More thoughts on the campaign map.

What Metatron says is true: focus on a smaller area, you get more provinces to fit in there, which can make for more historical accuracy. However, I can see the attraction in having factions like the Sicilians, the Venetians, etc.

I think the big question here will be what kind of campaign would we most like to have.

Personally, I'd like to see Byzantium included in this mod. During the time period we're talking about, there was much cooperation and conflict between the Byzantines and the Crusader states in Asia Minor and the Middle East. To do Byzantium justice, you'd need to include Greece and sections of the Balkans, not to mention all of modern-day Turkey.

When you talk about going further west, however, I get hesitant.

Here's why: If you want to include some Western European powers, it seems to me that you'd really need to include them all. Just having the Venetians, for example, and having the map only stretch west to Italy, would seem to be only giving a fraction of a larger picture. If you really want to have the English and the HRE as factions, then we're talking about a map which is basically the same scale as the current MTW map ... and then the focus wouldn't really be on the Crusader States at all; we'd be fighting all over Europe just like we can do now.

I think for the sake of simplicity and accuracy (as far as provinces and cities are concerned) it would make sense to confine the map to the Eastern Mediterranean, maybe with the Adriatic as its western border. Making the map even smaller in focus -- ie just the Levant -- would leave out a lot of room for the various Turkish factions as well as chunks of Byzantium: and my argument for Byzantium is that they were a very powerful LOCAL entity in the area at the time.

That's just my take on this; but hey I've got my own biases obviously . I think a general rule, though, should be simplicity. I'd really love to see this mod get finished, and the best way to ensure that that happens is to keep it simple.