[Submod] Gaea 1.4.5d (Updated Map) - 04/08/2019

[JonStryker]

The Danube served as a border for a thousand years. The settlement of the Bulgarians and slavs on both sides of it is the only reason that stared to change.

In the upper regions of the Danube (Bavaria, Austria, Hungary) the Danube did not serve as a state border since the Romans left. There's plenty of cities that (eventually) grew to two sides of fairly big rivers and which were in the center of a realm and not at the fringes of it. Paris is on both sides of the Seine since a long time. Vienna grew to both sides of the Danube. The Thames runs right through London. The settlements of Pest and Ofen that grew into Budapest were on different sides of the Danube.
Sometimes a big and dangerous river marks the border between two realms. But more often than not a river is an important trade route. Think of a realm that is mountainous and/or forested. The easiest way to get downriver (and even upriver) is to just grab a boat. It is actually harder to find rivers that have always been at the border of realms rather than in the center of it.

 

[Marinakis]

In the upper regions of the Danube (Bavaria, Austria, Hungary) the Danube did not serve as a state border since the Romans left. There's plenty of cities that (eventually) grew to two sides of fairly big rivers and which were in the center of a realm and not at the fringes of it. Paris is on both sides of the Seine since a long time. Vienna grew to both sides of the Danube. The Thames runs right through London. The settlements of Pest and Ofen that grew into Budapest were on different sides of the Danube.
Sometimes a big and dangerous river marks the border between two realms. But more often than not a river is an important trade route. Think of a realm that is mountainous and/or forested. The easiest way to get downriver (and even upriver) is to just grab a boat. It is actually harder to find rivers that have always been at the border of realms rather than in the center of it.

Well yeah, it depends on the river, mountain range, overall geography, demographics and politics of a region. The upper Danube is different from the lower. The Thames is different from the Rhine, etc.

All I am saying is people tend to look at a map using the knowedge of how borders, nations and demographics would develop from the 800s to today. The game is a sandbox. The fact that the slavs would come to utterly dominate the region between Austria and Bulgaria was not known back then. For example, the Bulgarians were a nation which, in the 800s, had a VERY uncertain future. The borders between the "French" and other germanic people's around the Rhine had not been settled, etc. I just don't like looking at this game using the biases of 1200 years of historic geopolitical knowedge. That's all.

 

[nsinger998]

@JonStryker:

Good points but CK2 doesn't have dynamic county adjustment which leaves a map modder with a descision:

Of the 700(600ish in swmh) That CK2 covers, Which part of this time period will my map be based on? At the earliest start, One could use borders close to the roman ones but not at later start dates.

 

[JonStryker]

@JonStryker:

Good points but CK2 doesn't have dynamic county adjustment which leaves a map modder with a descision:

Of the 700(600ish in swmh) That CK2 covers, Which part of this time period will my map be based on? At the earliest start, One could use borders close to the roman ones but not at later start dates.

I never said that Roman borders should be used. Just that the Danube usually was not used as a border. With the exception of the Romans who used it as their Northern border.
My point being that borders that are known from historic maps should be used and borders not be redrawn according to rivers.

 

[Marinakis]

Hey guys.

So I am almost done the provinces (Just have to add the sea provinces), but I wanted to get a vote on something before I started locations.

Previously there was some feedback that the Mongol/Turkic Steppes were SLIGHTLY cut off from the vanilla map. This is due to the vanilla map being highly distorted to squeeze in the eastern steppes within map parameters that really should include it. (aka Paradox got lazy and took shortcuts). Within that context, my map parameters were chosen to focus on Europe, North/central Africa, the Iranian/Kazakhstan Steppes as well as western India.

I say the following within the framework that I WAS able to get all the provinces contained on the HIP map into my map. Admittedly, I was forced to skeeze a few of the most easterly steppe provinces into the map in a slightly ahistorical way. However, I thought it was worth sacrificing a little historical location accuracy (an inaccuracy probably 95% of people wouldn't even recognize) for the sake of gameplay balance.

Now, BEFORE I start working on city locations, I could move the map a bit east to grab a little more of the landmass of the steppes. This would involve me adding a lot more wastelands in the Russian steppes just to add a few more inches of map to expand the territory of 3 or 4 steppe provinces and 1 Indian province (Remember, I WAS able to squeeze every province in regardless of the potential change).

The downside of moving the map a bit east is the fact that I will guarantee the loss of a few island provinces off the West African coast as well as, likely the vast majority of Iceland. Initially, I specifically chose my map parameters to slightly cut the map short by an inch or two off the coast in West Africa/Iceland as well as the Steppes, but not so much so on either end to force the lose of any provinces.

Hope that block of text makes sense...

Let me know:
Option 1 - Keep the map as is
Option 2 - Move the map east and lose parts of the West African coast and most of Iceland.

Some pics for visual reference

 

[zijistark]

Hey guys.

So I am almost done the provinces (Just have to add the sea provinces), but I wanted to get a vote on something before I started locations.

Previously there was some feedback that the Mongol/Turkic Steppes were SLIGHTLY cut off from the vanilla map. This is due to the vanilla map being highly distorted to squeeze in the eastern steppes within map parameters that really should include it. (aka Paradox got lazy and took shortcuts). Within that context, my map parameters were chosen to focus on Europe, North/central Africa, the Iranian/Kazakhstan Steppes as well as western India.

I say the following within the framework that I WAS able to get all the provinces contained on the HIP map into my map. Admittedly, I was forced to skeeze a few of the most easterly steppe provinces into the map in a slightly ahistorical way. However, I thought it was worth sacrificing a little historical location accuracy (an inaccuracy probably 95% of people wouldn't even recognize) for the sake of gameplay balance.

Now, BEFORE I start working on city locations, I could move the map a bit east to grab a little more of the landmass of the steppes. This would involve me adding a lot more wastelands in the Russian steppes just to add a few more inches of map to expand the territory of 3 or 4 steppe provinces and 1 Indian province (Remember, I WAS able to squeeze every province in regardless of the potential change).

The downside of moving the map a bit east is the fact that I will guarantee the loss of a few island provinces off the West African coast as well as, likely the vast majority of Iceland. Initially, I specifically chose my map parameters to slightly cut the map short by an inch or two off the coast in West Africa/Iceland as well as the Steppes, but not so much so on either end to force the lose of any provinces.

Hope that block of text makes sense...

Let me know:
Option 1 - Keep the map as is
Option 2 - Move the map east and lose parts of the West African coast and most of Iceland.

Some pics for visual reference
View attachment 281395 View attachment 281397 View attachment 281398 View attachment 281399 View attachment 281400 View attachment 281401 View attachment 281402 View attachment 281403 View attachment 281404 View attachment 281405 View attachment 281406

Is there an option #3 that isn't being considered yet? Because there should be, ideally. While nobody cares about the Canary Islands (why they even have Gaunche tribal rulers on them right now is a total mystery to me -- it's more of an easter egg than anything which makes the map more historically accurate or fun to play), cutting off any part of the West African continental coast is a pretty nasty alternative to an eastward expansion, and the eastward expansion is IMO quite necessary.

Why is the eastern expansion necessary? With your current map, you're already squeezing off, e.g., the mongol spawn point, but furthermore, Tibet will be added with the upcoming major patch / expansion (2.8), and the SWMH team has already decided that they are indeed going to add Tibet. And that's a good decision, because the next DLC is going to make that area quite a bit more interesting and relevant.

 

[Marinakis]

Well, you are advocating for option 2, not sure why you need an option 3. The map has a max resolution. Maybe the developers will increase the resolution when they add Tibet. But, my map already runs on the max resolution, so to move it easterly, I will have to lose an equal pixel count on the western side of the map as I gain on the eastern side of the map.

Anyway, thanks for the feedback. Ill see what everyone else says before making a decision.

 

[zijistark]

Well, you are advocating for option 2, not sure why you need an option 3. The map has a max resolution. Maybe the developers will increase the resolution when they add Tibet. But, my map already runs on the max resolution, so to move it easterly, I will have to lose an equal pixel count on the western side of the map as I gain on the eastern side of the map.

The developers definitely won't increase the max. dimensions and resolution of the map in 2.8 / when Tibet cometh. However, if your projection were correctly scaled in the first place, it would have definitely all been able to fit.

I realize now, of course, that you've put too much manual effort into the map that cannot be easily transformed to a slightly altered reprojection, so yeah, there isn't really an option #3.

In that case, definitely hack off west africa. It's far less popular & historically relevant to the rest of the map & relevant to special game features and content than the Steppe & Tarim Basin as it is now on SWMH & even Tibet. I mean, I'm the HIP lead, and I religiously only play MiniSWMH, wherein west africa (ghana, etc.) is already wasteland -- mainly because I find the playthrough results of incl. them on the map to be often rather ahistorical & implausible. So, for me at least, as long as you don't cut provinces from k_maghreb and k_mauretania (though cutting off part of them would be fine), I wouldn't even perceive any loss when playing [assuming this thing ends up compatible with MiniSWMH, which it will so long as it's compatible with SWMH without overriding history files or landed_titles].

 

[Marinakis]

With respect - My map was and is projected correctly. I was asking for the opinions of others to see if there was a big desire for more steppes. I personally don't care all that much for steppe nations or far east Asia nations - nothing against them personally, its just not my flavor of interest. I personally like Europe, the Near East, Iran, North Africa and Ethiopia... that's just me. Hense, I emphasized those regions.

With that being said, it would not be super difficult to re-scale the map and provinces to include tibet. I wasn't aware that HIP was adding them in the future. If the HIP team confirms they're updating the map to go further east, I'll do the same.

 

[nsinger998]

I say leave the map as it is, because the focus of Swmh was always more westerly.

 

[elvain]

I would support ziji's call for an option 3:
You can cut (or better, move or distort) the Canary islands as well as move Iceland a bit closer to Europe and use that space in the East to make the map there look little better there. I would agree that while having less sea in the West and tiny distortion of Canary islands (meh, who cares about them after all) and of Iceland would definitely be worth having a little more accurate East, especially since you will need that space for Tibet (You'll need to distort it heavily in any case).

So the question IMHO basically is how much to cut in the west and add to the east. You won't be able to move eastwards enough to have propper Tibet anyways.
As somebody heavily interested in both ends of the map and especially in Africa, I would say that even cutting small portion of West African coast is no harm. Actually the coastal provinces there don't really need the coast, since they should not be navigable anyway and thus it does not really matter if they lose few westernmost kilometers as long as they stay in.

So you can move the map as far as you can keep some basic land to those westernmost provinces and you can squeeze them somehow as you did to the eastern provinces now. Would that mean moving Iceland closer to continent or making it a little smaller and doing the same for Canary islands? Go for it! After all they are both the most marginal and isolated parts of the map, while the Eastern edge is essential for the Mongols and will be for Tibet.

I know it means quite a lot of work for relatively small gain but considering the addition of Tibet, I think it's worth it.

 

[Marinakis]

So, some of the map developers confirmed that Tibet will be included at a later date...

As such, I took a few hours and expanded my map to include most of Tibet (Steppe lovers rejoice.... ). I'll fit the provinces in later this week.

I literally refined/redrew every square inch of coastline from my original map to make it as accurate as humanly possible as compared to actual satellite images. (With a few exceptions.. Ariel Sea and Netherlands... I'm looking at you.)

My eyes are shot.

The World

The East

Netherlands

 

[G.Strategos]

Looking good. Keep it up buddy.

 

[Farbolo]

Does this mean that you had to start all over again? Oh man, I admire your perseverane, but I certainly do not envy you. Also: Will you fill India completely ?

 

[The Guru]

What? Amputating Iceland? No, noooooooo

 

[Ese Khan]

As such, I took a few hours and expanded my map to include most of Tibet (Steppe lovers rejoice.... ). I'll fit the provinces in later this week.

I hate to suggest this because it's like encouraging you to fiddle with the map again, but if you want to save some space to the east so that you can add the western edge of Iceland, you can cut everything east of Bosten Lake, located to the northeast of the Tarim basin. SWMH's easternmost province, Karashahr/Yanqi, is located just west of that lake.

 

[Marinakis]

Does this mean that you had to start all over again? Oh man, I admire your perseverane, but I certainly do not envy you. Also: Will you fill India completely ?

No, not really, it is a delay, but not a ful-on start over. The new map is a 8% scale-down of my old one, so I can use all my old stuff, just have to scale it down and clean it up.

I will only fill in India as much as SWMH does.

What? Amputating Iceland? No, noooooooo

Not really. Lost a tiny bit more from my old map, but not much. The extra territory is due to a smaller scale across the board (8%).

I hate to suggest this because it's like encouraging you to fiddle with the map again, but if you want to save some space to the east so that you can add the western edge of Iceland, you can cut everything east of Bosten Lake, located to the northeast of the Tarim basin. SWMH's easternmost province, Karashahr/Yanqi, is located just west of that lake.

Ha, nah. Ill keep it where it is

 

[Farbolo]

No, not really, it is a delay, but not a ful-on start over. The new map is a 8% scale-down of my old one, so I can use all my old stuff, just have to scale it down and clean it up.

I will only fill in India as much as SWMH does.

Ah, what a pity I had already hope. But I surely will try your map nonetheless keep it up.

 

[Marinakis]

More than enough room for a future Tibet now. The map even extends into western parts of modern Mongolia if the team ever decided to expand into there.

No one can have any issues with the map's eastern regions now

Note: Obviously, many of the eastern most and southern most provinces are very rough.

 

[JonStryker]

Why did you have to cut off from the west anyways? Is there any reason of adhering to vanilla's 3x2 ratio?