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

[QuintusSertorius]

@QuintusSertorius

I have been attempting to respond to your thread at TWC, but for some darn reason I can't seem to get my posts actually posted. I keep being told I need to wait for moderator approval.

With regards the suggestion which is often being posted, that Britain was an isolated area which was tangential to the rest of the world I would like to defend the position by noting that for much of the later Iron Age (La Tene period) southwestern Britain and Armorica were involved in a vibrant and intense maritime exchange. From c.120BC onward there is evidence for even more intense exchanges between Belgic Gaul and south eastern Britain. There is even slight evidence for contact between the east of Britain and Europe across the North Sea. The druidic tradition was established in Britain and exported to the continent, likely c.600BC (according to Jean-Louis Brunaux). Two potins (high tin cast coins) have been recovered from the Arverni oppida of Corent, attesting to contacts, albeit possibly indirectly, between the Britons and Arverni prior to the start of the Gallic Wars. Likewise the tin trade should not be underestimated, and was responsible to varying degree for the wealth of the Armorican tribes and the Bituriges who occupied the Loire valley.

I appreciate that you're very close to this and it's something you're working on right now, and that a lot of effort has gone into the region. I was only involved in a handful of province descriptions, and they were not trivial pieces of work, the scale you're covering dwarfs anything I did. I don't doubt the archaeology is interesting, and I defer to your greater expertise in this area.

That said, this feels to me like justification for the British Isles being present (because of interchange with Belgic Gaul), but not enough for more provinces than Greece. When we were 21 factions as at EB1, you could forgive a generous allotment to Britain, but when we're now at 30 factions, it feels like too heavy a weighting. If we had a higher upper limit, or hadn't yet reached it, I wouldn't have an issue, but we're already there and some of the areas that lost provinces are pretty central. Greece, Anatolia and Iberia, for just three regions, have lost provinces to make room for more detail elsewhere. Those are places which affect multiple factions each, yet changes to Britain for the most part affect only one, which is another imbalance.

Someone on TWC suggested perhaps some merging as happened with Asturia-Cantabria, and while that isn't ideal, from a gameplay perspective I think something like that would be the right idea. As I said, at the moment 8 provinces in Britain makes the task of the human player far too easy. Reducing that would force them to engage with the continent and early, rather than having the luxury of operating within a sheltered space until such time as they felt the need to go beyond.