The smallest countries and pieces

(You got me Uruguay)

A country could confidently have it’s own piece starting at an area ~270K km2. It just works this way -- I can’t provide logical reasoning here and now but probably could if pressed to.

There is a dilemma for countries that are smaller than this size, that is too small to have their own piece -- which surrounding country’s piece should they be included with? Every single one of these needed to be dealt with on a case-by-case basis.

The piece here that has caused me the most anguish is Uruguay (A4). At ~175K km2, 89th/203 -- it’s too small to have it’s own piece. It is. The next smallest country to have its own piece is ranked 76th (~250K km2) by area and only got its own piece on a technicality near the end (to be discussed later this is a special one). The 75th is Ecuador (~255K km2) which is quite borderline, but I have a soft spot for this country and added (the removed then added again) the Galapagos (because they’re awesome).

Yet despite Uruguay being lose-ably small there was simply no way culturally I could put it in with any of the surrounding pieces. I looked at regional history, economics and ethnography, it is truly quite independent. It wouldn’t be right to say, tack it on to Brazil. I gave it some extra ocean to try and make it bigger so it doesn’t get lost, but it’s an exception that wouldn’t conform.