Hamgyeong, Gangneung and Jeolla can all be divided without making micro-provinces. I think
@Bella Gerant would know how to go about a Korean rework.
Sorry I didn't get back to you sooner. Was just trying to figure how to go about it without just copying M&T. Which makes this a shameless plug for M&T because they've done a rather lovely job at depicting Korea (they split up the 8 provinces into 17, cutting each in half and making Jejudo its own province) in terms of geography (actually having mountains). Puts it up to 311 development, over 3 times the current Korean development, which makes sense since Korea had a population and land area greater than England proper in 1400 (puts it actually in kingdom rank).
Oh cool, I like the addition of Oshima. Hopefully there'll be a way to keep it from making Japan eat the Ainu even quicker though.
Well... yeah? One is heavily undeveloped Manchuria, the other is densely developed Korea. I'm no expert on the specifics of Manchurian population trends, but from a glance at wikipedia it says even in 1750, the entirety of Manchuria was ~ 1 million people. Silla Korea (which wasn't even the entire peninsula) had between 2 and 4 million inhabitants in 750, a thousand years earlier, and by EU4's period that was probably more than doubled. Korea's population state was extremely precarious from the mid-late EU4 period (and the figures are still controversial) but for most of history it's been one of the denser parts of Asia.
That's a fair point, though I'm pretty sure that the devs have stated that population != development and that the latter is more balance than historical, seeing as Germany alone has more development than all of China despite China being vastly more populated throughout history. Add the rest of Western Europe (France, Italy, Spain, the British Isles) etc. into the equation and a population maybe a third of Ming China's (western Europe had around 57 million people in 1500 while the Ming had perhaps 155 million at the same time) has 3x the development (around 3600 development compared to 1109) at the start of the game. Of course, if the Ming Empire had 9000 development, it'd be slightly overpowered.
Korea's near 100 development makes it easy to vassalize (just takes two wars) which is what the Manchu did in the 1600s (two invasions, vassalization by war). I imagine that's what led the devs to assign Korea its development value.
I don't think 1.19 Korea was crying out for new provinces relative to its neighbors, but with Japan the better part of twice as dense, and the Manchus buffed significantly, I think it could definitely stand to have a few more. Personally I'd redistribute the southern provinces (Gyeongsang, Jeolla, Gyeonggi) as they were the densest parts of the peninsula with the most farmland, whereas the north has always been less populated, but I guess maybe gameplay wise with the fort setup a case could be made for the north too.
Alternatively you could rejig them based on terrain- I've been meaning to write up for a while, but Korea's terrain could do with a significant rework- the peninsula is notoriously mountainous, to the point it's been instrumental Korea's survival throughout history. Changing up the provinces to accommodate that (the southeast for instance was almost entirely cut off from the rest of the peninsula by mountains) could be good.
Terrain's definitely a sticking point here. 70% of Korea is mountainous and while most of those mountains are rather small (there's a lot them, jeez), the terrain made it difficult to invade and subdue. However, of Korea's 14 provinces in-game, 9 are grasslands, 4 are woods, and Jejudo is coastline. None of those provinces types provide any sort of fort defense and only 4 of them provide a defensive bonus in battle.
Just for reference, here's the topography of the Korean peninsula:
West and North should have some mountain or, at the very least, hill provinces. The geography mapmode depicts a ridge in the northern "grassland," for chrissake!
And a map of where the major cities in the South are relative to
Strangely enough, all of the provinces bordering Korea, with the exception of Furdan, are designated as mountain provinces. Two of the Korean border provinces are marked as woods and one is grassland.
Anyways, the traditional 8 provinces follow geography to begin with (Korea's in-game 14 provinces are just involve splitting 5 of the provinces in two and isolating Jejudo). M&T just splits them up in a different way (Pyongan split east-west instead of in-game north-south). Any division of Korea's likely to follow the 8 in some fashion.
But yeah, a bit more development wouldn't hurt, more provinces would be nice, and a geography fix would be amazing.
Also, splitting up the sea tiles (Christ, this is just a M&T plug).
