PMTW 2.0 - new map thread

[cegorach]

It wil take me a while to check what wa supposed to be in the game, but I have decided we could have a separate thread dealing with the subject.


As you are aware we only have as many provinces to use as there are in PMTW 1.5, so all new provinces have to use colours and data of areas which are already in the game.

I've planned to remove a couple in Africa and Middle East and I do have a working alpha version of PMTW 2.0 so it shouldn't take much time to describe what I wanted.

If you have any proposals they can be discussed in this thread, but let's keep it on topic - other ideas can be discussed in separate threads.

[zweihander]

Germany is certainly the part of the map I most interested in. As Münster, Palatinate and Pomerania will be added to the Lion of the North campaign, which provinces will you put those new faction in? And I also think it is strange to put Hessen in Swabia and put Saxony in Franconia, can we expect new province in Germany area?

[cegorach]

Germany is certainly the part of the map I most interested in. As Münster, Palatinate and Pomerania will be added to the Lion of the North campaign, which provinces will you put those new faction in? And I also think it is strange to put Hessen in Swabia and put Saxony in Franconia, can we expect new province in Germany area?

As you can see MTW Franconia has been divided - so there is one, new province in Germany.

Frankly the exact shape of german areas never concerned me that much - the territory is quite crowded compared to the rest of the map and there are many other factions which screamed for something new.

There isn't much what could be done with the number of provices, but their shape and neighbouring areas can be redefined.

If you wish you can post proposal for a new map in Germany, but bear in mind there can be only one new province added in the territory - Courland, Royal Prussia, Royal Hungary, new Dutch province, Dalmatia etc have priority.

Whatever we can use will have to be useful in ALL eras.

[zweihander]

Actually I think spliting Franconia is a good idea. curious about how would you name these two provinces splited from Franconia.

[cegorach]

One is Sachsen (Dresden), another still named Franconia.

Yeah, I suppose Germany need much work.

Think of the same number of provinces + 1 and we can change some stuff as you see fit.

Germany is relatively easy because it still will be using the same province names, same homelands for units etc.

Completely new provinces are more difficult.

[cegorach]

Ok, let's start with something easy: sea/ocean areas.


So far only two changes which are however very important:

Northern Baltic and Dutch Coast.



First links Finland and Estonia with Sweden (no landconnection).



Second protects the Dutch from sudden invasions and allows them
to build sizable fleet without blocking anybody.



Since every such change costs us Adriatic was merged with the Ionian Sea



and the Sea of Marmara was merged with the Aegean Sea.



If you have other ideas we can use them, but I doubt we need too many - maybe spliting the Black Sea to help Georgia, Circassia and the Tartars if they ever build a fleet? Honestly I am happy with the two changes.

[cegorach]

Another thing to think about is to use some of sea zones to expand the Atlantic or something, but as long as the Azores are defended by deep sea area which is not easy to access I am happy.

[Stazi]

The AI usually moves ships to the seas with the most connections and does this to the point where small seas, which connects to only 3-4 other areas, are left empty. So, I'm not sure if making the Dutch Coast is a good idea. Time will tell.

[western]

Ok, let's start with something easy: sea/ocean areas.


So far only two changes which are however very important:

Northern Baltic and Dutch Coast.



First links Finland and Estonia with Sweden (no landconnection).



Second protects the Dutch from sudden invasions and allows them
to build sizable fleet without blocking anybody.



Since every such change costs us Adriatic was merged with the Ionian Sea



and the Sea of Marmara was merged with the Aegean Sea.



If you have other ideas we can use them, but I doubt we need too many - maybe spliting the Black Sea to help Georgia, Circassia and the Tartars if they ever build a fleet? Honestly I am happy with the two changes.

How about splitting adriatic so Venice has some home waters? Two reasons - it shouldn't be too easy to take venice by sea, and I hate when Venice just casually conquers Naples - so ahistorical. You could even split the Adriatic longitudinally so Venice is funnelled towards Dalmatia and Greece rather than southern Italy.

[cegorach]

In this case as long as the Dutch will build some ships I am happy. Plus it is supposed to give them some basic, easy income from trade.

There are plenty of sea areas connected to Northern Africa which are rather unnecessary. We could use some of these if there are any ideas to exploit it.

[zweihander]

One is Sachsen (Dresden), another still named Franconia.

Good. But how do you deal the the Saxony province on the original MTW map, as Sachsen is the German form of Saxony.

Ok, let's start with something easy: sea/ocean areas.


So far only two changes which are however very important:

Northern Baltic and Dutch Coast.

Would spliting the Baltic Sea also protect and give more advantage to the Livonian Order?
And as the screenshot show, are you also splited the Livonia province?

[cegorach]

How about splitting adriatic so Venice has some home waters? Two reasons - it shouldn't be too easy to take venice by sea, and I hate when Venice just casually conquers Naples - so ahistorical. You could even split the Adriatic longitudinally so Venice is funnelled towards Dalmatia and Greece rather than southern Italy.

Good point with Naples.

I believe we have several unnecessary sea zones in the south so Venice could use one linking it with Dalmatia. Plus it is pretty accurate that all those small islands make a separate warzone.


Adding/removing sea areas is much less complicated than with land provinces, but I think we should be ok with no more than 5 new sea zones.

[cegorach]

Good. But how do you deal the the Saxony province on the original MTW map, as Sachsen is the German form of Saxony.

It was renamed. Rather lazily into Northern Germany or something like that.

As I've said Germany was never treated properly - we lacked someone who could deal with the subject properly.

Would spliting the Baltic Sea also protect and give more advantage to the Livonian Order?
And as the screenshot show, are you also splited the Livonia province?

Yes. Livonian wars are pretty important in the period so Courland was added.

I think that this way two of three provinces of the Livonian Confederacy are well defended (recreating the importance of Riga and Danzig and local trade). Estonia has to be treated differently.

The actual, main reason to do it this way is to give Sweden direct acces to Germany.

[cegorach]

I'll show changes to land areas later, but one of them you should notice already - there is no Libya and no land contact between Tunisia and Egypt.

I wanted to stop land invasions of Egypt through Africa - very difficult in actual history and impossible without a fleet.

[zweihander]

It was renamed. Rather lazily into Northern Germany or something like that.

As I've said Germany was never treated properly - we lacked someone who could deal with the subject properly.

I suggest to name it 'Lower Saxony'.

Here is a a map of Imperial Circles in 1560:

[western]

Can I make a couple of map proposals re Venice, one very simple and the other more difficult?

In PMTW, the odd border is closed for realism (mountains) or historicity - thus Moldavia to Poland or Bulgaria. This is a good feature which somewhat makes up for the lack of terrain effects on the 2D map.

I'd like to suggest closing Venice/Austria border certainly, possibly also Venice/Croatia and Venice/Tyrolia. Two reasons - having Venice besiege Vienna would be absurd and this encourages Venice to expand by sea rather than by land; also getting into and out of Italy wasn't easy, with the key routes passing through Switzerland (Grisons and Valtelline) and Savoy. Hence also the strategic importance of Milan. It also simulates a bit how hard Venice was to overrun and occupy (which no-one managed till Napoleon).

That brings me to my harder suggestion, which is a bigger Switzerland. The Swiss warred with ducal Milan (eg 1487) and also intervened forcefully in the Italian Wars. Enlarging Switzerland to touch Milan would be historical in this sense as well as in simulating its importance as a country of passage at least until 1648. That's the middle option. The biggest/hardest option would be to give Switzerland 2 provinces by absorbing most of Tyrolia - they could be the Swiss Confederacy and the associated Three Leagues to the south east (formed 1471 - there's a good wikipedia article on the Three Leagues). Re-using Tyrolia means that it wouldn't affect the province limit.

So there are a range of options there, from simple to hard, all with the same purpose. I'm reading Geoffrey Parker's massive Global Crisis on the 17th century at the moment, and that reminded me of his classic Army of Flanders and the Spanish Road, which really brought out the importance of Milan and the Swiss passes throughout the 80 year Dutch Revolt.

[cegorach]

All useful proposals, but for now I'd like to finish the subject of sea zones.

So far - Prussian Coast (could be new or re-named Baltic Sea), Dutch Coast and Dalmatian Coast (different name?) which would also cover Venice.

Removed - the Sea of Marmara and the Ionian Sea + something else.


Any proposals? We could remove some areas just because they are no longer useful or because it helps the AI, but each such change would require other changes so it has to be done properly and for really good reasons.

[western]

OK Cegorach, if sea areas are the current topic, let's start with a couple of name curiosities. Looking at the map, the Spanish Coast should really be the Portuguese Coast, and Cadiz town would actually fall outside the Gulf of Cadiz and closer to Gibraltar.

That's not entirely a trivial comment because I wonder if losing the Gulf of Cadiz might give you the extra sea province you need - stretch Straits of Gibraltar to the Cordoba/Algarve border and move Spanish Coast south to start at the Leon/Portugal border, so it truly is the "Portuguese Coast"

I don't think you lose anything by no longer having a sea area at either end of Portugal bordering 2 provinces (Algarve/Cordoba and Portugal/Leon), because in each case those 2 provinces can already invade each other by land, so the ability to sea-invade adds nothing. A fleet coming from Atlantic Ocean would need to make a more definite choice between moving adjacent to either Spain or Portugal, but that is no bad thing.

Overall, Costa Verde, Spanish Coast and Straits of Gibraltar still connect with same number of provinces as now (3, 2 and 4), so hopefully it's a bit of keyhole surgery without major trauma. Cordoba's port would now enter onto the Straits, but that seems OK.

I hope that's as clear when looking at the map as it is in my head! I'm trying to be helpfully detailed but that just makes it sound complex.

[western]

One more idea since my brain has been on this track. I really liked the way 1.5 made the game seem bigger through representing off-map events/territories through buildings like Siberia, Songhai Empire, Portuguese Colonies etc. If you've got too many sea areas on your hands, they could be used as a one way valve for a similar purpose. So if Arabia ceased to a slightly nonsensical province and became a box representing the Egyptian interior or Yemen, for example, it could have a port on the Red Sea (those bits of the Red Sea shown on the map can be made a sea province) and manpower could flow from the interior/Yemen to Egypt, but not vice versa. Alternatively a box at bottom left corner of empty Africa could be sending empire resources via a sea province to Azores and thence to Portugal. If the sea province connects only to Azores, the box is unreachable. But if you want trade and not just manpower/revenue, the flow has to be two-way. (Call the box Guinea Coast then - France, England, Holland, Sweden, Denmark, Prussia, even Courland all competed for control there.)

I think you have probably already re-used Arabia, and I am going well beyond the scope of 1.6, but since the topic is sea areas I'm just laying out the idea. The potential one-way property of sea provinces is a feature of the MTW1 engine that I've never seen exploited, and it could be. (And what makes it more exploitable is the way the game will recognise a port as serving a province without the port having physically to be in the province - though obviously it's preferable if the connection between port and province/box is visible and obvious to the player.)

Finally I made error in previous post - just to be clear Spanish Coast connects to 3 provinces now and proposed Portuguese Coast would connect only to 2.

[cegorach]

Could you post images how would you see those naval areas? Or is it just merging one area with another and renaming thing?

When it comes to the colonial thing every province entry is taken or will be by new provinces in other areas of the map so not even a single 'colonial' can be spared.

One way access is impossible in land provinces and results in CTDs - I have tested it 10 years ago when trying to simulate Skaven tunnels - not sure about sea zones, but I doubt it is different.

[western]

Cegorach

This was my idea re losing Gulf of Cadiz



I hope you can see that. I haven't done this before.

Regarding one way sea provinces, the thing that makes one way possible with a sea province as distinct from a land province is the port. So if the Red Sea was a sea province and Arabia had a port on it but was otherwise isolated, Arabia could communicate with Egypt via the Red Sea, but nothing could go the other way. Red Sea has a coast with Egypt, but without an Egyptian port on the Red Sea, traffic into Egypt is one-way (with no crashes).

[cegorach]

All right here go the land areas.

new map.bmp



Added

- Azores - Ponta Delgada

- Holland - Leiden (port in Rotterdam) - Friesland changed into Northern Netherlands (Amsterdam),

- Luxemburg - northern Lorraine (Luxemburg),

- Rheinland - western Franconia (Cologne),

- Munster-Oldenburg - western Saxony (Munster),

- Jutland - mainland Denmark (Aarhus),

- Royal Hungary (Pressburg)

- Eastern Prussia (Konigsberg),

- Courland - (Mitau and Libau),

- Dalmatia - (Ragusa)


REMOVED

- Murcia,

- Lesser Armenia, Antioch, Tripoli, Edessa, Mesopotamia, Sinai,

- Libya, Arabia, Algavre,


As you can see some provinces were reshaped and renamed, but that is easy to notice.

BTW The bmp above is enlargened 1:2, here are BMPs in original size:

FE_MINIMAP_LUKUP_f1.bmp

MINILUKUP_f1.bmp

[cegorach]

When it comes to provincial colours as long as Tripoli ID is used for Holland (for one event) and Syria stays where it is it should be fine.

As you can see certain areas lost contact with each other and for example Switzerland is considerably bigger, but that can be discussed later.

Right now the choice of new areas how I see it.

We get The Netherlands how they should look like, more areas in Germany, two province safer Portugal (Azores instead of Algavre), more Baltic provinces, Denmark safe if its fleet protects its capital, Royal Hungary shielding HRE, eastern steppes in much better condition than they are right now.

A number of factions is given two provinces and some are better protected - see Austria now shielded by Royal Hungary and Carinthia.
Northern Africa is divided because land expansion through Africa should be impossible without a fleet. This should also force the Ottomans to attack in Europe and against Georgia (or Persia if it is present).

I am rather happy with those choices, though a land corridor might be added (in startpos files not on the map) between Milan, Spanish possessions in south-east France and Flandres if we feel it should be there.

[zweihander]

-delete-

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[zweihander]

All right here go the land areas.

new map.bmp



Added

- Azores - Ponta Delgada

- Holland - Leiden (port in Rotterdam) - Friesland changed into Northern Netherlands (Amsterdam),

- Luxemburg - northern Lorraine (Luxemburg),

- Rheinland - western Franconia (Cologne),

- Munster-Oldenburg - western Saxony (Munster),

- Jutland - mainland Denmark (Aarhus),

- Royal Hungary (Pressburg)

- Eastern Prussia (Konigsberg),

- Courland - (Mitau and Libau),

- Dalmatia - (Ragusa)


REMOVED

- Murcia,

- Lesser Armenia, Antioch, Tripoli, Edessa, Mesopotamia, Sinai,

- Libya, Arabia, Algavre,


As you can see some provinces were reshaped and renamed, but that is easy to notice.

BTW The bmp above is enlargened 1:2, here are BMPs in original size:

FE_MINIMAP_LUKUP_f1.bmp

MINILUKUP_f1.bmp

I check the map you post many times, and I believe this list is incomplete. Do you add more provinces than which are listed here?

[cegorach]

No, but some look differently - see Italy, Ukraine or Austria - in each case some changes are made, but won't need much effort and will not take province IDs from removed/merged areas.

[western]

Just one point on the map. While the province choices are great, for playability might it be worth thickening up Dalmatia? I'm thinking that if you have a few stacks it's going to be hard to tell who is in Dalmatia and who is in Croatia. By the time you've put in a castle and a port, there won't be much room to stand. And then there's the problem of fitting the name on the map...

[cegorach]

Just one point on the map. While the province choices are great, for playability might it be worth thickening up Dalmatia? I'm thinking that if you have a few stacks it's going to be hard to tell who is in Dalmatia and who is in Croatia. By the time you've put in a castle and a port, there won't be much room to stand. And then there's the problem of fitting the name on the map...

Here is a screenshot from a game as Ragusa (Lion of the North).

raguza.bmp





There is enough space for everything. If there will be any problems it won't be too difficult to correct them.

[western]

Cool! Seeing the thing it looks great - big improvement on generic vanilla provinces.

[western]

There's an error in the old XL map used by PMTW 1.5. See the post by Pons over at TW center. Doesn't sound like it affects much, but no reason why it should be carried forward to any new map