View Full Version : Pocket - Maps and Provinces
Please post your suggestions on the Map for the Pocket Mod here. Some sort of visual aid based on your suggestions is required; I'll be putting mine up tomorrow.
Sorry for the Doublepost, but this is my Idea. It's haphazard and not finalized, so it might be a little confusing.
https://i189.photobucket.com/albums/z41/YourLordandConqueror_2007/MapTex.jpg
Could you by any chance number it and provide a key with the proposed province names?
:bow:
The Unknown Guy
05-24-2007, 17:51
Some comments on that map (I assume that the islands stand as separated provinces):
-Move the borders of Constantinople (and the name) to Thrace. AKA: full Europe province, with an adequate border representing the Bosphorous strait.
-North of Castile: Lordship of Biscay
-What are the two south-sahara provinces?
-Move the borders of Constantinople (and the name) to Thrace. AKA: full Europe province, with an adequate border representing the Bosphorous strait.
My argument against this is that although the Constantinople province is not ideal it does represent the cities that would have been held by the Byzantine for much longer than the rest of western Anatolia. It also more closely reflects the approximate border between Nicaea and the Latin Empire after the fourth crusade.
Thanks for the input. I have adjusted the map to be more understandable. I haven't yet completed a list or key for provinces yet, mostly because I lack names for a few of them, and any help in that regard would be most appreciated. I have add sea borders (red line) and landbridges (cyan line). Green lines donote where "possible" provinces may be.
https://i172.photobucket.com/albums/w17/YourLordandConqueror/MapTex2OrgVersion.jpg
Cheers!:medievalcheers: :barrel:
No Comments:inquisitive: ? I still need help on the names for provinces.
No Comments:inquisitive: ? I still need help on the names for provinces.
If the provinces are nameless then I'm not sure how you have come up with their locations? What you have to remember is that in those days there were no real provinces, just land claimed by a certain lord or king based on visual geographics. Kingdoms such as Navarre, Aragon and Kiev changed size constantly. you're going to have to base your provinces on what we have at the moment, not on a complete rework. you're also going to have to keep the limitations to the number of provinces in mind. looking at your map I would estimate that you've gone over that.
I'm also unsure about some of your choices, including the new province in northern Anatolia stretching into north western Nicaea and the eastern part of the old Constantinople province.
The best thing at this point would be for you to provide sources for the map, so that others can scrutinise it.
:bow:
The Unknown Guy
05-26-2007, 18:54
Well, some historical ones I know:
- Despotate of Morea as in the southern Greece province
- The Lordship of Biscay, in Northern Spain. Switched hands between Castile and Navarre several times.
-Also, found this webpage which might help in other consultations:
http://www.allempires.com/
Actually, I have 106 set provinces, with 6 possible ones (Green lines). I also have 14 sea regions, which is a reduced amount (from 24 or 21, I believe). The ungainly "northern" Anatolia province is an attempt to create a western Trebizond while taking the advice from Unknown Guy to make Constantinople a european province while still keeping intact Nicaea's borders :dizzy2: . As for naming, I am attempting to be historically accurate as possible :help: . My sources, sadly, happen to be the multiplicity of Mod maps combined to together as feasibly as possible :shame: . My attempts at recreating the medieval era using historic maps always end in failure :wall: , as I have no idea on which provinces to compromise on :embarassed: .
The ungainly "northern" Anatolia province is an attempt to create a western Trebizond while taking the advice from Unknown Guy to make Constantinople a european province while still keeping intact Nicaea's borders :dizzy2: .
I don't agree with making Constantinople an European province because the Constantinople province in the game is roughly equivalent to the territory of the western anatolian cities, and the territory held by the Latin Empire after 1204, and territory reclaimed by the Byzantines later. In my opinion the Nicaea province is the one that needs some changes. I would divide it up and make it smaller, having the western part as Nicaea, and give part of the southern Constantinople province to this new Nicaea province, relocating Nicaea to it's correct position.
Belisario
05-27-2007, 21:15
These maps could be useful:
The Balkans and Anatolia after the 4th Crusade:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:LatinEmpire2.png
Several maps of Byzantium:
http://www.imperiobizantino.com/grupal3/Anexo%20mapas.pdf
Pay attention to these questions:
-Nicaea is located in the North-Western corner of Asia Minor. This region was historically known as Bythinia. Other important cities in Bythina are Nicomedia and Bursa, the latest being the first Ottoman capital.
-The western part of the actual Trebizond MTW province corresponds with the historical region of Paphlagonia, which was the native land of the Komnenian family. Its capital could be the coastal city of Sinope.
-The capital of the Seljuqs of Rum, Iconium, is located at the center of Anatolia. MTW Rum and Iconium are located a bit eastwards. I think that Rum could be replaced in central MTW Anatolia province while MTW Rum could be the Armenian regions of Melitene/Malatia and Sivas, the latest being occasionally the capital of the Seljuqs of Rum after its conquest by Kilij Arslan II in 1174. The coastal part of MTW Anatolia could be a new province called Antalya/Attalia, an area conquered by the Seljuqs and recaptured by the Byzantines again and again from 1076 onwards as the Seljuks strove to establish a trading base on the Mediterranean. In 1220 Byzantine rule ended for the last time and the city was conquered by the Seljuqs of Rum.
-The European part of MTW Constantinople corresponds with the historical region of Thrace (most important cities, Constantinople but also Adrianople), and, together with a part of Northern MTW Greece, Macedonia (most important city Thessaloniki).
-The North-Western part of Greece corresponds with the historical region of Epirus. Its most important cities were Arta (capital of the Despotate of Epirus), Ioannina, and the coastal town of Dyrrachium (Greek Durrës, Italian Durazzo).
-The large peninsula in southern Greece is the Peloponnese, which was known in medieval times as Morea. The Franks founded there the Principality of Achaea and the Catalans the Duchy of Athens, and later the Greeks of Morea tenaciously fought against the Ottomans.
-The Southern part of MTW Nicaea could be a new province perhaps called Smyrna or even Lydia but I am not sure.
Well, I don't forget the province limit factor :yes:
Thanks for the info Belisario, I have maps similar to the one in your first link. :thumbsup:
This is what I have done so far as regard north Africa. I have also slightly adjusted the border between Nicaea and Constantinople to place Nicaea actually in the Nicaea province.
https://img168.imageshack.us/img168/2020/maptex2an0.th.jpg (https://img168.imageshack.us/my.php?image=maptex2an0.jpg)
I have freed up 3 provinces (Cyrenacia, Sinai and Sahara) in doing this. Some may disagree with the southward extent of Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia but those provinces did actually extend that far during the Almohad Dynasty and before and after that.
Caravel
Changing the map makes all the difference. Can't be easy because it has been done so rarely, but imho the most interesting Mods are the ones that give you some new realities that way. :2thumbsup: On that theme, and sticking with Africa, conquering Morocco or Egypt should not be a pushover - one pounce and it's done. And they should have the strength to generate some real offensive power. I'm thinking of the crusader campaigns inside Egypt, and the Spanish/Portuguese lodgements on the coast of Morocco which never gave them the interior. In other words, how about splitting both into a coast and interior province? Entirely agree that Sinai and Libya were without much significance, but for Morocco to be one province when Spain is 7 plus Portugal, or for Egypt to be overrun by a single naval landing, has always been more than a bit unrealistic and removes serious campaigning in North Africa, of which there was actually quite a lot in our period. No other Mod has done this, but I think the historical arguments are sound.
There's obvious space to do this for Morocco. Map is less kind to Egypt, but maybe a diagonal split of Alexandria from (interior) Cairo?:egypt:
Belisario
05-28-2007, 01:46
I don't have objections to the southwards extent of the Maghrib provinces, but I dislike the loss of Cyrenaica. I can argue some reasons:
-Cyrenaica was conquered by the Islamic Arabs by the first caliph, Abu Bakr, in 643/44, and became known as Barka after its new provincial capital, the ancient Barca. After the breakdown of the Ummayad caliphate, it was annexed to Egypt, although still under the same name, under the Fatimid caliphs and later under the Ayyubid and Mamluk sultanates.
-The Arab tribes settled in the south-eastern border of Tunisia (perhaps better called Ifriqiya which in medieval times was the area comprising the coastal regions of what are today western Libya, Tunisia, and eastern Algeria) were an outstanding factor in the political scenario of this region. In the 11th century the Fatimids favoured their settlement there as a counteroffensive to the rising independent power of the Zirids in Ifriqiya/Tunisia. These Arabs were also an important element of the military structure of the Almohads, who enrolled them in high numbers.
-Cyrenaica/Barka was a warfare scenario for the Siculo-Normans (conquest of Tripoli by the admiral Giorgio d'Antiochia in 1146), the Almohads (during the period of maximum extent of the caliphate), or the Ayyubids (campaigns of the mamluk soldier Qaraqush in the 1170s).
A possible idea for Morocco could be split it into two provinces:
-A northern province with Fes as capital and at north it borders on the Strait of Gibraltar.
-A southern province with Marrakech as capital and at west it borders on MTW Moroccan small sea region (I don't remember its name).
On that theme, and sticking with Africa, conquering Morocco or Egypt should not be a pushover - one pounce and it's done. And they should have the strength to generate some real offensive power. I'm thinking of the crusader campaigns inside Egypt, and the Spanish/Portuguese lodgements on the coast of Morocco which never gave them the interior. In other words, how about splitting both into a coast and interior province? Entirely agree that Sinai and Libya were without much significance, but for Morocco to be one province when Spain is 7 plus Portugal, or for Egypt to be overrun by a single naval landing, has always been more than a bit unrealistic and removes serious campaigning in North Africa, of which there was actually quite a lot in our period. No other Mod has done this, but I think the historical arguments are sound.
There's obvious space to do this for Morocco. Map is less kind to Egypt, but maybe a diagonal split of Alexandria from (interior) Cairo?:egypt:
I agree, though it is not easy to divide up north Africa into provinces. The problem with the coastal strips idea is that the Kingdom of Fez, Zirids, Hammadids, Fatimids, Almoravids, Almohads, Marinids, Ziyyanids and Hafsids all held lands well into the interior, the coastal strip and interior province would seem artificial.
I don't have objections to the southwards extent of the Maghrib provinces, but I dislike the loss of Cyrenaica. I can argue some reasons:
-Cyrenaica was conquered by the Islamic Arabs by the first caliph, Abu Bakr, in 643/44, and became known as Barka after its new provincial capital, the ancient Barca. After the breakdown of the Ummayad caliphate, it was annexed to Egypt, although still under the same name, under the Fatimid caliphs and later under the Ayyubid and Mamluk sultanates.
-The Arab tribes settled in the south-eastern border of Tunisia (perhaps better called Ifriqiya which in medieval times was the area comprising the coastal regions of what are today western Libya, Tunisia, and eastern Algeria) were an outstanding factor in the political scenario of this region. In the 11th century the Fatimids favoured their settlement there as a counteroffensive to the rising independent power of the Zirids in Ifriqiya/Tunisia. These Arabs were also an important element of the military structure of the Almohads, who enrolled them in high numbers.
-Cyrenaica/Barka was a warfare scenario for the Siculo-Normans (conquest of Tripoli by the admiral Giorgio d'Antiochia in 1146), the Almohads (during the period of maximum extent of the caliphate), or the Ayyubids (campaigns of the mamluk soldier Qaraqush in the 1170s).
The north African gains of George of Antioch were lost less than twenty years later. For the vast majority of the game's timeframe the MTW Cyrenacia province was split with the eastern part (Cyrene) being mostly under control of one of the Egyptian Dynasties. The western part was either independent or held by the Almohads.
The reason I have split the province and left a dead zone in the centre is to prevent Crusades taking this route to the Holy Land. The other reason is to better represent historical boundaries and to free up provinces.
A possible idea for Morocco could be split it into two provinces:
-A northern province with Fes as capital and at north it borders on the Strait of Gibraltar.
-A southern province with Marrakech as capital and at west it borders on MTW Moroccan small sea region (I don't remember its name).
Splitting Morocco into Fes and Marrakech may be a good idea.
:bow:
Caravel
I agree with you about transverse travel across Africa. More realistic to have basically two zones (Morocco and Egypt) that might be invaded or from which invasions might come. Noone would invade Morocco via Egypt or vice versa (alright - the Arabs did it in the 8th century, but that's a one-off and out of period!). If you've got the provinces, there's also a zone in the middle that attracted a couple of crusades in its own right - but I'd suggest less essential to realism than, for example, splitting up Syria.
Caravel
I agree with you about transverse travel across Africa. More realistic to have basically two zones (Morocco and Egypt) that might be invaded or from which invasions might come. Noone would invade Morocco via Egypt or vice versa (alright - the Arabs did it in the 8th century, but that's a one-off and out of period!). If you've got the provinces, there's also a zone in the middle that attracted a couple of crusades in its own right - but I'd suggest less essential to realism than, for example, splitting up Syria.
Syria I would cut in half almost vertically but the eastern half I would turn into a dead zone and remove along with the Arabia province. That land was usually a no-man's land populated only by Bedouin AFAIK. Any and all maps I have consulted have that land as unconquered by Fatimids, Seljuks, Mongols, Ayyubids, Mamluks and others. Euratlas also shows the same. Halving Syria and calling the eastern part "Mespotamia" is also wrong as Mespotamia would have been further to the east (near the rivers). Arabia could be retained as the coastal strip just about visible near the Sinai province, but it would hardly be worth it. Personally I would remove it an put it to better use along with Cyrenacia.
I have replaced the Morocco Province as it is in the game. I have renamed the province and the castle "Fes". The Sahara and it's castle are now "Marrakech".
Nice:2thumbsup: I agree whole hartedly. In vanilla, Islamic lands had the tendency to be overrun quickly because they lacked the fragmentaion of the western ones. Would you be partial to slicing Syria and Arabai down the middle, and keeping the western half as a province, while the east remains a Dead zone? This should allow the Egyptians (or Turks) a space in which to easily counter attack incursions into thier homeland, as was done throuout history.
ou considered any part of my map? Just wondering.
Caravel
I agree about Mesopotamia, but my thought on Syria is that there were 3 states pretty consistently important - Mosul east of Edessa, Aleppo east of Antioch and Damascus east of Tripoli and the northern part of Kindom of Jerusalem. The key for the crusaders was to keep them separate from each other and from Egypt, which ultimately - after the own goal of the Second Crusade attacking Damascus - they failed to do. If you could split Syria in 3, you'd have a mirror of the real crusader situation (assassins apart, but they never amounted to a faction with potential for conquest). But actually, since Mosul and Aleppo were joined under Zenghi from 1128, splitting in 2 would do - it's a north south split rather than an east west one. East of Damascus, you're right, would be desert.
It's your Mod mate, but I have been stewing on the map a long time, without the brains to change it!:2thumbsup:
I very much like the idea of the Syria split into Mosul, Aleppo and Damascus. Cyrenacia, Arabia and Sinai could all be used (put to a much better use) for those provinces. Consider the geographical borders of the crusader states changed so often a good map would be needed, but I am having no luck finding anything decent. :shrug:
The Unknown Guy
05-28-2007, 22:58
How about putting in the Syrian "No man's land" a Hashashini faction?
EDIT: And PD: Maybe Finland could be dumped onto Novgorod? It's not like there was much there besides Novgorod, right? (Covers from the Finnish onslaught)
Caravel
I'm an IT dunce so don't know how this will appear, but you're probably familiar with this address which gives you maps century by century? The 3 emirates are pretty clear on it.:yes:
http://www.euratlas.com/big/big1100.htm
The Unknown Guy
05-28-2007, 23:23
BTW: The capital of Malta was certainly NOT Valetta at medieval times, as that city dates to the XVI century
Caravel
I'm an IT dunce so don't know how this will appear, but you're probably familiar with this address which gives you maps century by century? The 3 emirates are pretty clear on it.:yes:
http://www.euratlas.com/big/big1100.htm
That's the one I've been referring to mostly as it seems the most accurate. I suppose I can work with that. I'll have a version up tomorrow with a bit of luck.
:bow:
BTW: The capital of Malta was certainly NOT Valetta at medieval times, as that city dates to the XVI century
I think you'll find a lot more like that. :shrug:
Ok here is the map of the region based roughly on the Euratlas 1100 map. Note that this is not an actual working lukupmap or even part of one, just a rough draft.
http://img2.freeimagehosting.net/uploads/th.16cc36a4b6.jpg (http://img2.freeimagehosting.net/image.php?16cc36a4b6.jpg)
It looks rather drastic but personally I think it could work well, especially with the smaller and more realistically sized crusader states. The bright green and red provinces are the additional ones that will need to make use of Arabia, Cyrenacia and Sinai.
Edit: If you have any suggestions, locations, e.g. of capitals or changes you can use my image as a template and make the rough modifications to that.
:bow:
Caravel
I like the look of what you've done - especially making Lesser Armenia an inland, mountain province (which it was). Map changes make it look great and real, not just dreamed up provinces.:2thumbsup: Let's hope LukupMap will play ball with you:juggle2:
But I would extend Tripoli and Jerusalem so they meet. If you've conquered the 4 crusader provinces (inc Edessa) you should be able to move a land army between them all, as crusaders frequently did, shuttling up to Antioch to meet a threat there, or sending contingents south to help Kingdom of Jerusalem. The map of 1100 shows a conquest in progress, just 1 year on from crusade's arrival - so the Trip and Jerusalem borders are interim, not the more or less stable ones they achieved after another 10 years campaigning.
Sorry I'm too dumb to show this on the map:embarassed: , but it just involves stretching Tripoli out to the Antioch eastern border, and stretching Jerusalem north to meet it. The actual Tripoli/Jerusalem meet should be a narrow coastal finger.
Caravel
I like the look of what you've done - especially making Lesser Armenia an inland, mountain province (which it was). Map changes make it look great and real, not just dreamed up provinces.:2thumbsup: Let's hope LukupMap will play ball with you:juggle2:
But I would extend Tripoli and Jerusalem so they meet. If you've conquered the 4 crusader provinces (inc Edessa) you should be able to move a land army between them all, as crusaders frequently did, shuttling up to Antioch to meet a threat there, or sending contingents south to help Kingdom of Jerusalem. The map of 1100 shows a conquest in progress, just 1 year on from crusade's arrival - so the Trip and Jerusalem borders are interim, not the more or less stable ones they achieved after another 10 years campaigning.
Sorry I'm too dumb to show this on the map:embarassed: , but it just involves stretching Tripoli out to the Antioch eastern border, and stretching Jerusalem north to meet it. The actual Tripoli/Jerusalem meet should be a narrow coastal finger.
Yes I think I know exactly what you mean. I have a map on paper that I can use for reference.
:bow:
Ok a second attempt, hopefully a better one.
https://img403.imageshack.us/img403/8624/mosulaleppo3rh9.th.jpg (https://img403.imageshack.us/my.php?image=mosulaleppo3rh9.jpg)
Whats all this fuss about province managment and squandering? the game has roof limit of 108, not 99.
Whats all this fuss about province managment and squandering? the game has roof limit of 108, not 99.
I'm well aware of that, but I want to stay well within that limit and not go berserk adding provinces and then find we've run out. It's better to be in a situation where we can add key provinces that are useful instead of being right at the limit. Also no one mentioned "squandering".
:bow:
Belisario
05-29-2007, 21:00
Hi Caravel!
I understand Cyrenaica's removal in favour of gameplay. I have other regions in mind to free up provinces: Rhodes, Malta, and Switzerland. The new Near East looks great.
Meanwhile I have been working on my own Lukupmaps experiments. I have finally obtained a working Lukupmap but I have a problem with Castle, Origin and Port coordinates, are these in picas? The port, castle and strategic pieces of my new province appears in strange places. Could you help me, please?
Hi Caravel!
I understand Cyrenaica's removal in favour of gameplay. I have other regions in mind to free up provinces: Rhodes, Malta, and Switzerland. The new Near East looks great.
Switzerland I can understand getting rid of by merging into Tyrolia but Malta and Rhodes I'm not so sure about. Anyway here is the latest from the new near east. I have to do the setneighbours, setborderinfo and castle, port and origin positions yet and then decide on their trade goods, resources, incomes, valour bonuses etc, and fix the homelands. Apart from that they're working fine though.
https://img508.imageshack.us/img508/5655/fertilecrescenteq6.th.jpg (https://img508.imageshack.us/my.php?image=fertilecrescenteq6.jpg)
-Edit: I should add that I've used Sinai for Aleppo and Arabia for Damascus, the other provinces are the same. Syria has become Mosul and Palestine - Jerusalem. Arabia is now dead zone as with the centre of Cyrenacia.
On a related note, the Maghreb region could now be cut off from the Iberian Peninsula by the removal of the landbridges between Granada/Cordoba and the province of Fes. This would create a separate region, like Britain, that can only be reached by ship. The old problem for Crusades from Castile heading for Constantinople to get to Morocco would no longer be an issue as the furthest they'd get would be Egypt which means they wouldn't try that route in the first place.
Meanwhile I have been working on my own Lukupmaps experiments. I have finally obtained a working Lukupmap but I have a problem with Castle, Origin and Port coordinates, are these in picas? The port, castle and strategic pieces of my new province appears in strange places. Could you help me, please?
I'm still not entirely confident when it comes to the castle port and origin points. I know that the y coordinate works from the top downwards, so something around the 20000 mark is very near the bottom of the map and low numbers for the x coordinate are near the left of the map and around the 30000 mark is the right side of the map. I work by checking the location of other castles and taking it from there - trial and error. Probably not ideal but that's how I've been getting on so far. How are you editing the map? Mithel image converter and ultimate paint? Are you working with "lukupmap2.lbm"?
:bow:
~:eek:
I like, very nice.
Hallo Caravel,
here's my suggestions on this:
I second Belisario for the removal of Switzerland, Malta and Rhodes:
That will leave you with the 5 largest islands in the Med
(Sicily,Corsica,Cyprus,Sardinia), that is well whithin the scope of the game. As i suggested much eralier i would connect them all with the inland at least through one province for example:
Corsica to Liguria (or the equivalent province)
Cyprus to Antioch
Sicily to Southern Italy (as is)
Corsica to Sardinia (as is)
Crete to Greece (or the equivalent province)
I further suggest Finland and Norway to be out for use elsewhere.
Areas of the map i think need more provinces:
1. South of France (split Acquitaine, split Toulouse)
2.Iberian; at least one internal province and prevent easy moving around of troups by means of ships by disallowing coastal vessels through Gibraltar that turns wars on the area a naval affair that is entirely off for me.
Three more provinces may be added there (Murcia and an internal one with Toledo capital and split Portugal).
3.Italy - North & the Alps. Malta may be transplanted whosale on the top of the Adriatic as Venice, as in the MedMod IV. Further provinces are needed north. In the Medmod Wes has included key provinces that represent the "passes" of the Alps to the Italian north. I took this one step further and disallowed connection between them (these mountainous regions) so passage is granted from only one of them in out in my home minimod, and it works well that way. Armies crossing from Marseille to Genoa cannot jump through the mountains into Austria - they have to pass from Milan and Verona.
4.Italy south. Well one more province (Apulia Campania) surely will help the Sicilian faction to be more proper IMO, and the whole place there to be more interesting gameplay wise.
5. Greece. It can be split into two or perhaps three provinces (Macedonia, Epirus, Moreas/Achaia). This will give European Byzantine territory some further financial substance and reality.
6. Asia minor. The problem here is a similar one to the Iberian one IMO. There is much of naval troops transport IMO when wars in the Anatolian plateau were purely inland ones. I suggest you either disallow naval access to provinces like Anatolia that should be inherently internal or to cover the coast with strip like provinces if have the numbers.
Trebizond makes passage to Constantinople a two turn affair as it stands. This is not good IMO and armies coming from Georgia should pass inland in order to reach the Borporous and they should be doing so in three turns. My soloution was to disallow passage from Armenia and Georgia to Trebizond. The reality/history reasoning behind this is that in maps Trebizond thins out considerably further east to the point that is only the coast.
7. The middle east. This i see you took care of well.
The only comment i have is that Jerusalem/Palestine is too much "in the middle" being a bottleneck and having coastal access. I would have it differently but i can see that this is what you wanted, so i leave it at that.
For Constantinople:
My suggestion is that if you don't want to make Constantinople a European province, then make it an internal one whithin the province that now stands (a very small one whithin the current province of Constantinople that would be basically the city itself). It will of course face the sea of Marmara.
This will assert the status of Constantinople as a powerful city-state metropolis and show in the game its defensible position. The "outer" province will be its attendant lands, that strecthed often both sides of the Bosporous.
Finally the North of Africa looks very good. Moroco may be split into two provinces (Moroco - Atlantic Coast) in order to provide more substance/refuge to the Almohads while Algeria-Tunisia may be the homegrounds of a fourth Islamic faction - one of the many dynasties that ruled there.
Many Thanks
Noir
The Unknown Guy
05-30-2007, 11:40
For Constantinople:
My suggestion is that if you don't want to make Constantinople a European province, then make it an internal one whithin the province that now stands (a very small one whithin the current province of Constantinople that would be basically the city itself). It will of course face the sea of Marmara.
I rather like this one. The big income would be linked to Constantinople, or to Thrace, then? Or maybe split? (Such as: huge farming bonus goes to Thrace, but Constantinople gets the trading goods)
Iberian; at least one internal province and prevent easy moving around of troups by means of ships by disallowing coastal vessels through Gibraltar that turns wars on the area a naval affair that is entirely off for me.
Two more provinces may be added there (Murcia and an internal one with Toledo capital)
My suggestion was to cut the north of Castile, and turn it into the "Lordship of Biscay" (which was a fief of the Castilian throne back then), thus leaving Castile as an internal province, with Toledo as the capital.
I would, perhaps, make Leon a more military-infrastructure developed province, but would leave Toledo as the province having the starting Royal Palace. The reason being that Toledo had been conçuered relatively recently at the starting point in the game, yet it had a good deal of symbolism because it was the capital of the old Visigoth kingdom of Spain.
As for Cordoba: I´d split it in two, as well. I don´t know if the split should be in favor of a Murcia eastern province, or an Extremadura western one, through (althrough I do favor Murcia, for some reason). In any case, balance-wise this is deserved because the Almoravids/Almohads have the unfair bonus of having a two-province defense layer, whereas they can strike at all Castilian provinces from the start of the game.
Originally posted by The Unknown Guy
Such as: huge farming bonus goes to Thrace, but Constantinople gets the trading goods
Something on these lines and something similar can be done for Venice.
The only disadvantage of this approach is that it consumes an extra province that might be better used elsewhere by making Constantinople fully european and including say 3 provinces in Greece.
Originally posted by The Unknown Guy
this is deserved because the Almoravids/Almohads have the unfair bonus of having a two-province defense layer, whereas they can strike at all Castilian provinces from the start of the game.
I agree in that both the Iberian and Anatolia need to see more strife and back and forth before the troop producing heartlands of the "enemy" are taken out.
In vanilla apart from the low rebelliousness and the outrageous naval profits its very easy to take out these key homelands in a few turns at the begonning of a campaign, because of the way the provinces connect. connectivity might introduce passes around geographical frontiers such as rivers and mountains as well as areas that transporting armies was not logistically feasible, in search of representing the locational nature of conflicts that occured in a given area.
Many Thanks
Noir
Belisario
05-30-2007, 19:00
I have edited the Lukupmap2 following this method:
1.Open a Lukupmap.lbm with IrfanView and import it as a TGA of 8 bits using the batch conversion tool. In this manner the original palette is preserved.
2.Edit the Lukupmap.tga with a graphic program (in my case Gimp2.2) and save it as un-compressed tga of 24 bits.
3.Use CA_BIF_BUF utility called Seqgrab.exe to obtain the new lukupmap.lbm. I don't know how work MithelImageConverter but I suppose that it works like CA tool. Seqgrab needs an un-compressed tga of 24 bits which provides the new image, and a lbm (in this case an original Lukupmap) which provides the palette.
If you free up Switzerland remember that this province has a hard-coded factor: the Swiss occasionally appears around 1300. I suggest that you actually free up Tyrolia or Swabia to avoid CTD's, and use the label "ID_SWITZERLAND" for the whole province of Tyrolia or Swabia, and the label "ID_TYROLIA" or "ID_SWABIA" for a new province.
Nice map, Caravel. I like it. :2thumbsup:
I'm not sure I'm really knowledgable enough about medieval geography to contribute much. The biggest problem -- as everyone here is already well aware -- is the game's hard-coded province limit. I could easily suggest a dozen new provinces, but it would immediately run into the cap. In the end, we're going to have to simply accept that quite a few provinces will have to be left out, however much justification there is for including them in the game.
I have edited the Lukupmap2 following this method:
1.Open a Lukupmap.lbm with IrfanView and import it as a TGA of 8 bits using the batch conversion tool. In this manner the original palette is preserved.
2.Edit the Lukupmap.tga with a graphic program (in my case Gimp2.2) and save it as un-compressed tga of 24 bits.
3.Use CA_BIF_BUF utility called Seqgrab.exe to obtain the new lukupmap.lbm. I don't know how work MithelImageConverter but I suppose that it works like CA tool. Seqgrab needs an un-compressed tga of 24 bits which provides the new image, and a lbm (in this case an original Lukupmap) which provides the palette.
I believe the method I'm using is considerably easier:
You will need the Mithel Image Converter, Ultimate Paint and preferably Paint Shop Pro. I use PSP as I find it much more user friendly than UP. The file to work with is lukumpmap2.lbm save a backup of this.
First open lukupmap2.lbm using ultimate paint, go to edit and copy and then open PSP and go to edit and paste as new image. Do your edits and changes then paste is back into the same image in UP. Click save and then exit. Load the Mithel Image Converter and load the original unedited lukupmap2.lbm and save the palette. Exit and then load the edited lukupmap2.lbm, again with the Mithel Image Converter and then load the palette. You can check the palette to ensure it's loading correctly. Once the palette is loaded save the .lbm and exit. That will give you a working lukupmap2. :2thumbsup:
If you free up Switzerland remember that this province has a hard-coded factor: the Swiss occasionally appears around 1300. I suggest that you actually free up Tyrolia or Swabia to avoid CTD's, and use the label "ID_SWITZERLAND" for the whole province of Tyrolia or Swabia, and the label "ID_TYROLIA" or "ID_SWABIA" for a new province.
I'd thought of that one, I'm not yet focusing on that area, but that is how I'll do it.
I've made some more changes to the same area. I've slightly expanded Tripoli based on a map I have here, mainly to make it slightly bigger as at present it is difficult to drop units there.
I've also extended Anatolia and Armenia in line with historical maps. The Antalya and Konya problem, that Belisario brought up earlier, is next on the agenda. Neither of these are in the correct place in the game. I'm not sure what Rum province and it's Iconium is supposed to represent. Konya would not have been in that location. The extension of Anatolia into part of southern Nicaea now places Konya in it's historic location in the Anatolia province along with Ankara and Antalya. The Rum province then lacks any significance or a capital. It could perhaps be extended further westwards and would then encompass Ankara, though I'm not certain of the historicity of this. I'd also like to extend the Nicaea province northwards into the Trebizond and reduce the size of Trebizond province, I have an example (again).
https://img528.imageshack.us/img528/3374/anatoliajp5.th.jpg (https://img528.imageshack.us/my.php?image=anatoliajp5.jpg)
The Unknown Guy
05-30-2007, 21:03
I don't play GA anymore so this doesn't concern me directly, but for those who do, it might be convenient to switch the ID label of Anatolia to "Rum", as there's a turkish GA dependent on that.
Caravel
Looks very good. Among many benefits, I've never liked Trebizond being next to Constantinople. It's a bit like putting Flanders adjacent to Navarre. Your changes put a whole 2 provinces in between, as it should be. Should also stop crusades taking an ahistorical excursion via Trebizond.:2thumbsup:
I don't play GA anymore so this doesn't concern me directly, but for those who do, it might be convenient to switch the ID label of Anatolia to "Rum", as there's a turkish GA dependent on that.
I'm not sure about that as technically Rum will still be in much the same location with a repositioned and renamed provincial capital. It would be more relevant as a homeland than Anatolia which is detached from the rest of the Homelands.
Looks very good. Among many benefits, I've never liked Trebizond being next to Constantinople. It's a bit like putting Flanders adjacent to Navarre. Your changes put a whole 2 provinces in between, as it should be. Should also stop crusades taking an ahistorical excursion via Trebizond.:2thumbsup:
Trebizond was a fallacy, it seems that the developer decided to add the black sea coastal strip, in it's position as it appears on maps, as a province and call it Trebizond. The annoying short cut that was always there for crusades to the Holy Land is another hopefully solved issue I hadn't thought of.
:bow:
-Edit: Well I had nearly done when PSP crashed and I've lost most of the work I had done on the Rum province so I'll have to start again. :wall:
Caravel, I can't tell from that map: Will Trebizond still be connected to the other Byzantine provinces, or will it be cut off from them?
Caravel
What are your thoughts re Greece?:book: To me, that is another obvious candidate for splitting. I agree with Noir's comments above about an ideal split into 3. When it comes to saving provinces, Malta seems to have played virtually no role (despite strategic position) until the Knights were given it in the 16th century. It wasn't even a naval base before that, and they had to build Valletta from scratch. Rhodes makes it into Late in sense that it was a naval base then (but again no real significance before those Knights get there) - is it worth using a province for, esp if there is no Knights faction?
Stopping using either of these as provinces wouldn't mean removing them from the map, so I guess no harder than other changes you are making?? Easy for me to say:dizzy2:
Originally posted by Martok
Caravel, I can't tell from that map: Will Trebizond still be connected to the other Byzantine provinces, or will it be cut off from them?
It seems not, and IMO this is good. Well done!
Many Thanks
Noir
Caravel, I can't tell from that map: Will Trebizond still be connected to the other Byzantine provinces, or will it be cut off from them?
Trebizond will be separate from Nicaea and constantinople. In early it will be a Byzantine province along with Constantinople and Nicaea, in the high era, it should be the base of a Separate Trapezuntine faction.
What are your thoughts re Greece?:book: To me, that is another obvious candidate for splitting. I agree with Noir's comments above about an ideal split into 3. When it comes to saving provinces, Malta seems to have played virtually no role (despite strategic position) until the Knights were given it in the 16th century. It wasn't even a naval base before that, and they had to build Valletta from scratch. Rhodes makes it into Late in sense that it was a naval base then (but again no real significance before those Knights get there) - is it worth using a province for, esp if there is no Knights faction?
Stopping using either of these as provinces wouldn't mean removing them from the map, so I guess no harder than other changes you are making?? Easy for me to say:dizzy2:
Malta can be removed but I'm concerned as to it's significance to the GA goals. It simply needs to be recoloured the same as Sicily on the lukupmap2 to make it part of that province, and the Malta Channel added to the straits of Sicily. It would be useful to use as one of the Greek provinces. I suppose Epirus and a province representing the Duchy of Athens and/or Achaia perhaps, with the rest as a Thessalonica. Some of northern Greece would be added to Bulgaria or Perhaps Serbia and Thessalonica would take some of the Constantinople province. Cyrenacia and Malta could be used for both of the new Greek provinces, that would leave the rest of the free provinces to use on the rest of Europe.
The Unknown Guy
05-31-2007, 12:08
If it was up to me I'd sçuikk Rhodes out of existance. As it is now it represents a ridiculously small island just a step away from the coast of Turkey, which however makes an ugly spot on the gameplay map by the "magnification" drawing....
Belisario
05-31-2007, 12:16
Concerning the Anatolian peninsula matter I think MTW Anatolia (now Konya) and MTW Rum (now "Ankara") should be INLAND regions. The Seljuks of Rum (Konya) fought against Byzantium to win access to the sea both Mediterranean and Black seas. In 1214 the Seljuks captured Sinop (Greek Sinope) on the Black Sea coast, in the ancient region of Paphlagonia, and this city served as a base for Seljuk expeditions against Crimea. About 1220 the Seljuks captured the Mediterranean city of Antalya (Greek Attalia) which provides them an important commercial port. However province limit is a restricted factor in this sense.
In the Euratlas (Southeastern Europe AD 1100) MTW Rum roughly corresponds with the Danishmend Emirate. This Turcoman dynasty ruling in eastern Anatolia was the main rival of the Seljuks of Rum until its conquest by Sultan Kiliç Arslan II in 1174 (the same Seljuk ruler who beats the Byzantines at Myriokephalon in 1176). Danishmend territory approximately covered the ancient region of Cappadocia; Britannica says about them:
Danishmend dynasty
Also spelled Danismend , also called Danishmendid Turkmen dynasty that ruled in the Sivas-Kayseri-Malatya-Kastamonu region of central and northeastern Anatolia from about 1071 to 1178.
Danishmend (Danismend), founder of the dynasty, first appeared in Anatolia as a gazi (warrior for the faith of Islam) during a period of confusion that followed the death of the Seljuq sultan Sulayman ibn Qutalmïsh in 1086. In 1102 Danishmend took Malatya, but when he died in 1104, the city was captured by the Seljuq sultan Qïlïj Arslan.
Danishmend's son and successor, Gazi, intervened in dynastic struggles among the sons of Qïlïj Arslan and helped Mas'ud seize power in 1116. Gazi then captured Malatya, Ankara, Kayseri, and Kastamonu from Mas'ud's rivals (1127). Finally in 1133 Gazi recaptured Kastamonu from the Byzantine emperor John II Comnenus, who had taken it the previous year. The caliph al-Mustarshid and Sanjar, the Seljuq sultan of Iraq-Iran, rewarded Gazi for his victories over the Christians by granting him the title of malik (king). Gazi died, however, in 1134, and his son Mehmed (Muhammad) took the title instead.
When Mehmed died (1142), the Danishmend territory was divided among his two brothers—Yagibasan (Yaghibasan) in Sivas and 'Ayn ad-Dawlah in Malatya-Elbistan—and his son Dhu an-Nun in Kayseri. After Yagibasan's death (1164), the Seljuq sultan Qïlïj Arslan II intervened repeatedly in the affairs of the Sivas and Kayseri branches and finally invaded Danishmend territory; but he was stopped by Dhu an-Nun's father-in-law, Nureddin of Mosul. Nureddin died in 1174, however, and Qïlïj was able to take Sivas, the Yesil Irmak (Iris) valley, Tokat, and Amasya (1175), and Dhu an-Nun was slain. The Malatya branch came under Seljuq control in 1178, thus marking the end of the Danishmend dynasty.
Danishmend, the first ruler, is the hero of an oral epic tradition, the Danishmendname, which first appeared in written form about 1245.
Well the only way to represent that would be the addition of two more provinces to the area namely Sinope and Antalya.
https://img527.imageshack.us/img527/4269/sinopeantalyaie4.th.jpg (https://img527.imageshack.us/my.php?image=sinopeantalyaie4.jpg)
Rhodes is Antalya and Cyrenacia is used for Sinope.
Caravel
Turning Rhodes into Antalya makes a lot of sense to me (as said before, Rhodes is a bit of an oddity unless there is a Hospitaller faction, and even then it's not as though they could realistically forge a land empire). Sinope would be good too if you have the provinces for it - but I guess you could go with one and not both if things get really tight.
It's all looking very interesting and a whole lot more historically accurate.:2thumbsup:
I've also been thinking that this dead zones idea adds a nice new dimension.
Caravel
Turning Rhodes into Antalya makes a lot of sense to me (as said before, Rhodes is a bit of an oddity unless there is a Hospitaller faction, and even then it's not as though they could realistically forge a land empire). Sinope would be good too if you have the provinces for it - but I guess you could go with one and not both if things get really tight.
It's all looking very interesting and a whole lot more historically accurate.:2thumbsup:
I've also been thinking that this dead zones idea adds a nice new dimension.
Sinope and Antalya are in, the screen shot in my last post is from a working lukupmap2. The neighbours data is set with provinces connecting properly, the ports, origins and castles are still all over the place for the changed provinces, apart from Sinope which is done. The borderinfo is next. Some suggested border crossing terrain based on the map above would be helpful ("armies meeting here" conditions).
:bow:
This may potentially be the best Anatolia yet for MTW.
This might help out with the borders:
http://www.iwmi.cgiar.org/pubs/Pub040/Images/Figure1.jpg
And some more specifics to put a little colour:
Fortresses of Trebizond:
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://members.tripod.com/romeartlover/Trebis21.jpg&imgrefurl=http://members.tripod.com/romeartlover/Trebiso2.html&h=300&w=618&sz=55&hl=en&start=84&um=1&tbnid=FvNXhoKHkEFQsM:&tbnh=66&tbnw=136&prev=/images%3Fq%3DTrebizond%2BTurkey%2Bpictures%26start%3D80%26ndsp%3D20%26svnum%3D10%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den% 26sa%3DN
Trebizond:
http://members.tripod.com/romeartlover/Trebison.html
Constantinople & Bosporous:
http://www.ephesusguides.com/files/bridge%20istanbul.jpg
Various places (very good landscape pictures - comments in czeck that i can't read):
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://voda.czechian.net/turecko/090_kappadocia_pv.jpg&imgrefurl=http://voda.czechian.net/turecko/photos.html&h=681&w=1034&sz=180&hl=en&start=12&um=1&tbnid=XVUbsSi98gSfXM:&tbnh=99&tbnw=150&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dkappadocia%2Bpictures%26svnum%3D10%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den
Desertland in eastern Anatolia:
http://www.denizt.com/interests/photos/eastanatolia/anatolia_hill.jpg
Many Thanks
Noir
Caravel
Quote re Trebizond (which initially included Sinope): "A high range of mountains separate this coastal strip from the Anatolian tableland and this fact helped in maintaining the area under the rule of the Byzantine Empire, even when most of western and central Anatolia had been conquered by the Seljuks and other invaders coming from the east."
Crudely, Anatolia has the Pontic mountain chain running west-east in the north, and the Taurus west-east in the south (swinging north-east at the edge of lesser armenia), with a high tableland in-between, increasingly hilly as you go east. So the effect we want is of a natural division into 2 coastal strips and an interior, with lesser Armenia pretty much encirled by mountains apart from outlets to Antalya and Antioch. You might therefore have
Trebizond to Rum, Armenia mountain
Trebizond to Georgia hilly
Trebizond to Sinope flat
Sinope to Rum, Nicaea hilly
Antalya to Konya hilly
Konya to Lesser Armenia mountain
Rum to Lesser Armenia mountain
Antalya to Lesser Armenia flat
I have to say I would make the vast majority of borders "no river" - how many battles in history actually consisted of one army trying to force its way across a bridge (not a river) in the immediate presence of the main body of the enemy?:thumbsdown: Bridge battles to me are one of the least realistic features of MTW, but luckily it is easy to control their frequency.
Hope that's helpful and you're not looking for something different.
Thanks Noir and western, that's the info I was looking for. Should have some border info done later, and on to Greece at the weekend. If you've any ideas for Greece get them in now in time for tomorrow. :thumbsup:
:bow:
You can make ideally 3 provinces out of Greece:
Macedonia (bulky land adjacent Thrace with Thessalonica capital)
Epirus (strip coastal on the Adriatic with Dyrrachium capital)
Achaia/Moreas/Mystras (Thessali, Rumeli and the Peloponese with potential capitals: Athens, Thebes or Mystras)
If two provnces is what you want, then i would split it into a north south affair (Macedonia&Epirus - Achaia/Moreas/Mystras) with the Adriatic coast link contained in the Northern one. This is awkard unfortunately as you would be having only one port either in the north aegean or in the Ionian, but better than having Greece as 1 province in any case.
Crete is better off as an independent province/island (with a landbridge connection to the mainland IMO) to represent the Aegean islands and their strategic position as naval bases IMO. It can be potentially merged with the Southern Greece province as an alternative in order to still get 3 provinces out of the mainland Greece split. You'll see when you finish all the map what suits better.
Unfortunately in my experience the Total number of provinces is not enough to represent all areas as vigorously you did with Asia Minor. Compromises will need to be made - but that will come later and perhaps better after playtesting.
Many Thanks
Noir
You can make ideally 3 provinces out of Greece:
Macedonia (bulky land adjacent Thrace with Thessalonica capital)
Epirus (strip coastal on the Adriatic with Dyrrachium capital)
Achaia/Moreas/Mystras (Thessali, Rumeli and the Peloponese with potential capitals: Athens, Thebes or Mystras)
If two provnces is what you want, then i would split it into a north south affair (Macedonia&Epirus - Achaia/Moreas/Mystras) with the Adriatic coast link contained in the Northern one. This is awkard unfortunately as you would be having only one port either in the north aegean or in the Ionian, but better than having Greece as 1 province in any case.
Crete is better off as an independent province/island (with a landbridge connection to the mainland IMO) to represent the Aegean islands and their strategic position as naval bases IMO. It can be potentially merged with the Southern Greece province as an alternative in order to still get 3 provinces out of the mainland Greece split. You'll see when you finish all the map what suits better.
Unfortunately in my experience the Total number of provinces is not enough to represent all areas as vigorously you did with Asia Minor. Compromises will need to be made - but that will come later and perhaps better after playtesting.
Many Thanks
Noir
Well the area between Morocco, Georgia and Constantinople has merely been redistributed. Provinces have been moved, stretched, shrunk and altered but no new provinces have been added as yet. Rhodes, Arabia and Cyrenacia have been simply moved and used elsewhere in that region. This leaves me with the extra provinces to play with as well as some others that could be removed such as Finland, Malta and Switzerland. Malta I've mentioned previously but Finland could perhaps be repositioned as another province, such as Polovtsia south of Kiev on the black sea coast.
Belisario
06-01-2007, 17:30
Caravel, the new Anatolian peninsula looks great. I would only suggest a minor change: extend Konya as far as Sinope to avoid the border between Nicaea and Ankara.
I am looking forward to seeing your next task, Greece. :2thumbsup:
Nice work Caravel. On Greece, I have read somewhere that Constantinople was difficult to invade from the north. As it stands, the Hungarians need only take Bulgaria to invade Constantinople, yet the self same Bulgarians had repeated troubles invading Constantinope from the north. My suggestion then is to extend Thrace (or Macedonia, depending on which your using) to cover Constantinople from invasions from Bulgaria. I don't know how accurate this would be, I'm looking for my sources as of right now.
Caravel, I have a slightly OT question: With the removal of Arabia, what happened to the hero general (I can never remember his name) who normally starts there in the Early period? Did you move him to another province, or has he been deleted entirely? (I ask because he's the only decent general the Eggies have in the very beginning of the game.) :book:
Caravel, the new Anatolian peninsula looks great. I would only suggest a minor change: extend Konya as far as Sinope to avoid the border between Nicaea and Ankara.
I am looking forward to seeing your next task, Greece. :2thumbsup:
I can see exactly what you mean and it makes a lot of sense I'll get on to that.
Nice work Caravel. On Greece, I have read somewhere that Constantinople was difficult to invade from the north. As it stands, the Hungarians need only take Bulgaria to invade Constantinople, yet the self same Bulgarians had repeated troubles invading Constantinope from the north. My suggestion then is to extend Thrace (or Macedonia, depending on which your using) to cover Constantinople from invasions from Bulgaria. I don't know how accurate this would be, I'm looking for my sources as of right now.
There is nothing we can do terrain wise, as with autocalced battles, hills and bridges have no effect AFAIK, so Constantinople would fall just as easily to an invasion from the west despite this. The extension of the current Greece province to cover it would not be accurate, and the creation of the new provinces within Greece will need to give parts of the north of the province to Constantinople province anyway, making it bigger. The only way I can see around this is to create a separate Constantinople province within Thrace as has been mentioned before, this would of course take up yet another much needed province, and would also involve the creation of a minimap which is just not feasible as everyone would have to download a file of nearly 37MB for the map graphics. The lukupmap is not such a problem as it is only a 700KB file. This is why I'd rather not have to get into cosmetic alterations of the map texture.
Caravel, I have a slightly OT question: With the removal of Arabia, what happened to the hero general (I can never remember his name) who normally starts there in the Early period? Did you move him to another province, or has he been deleted entirely? (I ask because he's the only decent general the Eggies have in the very beginning of the game.) :book:
The gentleman, Al-Afdal Shahinshah, and his trusty camels have been relocated to Damascus (which is really ID_ARABIA anyway). :bow:
The gentleman, Al-Afdal Shahinshah, and his trusty camels have been relocated to Damascus (which is really ID_ARABIA anyway). :bow:
:2thumbsup:
Apropos of nothing: No word on my replacement power supply yet. I hope to hear from my friend over the weekend, but it still might be another week. :sweatdrop:
Not to rush you, but what are your plans for the Italian and Iberian Pennisulas? The British Isles? Central Europe and Scandinavia? Russian Steppes? I admire your work so far, just wondering though what might happen to those regions.
Not to rush you, but what are your plans for the Italian and Iberian Pennisulas? The British Isles? Central Europe and Scandinavia? Russian Steppes? I admire your work so far, just wondering though what might happen to those regions.
Italy I'm still looking into. The problem there is the sheer number of provinces that would need to be added. I'm thinking that Naples needs to be split at the least.
Iberia Belisario was working on last I heard, though I'm not sure if he's still on it? If needs be he can send me a rough draft (a jpg of only the region showing roughly where the borders would be) and I can do the actual work drawing the borders and converting the image etc.
The British Isles I wasn't planning to change. A landbridge between Ireland and Wales (Wales because otherwise the only route would be through Scotland which would be unrealistic) and that's about it. No matter how the provinces are altered there it would be still in the same format.
Scandinavia I'm still not sure about. I may add the southern tip of Sweden to Denmark and that's it. I'm open to opinion on that one.
The Steppe region I'm ok with so far. All of the provinces (Smolensk, Ryazan, Pereyaslavl etc) are all there. The only changes I would make would be around the south, mainly Kiev and Khazar perhaps.
For the rest of central and Western Europe I'm also open to opinion.
Caravel
You invited ideas:idea2: Here are a bundle - as you know, I think a good map adds more value than just about anything.
There are so many possibilities that I suggest a couple of tests
- was the proposed province significant historically over a long period
- does it add to gameplay
Supporting these tests
- it's good if new provinces make it harder to use teleporting sea power all over the map and conquer by sea what were in reality large inland provinces
- additional provinces in the border zones between culture areas/homelands are also good, so it is harder to leap from central France for example to the heart of the HRE or Castile-Leon
Applying those rules of thumb
- your proposal to split Naples is essential - S. Italy was a border zone, a hard nut to crack by seaborne invasion, and a major factor first in Norman struggles against Empire, Papacy and Byzantium, then in the conflict between Aragon and Anjou
- Dalmatian coast to me is another goodie. This was an area of consistent struggle, changing hands between Italy, Byzantines, Turks and Hungary in our period. Adding it would make Croatia and Serbia conquerable only by land, which is right
- I would split Aquitaine into Guyenne and Poitou - again all tests apply. Key area, hard to master
- movement between Burgundy and Italy shouldn't be possible. I would put Savoy in between (also shielding Milan from France). The Count of Savoy was nicknamed "the gatekeeper of Italy"
- Poland really needs splitting into Lesser Poland (Cracow) and Greater (Posen). It was very fragmented at this period, and the German drang nach osten should be more demanding than a pounce on a single province
- I would add Samogitia between Livonia and Prussia. Again, there was prolonged conflict here, and adding removes absurdity of the forest expanses of Lithuania being conquered by a coastal landing
- Flanders is way too big. This was the main conflict zone between HRE, France, Burgundy (plus some interest from England). I would split out Holland-Brabant as a separate province - maybe even 2.
- doing something to S. Russia so you can't conquer the Steppe from the sea would make sense
Those are my favourites (speaking only of Europe). Other possibles with a strong historical basis and some gameplay advantage (but less than above):
- split Pomerania into E and West
- split Lorraine into Upper and Lower
- split Provence into County (coastal - linked to Aragonese) and Marquessate (inland)
- split Denmark into mainland and islands
- split Burgundy into Duchy (French) and County (Imperial - later became Franche Comte).
Can add more detail about any of these if that helps.
On the other side, I personally wonder about taking out Norway and Sweden. What could realistically happen there apart from Denmark v rebels? Anyway Sweden without Finland doesn't make a lot of sense.
Look forward to your views:beam:
Some very good ideas there for provinces, I will definitely be looking into some of those.
:bow:
The Unknown Guy
06-11-2007, 10:30
Those are my favourites (speaking only of Europe). Other possibles with a strong historical basis and some gameplay advantage (but less than above):
- split Pomerania into E and West
- split Lorraine into Upper and Lower
- split Provence into County (coastal - linked to Aragonese) and Marquessate (inland)
- split Denmark into mainland and islands
- split Burgundy into Duchy (French) and County (Imperial - later became Franche Comte).
I think France and Iberia need some province splits, althrough in France I'd split both southern provinces (Provence and ...? I can't remember the name of the Western one, but I´d make it into Brittany and, uhm, The Gascogne, or whatever). Likewise, in Iberia I´d split Castile into a northern seaside and a southern inland province, and Cordoba in two (not sure exactly how)
Also, I don´t remember if it was in this particular thread, but I made the experiment of messing with the starting rebel troops in "historically independent kingdoms during the Middle Ages". In Trebizond it worked just fine: If you jump to Constantinople, the rebel AI moves in the PKT that I gave it (which makes sense, in the context of "trying to reclaim the throne". althrough the new map alteration would make this part moot). I did not increase it's rebelliousness factor past 4, althrough I considered experimenting with that, as it would make Byzantium too hard, as what happened with my Iberian tweakings (see below)
Increasing the garrison of Navarre, however, seems to have made Castile very unstable, and they got wiped by the almohads rather early. I´m not profficient about this last one, through, I need to test it playing in the local area. My hypothesis (not verified) is that the high rebellion rate I added to that particular province, and the big rebel army, makes Castile commit too many troops to keeping peace there, and that afterwards, the Almos move north, rout the king out of Castile, and thus split the kingdom into Navarre and Leon, with huge rebellions and not a whole lot of economy or base armies in either.
Actually, thats why I play with a hampered rebel faction AI. The actual factions play much better, and war is signifgantly more common, as the rebel lands are quickly gobbled up.
P.S. - In one of my games, the Spanish and Almos made peace for 60 odd years, and the Almo bull rushed the egyptians from behind as they were attacking hungary. It was the fastest collapse of an empire, and the most violent too (Not a single province remianed under egyptian control).
Belisario
06-13-2007, 18:29
My Iberian map:
https://img501.imageshack.us/img501/5532/iberiakm1.th.jpg (https://img501.imageshack.us/my.php?image=iberiakm1.jpg)
I have added four new provinces (Catalonia, Murcia, Algarve, and Toledo) and made some border corrections (notably Valencia). The instability of the Muslim-Christian frontier makes the Iberian peninsula a hard work camp. I have tried to make a representative map of the period.
If you want I can send you a high quality image of my Iberian map ready to use (copy and paste).
I have been thinking about other regions but the province limit is frustrating.
That's a sweet map, Belisario. :thumbsup:
Unfortunately, I'm forced to agree that the province limit is probably going to prevent adding all the new regions you've put in. Indeed, if the only new provinces we added were these plus those proposed in the Middle East section of the map, I'm pretty sure that alone would max out the province limit. And we still don't know for sure where else we're going to want to add new provinces, either. No matter what we do, some regions will almost certainly have to be sacrificed.
Belisario
06-13-2007, 21:12
I am agree with you, Martok.
I confess that I have thought about the possibility of new maps which represent specific scenarios: Reconquista (in this case we have the mod of the Celtibero Ramiro el Monje -MonkWarrior-), Crusades, Baltic Crusades, 100YW, Byzantium... There are multiple possibilities for these mods, but they need a lot of work (and time!).
Nice map Belisario:2thumbsup:
I've said it before and I say it again. Death to Norway, Sweden and Finland:smash: They could go from the game with a gain to realism and make it possible to add provinces which were genuinely contested in this period.
A 12 province (out of 107) Iberia does look a shade generous though (especially if it means a 1 province Morocco, when Morocco was the driver for so much Spanish action). In gameplay (not historical) terms, if you had to reduce I would merge Granada and Murcia first of all.
A superb map, I am in full support of it. I don't think it is overdoing it either. It can only enhance gameplay, not impact it. If there are provinces available I have no problem with adding that region exactly as it is.
Morocco I have as two provinces - Marrakech and Fes. There are also Algeria and Tunisia which are more than enough provinces for a region, that like Britain will be cut off by sea (due to the removal of Cyrenacia and the final (proposed) removal of the landbriges between Spain and Morocco). I plan to turn Marrakech into a rich province with good starting fortifications. The Moors losing spain will not mean the loss of the campaign.
:bow:
I've said it before and I say it again. Death to Norway, Sweden and Finland:smash: They could go from the game with a gain to realism and make it possible to add provinces which were genuinely contested in this period.
At least one problem with removing those provinces is that it would hurt the Danes and Novgorod, as they would then have fewer provinces into which they could expand. (In fact, the Danes would basically have no avenue for nearby expansion unless they wanted to tackle the HRE immediately!) Also, removing those provinces would greatly reduce the strategic signficance of maintaining naval supremacy in the Skaagerak and Baltic Sea.
Ah yes, the Novgorod conquest of Sweden, followed by a quick dash to Norway to forestall the English:clown:
It all depends where you stand on the realism debate. If you have a realistic reconquista, seems a bit odd to have these funny goings on in Scandinavia - especially if provinces could be saved and better used. That's the kind of double whammy Caravel got from moving Cyrenaica.
If that means that Danes have to expand into HRE rather than going north - well, that's exactly what Waldemar the Conqueror did. Tough gig, but what a challenge!
I know total realism isn't achievable. But you can keep the possibilities at least bounded to some degree and I think that makes the game better, with some really tough factions. That's just my point of view though. Have to keep telling myself it's only a game:juggle2:
On the whole Sweden/Norway thing Denmark could be expanded to encompass part of southern Sweden, it's trade goods and farming could be improved and infrastructure strengthened if those provinces were removed. At present we have a weak Denmark that never expands in the early period. Invasion of Sweden almost always ends in disaster with the province rebelling creating a larger rebel garrison and the Danes in a worse position than before. Then the heirs start to mature and before you know it, they're in the red and out of the campaign. The Danes should always be a minor type of faction in the campaign, much like Aragon, but they should not be a completely crippled one. The real danger is in imbalancing them altogether which would unleash an unstoppable juggernaut Norse units through the HRE lands and beyond. This should not be a problem if they're still restricted to one province, don't have too much income and the unit prerequisites are properly set.
Belisario
06-16-2007, 15:56
In gameplay (not historical) terms, if you had to reduce I would merge Granada and Murcia first of all.
More accurate would be merge Murcia and Valencia. Both provinces represent the Spanish region of Levante which the Muslims called Sharq al-Andalus. The Almohads came up against serious difficulties in this region, which remained unconquered until the death of its ruler Muhammad ibn Mardanish in 1172.
Caravel, in what part of the map do you work now?
I'm currently not working on any part of the map. I understood you were working on the Iberian provinces and was awaiting the outcome before proceeding.
The outcome is very good, so perhaps we can incorporate those provinces into the map?
:bow:
Belisario
06-18-2007, 18:43
Caravel, feel free to use it. This wednesday I will got some free time and I will send you an image of better quality of the map.
Okay I want to jump on this map debate. On the removal of the Scandinavia provinces, I say the following: Kalmer Union. Also, the Danes really do need to expand else where, so I have an Idea. As a comprimise, unite Norway and Sweden, and Finland and Novgorod (the Rus can expand elswhere, their not severly hampered by such a loss). Give the Danes a large navy, which could prompt them to attempt naval invasions, which they happened to be historically good at. This will also bring some extra cash from the occasional line up of ships in the form of trade. Also, eliminate any and all male hiers for them. This gives them at least 16 years in which to expand their economy to be able to actually able to sustain thier royalty. If you want to couter the danish navy so they don't totaly own the seas, Give more ships to the Italians, Byzantines, and Egyptians.
The Unknown Guy
08-30-2007, 11:12
The Danes need a boost bad. Right now they vegetate, until a low influence king triggers a huge rebellion that kills them :/
Aragon is no better. I gave it a slightly developed Navarre. This is not only convenient to increase their survival rate: from 800 to 1134 (their final split, with a shorter split in the beggining of the 11th century) Navarre and Aragon were one kingdom.
A couple of things that have been on my mind:
a) More provinces are needed in theaters (local areas) with more factions contesting for them
Say for example in vanilla, Spanish provinces are too few and too rich; the game quickly deteriorates off balance with the Spanish faction domiating the area and becoming a full fledged punch towards the outside whithin 30 - 40 turns almost; past 100 turns, the Spanish faction is a great threat to say whoever is in France or Egypt.
Having more provinces where there are more factions will require the eventual winner to struggle with the others and also allows for a more multidistributed wealth - that is thewinner needs to keep more provinces under his control (more garisson) to get a decent/substantial income. Province rebelliousness 1.0 or 2.0 as default for the map will help with that too.
From that persepective, Anatolia needs way more provinces to support the Turkish faction and prevent it from being wiped out as early as it happens in vanilla. Caravel's go at Anatolia is quite good and tunes in with the no. of factions well.
b) The various theaters need income balancing between them, as income of theaters controls game dynamics
Typical such example is the aforemention Anatolia and Middle East between Byzantines, Turks and Egyptians. In vanilla, the middle east is axtraordinarily rich and so the Egyptians slowly wipe out the Turks and then goafter the Byzantines and most of the time wear them down and take Constantinople too.
If you take about 150-200 florins out of each Crusading province from the middle east in vanilla you'll find that the dynamics in the area work better; as the Turks, Byzantines and Egyptians take more turns to war before a clear winner comes out and still not as strong as in the example outlined in the pargraph earlier.
c) Add 1 or 2 factions in the steppes, as you had intended to stop sucking in of factions dueto the rebel provinces
Hungary, Poland, the Russians and worst of all the Byzantnes dominating there attracted by the rebel provinces really kills campaign development from my perspective.
The previously perceived Kievans are good as well as a steppe faction for early (Cumans? Pechenegs? Volga BUlgars?) in order to make a triangle as the area has enough provinces and income to support that.
Noir
The Unknown Guy
09-07-2007, 10:14
Spanish provinces are too few and too rich; the game quickly deteriorates off balance with the Spanish faction domiating the area and becoming a full fledged punch towards the outside whithin 30 - 40 turns almost; past 100 turns, the Spanish faction is a great threat to say whoever is in France or Egypt.
Indeed. The trouble arises from having only 8 provinces in Spain, with huge incomes, compared to the undefensible scattered regions in France or Germany. I managed a partial fix, but I think that two more provinces would be in order.
Ok, it's back to the map. The map will be the sole focus from now on until it's completion. The area I am now looking at in particular is southern Europe, the Balkan, Italian and Iberian Peninsulas respectively. This is following on from the last area which was Asia Minor.
First off, in the general area I have looked at areas that need landbridging and others that need eliminating. It seems to me that Crete should be linked to the southern Peloponnese. Malta should be removed altogether and better used elsewhere - this will mean the merging of the Malta Channel into the Gulf of Gabes. For the Balkan Peninsula itself, it needs to be perhaps divided into a few provinces in the manner such as Noir suggested earlier in this thread. Malta will be available to use as one of these provinces, and the rest will need to be new provinces.
Update: I've removed Malta (and added it as a small dot in southern Greece in order that I don't forget about it and it's RGB values) and the Malta Channel. This is the map so far:
https://img170.imageshack.us/img170/1342/latestmap0907amp2.th.jpg (https://img170.imageshack.us/my.php?image=latestmap0907amp2.jpg)
I would like to tidy up the point where the Gulf of Gabes connects to the Western Med but that would conflict with the standard Maptex.TGA file. This is also the reason why the Rhodes and Malta "blanks" for both the scale and zoomed in views have been retained (to ensure compatibility with the standard map).
Looking good.
further comments and suggestions: I made the above post about provinces needing to be proportional to factions in the area because, i have concluded, that overall there aren't enough provinces to represent decently all theaters.
For example you could go ahead and split Acquitaine, Provence and Toulouse (Languedoc, Poitou, Provence, Dauphin, Auverge, Toulouse) OR concentrate on Burgundy or Lorraine or split Bohemia (Bohemia, Moravia).
Similar arguments apply in Spain (Murcia, Al-garb, Portugal, Old Castille, New Castille and possibly more) in splitting Poland (Mazovia,Ruthenia,Upper Poland,Lower Poland) as well as Greece (Moreas, Epirus, Macedonia) and Hungary and the steppes (say for example Khazar in a coastal bit and an internal bit).
Italy is also a place that needs plenty of provinces to represent the Alpine crossings and act as borders between the Italian North and France,Germany and the Balkans (Savoy, Turolia, Carniola) and perhaps an extra island like province with a single landbridge to represent Venice. Not to forget Naples (Naples, Apulia) as it is slightly ridiculous as one province.
If you do all of the above, then in all probability you'll run out of provinces and have to make a compromise or two somewhere.
All i am saying is that its better to make that compromise in places where the no. of factions justifies it.
The other issue i want to raise is connectivity ie how far from theater to theater a stack can move; if you notice CA's strategy is to allow for a high connectivity, example you can jump from Georgia to Constantinople in two turns.
My suggestion is that connectivity should be reduced between theaters, particularly where there are geographical features that justify this. Such features are: The Alps, the Carpathian Mountains, The Caucasian mountains (not much to do there), the Pyrenees, the Rhine, the Vistoula, the Danube.
Places like Greece and Spain and Asia Minor (well treated) should reflect the fragmented geography due to terrain, while Northern France say should allow accessibility (as it does) due to its flat terrain.
In some cases connectivity is really bad IMO, for example Franconia makes passage from France to Poland a 3 turn affair; as long as it takes from Lorraine to Brittany! Franconia needs to be disconnected from Silesia IMO, and be confined to the western part of Germany.
Other such examples are Poland and Hungary that are really (especially the first one) really badly placed. They need appropriate partitioning IMO.
The reason i champion lower connectivity is that it has a profound effect on gameplay as there are fewer roads to a certain place and so expansion is slower and after fierce fighting - there are less of these silly "retreats" the AI does since the player is able to concentrate all his forces in a place and gives away his most developed provinces simply because his territories can be accessed from many areas.
The same goes for the sea zones that i suggested long ago. I did various experiments with vanilla and the MedmOd and it turns out that unless you split the sea into 4 zones, the AI tends to use his boats as spies almost losing income (upkeep and loss of trade) as well as not being able to protect his shores (more vulnerable to invasions) that in turn may come from very far away places (Russians in Spain and other such paradoxes - i am not saying they shouldn't be possible, i am saying that they should be very difficult as they were according to the logistics of the age).
On top of this an extra strategic element is added to the game:
In order to contest trade/sea control in a sea zone you need to conquer a port via land that faces it. This means that for the Byzantines to interfere in the English channel they need to conquer say Flanders. This is way more realistic rather than the colonial fleets that hang around in vanilla.
The zones i propose are:
Black Sea/East Med/Adriatic
West Med/Straits of Gibratar/Golden Coast/Tyrhenian Sea
Portugues Coast/Spanish Coast/Bay of Biscay/English Channel
Skaggerak/Baltic
The number of sea areas and ports may be adjusted to ensure decent trade whithin every zone respecting reality and historical accuracy for profit margins.
The zones should be divided by deep sea zones and so giving the AI and the player to make contact with others but with more expensive to maintain deep sea vessels as would have been in actuality.
Similarly it should be thought out from how many sea zones a province can be accessed; for example the ones on the North African coast can be accessed from way too many sea areas that make the position of the Almohads even more dire than it was. The fact that Crusades though can't go to the middle east will make the situation definitely better. I further suggest you make say Tunisia invadible from on sea area instead of two and the same with Algeria. This will account for the fact that these lands were going deep in North Africa and a landing there even if it was accompanied by a succesful battle didn't meant that their overloards were defeated (the other way is to add more provinces there internally but again there aren't enough - i was happy to see Morocco becoming 2 as it will help the Almohads immensely).
Last but not least, i would suggest that most provinces be half worthwhile income wise (except from Ireland and Scotland that might turn the faction of the British Isles into a pain as the defensibility is very high due to the sea border). Provinces such as Arabia are real knock outs for gameplay as they hurt badly the AI.
Noir
I agree with Noir :2thumbsup: When I've fiddled with maps, I've done pretty much what he describes here - tried to make things more realistic by restricting movement (and in some cases - like Arabia or Sinai - restricting development too).
On a more mundane level, re the part of the map which is Caravel's current focus, I said a while back why I thought Dalmatian coast would be a really good additional province. I'd add splitting Greece. Creating a Peloponnese province gives Turks, Byz, Italians/Venetians, Crusaders, even French something else to realistically battle over. Achaea was reckoned the model feudal court in the middle of the 13th century, contributed 400 knights to the overthrow of the Hohenstaufen in S. Italy, passed through multiple hands after 1204 but was always a separate entity (well actually 2, ie Duchy of Athens and Principality of Achaea, but one province could adequately represent this) :yes:
I've spent last night debugging the startpos file and found no problems with the provincial connectivity so far. Greece is now done, along with the near east and Anatolia. In northern and western Europe the only changes made so far are the removal of Finland and Switzerland. One more provoince will be added to Spain before the focus will shift to eastern Europe and the steppes. If there are enough provinces I may add a few more to western Europe, but my priority remains in those areas that have insufficient or badly placed provinces.
If you have ideas for provinces that you want added or believe may be needed for gameplay reasons now is the time to express your thoughts here. All ideas will be considered.
:bow:
Good to see you're adding Algarve. :2thumbsup:
What did you think about my idea of splitting Poland, by the way? Like I said before, my gut feeling is that the Polish could use another province, given that the AI generally seems to struggle when playing as them. Have you (or anyone else) noticed this as well, or is just me?
EDIT: Have you check out this map (http://historymedren.about.com/library/atlas/natmapbalt1220.htm)? I know it's from the High period, but it lists a few cities that could made into new steppe provinces.
Belisario
02-23-2008, 20:08
I agree with Martok, Poland could be split in two regions: Greater Poland (capital Gniezno or Poznan) and Lesser Poland (capital Krakow).
Hungary could also split in two regions but I'm not sure how do it. There are many possibilities in the eastern part of the map, however the region limit is also present.
I agree with the splitting of Poland If someone can find a map showing this and also an idea as to how the existing province could be divided then I'll be interested. This is all I've found so far but it would involve a lot of moving of existing borders to get it right.
http://www.euratlas.com/history_europe/europe_map_1200.html
I agree with the splitting of Poland If someone can find a map showing this and also an idea as to how the existing province could be divided then I'll be interested. This is all I've found so far but it would involve a lot of moving of existing borders to get it right.
http://www.euratlas.com/history_europe/europe_map_1200.html
To be honest, I'm not sure you'll find a better map than that. I found two maps in Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lesser_Poland), but they're not terribly useful since they're both too recent.
You may end up having to do what VikingHorde did with XL and just divide the existing province as you best see fit. I'll keep looking to see if I can find a map more suited to our needs, but I probably wouldn't hold my breath. :shrug:
Belisario
02-26-2008, 18:57
Moving existing borders can be just one big headache to you. I've experienced it recently because I'm working in a map for a "Teutonic" campaign, and I decided to use original borders as far as possible. The 1200 euratlas map that you've posted come in useful to split Poland in two regions, 1)Great Poland comprising Great Poland and Mazovia, and 2)Lesser Poland the southern part. As Martok says "You may end up having to do what VikingHorde did with XL", or having to do what WesW did with MedMod: 1)Poland comprising Great and Lesser Poland, 2)Mazovia. If you have free regions I suggest Samogitia (northwest Lithuania), a good addition if you include the Lithuanians as a new faction.
Moving existing borders can be just one big headache to you.
Tell me abut it. :dizzy2:
Regarding Poland, if divided it should be as Great Poland or Wielkopolska in Polish and Little Poland or Malopolska in Polish. The section that becomes Galacia or Galacja in Polish on the Euratlas map would be a Principality of the Kievian Rus.
Moving borders isn't a problem. I've grown used to that, and if the region will work better rearranged then I'm all for it. I would like to add Mazovia as well as splitting Poland, though this may not be possible given the restraints.
I was just putting together a complex post on splitting the sea into three regions and then clicked the close button on the browser window...
Anyway I am thinking of splitting the map at the straits of Gibraltar and again at the southern point of Morea. This will provide three distinct regions, will curb trade and over expansion and will stop some of the silliness that comes of having cheaper ships such as the Byzantine Emperor in Wales etc. I'm also proposing to remove all of the three deep sea zones as they will be pretty much redundant once the sea zones are split.
Thoughts?
So the plan is to go from 22 sea regions to 3-5? Sounds great, the AI may finally be able to actually have trade income :laugh4:
But Seriously, it sounds terrific, and to me addresses one of the major exploits for player. Now the computer too can have massive trade income :2thumbsup:
Long distance invasions are one of the most unrealistic features of MTW, so dividing sea regions to prevent this is a good thing in my book. There were plenty of shortish range invasions in period, but I can't think of a single long one - even the third crusade was a two stage thing, breaking journey in Sicily :yes:
I was just putting together a complex post on splitting the sea into three regions and then clicked the close button on the browser window...
Anyway I am thinking of splitting the map at the straits of Gibraltar and again at the southern point of Morea. This will provide three distinct regions, will curb trade and over expansion and will stop some of the silliness that comes of having cheaper ships such as the Byzantine Emperor in Wales etc. I'm also proposing to remove all of the three deep sea zones as they will be pretty much redundant once the sea zones are split.
Thoughts?
I wholeheartedly approve. I've been meaning to suggest dropping the deep-sea regions for a while anyway.
The other part sounds excellent as well. As others have pointed out, it should improve the realism aspect to a degree (no more absurdly long sea invasion routes) in addition to (somewhat) equalizing things for the AI, trade-wise. :2thumbsup:
The Morea area will have no clear division to show where the split is. If needed I can adjust some of the borders there to produce a "gap" to show that there is no link between the neighbouring sea regions in this area.
Hi,
this is a double edged knife in my opinion. You solve certain problems true and yet you reduce the ingrain potential of the game by a large margin.
The problem to my knowledge comes from the way the AI calculates what is advantageous trade network for him, coming invariably to the conclusion that the one running say from the home ports of Genoa, Florence if the Italians all the way to the baltic. This is because i guess this is the longest unninterrupted line of adjacent coastal sea reagions and therefore in Ais mind the most profitable.
Now the cost of ship maintenance increases two fold for every sea region of distance from a sea region with a port. So if you have a dromon of 15 florins per year meintenance, it costs 30 when one sea region away from say the home port of Genoa, 45 two regions, 60 three regions etc. Now if you follow this all the way say to the baltic sea, and multiply the costs of ships you ll find that its 11 or so odd regions away from the Genoa sea region that is 11x15 plus 10x15 plus... plus 15.
That is 165 plus 150 plus 135 plus 120 plus 105 plus 90 plus 75 plus 60 plus 45 plus 30 plus 15 or a positive slope line with costs on y and coastal region distance from home port on x. The cummulative cost is the area under the curve.
This is obviously a respectable sum and whats more is at the minimum; AI or player you wont have one ship per region for long if that network is to prove permanent and so profitable.
The various Doges and Byzantine Emperors then invade Wales or Sweden or Saxony or Prussia or other such silliness to cut down these costs. If say the imaginary Italian manages to Invade Prussia and have a port in the baltic the above line of costs looks like this;
15 plus 30 plus 45 plus 60 plus 75 plus 90 plus 75 plus 60 plus 45 plus 30 plus 15
Now the curve consists of two lines; one increasing like previously and one decreasing making it look like a pyramid.
The cummulative costs are far less in this second case (basically two fourths, 50 percent down).
So all in all the Ai strategy of far off invasions isnt all that bad in that respect, the problem is that the AI comes invariably at this solution and ignores all the other strategic opportunities, say to have a much shorter network from the adriatic to Nile_coast and eastern Med as the Sicilians that can make millions if assisted by the right politics (no war with the Egyptians).
The other problem is that as noted the AI needs to maintain substantial garrisons in his colonies neglecting meny times his home provinces and also as noted that he often choses to invade with his monarch, a measure that cause much grief through civil wars and drop of loyalty.
The reason i say however that some of this should be allowed to continue is that this is an integral part of the game and whats more if it was a bit more carefully better implemented it was also an integral part of medieval reality. The Venetians and Genoese were notorius for having colonies and whole posts in Constantinople and the Crimea where they took advantage of the trading goods of the silk road arriving there.
The deep sea regions are similarly a part of the game and a nice abstraction over a basic reality of the time too. The real problem in my opinion is that the AI does not a very good job at keeping all these ends together - yet it does a good enough job for the game to play at a decent level if given the conditions. Yet castrating so to speak the game of what the AI cannot do well will leave very few things unspoiled as far as i am concerned. Better to assist and cajoled him with modding at doing them better rather than taking them out by... violent means.
However if you must have set apart sea regions my suggestion is this;
Chop them thus; take out Atlantic and North Atlantic. Make impassable to coastal vessels (deep sea regions) the Gibraltar straits to Gulf of Cadiz passing and the Bay of Biscay. Add an additional coastal region in western france that would turn the Bay of Biscay in a true deep sea region (as it is in reality). This sea reagion should not contact the Spanish coast.
Now for all other factions other than the Muslims (something quite historically plausible) the seas for most of the game are cut in three distinct regions; the Mediterannean sea, the Straits of Gibraltar to Bay of Biscay, and the Bay of Biscay to the Baltic.
This gives opportunities for trade and competition for trade colonies to exist and yet cuts down a large percent of the possibility on the unnacceptable far off invasions.
!it burnsus!
Hi,
another thing to mention in this vain is that the basic maintenance ship cost that is anything between 15 to 30 florins per year is set definitely with the condition of the vanilla map in mind. If you cut down the sea regions in strings of 3 to 4 in line i suggest you increase it slightly (but not too much because the AI will turn it into a burden to itself) and perhaps return the building times of ships to three turns otherwise my guess is that serious ship spamming will happen.
!it burnsus!
I think you may be giving the AI a little too much credit. The sea crossings work very simplistically in fact. The AI sends ships out at random, it does not build trade routes and does not place ships in adjacent seas to protect it's coasts correctly. The reason that the Byzantines invade provinces along the "shipping lanes" is very simple: It's by sheer luck that an AI faction crosses the sea and nothing more. It's a matter of ships happening to be in the right places at the right time.
The AI factions are much more aggressive towards the rebel faction so as a whole they will invade rebels without hesitation when the opportunity presents itself. It's important to remember that when a link is created, such as a link from Epirus to Valencia, the AI sees this link as a direct invasion path to an easily acquired rebel province - which it is. It does not think about reducing shipping support costs.
To the AI Scotland linked to Jerusalem by a continuous line of ships is the same as Scotland and Northumbria, there is no difference. The invasion takes one turn and the AI will do it if it is viable.
In the campaign I was playing, the Byzantine did (by chance, because they had spammed so many ships it took me years to hunt them all down) have decent trade/transportation links for about 3 turns... this got them to Valencia and Wales (where the Byzantine Emperor became cut off causing the rest of his lands in the east to rebel and fall to the Turks (me) and the Sicilians). Then the AI began moving fleets around - and their ships, quite predictably, formed into clumps dotted around in pointless locations,cutting off the aforementioned territories. Two Byzantine "super fleets" appeared off the west coast of Spain. These were two almost full stacks in one sea region. The rest of their shipping was similarly dotted around.
Personally I disagree that the trade, fleets and shipping is an integral part of the game. MTW is basically an "STW mod" and STW did not have fleets of ships. The shipping in MTW often seems like it was added as an afterthought. It is highly unpredictable and does not work how it should. The player can exploit sea trade, raking in hundreds of thousands of florins and protect his coasts effectively, where the AI is totally incapable of doing either effectively. I've seen the Sicilians send their starting fleet of a few ships up to the Baltic! This alone proves that the AI shipping is totally uncoordinated.
IMHO the shipping would have worked better had the ships themselves also produced the links to the neighbouring sea regions. So if you build a ship and then try to move it out to an adjacent sea that does not border one of your provinces or a sea zone controlled by your fleets it cannot be moved. This would have forced the creation of chains of fleets that could only be broken by ships getting sunk.
Hi,
I agree in almost all that concerns the invasion of far off provinces that you say and yet, it is for in my view certainly not randomly decided and i will give evidence of this claim. The Italians, Sicilians and English in the game (vanilla or not) are set to either CATHOLIC_CRUSADER_TRADER, CATHOLIC_TRADER or CATHOLIC_NAVAL_EXPANSIONIST. Now these factions with a bit of starting buck (unlike the Danes that start with little of that), always consciously as soon as they have a bit of money to take it to the seas invariably do this scenario of baltic to medditerannean trade route. The Italians sooner than anybody, but the English join the fray when they have a good part of France and the Sicilians when the takeover some extra province that produces good money.
Factions that do not have the sea/trader personna do not bother often with this strategy unless stinking rich and large. Say for example the French, the HRE, but also the poles and hungarians.
The Byzantines, Egyptians,Turks and the Almohads do it too when they become very rich as everyone else. In fact the Byzantines try to get to Lithuania in early vanilla securing in this way a land route to a port in the baltic that will serve as maintenance cost reducer.
This is something that is actually observable as far as i am concerned and you can decide as to weather it happens by checking it out in campaigns. In mods that the sea regions are divided you see the AI choosing the western mediterranean as its optimal trade network. It frequently chooses last the eastern med and the black sea, perhaps because the number of sea regions/ports on the way is smaller.
In the campaigns i played in the Poecket Mod 1.8 beta, the Italians invariably did the baltic to med trade network and colonised as i reported in the Byzantine campaign Portugal, Scotland, Wales and Mercia. They were always rich and venice at times was making more than constantinople under my coomand.
Even with MTW being a STW mod as you say it has yet at least in the campaign (the battlefield too, STW ai does not tend to flank with cavalry for example) very many enhancements, that came to be regarded as integral, such as the titles, the crusade mechanics, the pope that brings a sense of politics at to the catholics, different cultures, different terrains, separate managing of provinces. It does not have the seasons and weather impact that goes with it, the harvest, the throne room and the agent/event videos.
The problem with vanilla is that the provinces are too rich agriculturally and this income suffices for winning the game, however they are not rich enough in order to do all that building up to get the high end units - it is no secret that the player outconstructs the AI factions everytime. My approach would be to make cheaper and faster the military production buildings as you have done so that the AI has actually money to spend in troops but also reduce the agricultural income to a point that it does not permit alone armies to conquer the world. Then trade becomes a necessity and periods without it or with it being disturbed by enemies on the other side of the map (especially if you play without disbanding units like me since the AI cannot do this) require caution.
Of course trade profit should also be limited, but this you have done already; the highest profit commodity has a value of 20 in the pocket mod, when in vanilla 50. Also you put a 50 percent imoprt profit that means that the receiver makes half as much as the merchant without having to support ships.
This actually opens another fine tuning aspect, that is overall money available on the map (essentially agricultural income total and distribution). This is a point of interest, as you can optimize the province incomes for specific unit sizes as the maintenance costs are linked with unit sizes (unlike RTW/M2TW). By optimal i mean in the following two aspects;
-balance between dynamic play and border defense for Ai factions - this currently works well at least when factions occupy initial territories.
- balance in regards to overall provincial money available. This refers to that point when one faction becomes the size of two or three of its neighbours, that is bound to happen especially when the map comes at a dead end, such as in the Levant and Mahreb. Essentially, imagine that you are the Byzantines and take over the Turks and Egyptians - even if it takes you up to 1230 by that time you ll be very rich. The point of balancing overalls is that even when of that size you do not have endless armies for expansion, that is your income does not grow linearly with the land you occupy. If so, you end up with mods like XL, that are fun only for the *challenge* of playing Bohemia, Armenia and Volga Bulalgaria, because everyone knows that once you are decently big the game is over you can outproduce the enemies into submission. If however overall balance is set right, that is profits do not shoot to the stars with size, then the challenge continues on a larger scale against another large nation somewhere instead of being diminished with empire size increase. Thats were trade can come in not as an exploit but as an esential tool for winning the game that requires the right politics too (grant favors, seek for peace etc).
All this sounds pretty theoretical and yet it is achievable - i talk from experience.
For your concept of the sea regions, the best way to find out how it works is to actually go with it. You never know how it will work until implemented and thats what modding is all about. Everybody has a way of perceiving how the game should be, but this is caravels pocket mod with contributions and not the contributors pocket mod with caravel implementing their thoughts.
!it burnsus!
It's a complex issue and I would like to see some detailed opinions on this.
:bow:
Well if we were to lower agricultural income to the point that trade is virtually necessary for higher-end construction and/or unit recruitment, then wouldn't we want to reduce the number of sea regions so as to better enable the AI to establish a decent trade income? What are the drawbacks? (Not a rhetorical question, btw; I'm really asking.)
Hi Cynewulf (aka Caravel)
You asked for opinions. I agree with Martok - drawbacks seem minimal. And also with Gollum - best way is to try it.
There are 2 aspects to this. First, realism. What matters for most states at this period is near-range trade - wool to Flanders and wine from Gascony. They should be encouraged to concentrate on this. (If you really wanted, you could equip the Venices and Genoas with unique ability to carry out long range trade by making the gaps between big sea regions into deep sea areas rather than voids, and giving only these powers access to deep sea ships.)
Second gameplay. Trade is moddable to achieve pretty much any results you want. Number, distribution and value of commodities can all be changed, as can import value - so if you wanted you could make trade in a restricted area still very valuable. Invasions are hardly moddable at all (all you can do is close the province off from the sea, which closes off trade as well). So my conclusion from that is that you can fix the long range invasion problem - by taking the only solution that offers this -and still achieve just about any situation you want re attractiveness of trade.
Final point - a lot of the trade that mattered didn't go by sea. Milan, for example, stood on the axis of trade from Germany to Italy. If we make trade all about chains of ships from Wessex to Crimea (which never happened), this is moving further from any kind of model of what the medieval world was really like. The change you're contemplating therefore seems to fit with the pocket mod concept as I understand it :yes:
One little snag I can see. No province can have more than 15 linked neighbour provinces, have more and the game CTDs. I'm fairly certain this relates to both land and sea provinces.
Well I won't be adding any more neighbours, more so removing neighbours so I'm not sure if that will be an issue?
:bow:
Hi,
just out of curiousity i did a little experiment by closing off the gulf of cadiz to straits of gibraltar and monitored the Italians that get to do the naval thing first in 4 campaigns with autorun and god mode 1187 to 1240 or there abouts.
As long as they were able to maintain their initial provinces they actually didnt spam ships and didnt blob them together in superstacks. Once they lost their moneymaking trade provinces though they did exactly that.
In the cases that they didnt lose starting provinces they managed actually the network reasonably tidy and extended up till 1240 or so when i gave up - not bad at all. In the cases that they lost interest in trade due to being catastrophically reduced, they indeed created superstacks out of their financial dead waight ships and sailed off in a *i ll spoil your network too* mission.
Whats also interesting is that they fared better if they didnt managed to expand in a rebel province somewhere as in Serbia or Valencia - they ve built a lot of troops (that would have been kept in the colony otherwise) and then expanded at the cost of HRE.
!it burnsus!
In my Sicilian campaign at present I still have the same situation with the Byzantine now in Wales and Scotland as they were in the Siclian campaign.
Anyway I am going to add the sea zone restrictions and release another testing version.
Hi,
a suggestion:
The only area of the map that slightly suffers is the area in and around the alps. If you are thinking to restrict the sea zones, you could for example say get rid of Corsica, Sardinia, Crete and Cyprus leaving only Sicily as the largest in the med and most significant island during the period and add extra provinces there (i assume that you have used all )
Two more would be great - one in between Provence - Genoa -Burgundy - Milan - Tyrolia (Savoy), one in between Austria - Venice - Hungary - Croatia (Carinthia). Assuming you disable the Islands, you could add more in France (split Provence in Dauphin and Provence - split Toulouse to get Toulouse and Auvergne - split Aqutaine to get Gascony and Aquitaine) or more in Poland (split Poland in Greater Polar and Mazovia) or split Hungary.
As i mentioned elsewhere the map is worthy of a lot of praise - the only area that perhaps got slightly more attention than needed is maybe Greece - Moreas and Athens could merge in a single Province (Achaia? Moreas?).
!it burns us!
Hi,
a suggestion:
The only area of the map that slightly suffers is the area in and around the alps. If you are thinking to restrict the sea zones, you could for example say get rid of Corsica, Sardinia, Crete and Cyprus leaving only Sicily as the largest in the med and most significant island during the period and add extra provinces there (i assume that you have used all )
I'd like to hear a concise factual argument as to why the area around the Alps is a problem? You're not the first person to mention this. I myself cannot see a problem with that region.
I do have a few provinces going spare so we will be looking into their best uses. I would be good to have some clear historical data this time around however, as in the past there was a lot of: "just do it how Medmod has" or "split Poland in the same way XL does".
As to the islands, they are a problem due to poor connectivity. In the next version I plan to do something about Britain, Ireland, Sardinia, Corsica, Crete and Cyprus. This would most likely involve the creation of land bridges to the mainland. Britain/Ireland is straightforward, it's the others that are more perplexing. Cyprus for example could be liked to a number of provinces, the same goes for Corsica. Crete would best be linked to Morea.
Two more would be great - one in between Provence - Genoa -Burgundy - Milan - Tyrolia (Savoy), one in between Austria - Venice - Hungary - Croatia (Carinthia). Assuming you disable the Islands, you could add more in France (split Provence in Dauphin and Provence - split Toulouse to get Toulouse and Auvergne - split Aqutaine to get Gascony and Aquitaine) or more in Poland (split Poland in Greater Polar and Mazovia) or split Hungary.
The way I see it, apart from around Poland, Volhynia, Kiev, Lithuania and perhaps Khazar, Europe has more than enough provinces. This is why I have concentrated on the east and Spain, where there were not enough provinces per faction or poorly laid out provinces.
As i mentioned elsewhere the map is worthy of a lot of praise - the only area that perhaps got slightly more attention than needed is maybe Greece - Moreas and Athens could merge in a single Province (Achaia? Moreas?).
!it burns us!
I added both because there were important separate Duchies in there after the sack of Constantinople and creation of the "Latin Empire". It's also clear that "Greece" was not enough in itself. I had left Thessaly as a large province to act as a buffer to Constantinople. I am also thinking of adding a province to the Dalmatian coast.
Sorry to budge in like this, but the only issue I ever found with Central/Northern/Western Europe was the speed at which the France's borders met Poland's, or the quickness in which Hungary or Denmark would gobble it all up, or the way Aragon would suddenly replace France. It's a general problem associated (IMHO) with how well armies can be funded, how many troops can be fielded, and the general ability of the conquering faction to actually hold onto that province. Again, IMHO, the Pocket Mod addresses this.
However, Eastern Europe is lacking a bit, and the speed with which it is gobbled up is even faster then Central Europe, even with fewer competitors. I don't have any thing to back up redrawing borders, but I will say Eastern Europe and the Steppes are badly underrepresented.
As for Land Bridges - Cyprus to Tripoli, Corsica to Florence (or Genoa, that is a hard one). This will help those the French early on in the High period, and Corsica to Florence or Genoa would help the Italians immensely - no more King stuck permanently on an island. Also, is Sicily connected to Naples (Also, is this divided yet into Spoletto and Apulia? May have names confused)
If there is one thing I want to see, it's more factions on the Steppe. I like my Lithuanians and Volga-Bulgars :laugh4: (As a side note, IIRC the Volga-Bulgars were a client state of the Golden Horde during the Late period and only vanished until the late 14th - I'll have to check :book:)
Sorry to budge in like this, but the only issue I ever found with Central/Northern/Western Europe was the speed at which the France's borders met Poland's, or the quickness in which Hungary or Denmark would gobble it all up, or the way Aragon would suddenly replace France. It's a general problem associated (IMHO) with how well armies can be funded, how many troops can be fielded, and the general ability of the conquering faction to actually hold onto that province. Again, IMHO, the Pocket Mod addresses this.
Yes the only provinces in the west I've been looking at so far are Aquitaine and Toulouse. I don't mind splitting those as they're huge and unrealistic (They are part of the same problem that was afflicting Spain).
However, Eastern Europe is lacking a bit, and the speed with which it is gobbled up is even faster then Central Europe, even with fewer competitors. I don't have any thing to back up redrawing borders, but I will say Eastern Europe and the Steppes are badly underrepresented.
The main problem areas is Poland, Lithuania, Kiev and Volyhnia etc. The extreme east of the map (the steppes, russia etc) has quite a few provinces and they're difficult to hold on to. In general you see a lot of rebels out there and not much else. It's a large area with good connectivity and plenty of provinces.
As for Land Bridges - Cyprus to Tripoli, Corsica to Florence (or Genoa, that is a hard one). This will help those the French early on in the High period, and Corsica to Florence or Genoa would help the Italians immensely - no more King stuck permanently on an island. Also, is Sicily connected to Naples (Also, is this divided yet into Spoletto and Apulia? May have names confused)
Yes those were the ones I had in mind. I'm still not sure about dividing Naples however. It gives us another province tagged onto the end of the peninsula with no real tactical value.
If there is one thing I want to see, it's more factions on the Steppe. I like my Lithuanians and Volga-Bulgars :laugh4: (As a side note, IIRC the Volga-Bulgars were a client state of the Golden Horde during the Late period and only vanished until the late 14th - I'll have to check :book:)
Well if someone wants to add these factions and do the work involved I can include them in a future release. I don't really have the time nor the historical knowledge to add extra factions.
I can see your point about the Steppes, But Khazar always felt...too much land for too little effort :laugh4:
If I have your permission, I wouldn't mind doing new factions for the pocket mod - with your approval first. To me, it's the funnest part of modding. Shall I post my suggestions in the correct thread then :beam:?
The way I see it, apart from around Poland, Volhynia, Kiev, Lithuania and perhaps Khazar, Europe has more than enough provinces. This is why I have concentrated on the east and Spain, where there were not enough provinces per faction or poorly laid out provinces.
Agreed. Aside from possibly splitting Aquitaine and Tolouse, I think most of Europe already has plenty of provinces. If we add more, it should probably be in the Poland/Lithuania region.
Also, is Sicily connected to Naples (Also, is this divided yet into Spoletto and Apulia? May have names confused)
By the time the game starts, the Normans had almost completely conquered the region (save for the city itself, which remained under Byzantine control til 1137). Given that, Cynewulf and I decided to keep Naples as a single province.
Speaking of maps, it's too bad we couldn't used the expanded one I have that reaches to about the same size as the RTW one - One could really include several new Factions and do them justice, and I would do this myself, but I fear I am horrible at doing maps by hand and I lost all my tools :laugh4:
Hi,
The main concise factual arguments are the ones you and YLC offer; that is that areas are badly misrepresented and highly abstracted and so are too well connected - the best example is jumping from Lorraine to Poland in two steps as YLC mentions.
I agree that the steppes are reasonably represented although Khazar could do with one more province.
What you mention about spliting Naples can be also applied to Morea its the same sort of argument and yet Appulia was equally significant and distinct to Naples when Aragon and the Siculo Normans conquered south Italy as Moreas during the death throes of the Byzantine.
Toulouse and Aquitaine are highly abstracted yes, but so is Provence (the northern part of it was Dauphin of the famed Dauphin Charles de Valois and the eastern Savoy an Italian-French border province that included the western Alpine crossing) - the choice of course is yours relative to what you want to achieve in the map.
The reason i mention the Alpine areas is that they are supposed to work as a Border something like the Pyrenees in which correctly you attributed tones of provinces (Catalonia, Aragon, Saragossa and Navarre). The Alps where an imoprtant barrier and its nice to have a gameplay representation of this in the game.
France is mentioned as the largest and richest medieval nation and this state of affairs lasted all the way up to the industrial revolution that the wheels of economy shifted to oether ways. The English with the small professional army had great difficulties garrisoning it in reality which became their ndoing over the 100 years war, and yet in the game France can be occupied very quickly.
Franconia is best cutoff from Silesia - Saxony and Bavaria should grow southwise and northwise respectively to limit Franconia in the west part of Germany.
Austria is also too large and abstracted as is Venice (Actually Venice was the Venice island plus little of the cost, the rest of the todays Venetto province was centred around Verona) and Croatia. The minimum that can be done is to add Carinthia that represents the Alpine passses from Austria into Italy.
Poland and Hungary are close to abominations, they deserve to be split. They were ok in the days of MTW v1.0 that Hungary was unplayable and the game was still close to *Crusader Total war* concept, but when the Hungarians appear as a faction its insufficient.
The reason i mention getting rid of the islands relates to the issue you mention (that is that they are badly connected and we see factions get trapped there or invade them when they are not worth it), but also because the Islands were somewhat insignificant duchies or provinces in ralation to other hugely important provinces of the map, that are lumped together in huge provinces that as you mention are misrepresented. In my mind its best to get rid of them altogether since the 109 limit cannot allow the moder to do too much, but with 5 more gratuit provinces, there is a lot that can be fixed.
!it burnsus!
I can see your point about the Steppes, But Khazar always felt...too much land for too little effort :laugh4:
If I have your permission, I wouldn't mind doing new factions for the pocket mod - with your approval first. To me, it's the funnest part of modding. Shall I post my suggestions in the correct thread then :beam:?
You have my permission of course. Can you attempt just one faction first and get that faction working before moving on to the next? I cannot of course guarantee that any work you do will be added to the mod. I do appreciate your efforts and continued interest however.
Agreed. Aside from possibly splitting Aquitaine and Tolouse, I think most of Europe already has plenty of provinces. If we add more, it should probably be in the Poland/Lithuania region.
Yes I prefer to add provinces where they're needed - and tagging a province onto the end of another doesn't seem like a valid province as it provides little strategic value.
By the time the game starts, the Normans had almost completely conquered the region (save for the city itself, which remained under Byzantine control til 1137). Given that, Cynewulf and I decided to keep Naples as a single province.
Yes there's historical accuracy to think about, but in reality we cannot hope to do Italy justice anyway with the limited number of provinces available. At the end of the day it's down to "popular history". We know of Apulia and other provinces such as Morea, Athens and Scania, but there are many more that have been omitted and are rarely added by modders. I have added some of these instead of adding the same provinces that other modders have added. A matter of opinion? Perhaps, though I have also taken into account those areas that are very lacking. I found that the Muslim factions with their poor provinces layout and peasant armies were just there are the "crusade victims" rather than as viable factions. This is why I have tried to improve them and the regions of the near east.
Speaking of maps, it's too bad we couldn't used the expanded one I have that reaches to about the same size as the RTW one - One could really include several new Factions and do them justice, and I would do this myself, but I fear I am horrible at doing maps by hand and I lost all my tools :laugh4:
Again the hardcoded province limit makes larger maps useless. The current map is really stretching it as it is. The limit is optimal for Feudal Japan or Dark Ages Britain - not Medieval Europe and parts of the east.
Note: gollum I haven't passed over you last post, but it's now 1:30 here and I need to be getting to sleep as any reply I make at this time will probably consist of "yes" and "no" only.
:bow:
Hi,
no worries, often i think that yes/no type of answers to my posts are the best :laugh4:
!it burnsus!
I'm sure it's not top of the agenda at the moment, but I agree with Gollum about at least some of the islands. Sicily and Cyprus had strategic importance in the sense of being valuable bases which were both the targets and launchpads for invasions. That was not the case for Corsica, Sardinia, Crete where the story from 11th to !4th centuries is pretty much just localised rebellion. So in the search for a better MTW, I'd regard those 3 provinces as available for re-use where there are better opportunities. There's no shortage of historically based candidates which would be good for gameplay - Southern France and either Dalmatia or Albania already mentioned; in addition the giant Flanders and Lorraine could profitably be split (add Artois and Brabant) to better represent this very active area; Moravia could be split off from Bohemia; and adding Samogitia (main battleground on the Baltic) would make Lithuania an inland province as it should be. Just some ideas :beam:
Hmmm...to me, one of the things that should decide provincial availability it the overall faction "presence" in an area. We could have a very active or province heavy place in one area or another, but history at some point gives way to game balance. Increasing the provinces in the Lorriane/Flanders area is not as needed as say splitting Hungary or Poland. Also, based on the number of a faction in an area, we should have a certain number of provinces - IHMO, the number of provinces in a given theater should be equal to (number of participants)x3(+1). So if we have 4 factions crammed into one area, then we should have 13 provinces they should be fighting over.
You make a good point YLC. There's no shortage of good, available choices for historical provinces - and the ones actually chosen should be linked to choices about factions, with more provinces where there are more factions.
I'm sure it's not top of the agenda at the moment, but I agree with Gollum about at least some of the islands. Sicily and Cyprus had strategic importance in the sense of being valuable bases which were both the targets and launchpads for invasions. That was not the case for Corsica, Sardinia, Crete where the story from 11th to !4th centuries is pretty much just localised rebellion. So in the search for a better MTW, I'd regard those 3 provinces as available for re-use where there are better opportunities. There's no shortage of historically based candidates which would be good for gameplay - Southern France and either Dalmatia or Albania already mentioned; in addition the giant Flanders and Lorraine could profitably be split (add Artois and Brabant) to better represent this very active area; Moravia could be split off from Bohemia; and adding Samogitia (main battleground on the Baltic) would make Lithuania an inland province as it should be. Just some ideas :beam:
We already have Albania in the form of Epirus.
Hi Cynewulf
I had in mind the area north of Epirus, centred on Dyrrachium (western end of the Via Egnatia), that formed the Angevin kingdom of Albania in the 13th century and was earlier fought over between the Normans and the Byz. It would mean Thessaly didn't have a border on the Adriatic, and it would be harder for the Sicilians to get to Constantinople - but it's just one of many candidates, depending on where you feel gameplay needs a bit of a boost.
I whole heartedly agree with YLC's post.
Alright - this is a suggestion in tackling the naval units/aspect of the game.
Its actually different than the one you have already started on - but bear with me it might be worth it.
The plan is this;
Make most sea areas not bordering land other than a few limited ones per theatre that would represent established commercial ports of the period as; Constantinople - Venice - Genoa - Valencia - Tripoli - Egypt - Algeria - Sicily - Fesh - Portugal - Aquitaine - Wessex - Pomerania - Denmark - Lithuania - Novgorod - Crimea.
These would be very small in map area representing the port - so from hereby i call them port areas. They would need to be drawn out on the map.
Now this would mean that naval trade is reduced significantly - so - i suggest that trade commodities have a much higher value than currently and even higher than in vanilla essentially becoming a constant source of profit.
Trade commodities should not be common among port areas so that whatever trade can be made is possible - with the raised commodity value trade should still be significant if somewhat exclusive to the player.
The rest of the sea areas i suggest to greatly reduce in number (ie merge a lot of coastal areas but may keep deep sea ones) - say Adriatic and Ionian they can be merged so can be Mirtoon and Aegean and Bosporus etc
In this way, major naval invasions that are fantasy of course for the period and detrimental for gameplay in my view, are largely impossible and by reducing the number of sea regions naval interaction will be more direct and effective for the AI factions.
In terms of this scheme, islands can be safely discarded - as i suggested elsewhere only Britain and Sicily can be kept.
This is just a suggestion - please do not tear appart ~:)
!it burnsus!
Let's just ditch ships altogether. :yes:
Ok well seriously, I'm not sure about this. Ditching ships is not as impossible as it seems by the way. Adding land-bridges to the map where required and getting rid of Islands is easy enough. It's the "crossing the Mediterranean" bit that always leaves me scratching my head. Anyway your idea is almost a compromise, but I'm still not sure. I would prefer the game to work as it does in STW, though it would be without the port hopping ability - which I never liked anyway. Ports and traders could be altered to simply give a steady income and trade goods removed altogether. Again my only reservation would be the Mediterranean region. It would be wrong not to have crossings there.
In my opinion it would improve the game vastly as you'd have no more of those stupid invasions (i.e. the Byzantine set off from Constantinople and invade Scotland), which ruin a good campaign.
Edit: by the way I tried this before some years ago before I started on this mod. I firmly believe that ships should be abstracted.
Thats exactly the kind of thing that is adressed - basically the only regions that can be invaded are the ones with a port sea region - also the AI factions should be better protected if the total number of sea regions is small. You are right in that it is a compromise and that taking out ships altogether is the best thing - the only problem that i see with that is that some gameplay and some flavor is taken out completely. In paper that might be inconsequential - yet perhaps when implemented it might turn out too dry.
EDIT
I wouldnt mind to take out ships altogether at all - and put on weight in other things like faction rosters, strategic imoprtance of tech trees in relation to recruitment and unit stats.
!it burnsus!
If ships are out altogether - then you might want to keep trade goods in with as i mentioned before with higher value - this will actually make for a decent constant income (as in the landlocked regions).
You could also add prerequisite buildings in order to exploit trade goods - say a lumberyard (for wood) or a textile guild (for silk) etc before a trading post can be set up. Then it would take some investing to reap the benefit.
!it burnsus!
True enough, trade goods could be left in to produce more variable incomes. Increasing their values and adding more goods to landlocked provinces would then be viable. Ports could be given a small income and would still be vital for the movement of agents.
A landbridge would need to be added from Ireland to Scotland and/or Wales. Landbridges across the Mediterranean are dangerous. For example a connection between Sicily and Tunisia would allow the Sicilians to Surge into North Africa with ease. I don't see this as an issue now that Cyrenacia and Sinai have been removed. This splits the region in half. To get to the Maghreb you have to go via Iberia which makes sense. Getting to Egypt and the holy land is via Asia Minor, this also makes a lot of sense. Of course there are those that will quote a certain invasion that came from a certain place and went somewhere that we would not be able to reproduce if ships were gone, though there are also plenty of other silly invasions, such as the Almohads turning up in Wales, that more than serve as the counter argument. Also from an historical perspective, 1087 - 1453 was hardly the age of great naval invasions and expeditions. Indeed most of the crusades went by the land route.
Ports can be now an expensive building that would add a small income (50flrs? 30flrns?). You can keep sea regions in by appropriately ponding them so agents from genoa say cannot travel to Novgorod.
An extra constant income building dependent on the port may be introduced (commercial port?) for the Italian faction as well as relevant units (such as the genoese sailors etc).
No shipping would certainly make for more realistic expansions and for more interesting crusading, especially after you have suceeded to say, conquer jerusalem. It took me 50 years to complete my first crusade with the French in 1.0.9beta - since i had to conquer Nicaea and then defend against a wave of Seljuk counterattacks. I had to build Nicaea up in order to replenish the Crusaders and then slowly move on towards the levant.
I would be against a landbridge from Sicily to Tunisia - but pro a landbridge from Naples to Eipirus - this is quite historical and feasible and would give a way out to the Sicilians in that direction that is good for gameplay imho (than connecting via landbridge muslim and christian lands).
talking of landbridges - you may want to cut off the Cordoba - Fes landbridge and leave in only the Granada-Fes one as it is harder for the Almoravids to defend once they lose Cordoba as it stands - while it would be easier if there was a choke point.
Taking out the islands will yield extra provinces - Crete, Cyprus, Corsica and Sardinia. I would also take out Ireland too - since there is no incentive to add an Irish faction - it is somewhat there only to be conquered by the English - and so inconsequential. There are other areas of the map that suffer greatly and are far more important (for the period globally) - namely around Poland and Hungary, southern France and the Alpine region.
If you have made this (important) decision - i suggest to concentrate on rendering a final version of the map next. Once this is finalised factions can be worked on (and a few perhaps added) while knowing that the map would not be altered anymore.
!it burnsus!
Yes there is no reason to take sea regions out. That would involve turning all of the sea to dead zone and messing around removing them from the startpos. They simply need to be disconnected. It can be done (or at least I think it can) but there wouldn't be much point. If the maptex file were to be altered then I would favour leaving in the sea zone names but removing the actual dividing lines (borders). This discussion would need to continue in the map thread.
-Edit and it's there.
:bow:
Ports can be now an expensive building that would add a small income (50flrs? 30flrns?). You can keep sea regions in by appropriately ponding them so agents from genoa say cannot travel to Novgorod.
Yes I think the way I removed ships in the past was to simply disable the shipbuilder line. I'm unsure as to whether this is the correct way to do it. Are agents restricted by interconnecting sea regions or can they simply port hop? If the latter is the case then you wouldn't be able to stop agents from going from Egypt to Novgorod via the ports.
An extra constant income building dependent on the port may be introduced (commercial port?) for the Italian faction as well as relevant units (such as the genoese sailors etc).
I was thinking that the shipwright line could be joined to the port line along with the boat builders and slipways from the VI. This would give a true port line with increasing income.
No shipping would certainly make for more realistic expansions and for more interesting crusading, especially after you have suceeded to say, conquer jerusalem. It took me 50 years to complete my first crusade with the French in 1.0.9beta - since i had to conquer Nicaea and then defend against a wave of Seljuk counterattacks. I had to build Nicaea up in order to replenish the Crusaders and then slowly move on towards the levant.
I feel it would stabilise the game and give factions better territorial integrity. It would also mean realistic expansion of territory into regions that are of some benefit and that can be retained.
I would be against a landbridge from Sicily to Tunisia - but pro a landbridge from Naples to Eipirus - this is quite historical and feasible and would give a way out to the Sicilians in that direction that is good for gameplay imho (than connecting via landbridge muslim and christian lands).
Yes when I tested this before I added the Epirus/Naples landbridge. That is a definite one.
talking of landbridges - you may want to cut off the Cordoba - Fes landbridge and leave in only the Granada-Fes one as it is harder for the Almoravids to defend once they lose Cordoba as it stands - while it would be easier if there was a choke point.
This is perhaps a good idea.
Taking out the islands will yield extra provinces - Crete, Cyprus, Corsica and Sardinia. I would also take out Ireland too - since there is no incentive to add an Irish faction - it is somewhat there only to be conquered by the English - and so inconsequential. There are other areas of the map that suffer greatly and are far more important (for the period globally) - namely around Poland and Hungary, southern France and the Alpine region.
Yes, though perhaps Cypruis should be retained due to it's historical significance? Also removing Ireland would seem wrong. It's an extra province that the English will need in the later eras when they start with only the British Isles. Sardinia and Corsica I would agree with removing, those would be far better used in Italy itself either in the alpine region or the peninsula.
If you have made this (important) decision - i suggest to concentrate on rendering a final version of the map next. Once this is finalised factions can be worked on (and a few perhaps added) while knowing that the map would not be altered anymore.
!it burnsus!
Nothing is set in stone as yet, but let's see what others think perhaps?
:bow:
Are agents restricted by interconnecting sea regions or can they simply port hop? If the latter is the case then you wouldn't be able to stop agents from going from Egypt to Novgorod via the ports.
Yes - remember the *bug* i found last.
I was thinking that the shipwright line could be joined to the port line along with the boat builders and slipways from the VI. This would give a true port line with increasing income.
sounds good.
I feel it would stabilise the game and give factions better territorial integrity. It would also mean realistic expansion of territory into regions that are of some benefit and that can be retained.
agreed and sounds good.
Yes when I tested this before I added the Epirus/Naples landbridge. That is a definite one.
Perfect.
This is perhaps a good idea.
Tried and tested.
Yes, though perhaps Cypruis should be retained due to it's historical significance? Also removing Ireland would seem wrong. It's an extra province that the English will need in the later eras when they start with only the British Isles. Sardinia and Corsica I would agree with removing, those would be far better used in Italy itself either in the alpine region or the peninsula.
Well - you can keep Cyprus in but in terms of gameplay makes little difference - using the province inland would be a million times better. Also Crete and Rhodes werent any less significant - i mean if you start in this vein there is no end - just need to prioritize. For Ireland i am with you.
!it burnsus!
Belisario
02-10-2009, 21:09
Hi Gollum and Caravel, interesting discussion about ships and sea regions!
I've reading your posts about this matter and I would like to see how this will affect gameplay. But I also have an idea: "make small independent sea zones" which don't border with their current sea neighbours, only with their land neighbours. Then you could deploy ships in this small sea zones but preventing silly invasions like you have noted and keeping the possibility of "historical" invasions (for instance Naples-Epiros, Sicily-Tunis, Morocco-Andalus...). I also think the movement of agents would result more "natural".
Hello Mr Belisario,
this is a good idea - i would only be fearful of the AI spamming boats on that single region that while might have some effect in allowing invasions may end up a financial dead weight for the AI factions that cannot be gotten rid of (as it currently happens).
:bow:
!it burnsus!
Yes, this is true. Currently the cheaper shiping causes massive spamming of fleets, expecially with the Byzantine. This makes no sense as they are not set up in the startpos file as a trading faction. When things start to go wrong the AI are stuck with these fleets.
Personally I don't find the ships in MTW much "fun". I don't know of anyone else that does either? The battles are very unpredictable and the AI merely spams fleets and moves them around with no clear purpose. It does not try to build trade routes, though it sometimes may seems so (accident/coincidence) this is not the case. I've seen the Danes with a handful of ships on a few occasions. There are enough of these to go from the baltic to the north sea. Instead of doing this however the AI just sends them anywhere and everywhere - isolated and ineffective. This is why whatever we do with shipping, the AI will never use it effectively and the player will exploit it with ease.
It can be done (or at least I think it can) but there wouldn't be much point.
It can, but it's tedious work.
:dizzy2:
Its contageous!
:wall:
!it burnsus!
It can, but it's tedious work.
:dizzy2:
Its contageous!
:wall:
!it burnsus!
Worrying... :help:
Thats Asai gollum Mr
!it burnsus!
Belisario
02-11-2009, 17:44
this is a good idea - i would only be fearful of the AI spamming boats on that single region that while might have some effect in allowing invasions may end up a financial dead weight for the AI factions that cannot be gotten rid of (as it currently happens).
Yes, I am also be fearful of the AI spamming boats which ruined the AI economy. We should find a solution to the spamming ships but it can be difficult. Maybe our Daimyo is right removing ships altogether.
Yes Mr Belisario - it would be interesting - there is a chance that the game might feel somewhat impoverished for some players but its certainly worth to take a chance.
!it burnsus!
Belisario
02-11-2009, 18:16
Yes there is no reason to take sea regions out. That would involve turning all of the sea to dead zone and messing around removing them from the startpos. They simply need to be disconnected. It can be done (or at least I think it can) but there wouldn't be much point. If the maptex file were to be altered then I would favour leaving in the sea zone names but removing the actual dividing lines (borders).
Do you want disconnected sea regions from their sea neighbours or also from their land neighbours?
I think you only need edit the "SetNeighbours" section in both cases and it don't requires hard work. Turning all of the sea to dead zone (i.e. pink colour) and removing seas from the startpos would take a long time, but could be used sea colours to add more land regions?
Rather than ruin the game I feel that removing ships will revitalise it. At present ships just don't work (sorry I'm repeating myself) and the AI sees the route from Antioch to Portugal in exactly the same way as it sees invading an adjoining province. The ships in neighbouring seas simply opens up a direct path to the province and the AI goes for it if the province is deemed worthwhile. Also if it happens to be a rebel province then the AI will be very aggressive towards it. This results in factions all scattered all over the map, often losing their homelands.
I mentioned a campaign of mine with the Almohads and Byzantine in the British Isles. Well we have done much to remedy this by breaking the sea up into three zones. This helps to an extent but it still doesn't stop the silly expansions. In the last campaign I played the Byzantine actually dominated the whole south eastern quarter of the map simply because none could compete with them navally. Once they had taken that part of the map, they effectively had the whole of eastern med sea zone to themselves but their, now relatively useless, fleets were still huge.
Do you want disconnected sea regions from their sea neighbours or also from their land neighbours?
Well I'm thinking that disconnecting won't help. Instead I may simply remove ships and shipbuilders. The problem with disconnecting sea zones is that agents will then be unable to move between ports.
Turning all of the sea to dead zone (i.e. pink colour) and removing seas from the startpos would take a long time, but could be used sea colours to add more land regions?
No, I won't be doing that. Unfortunately the disused sea regions cannot be combined and used as land regions. :no:
Belisario
02-11-2009, 18:35
Instead I may simply remove ships and shipbuilders.
Then the final solution will be easily reached. Any comment about new landbridges, where they are needed or what you have in mind?
Naples to Epirus will be needed as well as Ireland to Wales/Scotland. Apart from that no more will be needed.
I'm still not sure about the Cordoba to Fes landbridge. It's existence allows for an isolated Granada which is useful and historical (plus there's the fact that we may have a one province faction there in the late era). It may be better to remove the Granada to Fes land bridge, and keep Granada as a defensible province. This way the Castilians could expand as far as Fes but would not need to march through Granada to get there. This will be something to consider for crusades also. Having what will end up as a line of provinces between Castile and Tunisia will mean that any crusade will have to pass through every province in succession in order to reach it's goal.
If removing ships will help out the AI and balance trade, then I fully support doing it. :yes: I admit I'll miss them a little, but not so much that I won't sacrifice them to improve gameplay.
Naples to Epirus will be needed as well as Ireland to Wales/Scotland. Apart from that no more will be needed.
I'm still not sure about the Cordoba to Fes landbridge. It's existence allows for an isolated Granada which is useful and historical (plus there's the fact that we may have a one province faction there in the late era). It may be better to remove the Granada to Fes land bridge, and keep Granada as a defensible province. This way the Castilians could expand as far as Fes but would not need to march through Granada to get there. This will be something to consider for crusades also. Having what will end up as a line of provinces between Castile and Tunisia will mean that any crusade will have to pass through every province in succession in order to reach it's goal.
What about a land bridge between Britain and Norway/Denmark? Bad idea?
Connecting Britain to Scandinavia is pushing it a bit. You would then end up with the English surging into that region far too early on.
This is how I see the province and landbridge situation so far:
1) The Flanders/Wessex landbridge restored.
2) Granada to Fes landbridge removed.
3) Ireland to Britain (Wales and/or Scotland?) landridge introduced.
4) Sardinia and Corsica either removed altogether or merged to a single province. If merged then where should the landbridge be to Italy be (Tuscany or Genoa?)?
5) Crete removed or merged to become part of Morea, not too historical but at least it has some pseudo representation. At present it's a useless province, where the Byzantine can become stranded.
6) Cyprus removed or connected to the mainland. Antioch would be the best point of connection perhaps? Connecting Cyprus gives us an additional province in the Levant "crusading region". At present it's totally useless.
7) Siciliy will remain as is - connected to Naples.
In addition to improving connectivity in places, this approach could potentially free up more provinces for use in more important areas (potentially another four provinces could be freed up).
Once this is complete the next region of the map I will be working on will depend partially on what people want? Suggestions for provinces are now welcome. (I need to have a look and see how many free provinces I have left at the moment).
:bow:
Turbosatan
02-12-2009, 11:37
Sorry to pipe up -- just chucking my tuppennyworth in -- I'm down with the removal of ships.
Apart from "local colour" they don't really add anything to the game, & if some of the innovative solutions for trade income that have been floated here are implemented I think I for one won't miss them. I hardly ever bother teching up to the tip-top shipbuilders, after all, because there's very little point/no incentive to do so.
I hardly ever bother teching up to the tip-top shipbuilders, after all, because there's very little point/no incentive to do so.
True enough. There is no point in teching up to anything stronger than Caravels/Baggalas/Wargalleys. Also once naval dominance is achieved it's game over. There is no point in continuing with such a predictable campaign and bloated treasury. I can count on one hand the times I've teched up to the higher level shipbuilders.
The trade goods could be handled exactly as discussed above. New goods could be added to inland provinces as well as to coastal ones and revenues from these goods increased. Ports could be adjusted to give an income, but would cost a lot more than they do currently. The ports could have one or two upgrades based on the shipwrights or the shipbuilders from VI, inserted at a lower level. Traders would then produce their local incomes based on the goods available in the province.
Belisario
02-12-2009, 14:01
1) The Flanders/Wessex landbridge restored.
Why not Normandy/Wessex? It make sense for early period: Anglo-Norman realm.
2) Granada to Fes landbridge removed.
Ok, the sites where Almoravids/Almohads/Marinids disembarked their troops are located in MTW Cordoba region: Algeciras, Tarifa. Although it is also true these cities were in hands of the Nasrids of Granada -and occasionally of the Marinids- during the late middle ages until its capture by the Castilians. But this is only a historical note, I agree about the removal of the Granada/Fes landbridge.
3) Ireland to Britain (Wales and/or Scotland?) landridge introduced.
I personally vote to connect Ireland with both regions.
4) Sardinia and Corsica either removed altogether or merged to a single province. If merged then where should the landbridge be to Italy be (Tuscany or Genoa?)?
Landbridge with both regions, Genoese and Pisans disputed the control of these islands during long time.
5) Crete removed or merged to become part of Morea, not too historical but at least it has some pseudo representation. At present it's a useless province, where the Byzantine can become stranded.
Alternatively, Crete could be connected with Morea.
6) Cyprus removed or connected to the mainland. Antioch would be the best point of connection perhaps? Connecting Cyprus gives us an additional province in the Levant "crusading region". At present it's totally useless.
7) Siciliy will remain as is - connected to Naples.
Ok
In addition to improving connectivity in places, this approach could potentially free up more provinces for use in more important areas (potentially another four provinces could be freed up).
Once this is complete the next region of the map I will be working on will depend partially on what people want? Suggestions for provinces are now welcome. (I need to have a look and see how many free provinces I have left at the moment).
I think new provinces could be added in Poland (Lesser Poland, Great Poland), Lithuania (Samogitia, Lithuania proper) or Hungary (Upper Hungary, Transdanubia). But gameplay is the main factor to decide where more provinces are needed.
Why not Normandy/Wessex? It make sense for early period: Anglo-Norman realm.
Yes I've considered that one as well. It also means that the French don't just storm into Britain taking out the English faction's best province and capital in the process. It might be the best approach.
Ok, the sites where Almoravids/Almohads/Marinids disembarked their troops are located in MTW Cordoba region: Algeciras, Tarifa. Although it is also true these cities were in hands of the Nasrids of Granada -and occasionally of the Marinids- during the late middle ages until its capture by the Castilians. But this is only a historical note, I agree about the removal of the Granada/Fes landbridge.
From a gameplay perspective it's better to have Granada more isolated in order that could operate as a base for a possible single province faction in the late era. Also it breaks the linearity of Cordoba/Murcia -> Granada -> Fes.
I personally vote to connect Ireland with both regions.
I also think this would be the best approach. Otherwise it would be necessary to take Scotland in order to invade Ireland, which would be rather silly.
Landbridge with both regions, Genoese and Pisans disputed the control of these islands during long time.
I need to look further into this. Though I would favour either making one province of them or removing them altogether. The landbridge triangle between Genoa, Tuscany and Corsica/Sardinia seems like a good idea from a gameplay perspective. Having Sardinia as separate province though would be a blind alley with no advantages.
Alternatively, Crete could be connected with Morea.
This would give us another province of little value, out on a limb.
I think new provinces could be added in Poland (Lesser Poland, Great Poland), Lithuania (Samogitia, Lithuania proper) or Hungary (Upper Hungary, Transdanubia). But gameplay is the main factor to decide where more provinces are needed.
I've looked at the Poland/Lithuania/Volhynia region in the past and it's a very difficult area to work with. If someone can provide an historical map showing how this should be divided up I will seriously consider at least splitting poland, though I don't mind resizing and moving neighbouring provinces also to get it looking it's best and of course connecting properly. I've not looked into Hungary much, though this is also a possibility if some maps can be shown as to how it should look.
:bow:
Belisario
02-12-2009, 22:23
I've looked at the Poland/Lithuania/Volhynia region in the past and it's a very difficult area to work with. If someone can provide an historical map showing how this should be divided up I will seriously consider at least splitting poland, though I don't mind resizing and moving neighbouring provinces also to get it looking it's best and of course connecting properly. I've not looked into Hungary much, though this is also a possibility if some maps can be shown as to how it should look.
The best maps I ever saw are the maps from the Euratlas of Christos Nussli, and I think you know them. However if you compare the size and neighbours of a region from the MTW map with the same region in the Euratlas map, you can observe notable differences in some cases. So a certain degree of abstraction is needed to avoid getting frustrating while you draw the new borders in these regions.
Well Euratlas is very good, though for the most parts it shows territory rather than individual provinces within a region.
-Edit: Four unused provinces remain.
With the removal of Crete and the merger of Sardninia and Corsica that will give us six provinces for areas such as Poland (Mazovia, Lesser Poland and Greater Poland) and any other provinces that are needed.
What about in the alpine regions or in Italy itself?
Italy? Rename Milan Lombardia.
And split the Papal States in two, plus give the top of Naples to it. So you have Tuscany (Toscana-Modena-Pisa) opposite the Papal States (Ferrara). And Roma opposite Ancona-Spoleto.
A more gameplay option would be to split Genoa, Milan and Venice into four provinces. Maybe Genoa to the West, Lombardia to the North-East of Genoa, Venice to the East and Verona to the North-West of Venice.
Hmmm... I'll look into that thanks. Do you know of any maps that would show me visually what you're referring to?
:bow:
Don't know if this helps...
http://www.roangelo.net/valente/conquest.html
It does western :medievalcheers:
So that northern part of Naples would become Spoleto with Assisi as it's castle? That would in fact add a worthwile extra province in a decent loction. I'll look into it, thanks.
I also like the idea of moving around/renaming some of the alpine provinces. Any more detailed maps showing that region?
Thanks.
:bow:
Always happy to help if I can.
How about this for some alpine region maps - esp the French one from 1912 (the one about 9 places down - not the first two). It brings out that the biggest omissions are probably Verona (as also shown in the Italy map I posted), Carinthia and the County of Burgundy (as distinct from the Duchy that sits within France). Switzerland doesn't exist yet of course, and a lot of its future territory - Geneva, Berne etc - is within that County of Burgundy. The Burgundian counts were pretty big players at this time - aside from participating in the first crusade and crusade of 1101, and skirmishing with Milan and the free cities, one of the counts made a bid for independence from the empire and had to be crushed by Lothair and Conrad.
http://www.edmaps.com/html/holy_roman_empire.html
Ok I've finally sat down to do some changes and debugging today.
The issue with agents travelling has been resolved. The western med region was not connected to the atlantic. That's one solved.
I got as far a Turks campaign and gave up near to the High Era. Far too easy so far.
It may be because the Turks have vital space now and do grow with time without having to fight for space against teh Byz or Egypts. Perhaps adding factions or calibrating incomes in the area can change that.
:bow:
Well I'm moving around the starting provinces at the moment and have made the probolem worse for now. But I plan to add another faction or two to that region anyway. I now have the "shipless operation", I'm just trying to decide what to do with provinces such as Crete, Sardinia and Corsica.
My suggestion would be to convert them into coastal/inland major Provinces in whichever area you think they are needed (ie is badly represented or will support more factions in the future).
Regarding income balancing - i suggest multiple hubs of good income to be present within all theaters - and these hubs to be surrounded by provinces of relatively low income. I further suggest that even the lowest income provinces to not be completely worthless (as it hampers the AI factions).
Generally speaking i would suggest a small variation of income between fertile/rich and not-so-fertile/not-so-rich provinces. That is for example say; poor apprx 200 flrns on average, medium apprx 300 flrns on average and rich close to 400 flrns on average. The vanilla differences are a big plus for the human player that quickly occupies the rich provinces at the beginning and since the AI factions seem to view them all as equally important (the AI will fight for rich and poor provinces the same sometimes) they end up in great disadvantage. Some variation is good to create competition in a local level - a lot of variation (ie poor 100 flrns and rich 600 plus flrns as in vanilla) is quite bad for AI progress and so challenge imho.
There is a post of suggestions that i wrote in reply to Garnier regarding king influence in relation to AI faction progress and AI personality - its quite relevant for the PoM and i believe it can be helpful - if you wish me to, i can copy paste that post here too.
:bow:
Gah, sounds all good gollum, now all I need to do is quit my job, get a divorce and move into a monastery... I may actually get something done on this mod then... :wall:
Generally speaking i would suggest a small variation of income between fertile/rich and not-so-fertile/not-so-rich provinces. That is for example say; poor apprx 200 flrns on average, medium apprx 300 flrns on average and rich close to 400 flrns on average. The vanilla differences are a big plus for the human player that quickly occupies the rich provinces at the beginning and since the AI factions seem to view them all as equally important (the AI will fight for rich and poor provinces the same sometimes) they end up in great disadvantage. Some variation is good to create competition in a local level - a lot of variation (ie poor 100 flrns and rich 600 plus flrns as in vanilla) is quite bad for AI progress and so challenge imho.
Good idea. I might try this out myself.
Ok here it is;
Originally posted by gollum
One of the things that generally goes unnoticed - is AI factions king influence.
This is one aspect of the game that the GA mode has an advantage over domination in terms of AI performance in vanilla. This is because certain factions (the best example of which is Hungary) get the GA homeland influence bonus every 25 years. Usually even large AI faction empires fall victime to low king influence - and that is a major game breaker (much less challenge).
On top of this the AI faction personnality setting is paramount together with the king influence aspect. The expansionist, naval_expansionist, crusader, crusader_trader, trader for Catholics and the expansionsit, devout for Muslims as well as the expansionsit, stagnant for Orthodox are AI faction killers.
The expansionist AI personalities focuses AI faction on constant attacks - so much so that it burns them out (and also does not leave developed lands behind for the ones that do conquer them eventually).
The crusader AI personalities, are litterally a curse for the long term as they set Crusading as a focus. AI crusades often fail and this in turn instigates civil wars that destroy a blossoming French kingdom or HRE say. This actually is a very significant long term effect and i noticed it while playing vanilla GA camaigns to the end. The end rival whoever i played in GA mode were the Hungarians (unless i played one of their immediate neighbours like the Byz or HRE). This is because the Hungarians are set to CATHOLIC_DEFENSIVE, cannot crusade and do take the homeland GA points (they start with them) that yield influence so they always have the best chances of survival.
Actually the DEFENSIVE AI personnality is the Best for AI factions unless they start too small and/or surrounded (say Turks, Danes, Novgorodians and Aragonese in early). For all other factions that have enough starting land/income DFENSIVE is best long term. In Defensive the AI factions do still crusade, but not as assiduously as when set to Crusader. They use more sense and when they do Crusade they have more focus as it is apparently regarded as a luxury and its done only when the AI is really rich and stable.
For the Turks in vanilla early (as example of situation) EXPANSIONIST is best - time is against them otherwise. They will get swallowed by their powerful neighbours if they just sit back.
For the Danes, Novgorodians and Aragonese (in vanilla early) EXPANSIONIST is also best (otherwise they fade out - too low starting income). Otherwise they get swallowed.
The equivalent of DEFENSIVE for Muslims is PEACEFUL. DEVOUT muslims make too many Jihads that melt them through influence hits. EXPANSIONIST burns them out. For the Almohads and Egyptians PEACEFUL is best in vanilla early.
All in all i suggest to try setting everyone unless too small or sandwitched between powerful neighbours like the Turks in DEFENSIVE, particularly in long games (early/high era) - challenge should rise.
:bow:
Thanks gollum. Very useful for me as well. :thumbsup:
Good Smeagal always helps
:bow:
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