After the End - A post-apocalyptic America mod

[Bosporus]

Alright, so I was able to get a look at the rest of California and I've got my recommendations (complete with Pictures if I don't somehow screw them up):

SoCal:
- Only a couple of changes since I covered the area before, but I would recommend moving the southern end of Blythe/Colorado Desert further south a bit, just so the actual city of Blythe is really in the province.
- I went ahead and mocked up the province splits for Riverside/Apple Valley, LA/South Bay, Coachella/Joshua Tree, and Barstow/Mojave.
- Gave the Counties of Inyo and Ridgecrest (Renamed to China Lake) to SoCal as the Duchy of Death Valley. This area doesn't really fit with NorCal at all so I threw it in with SoCal, but depending on what you do with Nevada you might find a better option there...
Duchies: 6 - Santa Ynez/Los Padres (2), LA (4), Salton (4), IE (5), Mojave (4), Death Valley (2) (21 total)

Kingdom of Inland:
- I agree with Cruxador that Kingdom of the Valley is probably the best name for this area. Its territory now completely encapsulates Sacramento.
Duchy of Kern: - Could either be Kern or Tulare (I think the latter might be better given the lake of the same name)
- Did of bunch of shuffling here as Tulare wasn't really in the right area (also I think there's overlap on the Tollhouse/Tulare holding list).
- I chopped up the Bako county to something less huge especially given that Bakersfield was practically on the very eastern edge of the province.
- I also put Tejon as part of Kern/Tulare here as I suggested earlier, but I think that if you made Tejon just a tad smaller you could keep it as part of Los Padres without it looking too weird...
- Also would recommend Avenal to King County ( or if you wanted to be fancy King's County)
Duchy of Central Valley: - Would rename to Duchy of Fresno (I'd prefer San Joaquin after the river, but it'd be weird to have a San Joaquin province outside of the San Joaquin duchy)
- I wrapped Merced around the end of the river so now Merced should be within its own borders. I also shrunk Tollhouse a little.
Duchy of Motherlode: - (I kind of like "Gold Country" better but that's just me)
- Gained the County of Tahoe, which I would recommend to change to Plumas as it better fits the area of the province.
Duchies: 4 - North Valley (5), Motherlode (4), Fresno (5) and Tulare (4) (18 total)

Kingdom of Francisco: - Would recommend either Kingdom of the Central Coast, Kingdom of SanFran, or Kingdom of San Francisco (it's weird when you drop the "san")
Duchy of Wineland:
- Took Cruxador's suggestion to split out Solano county from Napa, both of which stay in Wineland Duchy. Also shrunk Napa a bit so that Sonoma city was in Sonoma province
Duchy of Hayward: - Would recommend Duchy of the Bay ( or you could get weird and go with "The Yay Area" also Hayward is slang known as "Haystack")
Duchy of Salinas:
- Just did a bit of fuddling with the borders
- Again I agree with Cruxador here; "San Luis" sounds really odd. You could do the whole name or just Obsipo or even "SLO".
Duchies: 4 - Wineland (4), Golden Gate (2), The Bay (3), and Salinas (4) (13 total)

Kingdom of Alta Cali: - Would also recommend Kingdom of Jefferson
Duchy of Shasta-Cascade:
- Is now Redding, Klamath, Yreka, Mount Shasta and Burney
Duchy of Redwoods:
- Is now Redwoods, Eureka (change name to Humboldt), Humboldt (change name to Lost Coast), Mendocino and Bragg.
Duchies: 2 - Redwoods (5) and Shasta-Cascade (5) (10 total)

Kingdom of Nevada:
- Consists of a single duchy of Nevada, as I'm not sure what your plans are for Nevada as a whole. Technically, Modoc and Lassen should be part of Alta Cali/Jefferson (maybe as their own duchy?) but I didn't want to mess up Nevada/Oregon plans
Duchies: 1(?) - Nevada (6) (6 total)

Other random bits:
- The County/Holding of Sacramento could be renamed "Sactown" to continue the slang naming
- Correcting myself earlier regarding Cetic holy sites, the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas is actually in the Bragg province

Once again, I hope that was helpful! And for your viewing pleasure, a couple of pictures:
1st shows just suggested province boundary changes; 2nd shows only revised Duchy (thin) and Kingdom (thick) borders

 

[SteelyGlint]

*snip* (including previous post)

*also snip*

Very educational infodumps. I implemented some of the suggestions in the south, mostly for things that are just simple name changes (i.e. I was already on the fence about San Luis Obispo, and your agreement convinced me I should change it to Obispo rather than San Luis). Kingdom of the Valley sounds pretty cool, so that will also be changed. I generally prefer names that are short and memorable, so Berdoo is a good fit.

I'll have to think about and discuss the more major overhauls with the rest of the team, and I'm not sure which other things will be done. For example, carving Solano out might not happen because the provinces in that area are already quite small. As always, remember that culture and borders may have dramatically shifted over the course of 600 years.

The overall kingdom structure is a bit tricky to modify, since we want to keep them fairly equal in power and avoid tiny kingdoms.

 

[Moopli]

we want to keep them fairly equal in power and avoid tiny kingdoms

IIRC, you were thinking of having 3 kingdoms, which I can see being balanced with a bit of border-shifting. Looking at the last map Bosporus put up, the Kingdom of the Valley seems to carry the most power, but you might be able to balance that by merging Baja and SoCal (since it seems to have a lot of desert), poaching a few counties off Jefferson for Frisco (do you have a good name for this kingdom yet? Frisco isn't, but I'll use it here out of ignorance), putting Jefferson more in the south-cascadia sphere of influence (through de-jures), and orienting the remaining northeast bit of California to the great basin (again, through de-jures).

Then, since Frisco is likely still outmatched by the Valley, and most likely also outmatched by South California, you could give Frisco a vassal republic -- this competes with the southern baja republic, and would have perfect access to the central waterways (if any are done using sea zones, anyway).

I don't think the system needs to be entirely self-stabilizing though, it only needs to be stable enough that a few modded CBs and events could keep the kings in line. A CB can be granted by the Emperor to maintain the balance of power, but I'm not sure what a good victory result would be. Perhaps the CB can grant all occupied holdings, and the AI can be wired to admit defeat, and accept victory, after only a small number of holdings have changed hands (though that doesn't handle the problem of the player fighting on and conquering, this very same CB, and other tricks, would then fight against the player). To help ensure the attacker can win, the emperor can be called in (and be scripted to always accept, and join with a not-insubstantial amount of troops (justifiable as he's the religious head)). I'm not sure if there's an easily-scriptable way to call in the owners of a set of specific titles to a war, so I'm not sure how easily we could get the final kingdom involved in a balance-of-power fight, but that shouldn't be a problem, since this CB will get any overambitious kingdom attacked by the other two.

I can take a stab at testing this stuff out tomorrow -- at least, the dejure work. What do you think?

 

[CrackdToothGrin]

Exactly as now? Of course not. Relative to the rest of the country? California supported the greatest population density in what's now America without agriculture, in pre-Colombian times. Even if agriculture becomes nile-style flood-based affair with quite limited supplemental irrigation, how is it not still going to be an agricultural powerhouse by medieval standards? Hell, Egypt was the breadbasket of the Mediterranean and they had nothing BUT a flooding river. Sure, we're not looking at a modern population or infrastructure but the California valley should reasonably be on par with the river-based agricultural economies of India and China in the middle ages.

I think you're heavily misinterpreting my points. I'm not saying California would not be densely populated. It has a favorable climate and some of the best agricultural soil in the country. My points are actually completely different than that. I'm basically arguing that the junction of the navigable rivers be visually modified to reflect the delta, and that the navigable portion extends down to Tulare. That's it.

Adding some swamp terrain might be reasonable, sure.

Much more than that. Subsidence of peat beds has dropped internal elevation of most reclaimed tracts to up to 20 feet below sea level. And only a handful of the levees made are 500 class or higher, and only with constant maintenance. The maintenance they need is from having soils trucked in from far away in massive quantities or by having silt dredging rebuild the levees. Even when the technology was far past the medieval stage, in the mid 19th Century, hand labor alone (done by Chinese migrants) was insufficient to keep them dry. It required them to use modified steam vessels to dredge and use the riverine silt to build the levees. Without maintenance of that level with at least Industrial Age equipment, all it takes is one storm to flood it and it is back to where it was before.

Obviously not. But your initial post made it sound like you think the whole system is going to be gone, and honestly you're still kind of giving that impression a bit. Sure, there'll be a great big flood every once in a while (and events reflecting that would be a fun addition) but there's no reason to suppose that California won't still have exemplary water-management infrastructure by medieval standards.

I'm sure that the area would hold impressive waterworks. We've been digging irrigation canals for almost 8,000 years as a species. But, part of the problem is precisely that irrigation canals in the Sacramento Delta did not work and they tried the whole hand labor thing before realizing that annual flooding would necessitate new innovation. And the water from the delta is pumped by electricity and huge waterworks to the other 25 million people in the state who need it. If the electricity is gone, and the tech to fix it is gone, then almost all the good agricultural land dries up and goes back to the same yields of its Pre-Colonial past; Which is to say "good" but not 60% over average annual yield per acre for some crops And certainly not in the areas where massive water is required to even grow in the first place.

Whatever this Event was, it apparently erased hundreds of years of progress in addition to a lot of people. So what are the chances that enough engineers and people with specialized skills to maintain an extensive, electrical, mechanical dredging operation on a modern industrial level survived the Event, preserved the knowledge of the technology, and migrated to the region to preserve the arable reclamations without the required infrastructure?

Without Industrial Age tech, one bad storm reverses 150 years of labor. And without significant reduction of meltwater by modern age ag tech, Tulare comes back and is navigable to the Delta. It seems more likely your advanced riverine culture would utilize the river as a conduit for trade and travel like the original population did.

 

[SteelyGlint]

*snip*

Baja and Socal will remain separate. I'm not totally averse to replacing Alta Cali with Jefferson, and have been considering it for a few days.

I think it might be worthwhile to add a couple more counties, and pull several of the counties along the rim of the Great Basin into their own kingdom. One option I'm considering is to put Death Valley into its own unformable kingdom. This would get rid of the ugliness of the long strip of land connected to one of the main kingdoms. The northern Nevadan counties would remain in Alta Cali/Jefferson. A two-duchy Nevada kingdom is also possible, but it might be too small.

I don't think we expect or desire perfect stability in the region. It's desirable that over the long term (even in the hands of an AI), all of the kingdoms have a chance to grow and seize control of the entire empire. I've got some ideas for events to keep things interesting, but they'll probably have to wait until characters are added to the region.

It's probably OK if Francisco is a bit smaller than The Valley, since it has two big advantages: many of its counties are rich coastal provinces, and Goldengate is a center of culture/trade with advanced tech levels.

If Jefferson replaces Alta Cali, it may get a duchy from Oregon.

I need to sleep on this.

 

[Bosporus]

I crunched some numbers using the total (built and unbuilt) number of holding slots for each county to get an idea of the wealth/power of each kingdom (from the setup I showed earlier but without any added provinces):

Alta Cali (including Lassen/Modoc) = 29 holdings; The Valley (including Tejon) = 83; SoCal = 67; San Francisco = 62; Sacramento = 7; and "Nevada" = 10
(If you wanted to do some mental math/switching: Lassen/Modoc (Duchy of Lassen Peak?) together have 7 holdings; Death Valley has 4)

So San Francisco and SoCal are fairly even in terms of potential wealth/power, it's just that the Valley is so strong. They control the top 3 duchies (Fresno (25), North Valley (23), and Motherlode (19)) each of which is greater than or equal to the Bay Area/Hayworth, Golden Gate, Los Angeles or Imperial Duchies, so the key to stability in the region might be redistributing some holding slots potentially? (right now Salton Duchy > Duchy of LA for example)

I think Death Valley could go either way (SoCal or Nevada/Great Basin) - eventually adding a poor province (Nopah perhaps?) in that "pocket" between China Lake/Barstow/Mojave I think will improve the aesthetics of that spit of land.

Anyways, thanks for letting us give you our input - hopefully we're not giving you all too terrible of a headache

 

[Cruxador]

Duchy of Central Valley: - Would rename to Duchy of Fresno (I'd prefer San Joaquin after the river, but it'd be weird to have a San Joaquin province outside of the San Joaquin duchy)
- I wrapped Merced around the end of the river so now Merced should be within its own borders. I also shrunk Tollhouse a little.
Duchy of Motherlode: - (I kind of like "Gold Country" better but that's just me)
- Gained the County of Tahoe, which I would recommend to change to Plumas as it better fits the area of the province.
Duchies: 4 - North Valley (5), Motherlode (4), Fresno (5) and Tulare (4) (18 total)

I agree with these renamings, but I like having a Duchy of Tahoe, because it is a fairly distinct region and the lake is the most notable thing by which to name it.

Kingdom of Alta Cali: - Would also recommend Kingdom of Jefferson
Duchy of Shasta-Cascade:
- Is now Redding, Klamath, Yreka, Mount Shasta and Burney
Duchy of Redwoods:
- Is now Redwoods, Eureka (change name to Humboldt), Humboldt (change name to Lost Coast), Mendocino and Bragg.
Duchies: 2 - Redwoods (5) and Shasta-Cascade (5) (10 total)

Kingdom of Nevada:
- Consists of a single duchy of Nevada, as I'm not sure what your plans are for Nevada as a whole. Technically, Modoc and Lassen should be part of Alta Cali/Jefferson (maybe as their own duchy?) but I didn't want to mess up Nevada/Oregon plans
Duchies: 1(?) - Nevada (6) (6 total)

First of all, Jefferson definitely contains Modoc and Lassen, those don't belong to Nevada. I know they need some help to be worthwhile as a kingdom, but I think taking them from other parts of the desert and adding a couple humboldt river communities. Let what's Nevada be Nevada and what's not be not.

Other random bits:
- The County/Holding of Sacramento could be renamed "Sactown" to continue the slang naming
- Correcting myself earlier regarding Cetic holy sites, the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas is actually in the Bragg province

Sactown for the holding is a good idea. If we're talking about names for fun purposes rather than merely fixing weirdness, I reckon it would also be cool to change Placerville to its historic name. These days it's only used for the historic area, but I think Hangtown is a more interesting and compelling name for a holding.

As for holy sites, I was thinking since it's new age and enlightenment, it would make sense to use some particularly majestic features of the natural world. Under that thought process, Muir Woods and Yosemite Valley would be obvious choices. Ten Thousand Buddhas would make sense as another in Jefferson. I think it makes sense that the Emperor have one in Sacramento, so a Monastery of Capital Hall might make sense if we suppose that the site has remained prominent and been repurposed, and now there's Cetic monks under the redwoods. That just leaves a need for one in SoCal somewhere, but I don't really know enough about what's down there to suggest a good holy site. Death Valley, maybe, if we want a different sort of harsh enlightenment.

Very educational infodumps. I implemented some of the suggestions in the south, mostly for things that are just simple name changes (i.e. I was already on the fence about San Luis Obispo, and your agreement convinced me I should change it to Obispo rather than San Luis). Kingdom of the Valley sounds pretty cool, so that will also be changed. I generally prefer names that are short and memorable, so Berdoo is a good fit.

I'll have to think about and discuss the more major overhauls with the rest of the team, and I'm not sure which other things will be done. For example, carving Solano out might not happen because the provinces in that area are already quite small. As always, remember that culture and borders may have dramatically shifted over the course of 600 years.

The overall kingdom structure is a bit tricky to modify, since we want to keep them fairly equal in power and avoid tiny kingdoms.

It's natural for provinces to be small in an area that has a major river and a ton of population and diversity. If you do want to keep province numbers down, though I suppose you could move the town of Napa to Yolo (they have a fair bit in common with Woodland folks) and then what's left is all Solano cities anyway. It would make more sense than the current setup at least.

Regarding kingdoms, I think too perfect parity is a bit boring. Why not model it a bit on Scandinavia? They have their big three core kingdoms (Denmark, Sweden, Norway) and then there are peripherally asociated realms, like Iceland and Finland, that are part of the de jure but less powerful and not really "Scandinavia proper". You can balance Francisco, the Valley, and SoCal against each other and just let Jefferson, Nevada, and Baja occupy that weaker peripheral space.

And things shifting is a justification for things being different, sure, but the stated guideline of the project is still to base it on reality where reasonable/feasible.

I think you're heavily misinterpreting my points. I'm not saying California would not be densely populated. It has a favorable climate and some of the best agricultural soil in the country. My points are actually completely different than that. I'm basically arguing that the junction of the navigable rivers be visually modified to reflect the delta, and that the navigable portion extends down to Tulare. That's it.

Oh, well that makes sense.

I'm sure that the area would hold impressive waterworks. We've been digging irrigation canals for almost 8,000 years as a species. But, part of the problem is precisely that irrigation canals in the Sacramento Delta did not work and they tried the whole hand labor thing before realizing that annual flooding would necessitate new innovation. And the water from the delta is pumped by electricity and huge waterworks to the other 25 million people in the state who need it. If the electricity is gone, and the tech to fix it is gone, then almost all the good agricultural land dries up and goes back to the same yields of its Pre-Colonial past; Which is to say "good" but not 60% over average annual yield per acre for some crops And certainly not in the areas where massive water is required to even grow in the first place.

Keep in mind that in those days California was very newly settled (at least by people interested in changing the rivers) and the population was very centralized in a few places, including the delta. Of course the flooding will always be a problem, but diverting things from upstream rather than downstream, like with sloughs, can still divert a lot of water from rivers to elsewhere in a greater quantity of lower-tech ways.

 

[Bosporus]

Looking back on it, I think I agree with Cruxador in terms of what to do with Modoc/Lassen - putting them with the rest of Alta Cali/Jefferson. I would suggest Nataqua as a name for the duchy (centered on Susanville) - other possible duchy names could be Modoc, Roop (former Nevada province in the region), Sagebrush (name of the conflict over Roop), Pit River, Eagle Peak (highest peak in the area) or Warner (mountain range).

The rest of the Nevada duchy (Black Rock, Reno, Carson City, and Hawthorne) could then become the duchy of Tahoe (or Reno). This would ideally be put in some sort of Nevada/Great Basin kingdom, but until Nevada's fleshed out, temporarily putting it back with Alta Cali wouldn't be too bad if you didn't want to have a tiny Kingdom of Nevada.

 

[SteelyGlint]

Looking back on it, I think I agree with Cruxador in terms of what to do with Modoc/Lassen - putting them with the rest of Alta Cali/Jefferson. I would suggest Nataqua as a name for the duchy (centered on Susanville) - other possible duchy names could be Modoc, Roop (former Nevada province in the region), Sagebrush (name of the conflict over Roop), Pit River, Eagle Peak (highest peak in the area) or Warner (mountain range).

The rest of the Nevada duchy (Black Rock, Reno, Carson City, and Hawthorne) could then become the duchy of Tahoe (or Reno). This would ideally be put in some sort of Nevada/Great Basin kingdom, but until Nevada's fleshed out, temporarily putting it back with Alta Cali wouldn't be too bad if you didn't want to have a tiny Kingdom of Nevada.

Hmm.. that might work. For me, one of the hard parts is coming up with duchy names that are evocative, accurate, and make sense in a medieval context.

 

[SteelyGlint]

I've made a few changes, the most major of which are in the north.

Alta Cali is now Jefferson, and it includes the duchies of Redwoods, Shasta Cascade, and Nevada. Counties in the region have been reorganized into these fairly large duchies.

The duchy of Death Valley has been split off into its own unformable kingdom of Death Valley. This avoids an ugly strip of land sticking out of Socal or Jefferson.

Solano was carved from Napa and Yolo, with Yolo absorbing the southern edge of Colusa. It's now a part of the Wineland duchy, and county holdings have been adjusted to make room for it.

Joshua Tree was carved from Riverside and Palm Springs, and is part of the Berdoo duchy. The actual Joshua Tree National Park is really only along the southern edge of the county, but I'm fine with that.

I also made several small map tweaks that most people won't notice, but which clean up duchy edges a bit. I'm about ready to call this "good enough" unless there are particularly egregious errors spotted.

 

[ThomasCHP]

Any chance of retrofitting some elements from Vanilla ROI into the Cetic religion? I think the Gurus and reincarnation would work well and it give the religion some flavour without too much effort.

 

[SteelyGlint]

Any chance of retrofitting some elements from Vanilla ROI into the Cetic religion? I think the Gurus and reincarnation would work well and it give the religion some flavour without too much effort.

One question is what we can add without making RoI required to play as a Cetic. The Cetic religion is currently wholly original, but if we add a lot of RoI events we might have to make it unplayable by people who don't have RoI.

Hmm... we might be able to create modified versions of the events that just don't happen if you don't have RoI. That might be be the best solution.

 

[ThomasCHP]

Or you could release a ROI module, like what you did with Sunset Invasion and African Faces.

 

[Jalathas]

Or you could release a ROI module, like what you did with Sunset Invasion and African Faces.

Those are both graphics-only. As far as I understand, they work because they don't affect game mechanics.

 

[Cruxador]

I've made a few changes, the most major of which are in the north. I'm about ready to call this "good enough" unless there are particularly egregious errors spotted.

Nevada and the back of the Sierras still seems weird to me. But this is a lot better/more realistic. "Good enough" is an accurate descriptor.

One question is what we can add without making RoI required to play as a Cetic. The Cetic religion is currently wholly original, but if we add a lot of RoI events we might have to make it unplayable by people who don't have RoI.

Hmm... we might be able to create modified versions of the events that just don't happen if you don't have RoI. That might be be the best solution.

That seems like a good solution to me. But I wonder, how much of that stuff is applicable? RoI has buddhism within a polytheistic hindu context and Indian culture. Californian culture and religion have western monotheism as their ancestor with buddhist principles (and generally the ones most divorced from hinduism, taken from further east than RoI covers) taken pretty independently of their original cultural context. Probably best to have a critical eye when deciding what to transfer, at least.



Some thoughts on the religion description: It focuses a lot on syncretization, why not focus more on what makes it distinctive? The first sentence could be replaced by something about the nature of the faith itself, like "The Cetic faith is a philosophical creed oriented towards attaining enlightenment." The syncretization info seems like it's already supplied by the list of gurus, and I think that's a more artful way to convey the history of the world than by outright stating it.
The last line of the description seems the sort of thing to get a yellow asterix as well, though I'm actually a bit unsure about it. Focusing on a the teachings of a single guru, rather than simply being immersed in the religious culture of all of them, seems like the sort of thing that would be only for some characters, not all. Those who take the Theology focus, for example.

Since the highest religious ruler is also the highest secular ruler, would it make sense to have that muslim thing where feudal rulers can own temple holdings?

And here's something I read the other day, not related to California but whenever the Afro-Syncretic religions are on the table again this seems like a useful resource to draw ideas from: http://www.miaminewtimes.com/news/myths-over-miami-6393117

 

[Orinsul]

RoI would what you'd do if you wanted a religion to have a caste system, pretty much everything else is easily moddable without it.

 

[gharzad]

Don't know if this is WAD but I just tried to start a new game playing as the Duke of Green Mountains (seemed like a great place for an occultist start) but once the game starts it recognizes him as a theocracy because the church registers as his main holding instead of the tribe in the same county.

Unless you meant for this to be the case it would be awesome if his main holding was the tribe instead so he was playable.

Thanks and keep up the great work!

 

[SteelyGlint]

Don't know if this is WAD but I just tried to start a new game playing as the Duke of Green Mountains (seemed like a great place for an occultist start) but once the game starts it recognizes him as a theocracy because the church registers as his main holding instead of the tribe in the same county.

Unless you meant for this to be the case it would be awesome if his main holding was the tribe instead so he was playable.

Thanks and keep up the great work!

This is an unfortunate issue caused by changes in the vanilla game, possibly a bug. At one point I considered going through through all rulers with this problem and stripping out the temple holdings, but I decided against it because I (perhaps foolishly) thought that the bug could be fixed at any moment... which would mean I would have wasted my time.

For many such characters, you can start the game as someone else and then switch with a console command ("play 1620036" in this case). Unfortunately I just tested this case and it didn't work. If you're dead set on playing this character, you can edit the "43 - Montpelier" and "45 - Newport" files in history\provinces to put the castle first.

 

[gharzad]

If you're dead set on playing this character, you can edit the "43 - Montpelier" and "45 - Newport" files in history\provinces to put the castle first.

Thanks for the reply, I'll try out your fix right away!

 

[gharzad]

Since the changeover has deleted a few pages of posts I'd just like to state again that the bugs I was experiencing with pagan Holy Wars (as a Rust Cultist) have now been completely repaired thanks to SteelyGlint. His diligence is amazing!