I draw a geographically and temporally disaggregated model of the location and course of the Algerian civil war, using new battle event and location data from press reports. I show that the war was located in areas and at moments in time in which both the rebels and the government were about equally strong, according to my novel relative strength index. Additional factors that can robustly predict high location-specific war intensity are the severity of violence at a location in the past period, and unemployment. Finally, violence is unlikely to take place in unpopulated areas.