Minor Proposal: Reduce the number of provinces in the British Isles

[Brennus]

There are certainly some valid points raised here, and indeed this issue has been raised in the past within the team itself. However, as the Faction Coordinator responsible for the Pritanoi, I would not be happy seeing the number of provinces in Britain reduced. The reasons for this are not simply sentimental or protectionist, although it cannot be ignored that they play a part. Rather it partly to do with future gameplay, and partly to do with current gamelplay. First of all the British Isles are complete in terms of province descriptions, which is more than can be said for other regions of the EBII map including Italy and Gaul. Now, obviously this represents a sizeable amount of time invested into writing these, but it also means that by removing them and replacing them with 4 new provinces we lose an area of the game which is already complete. If, as may very well be the case, that the Belgae are voted by the team as a future faction, it will mean development of that faction will be delayed by the fact that 4 new Pritanoi provinces would have to be written.

On an historical note, reducing the British Isles to 4 provinces does a diservice to the archaeological data which we have for the region, and reduces a very vibrant and varied set of Iron Age communities to, in my opinion, the sort of homogenous vanilla Rome barbarians. We have much more data available for the Iron Age in Britain than we do for other areas, such as the Balkans (and hence the Scordisci). If we were to reduce Britain to 4 provinces then we may as well remove the Pritanoi alltogether (who already have all their descriptions and unique government finished). We already have concepts for 7 new British Isles based units which will add to the area. We are hoping to begin work on these soon.


Replacing thse provinces will also mean that we need to redress the mechanics which govern the map. Removing them will mean that the British Isles will not only need to be adjusted, but also that the area we add them to will have to be adjusted as well.

The M2TW engine, as can be seen from the AI faction progression thread, is quite good for AI naval invasions, indeed one which was posted shows the Sweboz getting involved in Scotland. With this in mind it shouldn't take much tweaking to make the Pritanoi more inclined to naval invasions.

Finally, if we were to add a Belgic faction to the mix then I am hoping to make one of the victory conditions for this faction to be conquest of large parts of Britain and defeat of the Pritanoi. Reducing Britain to 4 provinces would dum down such victory conditions.