CK2 Dev Diary #78 - Polishing up the Map

[sreckom92]

No.

It takes few minutes to check such things. If somebody is not capable of checking it or too lazy to it, then such person shouldn't do it, and especially take money for it. This game pretends to be as much historically accurate as possible, yet has blatant mistakes and errors. For such price of game and it's dlcs we can except much better quality and accuracy.

CK2 isn't meant to be a tool for educating people, or to be a definitive source of information for someone. As such, Paradox devs are not committing a crime for making a mistake.
It is meant to be a video game.
Of course, historical accuracy is desirable.
But firing someone over mistakes for one small particular map region is quite silly.

 

[[Arthur-PDX]]

Did You fix Coat of Arms of Krakow to be a proper one? It still uses CoA of city of Kielce.

Yeah, this one was the most time appropriate I could find : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbols_of_Kraków#/media/File:POL_Kraków_COA.svg


Arthur

 

[XYN]

I hope CK2 nearing the end. Woulf be great to see "it is our last expansion" in the announcement.

How about Sápmi or West Africa?

All what they can do about Sampi is pretty muvh fantasy, I am afraid there isn't much room for Polish.

 

[Me_]

Darn, after all those years, I might actually try playing in Poland. it was way too unrealistic for me so far (not knowing the geography of other nations helps ignore errors).

 

[Arrowkill]

Where does the quoted post even suggest that? It's all the usual stuff.

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/ck2-dev-diary-59-publishing-ck2.1036690/

Among other threads I cannot find, they have said multiple times that CK2 is nearing the end of its life and development will be coming to a close.

 

[XYN]

No.

It takes few minutes to check such things. If somebody is not capable of checking it or too lazy to it, then such person shouldn't do it, and especially take money for it. This game pretends to be as much historically accurate as possible, yet has blatant mistakes and errors. For such price of game and it's dlcs we can except much better quality and accuracy.

It doesn't pretend. PDX games are openly goofy about history and don't hide it. Why would anyone take them as hardcore history games is beyond me.

 

[Voy]

It doesn't pretend. PDX games are openly goofy about history and don't hide it. Why would anyone take them as hardcore history games is beyond me.

I think wishful thinking plays a part, there aren't any hard core historical games out there.

 

[MrocznyEwaporat]

Also, if you want to make 4 counties out of the 5 yellow regions of the map, you should probably merge Sieradz and Łęczyca (like it was done in the old version of CK2), and not Kujawy and Łęczyca. Sieradz and Łęczyca had more common history than all the other possible pairs (maybe except Kujawy and Dobrzyń, but they are on different sides of Vistula, and players love to have borders on major rivers).

Of course it'd also be a good idea to just have 5 counties here.

 

[Bernard95]

It's worth noting how the first second dev diary for Jade Dragon showed us (and before the expansion was announced) maps of Tibet and reworked eastern part of the map.
Maybe...just maybe this is an indicator of the next expansion. Perhaps indeed something for the Slavs? Or even for Holy Roman Empire?
I just can't help myself from speculating...

Those are my thoughts exactly. With any luck, maybe we'll at least get a Slavic portrait pack out of this. Perhaps they're even looking to improve the neglected defensive pagans in particular, and come to think of it, maybe this ties back to what they said about wanting to do more societies. Pagans definitely need them, but considering the region the Teutonic Order immediately springs to mind as well. Maybe they'll make holy orders like the Teutonic Order societies and go with some kind of Baltic Crusade theme or something.

 

[elvain]

This:
But, you don't really need a historically accurate map to see that Hradec Králové is not a part of Moravia, or Znojmo is a part of Austria. Or the fact that the map looks terrible in its current state. @[Arthur-PDX]

Yup, agreed. Hopefully this will get fixed when Bohemia seems to be adressed aswell.
btw, here is a map I used as source for those I did and which were already uploaded here:

used as source for a map I uploaded earlier. (That post was edited with further explanation)

OTOH, frankly I think that while Bohemia/Moravia have some inaccuracies like this... and the ones with Hradec and Znojmo are big ones, Bohemia is still doing very well compared to other regions...

and in particular I mean Germany (German speaking lands as pointed out by @Ruwaard ), North and West Africa and perhaps Wallachia. These desperately need some nice touch.

 

[WJS]

I think wishful thinking places a part, there aren't any hard core historical games out there.

Wouldn't a true hard-core historical game have to necessarily take choice away from the player, in order to maintain history? And then it's less of a game, and more of a simulation one just sits back and observes?

 

[klopkr]

I'm glad you guys aren't dead.

Map improvements at this stage of the game is excellent since I assume many parts of the map will be ported forward.

 

[Voy]

Wouldn't a true hard-core historical game have to necessarily take choice away from the player, in order to maintain history? And then it's less of a game, and more of a simulation one just sits back and observes?

I wouldn't mind, but it doesn't have to be. It just require CK2 to be 100 times deeper than it already is. The game's limitations is kind of frustrating, but understandable.

 

[TheDungen]

I'm glad you guys aren't dead.

Map improvements at this stage of the game is excellent since I assume many parts of the map will be ported forward.

I was rathe rhoping they'd use the opportunity to start over with the map, perhaps use the old one as inspiration but this map was taken from CK1 which took it from EU3 which took it from EU2. and so on. It is about time they do that thing the swedish military always says "Gör om och gör rätt" (Do it again and do it right).

 

[Ols]

Well Paradox has clearly taken concerns like yours on board and has taken steps towards improving the West Slavic kingdoms, so I don't see what you're hypothesising about. Most likely the mistakes occurred because Paradox did not have someone with a good knowledge of Poland and Bohemia in the team at the time.

 

[Ekscalybur]

It's interesting. What would be a large mistake for you then? A mistake in Scandinavia, especially in Sweden? A mistake in your region or country?
Is EU2 map, which had Polish regions completely swapped and so in wrong places also a minor mistake?
Of course mistakes happen, and Paradox games are full of them. In this case we are not speaking of single mistake though. Polish region has a lot of duplicated or misnamed towns, and this wasn't corrected for six years. In general, in Paradox games Poland has plenty of mistakes and is one of the least developed.
For me, such mistakes and lack of care to fix them shows lack of respect towards said nation and country. Furthermore such mistakes don't happen that often in other regions. If someone from Paradox finds this region uninteresting or unimportant, or they dislike it because of history with plenty of wars between Scandinavians and West Slavs, this could be a case of racism and nationalism, something Paradox is seeming to despise.
If it would prove true, it could create a lot of bad press for Paradox, and not only in the press, but even further.



It didn't knew that having towns with proper names in proper places makes strategy hardcore.

Really, you're going to throw the lack or respect card out there? For a minuscule mistake, because what you've been going on about is a minuscule mistake, in a videogame.

No, you're going to completely jump out of reality and throw down the racism card. Snowflake much?

 

[sreckom92]

It's interesting. What would be a large mistake for you then? A mistake in Scandinavia, especially in Sweden? A mistake in your region or country?
Is EU2 map, which had Polish regions completely swapped and so in wrong places also a minor mistake?
Of course mistakes happen, and Paradox games are full of them. In this case we are not speaking of single mistake though. Polish region has a lot of duplicated or misnamed towns, and this wasn't corrected for six years. In general, in Paradox games Poland has plenty of mistakes and is one of the least developed.
For me, such mistakes and lack of care to fix them shows lack of respect towards said nation and country. Furthermore such mistakes don't happen that often in other regions. If someone from Paradox finds this region uninteresting or unimportant, or they dislike it because of history with plenty of wars between Scandinavians and West Slavs, this could be a case of racism and nationalism, something Paradox is seeming to despise.
If it would prove true, it could create a lot of bad press for Paradox, and not only in the press, but even further.

A large mistake would be if the game crashed to desktop every time you launch it. Or anything that literally makes a paid content unplayable, for a long period of time.
That sort of thing perhaps warrants a loss of job for someone in my book. Not a wrong town name.
Why don't you post a suggestion, in the Suggestion forum? I

Lack of respect towards a country and nation? Racism?
OK, you're taking this way too seriously, and I'm not interested discussing the matter further.

 

[LeSingeAffame]

That's where we're at. Implying that the whole Paradox company may be racist because they didn't correct a video-game map.
What a wonderful world.

 

[XYN]

It's interesting. What would be a large mistake for you then? A mistake in Scandinavia, especially in Sweden? A mistake in your region or country?
Is EU2 map, which had Polish regions completely swapped and so in wrong places also a minor mistake?
Of course mistakes happen, and Paradox games are full of them. In this case we are not speaking of single mistake though. Polish region has a lot of duplicated or misnamed towns, and this wasn't corrected for six years. In general, in Paradox games Poland has plenty of mistakes and is one of the least developed.
For me, such mistakes and lack of care to fix them shows lack of respect towards said nation and country. Furthermore such mistakes don't happen that often in other regions. If someone from Paradox finds this region uninteresting or unimportant, or they dislike it because of history with plenty of wars between Scandinavians and West Slavs, this could be a case of racism and nationalism, something Paradox is seeming to despise.
If it would prove true, it could create a lot of bad press for Paradox, and not only in the press, but even further.



It didn't knew that having towns with proper names in proper places makes strategy hardcore.

Accusing them in racism out of the blue is pretty low.

Don't be a snowflake. The whole map has tons of inaccuracies or wild assumptions to fill gaps.

 

[Ols]

That's actually one of the map I used While your arguments are all valid, it's a bit more tricky that just pasting the map in Photoshop and painting over it, and a few things are a bit wonkier than the others because of Gameplay/Level Design constraints, basically

I feel your pain. As much as I'd love to be able to trace maps out into provinces ingame there's the inevitable problem of the map projections and terrain map not lining up right. What would be really handy would be some standardised way to warp a map projection to correspond to the CKII projection as well as a sort of graphical province editor that let you view the terrain in 3d whilst drawing provinces. Hard to stack up 3 layers of pixelated files and really understand what you're drawing.