesser Antilles.
• Andean South America — Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia and Chile — the countries the Andes runs through.
• The Southern Cone — Argentina, Chile, Uruguay and Paraguay, plus the vast dry plateaus of Patagonia in the south.
• The Guianas — Guyana, Suriname and French Guiana on the north-east coast, often overlooked and therefore easy to confuse.
• Brazil — large enough to be its own region: the Amazon basin in the north, the arid sertão in the north-east, the big cities of the south-east, and the grasslands of the south.

• Australia — eight states and territories — New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, Western Australia, South Australia, Tasmania, the Northern Territory and the Australian Capital Territory. The populated south-east corner is where most cities are.
• New Zealand — two main islands, with Auckland in the north and the Southern Alps and Fiordland in the south.
• Melanesia — Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and Fiji.
• Micronesia — Palau, Guam, the Marshall Islands and the Federated States of Micronesia.
• Polynesia — Samoa, Tonga, Tuvalu, French Polynesia, Hawaii, Easter Island and New Zealand's Māori heritage — the vast triangle of the central and eastern Pacific.

The quickest way to make regions stick is to attach one or two cities to each. If you can picture Nairobi, Lagos, Cairo, Jakarta, Bogotá and Helsinki on the map, you can orient yourself almost anywhere nearby.

Next step: once the regions feel familiar, learn which countries sit beside which in borders and neighbours.