I suspect sometime in the near future we'll make a final decision about the campaign map. It looks like we've got people who want a big map (Minister of Fear), people who want a small map (Metatron), and I suspect there are a couple others like myself who can see a compromise working out. As it is right now, I can see Minister's point about the Italian cities needing representation. However, the French and English still seem to extend the scope too wide for me. My inclination right now is that I'd prefer to keep the map from extending beyond Italy. Maybe the shortage of men in the Levant could be represented in some other way.... but as I said this will likely get settled soon, and I can work with whatever happens.

As for the Byzantines, if we're starting around 1130, then we're still looking at a unified Empire, led by John II at that time (1118-1143 I believe). In Asia Minor, the empire held lands roughly from the SW "corner" of Turkey to the NE "corner", where it meets the SE corner of the Black Sea. We've got a Seljuk faction, a Danishmend (right? this is from memory...) faction, and there should be several provinces in the hands of rebels, as there were a lot of nomadic, unaffiliated Turkish peoples milling about.

The split into several different Byzantine factions occurred later, after the fourth crusade and the establishment of the Latin state of Constantinople. However, in terms of representing this in the game.... I think we probably shouldn't, unless we have a separate start date for the High period at 1204. If we're just having one start date, from 1130ish on, then there should be just one Byzantine faction. I'm not familiar with BKBs units as I don't have the mod, but I've heard they're very accurate.

Anyway that's all for now. The Byzantine part should be fairly easy -- the hard part for right now is deciding the limits of the map and where to literally draw the line.

CountMRVHS