Maps and Provinces

[caravel]

Whats all this fuss about province managment and squandering? the game has roof limit of 108, not 99.

I'm well aware of that, but I want to stay well within that limit and not go berserk adding provinces and then find we've run out. It's better to be in a situation where we can add key provinces that are useful instead of being right at the limit. Also no one mentioned "squandering".

[Belisario]

Hi Caravel!

I understand Cyrenaica's removal in favour of gameplay. I have other regions in mind to free up provinces: Rhodes, Malta, and Switzerland. The new Near East looks great.

Meanwhile I have been working on my own Lukupmaps experiments. I have finally obtained a working Lukupmap but I have a problem with Castle, Origin and Port coordinates, are these in picas? The port, castle and strategic pieces of my new province appears in strange places. Could you help me, please?

[caravel]

Hi Caravel!

I understand Cyrenaica's removal in favour of gameplay. I have other regions in mind to free up provinces: Rhodes, Malta, and Switzerland. The new Near East looks great.

Switzerland I can understand getting rid of by merging into Tyrolia but Malta and Rhodes I'm not so sure about. Anyway here is the latest from the new near east. I have to do the setneighbours, setborderinfo and castle, port and origin positions yet and then decide on their trade goods, resources, incomes, valour bonuses etc, and fix the homelands. Apart from that they're working fine though.



-Edit: I should add that I've used Sinai for Aleppo and Arabia for Damascus, the other provinces are the same. Syria has become Mosul and Palestine - Jerusalem. Arabia is now dead zone as with the centre of Cyrenacia.

On a related note, the Maghreb region could now be cut off from the Iberian Peninsula by the removal of the landbridges between Granada/Cordoba and the province of Fes. This would create a separate region, like Britain, that can only be reached by ship. The old problem for Crusades from Castile heading for Constantinople to get to Morocco would no longer be an issue as the furthest they'd get would be Egypt which means they wouldn't try that route in the first place.

Meanwhile I have been working on my own Lukupmaps experiments. I have finally obtained a working Lukupmap but I have a problem with Castle, Origin and Port coordinates, are these in picas? The port, castle and strategic pieces of my new province appears in strange places. Could you help me, please?

I'm still not entirely confident when it comes to the castle port and origin points. I know that the y coordinate works from the top downwards, so something around the 20000 mark is very near the bottom of the map and low numbers for the x coordinate are near the left of the map and around the 30000 mark is the right side of the map. I work by checking the location of other castles and taking it from there - trial and error. Probably not ideal but that's how I've been getting on so far. How are you editing the map? Mithel image converter and ultimate paint? Are you working with "lukupmap2.lbm"?

[naut]

I like, very nice.

[Noir]

Hallo Caravel,

here's my suggestions on this:

I second Belisario for the removal of Switzerland, Malta and Rhodes:

That will leave you with the 5 largest islands in the Med

(Sicily,Corsica,Cyprus,Sardinia), that is well whithin the scope of the game. As i suggested much eralier i would connect them all with the inland at least through one province for example:

Corsica to Liguria (or the equivalent province)
Cyprus to Antioch
Sicily to Southern Italy (as is)
Corsica to Sardinia (as is)
Crete to Greece (or the equivalent province)


I further suggest Finland and Norway to be out for use elsewhere.

Areas of the map i think need more provinces:

1. South of France (split Acquitaine, split Toulouse)
2.Iberian; at least one internal province and prevent easy moving around of troups by means of ships by disallowing coastal vessels through Gibraltar that turns wars on the area a naval affair that is entirely off for me.

Three more provinces may be added there (Murcia and an internal one with Toledo capital and split Portugal).

3.Italy - North & the Alps. Malta may be transplanted whosale on the top of the Adriatic as Venice, as in the MedMod IV. Further provinces are needed north. In the Medmod Wes has included key provinces that represent the "passes" of the Alps to the Italian north. I took this one step further and disallowed connection between them (these mountainous regions) so passage is granted from only one of them in out in my home minimod, and it works well that way. Armies crossing from Marseille to Genoa cannot jump through the mountains into Austria - they have to pass from Milan and Verona.

4.Italy south. Well one more province (Apulia Campania) surely will help the Sicilian faction to be more proper IMO, and the whole place there to be more interesting gameplay wise.

5. Greece. It can be split into two or perhaps three provinces (Macedonia, Epirus, Moreas/Achaia). This will give European Byzantine territory some further financial substance and reality.

6. Asia minor. The problem here is a similar one to the Iberian one IMO. There is much of naval troops transport IMO when wars in the Anatolian plateau were purely inland ones. I suggest you either disallow naval access to provinces like Anatolia that should be inherently internal or to cover the coast with strip like provinces if have the numbers.

Trebizond makes passage to Constantinople a two turn affair as it stands. This is not good IMO and armies coming from Georgia should pass inland in order to reach the Borporous and they should be doing so in three turns. My soloution was to disallow passage from Armenia and Georgia to Trebizond. The reality/history reasoning behind this is that in maps Trebizond thins out considerably further east to the point that is only the coast.

7. The middle east. This i see you took care of well.

The only comment i have is that Jerusalem/Palestine is too much "in the middle" being a bottleneck and having coastal access. I would have it differently but i can see that this is what you wanted, so i leave it at that.

For Constantinople:
My suggestion is that if you don't want to make Constantinople a European province, then make it an internal one whithin the province that now stands (a very small one whithin the current province of Constantinople that would be basically the city itself). It will of course face the sea of Marmara.

This will assert the status of Constantinople as a powerful city-state metropolis and show in the game its defensible position. The "outer" province will be its attendant lands, that strecthed often both sides of the Bosporous.

Finally the North of Africa looks very good. Moroco may be split into two provinces (Moroco - Atlantic Coast) in order to provide more substance/refuge to the Almohads while Algeria-Tunisia may be the homegrounds of a fourth Islamic faction - one of the many dynasties that ruled there.

Many Thanks

Noir

[The Unknown Guy]

For Constantinople:
My suggestion is that if you don't want to make Constantinople a European province, then make it an internal one whithin the province that now stands (a very small one whithin the current province of Constantinople that would be basically the city itself). It will of course face the sea of Marmara.

I rather like this one. The big income would be linked to Constantinople, or to Thrace, then? Or maybe split? (Such as: huge farming bonus goes to Thrace, but Constantinople gets the trading goods)

Iberian; at least one internal province and prevent easy moving around of troups by means of ships by disallowing coastal vessels through Gibraltar that turns wars on the area a naval affair that is entirely off for me.

Two more provinces may be added there (Murcia and an internal one with Toledo capital)

My suggestion was to cut the north of Castile, and turn it into the "Lordship of Biscay" (which was a fief of the Castilian throne back then), thus leaving Castile as an internal province, with Toledo as the capital.
I would, perhaps, make Leon a more military-infrastructure developed province, but would leave Toledo as the province having the starting Royal Palace. The reason being that Toledo had been conçuered relatively recently at the starting point in the game, yet it had a good deal of symbolism because it was the capital of the old Visigoth kingdom of Spain.

As for Cordoba: I´d split it in two, as well. I don´t know if the split should be in favor of a Murcia eastern province, or an Extremadura western one, through (althrough I do favor Murcia, for some reason). In any case, balance-wise this is deserved because the Almoravids/Almohads have the unfair bonus of having a two-province defense layer, whereas they can strike at all Castilian provinces from the start of the game.

[Noir]

Originally posted by The Unknown Guy
Such as: huge farming bonus goes to Thrace, but Constantinople gets the trading goods

Something on these lines and something similar can be done for Venice.

The only disadvantage of this approach is that it consumes an extra province that might be better used elsewhere by making Constantinople fully european and including say 3 provinces in Greece.

Originally posted by The Unknown Guy
this is deserved because the Almoravids/Almohads have the unfair bonus of having a two-province defense layer, whereas they can strike at all Castilian provinces from the start of the game.

I agree in that both the Iberian and Anatolia need to see more strife and back and forth before the troop producing heartlands of the "enemy" are taken out.

In vanilla apart from the low rebelliousness and the outrageous naval profits its very easy to take out these key homelands in a few turns at the begonning of a campaign, because of the way the provinces connect. connectivity might introduce passes around geographical frontiers such as rivers and mountains as well as areas that transporting armies was not logistically feasible, in search of representing the locational nature of conflicts that occured in a given area.

Many Thanks

Noir

[Belisario]

I have edited the Lukupmap2 following this method:

1.Open a Lukupmap.lbm with IrfanView and import it as a TGA of 8 bits using the batch conversion tool. In this manner the original palette is preserved.

2.Edit the Lukupmap.tga with a graphic program (in my case Gimp2.2) and save it as un-compressed tga of 24 bits.

3.Use CA_BIF_BUF utility called Seqgrab.exe to obtain the new lukupmap.lbm. I don't know how work MithelImageConverter but I suppose that it works like CA tool. Seqgrab needs an un-compressed tga of 24 bits which provides the new image, and a lbm (in this case an original Lukupmap) which provides the palette.

If you free up Switzerland remember that this province has a hard-coded factor: the Swiss occasionally appears around 1300. I suggest that you actually free up Tyrolia or Swabia to avoid CTD's, and use the label "ID_SWITZERLAND" for the whole province of Tyrolia or Swabia, and the label "ID_TYROLIA" or "ID_SWABIA" for a new province.

[Martok]

Nice map, Caravel. I like it.

I'm not sure I'm really knowledgable enough about medieval geography to contribute much. The biggest problem -- as everyone here is already well aware -- is the game's hard-coded province limit. I could easily suggest a dozen new provinces, but it would immediately run into the cap. In the end, we're going to have to simply accept that quite a few provinces will have to be left out, however much justification there is for including them in the game.

[caravel]

I have edited the Lukupmap2 following this method:

1.Open a Lukupmap.lbm with IrfanView and import it as a TGA of 8 bits using the batch conversion tool. In this manner the original palette is preserved.

2.Edit the Lukupmap.tga with a graphic program (in my case Gimp2.2) and save it as un-compressed tga of 24 bits.

3.Use CA_BIF_BUF utility called Seqgrab.exe to obtain the new lukupmap.lbm. I don't know how work MithelImageConverter but I suppose that it works like CA tool. Seqgrab needs an un-compressed tga of 24 bits which provides the new image, and a lbm (in this case an original Lukupmap) which provides the palette.

I believe the method I'm using is considerably easier:

You will need the Mithel Image Converter, Ultimate Paint and preferably Paint Shop Pro. I use PSP as I find it much more user friendly than UP. The file to work with is lukumpmap2.lbm save a backup of this.

First open lukupmap2.lbm using ultimate paint, go to edit and copy and then open PSP and go to edit and paste as new image. Do your edits and changes then paste is back into the same image in UP. Click save and then exit. Load the Mithel Image Converter and load the original unedited lukupmap2.lbm and save the palette. Exit and then load the edited lukupmap2.lbm, again with the Mithel Image Converter and then load the palette. You can check the palette to ensure it's loading correctly. Once the palette is loaded save the .lbm and exit. That will give you a working lukupmap2.

If you free up Switzerland remember that this province has a hard-coded factor: the Swiss occasionally appears around 1300. I suggest that you actually free up Tyrolia or Swabia to avoid CTD's, and use the label "ID_SWITZERLAND" for the whole province of Tyrolia or Swabia, and the label "ID_TYROLIA" or "ID_SWABIA" for a new province.

I'd thought of that one, I'm not yet focusing on that area, but that is how I'll do it.

I've made some more changes to the same area. I've slightly expanded Tripoli based on a map I have here, mainly to make it slightly bigger as at present it is difficult to drop units there.

I've also extended Anatolia and Armenia in line with historical maps. The Antalya and Konya problem, that Belisario brought up earlier, is next on the agenda. Neither of these are in the correct place in the game. I'm not sure what Rum province and it's Iconium is supposed to represent. Konya would not have been in that location. The extension of Anatolia into part of southern Nicaea now places Konya in it's historic location in the Anatolia province along with Ankara and Antalya. The Rum province then lacks any significance or a capital. It could perhaps be extended further westwards and would then encompass Ankara, though I'm not certain of the historicity of this. I'd also like to extend the Nicaea province northwards into the Trebizond and reduce the size of Trebizond province, I have an example (again).

[The Unknown Guy]

I don't play GA anymore so this doesn't concern me directly, but for those who do, it might be convenient to switch the ID label of Anatolia to "Rum", as there's a turkish GA dependent on that.

[western]

Caravel

Looks very good. Among many benefits, I've never liked Trebizond being next to Constantinople. It's a bit like putting Flanders adjacent to Navarre. Your changes put a whole 2 provinces in between, as it should be. Should also stop crusades taking an ahistorical excursion via Trebizond.

[caravel]

I don't play GA anymore so this doesn't concern me directly, but for those who do, it might be convenient to switch the ID label of Anatolia to "Rum", as there's a turkish GA dependent on that.

I'm not sure about that as technically Rum will still be in much the same location with a repositioned and renamed provincial capital. It would be more relevant as a homeland than Anatolia which is detached from the rest of the Homelands.

Looks very good. Among many benefits, I've never liked Trebizond being next to Constantinople. It's a bit like putting Flanders adjacent to Navarre. Your changes put a whole 2 provinces in between, as it should be. Should also stop crusades taking an ahistorical excursion via Trebizond.

Trebizond was a fallacy, it seems that the developer decided to add the black sea coastal strip, in it's position as it appears on maps, as a province and call it Trebizond. The annoying short cut that was always there for crusades to the Holy Land is another hopefully solved issue I hadn't thought of.



-Edit: Well I had nearly done when PSP crashed and I've lost most of the work I had done on the Rum province so I'll have to start again.

[Martok]

Caravel, I can't tell from that map: Will Trebizond still be connected to the other Byzantine provinces, or will it be cut off from them?

[western]

Caravel

What are your thoughts re Greece? To me, that is another obvious candidate for splitting. I agree with Noir's comments above about an ideal split into 3. When it comes to saving provinces, Malta seems to have played virtually no role (despite strategic position) until the Knights were given it in the 16th century. It wasn't even a naval base before that, and they had to build Valletta from scratch. Rhodes makes it into Late in sense that it was a naval base then (but again no real significance before those Knights get there) - is it worth using a province for, esp if there is no Knights faction?

Stopping using either of these as provinces wouldn't mean removing them from the map, so I guess no harder than other changes you are making?? Easy for me to say

[Noir]

Originally posted by Martok
Caravel, I can't tell from that map: Will Trebizond still be connected to the other Byzantine provinces, or will it be cut off from them?

It seems not, and IMO this is good. Well done!

Many Thanks

Noir

[caravel]

Caravel, I can't tell from that map: Will Trebizond still be connected to the other Byzantine provinces, or will it be cut off from them?

Trebizond will be separate from Nicaea and constantinople. In early it will be a Byzantine province along with Constantinople and Nicaea, in the high era, it should be the base of a Separate Trapezuntine faction.

What are your thoughts re Greece? To me, that is another obvious candidate for splitting. I agree with Noir's comments above about an ideal split into 3. When it comes to saving provinces, Malta seems to have played virtually no role (despite strategic position) until the Knights were given it in the 16th century. It wasn't even a naval base before that, and they had to build Valletta from scratch. Rhodes makes it into Late in sense that it was a naval base then (but again no real significance before those Knights get there) - is it worth using a province for, esp if there is no Knights faction?

Stopping using either of these as provinces wouldn't mean removing them from the map, so I guess no harder than other changes you are making?? Easy for me to say

Malta can be removed but I'm concerned as to it's significance to the GA goals. It simply needs to be recoloured the same as Sicily on the lukupmap2 to make it part of that province, and the Malta Channel added to the straits of Sicily. It would be useful to use as one of the Greek provinces. I suppose Epirus and a province representing the Duchy of Athens and/or Achaia perhaps, with the rest as a Thessalonica. Some of northern Greece would be added to Bulgaria or Perhaps Serbia and Thessalonica would take some of the Constantinople province. Cyrenacia and Malta could be used for both of the new Greek provinces, that would leave the rest of the free provinces to use on the rest of Europe.

[The Unknown Guy]

If it was up to me I'd sçuikk Rhodes out of existance. As it is now it represents a ridiculously small island just a step away from the coast of Turkey, which however makes an ugly spot on the gameplay map by the "magnification" drawing....

[Belisario]

Concerning the Anatolian peninsula matter I think MTW Anatolia (now Konya) and MTW Rum (now "Ankara") should be INLAND regions. The Seljuks of Rum (Konya) fought against Byzantium to win access to the sea both Mediterranean and Black seas. In 1214 the Seljuks captured Sinop (Greek Sinope) on the Black Sea coast, in the ancient region of Paphlagonia, and this city served as a base for Seljuk expeditions against Crimea. About 1220 the Seljuks captured the Mediterranean city of Antalya (Greek Attalia) which provides them an important commercial port. However province limit is a restricted factor in this sense.
In the Euratlas (Southeastern Europe AD 1100) MTW Rum roughly corresponds with the Danishmend Emirate. This Turcoman dynasty ruling in eastern Anatolia was the main rival of the Seljuks of Rum until its conquest by Sultan Kiliç Arslan II in 1174 (the same Seljuk ruler who beats the Byzantines at Myriokephalon in 1176). Danishmend territory approximately covered the ancient region of Cappadocia; Britannica says about them:

Danishmend dynasty

Also spelled Danismend , also called Danishmendid Turkmen dynasty that ruled in the Sivas-Kayseri-Malatya-Kastamonu region of central and northeastern Anatolia from about 1071 to 1178.

Danishmend (Danismend), founder of the dynasty, first appeared in Anatolia as a gazi (warrior for the faith of Islam) during a period of confusion that followed the death of the Seljuq sultan Sulayman ibn Qutalmïsh in 1086. In 1102 Danishmend took Malatya, but when he died in 1104, the city was captured by the Seljuq sultan Qïlïj Arslan.

Danishmend's son and successor, Gazi, intervened in dynastic struggles among the sons of Qïlïj Arslan and helped Mas'ud seize power in 1116. Gazi then captured Malatya, Ankara, Kayseri, and Kastamonu from Mas'ud's rivals (1127). Finally in 1133 Gazi recaptured Kastamonu from the Byzantine emperor John II Comnenus, who had taken it the previous year. The caliph al-Mustarshid and Sanjar, the Seljuq sultan of Iraq-Iran, rewarded Gazi for his victories over the Christians by granting him the title of malik (king). Gazi died, however, in 1134, and his son Mehmed (Muhammad) took the title instead.

When Mehmed died (1142), the Danishmend territory was divided among his two brothers—Yagibasan (Yaghibasan) in Sivas and 'Ayn ad-Dawlah in Malatya-Elbistan—and his son Dhu an-Nun in Kayseri. After Yagibasan's death (1164), the Seljuq sultan Qïlïj Arslan II intervened repeatedly in the affairs of the Sivas and Kayseri branches and finally invaded Danishmend territory; but he was stopped by Dhu an-Nun's father-in-law, Nureddin of Mosul. Nureddin died in 1174, however, and Qïlïj was able to take Sivas, the Yesil Irmak (Iris) valley, Tokat, and Amasya (1175), and Dhu an-Nun was slain. The Malatya branch came under Seljuq control in 1178, thus marking the end of the Danishmend dynasty.

Danishmend, the first ruler, is the hero of an oral epic tradition, the Danishmendname, which first appeared in written form about 1245.

[caravel]

Well the only way to represent that would be the addition of two more provinces to the area namely Sinope and Antalya.



Rhodes is Antalya and Cyrenacia is used for Sinope.

[western]

Caravel

Turning Rhodes into Antalya makes a lot of sense to me (as said before, Rhodes is a bit of an oddity unless there is a Hospitaller faction, and even then it's not as though they could realistically forge a land empire). Sinope would be good too if you have the provinces for it - but I guess you could go with one and not both if things get really tight.

It's all looking very interesting and a whole lot more historically accurate.

I've also been thinking that this dead zones idea adds a nice new dimension.

[caravel]

Caravel

Turning Rhodes into Antalya makes a lot of sense to me (as said before, Rhodes is a bit of an oddity unless there is a Hospitaller faction, and even then it's not as though they could realistically forge a land empire). Sinope would be good too if you have the provinces for it - but I guess you could go with one and not both if things get really tight.

It's all looking very interesting and a whole lot more historically accurate.

I've also been thinking that this dead zones idea adds a nice new dimension.

Sinope and Antalya are in, the screen shot in my last post is from a working lukupmap2. The neighbours data is set with provinces connecting properly, the ports, origins and castles are still all over the place for the changed provinces, apart from Sinope which is done. The borderinfo is next. Some suggested border crossing terrain based on the map above would be helpful ("armies meeting here" conditions).

[Noir]

This may potentially be the best Anatolia yet for MTW.

This might help out with the borders:
http://www.iwmi.cgiar.org/pubs/Pub04...es/Figure1.jpg

And some more specifics to put a little colour:
Fortresses of Trebizond:
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgu...%3Den%26sa%3DN
Trebizond:
http://members.tripod.com/romeartlover/Trebison.html
Constantinople & Bosporous:
http://www.ephesusguides.com/files/b...20istanbul.jpg
Various places (very good landscape pictures - comments in czeck that i can't read):
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgu...%3D1%26hl%3Den
Desertland in eastern Anatolia:
http://www.denizt.com/interests/phot...tolia_hill.jpg

Many Thanks

Noir

[western]

Caravel

Quote re Trebizond (which initially included Sinope): "A high range of mountains separate this coastal strip from the Anatolian tableland and this fact helped in maintaining the area under the rule of the Byzantine Empire, even when most of western and central Anatolia had been conquered by the Seljuks and other invaders coming from the east."

Crudely, Anatolia has the Pontic mountain chain running west-east in the north, and the Taurus west-east in the south (swinging north-east at the edge of lesser armenia), with a high tableland in-between, increasingly hilly as you go east. So the effect we want is of a natural division into 2 coastal strips and an interior, with lesser Armenia pretty much encirled by mountains apart from outlets to Antalya and Antioch. You might therefore have
Trebizond to Rum, Armenia mountain
Trebizond to Georgia hilly
Trebizond to Sinope flat
Sinope to Rum, Nicaea hilly
Antalya to Konya hilly
Konya to Lesser Armenia mountain
Rum to Lesser Armenia mountain
Antalya to Lesser Armenia flat

I have to say I would make the vast majority of borders "no river" - how many battles in history actually consisted of one army trying to force its way across a bridge (not a river) in the immediate presence of the main body of the enemy? Bridge battles to me are one of the least realistic features of MTW, but luckily it is easy to control their frequency.

Hope that's helpful and you're not looking for something different.

[caravel]

Thanks Noir and western, that's the info I was looking for. Should have some border info done later, and on to Greece at the weekend. If you've any ideas for Greece get them in now in time for tomorrow.

[Noir]

You can make ideally 3 provinces out of Greece:

Macedonia (bulky land adjacent Thrace with Thessalonica capital)
Epirus (strip coastal on the Adriatic with Dyrrachium capital)
Achaia/Moreas/Mystras (Thessali, Rumeli and the Peloponese with potential capitals: Athens, Thebes or Mystras)

If two provnces is what you want, then i would split it into a north south affair (Macedonia&Epirus - Achaia/Moreas/Mystras) with the Adriatic coast link contained in the Northern one. This is awkard unfortunately as you would be having only one port either in the north aegean or in the Ionian, but better than having Greece as 1 province in any case.

Crete is better off as an independent province/island (with a landbridge connection to the mainland IMO) to represent the Aegean islands and their strategic position as naval bases IMO. It can be potentially merged with the Southern Greece province as an alternative in order to still get 3 provinces out of the mainland Greece split. You'll see when you finish all the map what suits better.

Unfortunately in my experience the Total number of provinces is not enough to represent all areas as vigorously you did with Asia Minor. Compromises will need to be made - but that will come later and perhaps better after playtesting.

Many Thanks

Noir

[caravel]

You can make ideally 3 provinces out of Greece:

Macedonia (bulky land adjacent Thrace with Thessalonica capital)
Epirus (strip coastal on the Adriatic with Dyrrachium capital)
Achaia/Moreas/Mystras (Thessali, Rumeli and the Peloponese with potential capitals: Athens, Thebes or Mystras)

If two provnces is what you want, then i would split it into a north south affair (Macedonia&Epirus - Achaia/Moreas/Mystras) with the Adriatic coast link contained in the Northern one. This is awkard unfortunately as you would be having only one port either in the north aegean or in the Ionian, but better than having Greece as 1 province in any case.

Crete is better off as an independent province/island (with a landbridge connection to the mainland IMO) to represent the Aegean islands and their strategic position as naval bases IMO. It can be potentially merged with the Southern Greece province as an alternative in order to still get 3 provinces out of the mainland Greece split. You'll see when you finish all the map what suits better.

Unfortunately in my experience the Total number of provinces is not enough to represent all areas as vigorously you did with Asia Minor. Compromises will need to be made - but that will come later and perhaps better after playtesting.

Many Thanks

Noir

Well the area between Morocco, Georgia and Constantinople has merely been redistributed. Provinces have been moved, stretched, shrunk and altered but no new provinces have been added as yet. Rhodes, Arabia and Cyrenacia have been simply moved and used elsewhere in that region. This leaves me with the extra provinces to play with as well as some others that could be removed such as Finland, Malta and Switzerland. Malta I've mentioned previously but Finland could perhaps be repositioned as another province, such as Polovtsia south of Kiev on the black sea coast.

[Belisario]

Caravel, the new Anatolian peninsula looks great. I would only suggest a minor change: extend Konya as far as Sinope to avoid the border between Nicaea and Ankara.
I am looking forward to seeing your next task, Greece.

[ULC]

Nice work Caravel. On Greece, I have read somewhere that Constantinople was difficult to invade from the north. As it stands, the Hungarians need only take Bulgaria to invade Constantinople, yet the self same Bulgarians had repeated troubles invading Constantinope from the north. My suggestion then is to extend Thrace (or Macedonia, depending on which your using) to cover Constantinople from invasions from Bulgaria. I don't know how accurate this would be, I'm looking for my sources as of right now.

[Martok]

Caravel, I have a slightly OT question: With the removal of Arabia, what happened to the hero general (I can never remember his name) who normally starts there in the Early period? Did you move him to another province, or has he been deleted entirely? (I ask because he's the only decent general the Eggies have in the very beginning of the game.)