Maps and Provinces

[ULC]

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.

[ULC]

Sorry for the Doublepost, but this is my Idea. It's haphazard and not finalized, so it might be a little confusing.

[caravel]

Could you by any chance number it and provide a key with the proposed province names?

[The Unknown Guy]

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?

[caravel]

-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.

[ULC]

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.



Cheers!

[ULC]

No Comments ? I still need help on the names for provinces.

[gollum]

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!

[caravel]

Let's just ditch ships altogether.

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.

[gollum]

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!

[gollum]

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!

[caravel]

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.

[caravel]

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.

[gollum]

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.

[caravel]

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.

[gollum]

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.

[caravel]

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...

[naut]

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.