Maps and Provinces

[ULC]

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

[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.