To big an Island

[Leão magno]

Even there, it seemed a little bit too much didn't it? (Personal opinion) :)

[bobbin]

Even there, it seemed a little bit too much didn't it? (Personal opinion) :)

Not really, the population of Britain is estimated to be somewhere around 2-4 million people by 150BC, if you include Ireland, which historically has had about half the population of Britain you get a total of 3-6 million.
Compare this with the population of Roman Italy (everything south of the Po Valley) at the start of the 2nd Punic War (218BC) which was around 4 million.

My point being that the British Isle were not some sparsely populated backwater as most people think, 8 provinces is perfectly justifiable.

[vartan]

Nice. Britain had the same population in 150BC as it did before the Normans came ashore. Who would have figured? (The question is: Why?)

[bobbin]

There was a major population crash at the end of the Roman period, probably linked with the Plague of Justinian.
After that the island became something of a war zone, first between the Roman-British populations and the incoming Angles and Saxons, and then between the Anglo-Saxons, Danes and Vikings.
These wars were a lot bigger than anything that went on during pre Roman times and so a lot more disruptive to the islands infrastructure, which would have hampered any population recovery.

[Ichon]

Not really, the population of Britain is estimated to be somewhere around 2-4 million people by 150BC, if you include Ireland, which historically has had about half the population of Britain you get a total of 3-6 million.
Compare this with the population of Roman Italy (everything south of the Po Valley) at the start of the 2nd Punic War (218BC) which was around 4 million.

My point being that the British Isle were not some sparsely populated backwater as most people think, 8 provinces is perfectly justifiable.

Britain reached a population of 3-4 million under Roman rule is widely accepted. I've not heard that was the level in 150 BC though. I thought that is more likely after 100 AD or at least 250 years later when most of Europe had also increased in population either with a warming period or under the pax romana or whatever it is attributed to.

Not sure I would buy that Britain achieved a population density equal to intensively agriculturalized Italy in 150 BC. Just curious what this is based on?

[vartan]

Not sure I would buy that Britain achieved a population density equal to intensively agriculturalized Italy in 150 BC. Just curious what this is based on?

"Intensively agriculturalized Italy" in 150 BCE would support a higher population than Britain. Why a density comparison? Drainage in Italy isn't the problem it is in Britain.

[bobbin]

Britain reached a population of 3-4 million under Roman rule is widely accepted. I've not heard that was the level in 150 BC though. I thought that is more likely after 100 AD or at least 250 years later when most of Europe had also increased in population either with a warming period or under the pax romana or whatever it is attributed to.

Not sure I would buy that Britain achieved a population density equal to intensively agriculturalized Italy in 150 BC. Just curious what this is based on?

Cunliffe gives an estimate of 2-4 million for 150 BC and 4-6 million for the height of the Roman era, this is based on the huge increase in the number of settlements being found which have pushed up the population estimates dramatically.

Also it isn't the same density, the 4 million figure for Roman Italy is from 218 BC, thats 68 years before so it would have grown during that time.
Roman Italy in 218 BC was also considerably smaller in area and ariable land than Britain, not to mention that it experienced more population loss due to war and disease that Britain would have.

[Leão magno]

Not really, the population of Britain is estimated to be somewhere around 2-4 million people by 150BC, if you include Ireland, which historically has had about half the population of Britain you get a total of 3-6 million.
Compare this with the population of Roman Italy (everything south of the Po Valley) at the start of the 2nd Punic War (218BC) which was around 4 million.

My point being that the British Isle were not some sparsely populated backwater as most people think, 8 provinces is perfectly justifiable.

I respect that, but the numbers shown are 68 years distant one another as you already mentioned so it makes it dificult to compare, but I respect your point of view. what I am questioning is in terms of importance! I believe that many other areas were as populated and more important in global terms... I mean isn't there any other region in mediterrain, Egypt, middle or far east that would take advantage of those cities? Not to speak Germania, Greece, Thrace, etc? So What was, lets say... Irelands importance in that time frame, especially in the very begining of it, and let me clarify that I only ask that because I am ignorant in that art of the world history. But I can tell a lot of Sicilian, Iberian, Italian Peninsula and African importance.

[Arjos]

On my personal note there's no such thing as "unimportant" in history...
As for regions what they need to represent is the population, iirc Ireland in EBII will have only one region, that's quite a drawback, still it's pretty hard to cope with scarse information and the game's limitation...
But the British Isle must have a decent number of settlements in order to give them a comparable demographic weight as they had at that time...

[vartan]

On my personal note there's no such thing as "unimportant" in history...
As for regions what they need to represent is the population, iirc Ireland in EBII will have only one region, that's quite a drawback, still it's pretty hard to cope with scarse information and the game's limitation...
But the British Isle must have a decent number of settlements in order to give them a comparable demographic weight as they had at that time...

Not necessarily. You might represent that as a lot of people in one town in-game. Besides, many or few towns in-game doesn't always have a correspondence with actual towns. It's like medieval Europe 9th/10th CE compared with 11th/12th. In the latter you see increase in towns. So I don't know how EB is going to do it. Will they put more towns where towns were, or will they put more because there were more people. In-game town need not necessarily correlate with in-life town.

[Ichon]

Well usually the region represents the actual region not just a single city though many of the regions are named after the largest known city within that region.

More important is how the social structure is represented... do we assume most low urbanized/non literate cultures were tribal like later Mongols where a khan of khans could emerge and lead united tribes or does it take lots of work to expand and organize. IE- if you start as a 2 region "barbarian" faction do you get to conquest a couple regions and immediately get access to more units since its a broad shared culture or do you have to work at it as hard as Romans or Greeks laying foundation and converting over time the population. Often uniting people under common banner is quite difficult to achieve and even if a population is equal in actual numbers, the population which is divided and fractious will fall before the more organized faction. IE- Gaul against Rome. Because simply saying- well, Britain had as much population as Italy therefor it should have as many regions is a bit simplistic if the people in those regions were not going to easily unite and in the game get much more power than would have been possible historically. IE- British invasion and conquest of Gaul or something.

If it stays similar to EB 1 then most of the factions should still take some work to expand beyond basic military/colonial type rule.

"Intensively agriculturalized Italy" in 150 BCE would support a higher population than Britain. Why a density comparison? Drainage in Italy isn't the problem it is in Britain.

Due to amount of arable land and the crops able to be grown per season/year population density is a better measure of the ability to project a given populations power and culture. A numerous but dispersed population has much more trouble to match a lower population but more densly concentrated population in most cases. IE- steppe cultures in numbers were large measured from Siberia to Crimea and could constantly raid and conquest parts of China but leave relatively little lasting legacy or cultural imprint relatively. Or the reverse... Greeks were relatively concentrated or at least could act as that due to easy sea travel/mobility compared to Perisa but were hugely less in population. For Persia to mobilize an army took much more work than for Greece though Persia was relatively more wealthy as well and if mobilized only 25% of its available manpower for exmaple could still outnumber the Greek mobilizing 90%

[bobbin]

I respect that, but the numbers shown are 68 years distant one another as you already mentioned so it makes it dificult to compare, but I respect your point of view. what I am questioning is in terms of importance! I believe that many other areas were as populated and more important in global terms... I mean isn't there any other region in mediterrain, Egypt, middle or far east that would take advantage of those cities? Not to speak Germania, Greece, Thrace, etc? So What was, lets say... Irelands importance in that time frame, especially in the very begining of it, and let me clarify that I only ask that because I am ignorant in that art of the world history. But I can tell a lot of Sicilian, Iberian, Italian Peninsula and African importance.

We were able to redistribute provinces to the needed areas without having to cut any from the British Isles, simple as that. Also we try not to think of it in global terms, we try to represent each area as well as we can, not choose one over the other.

Ireland was quite important in its local region, it only gets one proper region though, the rest is part of the Eremos province, to represent the difficulty of controlling parts of the island (the highlands of Scotland also get this treatment).

[WinsingtonIII]

Ireland was quite important in its local region, it only gets one proper region though, the rest is part of the Eremos province, to represent the difficulty of controlling parts of the island (the highlands of Scotland also get this treatment).

Where is the Eremos province (I'm guessing it's an inaccessible province in the Sahara or something)? Does this essentially mean that no one will ever actually control parts of Scotland and Ireland?

[vartan]

Where is the Eremos province (I'm guessing it's an inaccessible province in the Sahara or something)? Does this essentially mean that no one will ever actually control parts of Scotland and Ireland?

You've heard of the word hermit. It comes from the Greek eremos. Refresh my memory if I don't recall correctly, but it would refer to the men who would take retreats in Arabia. In-game Eremos would therefore correspond to the vast Arabian desert contained on three sides by the Arabian coastal regions.

[bobbin]

Where is the Eremos province (I'm guessing it's an inaccessible province in the Sahara or something)? Does this essentially mean that no one will ever actually control parts of Scotland and Ireland?

The Eremos province is the large unconquerable province in EB that made up the Sahara and centre of the Arabian pennisula. In EBII it has been expanded to include the northern regions of the Russian steppe, inland Scandinavia, western Ireland and northern Scotland.

Eremos translated as "desert" or "wilderness" by the way.

[ziegenpeter]

Why is there actually a need for these void regions? why cant they be part of the regions next to them? to simulate foreign territory for the faction who owns the neighbouring regions? of course I am not talking about the terhazza region.

[WinsingtonIII]

The Eremos province is the large unconquerable province in EB that made up the Sahara and centre of the Arabian pennisula. In EBII it has been expanded to include the northern regions of the Russian steppe, inland Scandinavia, western Ireland and northern Scotland.

Eremos translated as "desert" or "wilderness" by the way.

Thanks for the answer!

Yeah, I looked up eremos and got desert, which is why my guess was the Sahara, but I guess that does make sense to just use one province slot for all of the unconquerable wilderness areas of the time.

[Leão magno]

... Also we try not to think of it in global terms, we try to represent each area as well as we can, not choose one over the other.

Ok! But how do you manage to think in regional terms and not in global while facing the games shortage of region slots? I always believed that to better represent the map you were looking from a global perspective and not regional ones, after all, greece for example, would have the need of more cities (regions) than many other places if we consider them in the regional terms, after all there were lots of regional important city-states. As far as I understand, the only way to deal with the limited number of regions e choosing wich regions wil be portraited and I believed that the choice was done considering many itens, including importance of the place in that given time, importance considering the factions presented, importance in terms of gameplay, etc; anyway, do not let me bother you with this curiosity and personal opinion EB is just great.