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CK2 Dev Diary #81 - Cleaning up the Map

Greetings!

The last few Dev Diaries have had you visit the Cartographer’s office to look at several reworked areas of the map - while there are more, we don’t want to show them all in a row, lest we risk you getting bored of them!

Today we will instead take a look at a minor free feature, an optional new Game Rule that might just help those of us that really can’t stand irregular borders! Like the map changes, this change will arrive in the free update that will accompany the next expansion. This feature is a pet project of mine, and an attempt to cure situations such as these:
Bordergore_example.png

As you can see in this example, Scotland holds a province in mainland Anatolia. There’s no logical way for them to control this territory - there’s no land connection, it’s not connected via ports, and it’s not part of their De Jure area.

The Game Rule is called ‘Exclave Independence', and aims to do just that - set exclaves independent. Being an optional Game Rule, it’s very modular, and is mainly intended as a tool for increasing immersion.
Exclave_GR.png


The Scotland example pictured previously is really the worst case scenario, and would be covered by any of the settings. As the ruler of Scotland dies, the game will try to identify any ‘exclaves’ and take appropriate action. If there are rulers whose land is completely situated in an exclave, they will be set independent, otherwise a peasant leader will seize control of the land. In this case the result will look like this:
Bordergore_cured.png


I can tell you that, if you’re like me, the difference playing with this Game Rule is like night and day. After a few hundred years you’ll no longer have a map that makes you want to claw your eyes out! As I mentioned earlier there are many different settings, and here is a full list of them:
Added the ‘Exclave Independence’ Game Rule, with the purpose of eliminating disconnected land on succession. As long as the new ruler during a succession isn’t at war, their exclaves should be set independent according to the setting. If the AI is at war during succession, they will try to remove exclaves once every year until such a time they are no longer at war (does not apply to Players). Settings:
  • Off - The default option, no removal.
  • Limited - Exclaves of Independent Rulers at peace will be removed on succession unless they are connected to the Capital area with gaps no larger than one County, via a naval path or part of the characters primary De Jure territory.
  • Limited (Naval) - Exclaves of Independent Rulers at peace will be removed on succession unless they are connected to the Capital area with gaps no larger than one County, via a limited naval path (1000 distance units) or part of the characters primary De Jure territory.
  • Significant - Exclaves of Independent Rulers at peace will be removed on succession unless they are connected via a naval path or part of the characters primary De Jure territory.
  • Harsh - Exclaves of Independent Rulers at peace will be removed on succession unless as they are connected via a limited naval path (1000 distance units) or part of the characters primary De Jure.
  • Total - Exclaves of Independent Rulers at peace will be removed on succession unless as they are connected via a limited naval path (1000 distance units). Disables Achievements.

To show a more tangible example, I loaded up an old save and added the Game Rule to it. It looked like this:
Exclave_ex2.png


After the death of the ruler of the Mongol Empire (the light blue spots) the result produced this:
Exclave_cure_mongol.png


And after the death of the King of Bengal:
Exclave_cure2.png

As you can see, the two Mongol provinces were overtaken by Peasant Leaders as they were much too far away from their steppe overlords. Bengals land, on the other hand, simply had the vassals declare independence, as they held no land in non-exclave land.

I hope this small feature will be of interest to some of you, in the next DD we will return to the cartographer's office with another exciting update!

Please note that the time between Dev Diaries will be irregular, as we’re still early in the development cycle.
 
How far is the distance? For instance, in my Italy game I had a Black sea trading post all by itself (usually in my demesne). Would Spain be too far? Britain?
 
How historically accurate is this?

If it is accurate to history then which option is the best?
There is no historical example of exclaves spontaneously abandoning their lieges because there happened to be some land of a different liege between them, that I am aware of.
However, there are a lot more examples of exclaves in a CKII game than in history, because of the way the game works. Prussia never held a county in Abkhazia in real life, but here it happens every Tuesday. That is not historically accurate either.
This is an ahistorical measure to solve an even more ahistorical problem. And the fanbase rejoiced.

Which option is the best will depend on your taste.
 
There is no historical example of exclaves spontaneously abandoning their lieges because there happened to be some land of a different liege between them, that I am aware of.
However, there are a lot more examples of exclaves in a CKII game than in history, because of the way the game works. Prussia never held a county in Abkhazia in real life, but here it happens every Tuesday. That is not historically accurate either.
This is an ahistorical measure to solve an even more ahistorical problem. And the fanbase rejoiced.

Which option is the best will depend on your taste.

And your solution to the problem would have been . . . ?
 
There is no historical example of exclaves spontaneously abandoning their lieges because there happened to be some land of a different liege between them, that I am aware of.
However, there are a lot more examples of exclaves in a CKII game than in history, because of the way the game works. Prussia never held a county in Abkhazia in real life, but here it happens every Tuesday. That is not historically accurate either.
This is an ahistorical measure to solve an even more ahistorical problem. And the fanbase rejoiced.

Which option is the best will depend on your taste.

This is the wrong way to solve it though


The A.I. should be reworked to prioritize certain provinces over others

Penalties to characters should be given if they had exclaves
 
This is the wrong way to solve it though


The A.I. should be reworked to prioritize certain provinces over others

Penalties to characters should be given if they had exclaves
Or, you know, keep it simple stupid.
No need to do an over complicated system which would probably be worse overall than the exclave removal system we currently have
 
And your solution to the problem would have been . . . ?
Hey, I like the system! I always put it on the harsh setting in any CKII game. The fact that it is ahistorical is a necessary evil to prevent even more ahistorical bordergore.
 
I mean sure there isn't really an example of a Medieval exclave becoming independent only because they aren't geographically connected to the rest of somebody's realm. But it's also true that if a Medieval ruler's power couldn't reach a part of his realm (which would be the case with most of the exclaves pre-HF games produced) then he might be able to call himself ruler of that place, but he wouldn't get any of the benefits of said title. Imagine being a medieval ruler and having an exclave deep into enemy territory...why would that enemy allow the taxes and troops from that place to reach you? Or even allow for your commands to reach said exclave? The real world didn't have 100% reliable carrier ravens like Game of Thrones.
Or having an exclave that is so far away that it takes months for any herald to reach them. Your contact with the vassals there would be so infrequent that they might as well independent and eventually see any command by you as a nuisance.

There really aren't many examples of Medieval exclaves unless they existed within something like the HRE or France, where there was at least some sort of overlord who's laws and degrees might allow your domain to develop into terrible bordergore. On an "international" level they were the rarity, unless connected by sea.

International exclaves only became a more common thing once the idea of a state being more than just "whatever lands the king holds" and even so in real life most exlcaves were/are tiny, close to the borders of the rest of the country they belong to and/or the result of complicated international treaties that wouldn't quite work in a CK2 timeframe.

So I think the exclave loss rule is actually a reasonaby well done abstraction of a historical reality.
 
When I first read that they were making this rule I was over the moon, but I always thought that it should be a two or even three step process - isolated exclaves should become tributaries, then weak tributaries, then independent. It's not like the arrangement would suddenly break down, it's just that the ties that bound each realm would weaken over time so that what was once a liege-vassal relationship became more of a guardian-employee relationship and then a relationship of equals.
 
Anything but the Harsh setting seems to be not very useful. Also exclaves are supposed to be lost upon succession, so it can take a long time.
I've seen rulers die and not lose exclaves on succession. They weren't at war and it wasn't in their dejure land. I tried replicating it by using console command to kill thier heirs and it still doesn't work as intended. Harsh seems like it works, but I am uninterested in any setting other than the limited ones. The border gore is the final thing that I have against ck2. Otherwise it is about as close to my perfect video game as possible.
 
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