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CK2 Dev Diary #40: Visiting the Cartographer

Greetings everyone!

Today I’m here to talk about one of my favorite parts of our games (a very important one too) and something I’ve been working on. I’m going to talk about the map.

Looking at the work @Trin Tragula does for the map on EU4, I started thinking. Why don’t we do something similar to CK2? So I went looking at the map for various possible improvements. I have not added anything new in terms of provinces or areas. Instead, I wanted to focus on improving the existing map and give it some needed polish.

The CK2 map is not perfect, so there are a quite a few places to look at. But I wanted to start with the terrain and topology. As there several places on the map that, frankly, look out of place. As such, I swooped the map of the most hideous offenders. Several lakes and most major rivers are now much smoother, avoiding ugly and sharp edges. The Ural Mountains are now mostly impassable.

Below you can see a few examples.

Ural mountains:
ck2_ural_mountains.jpg


Lake Baikal, old and new:
ck2_baikal_old.png

ck2_baikal_new.png


The Ganges, old and new:
ck2_ganges_old.png

ck2_ganges_new.png



I also took this opportunity to make some smaller de jure adjustments (I know that not everyone will agree with me on these). These are done for gameplay reasons and considerations. The largest change will be for the kingdom of Cumania. Which I broke off slightly by giving the duchies of Itil and Sarkel to Khazaria, along with Crimea and Cherson (so Taurica no longer holds any de jure land).

A small shift in the kingdoms of the ERE. Greece is a very large kingdom, so I made it slightly smaller by moving Samos and Cibyrrhaeot to Anatolia, and in turn, made Anatolia stay close to the same size by making the duchies of Trebizond and Armeniacon de jure to the kingdom of Trebizond.

ck2_updated_de_jure.png



Last, and definitely not least. Let’s take a look at Hungary and the Danube. The first thing I did was to redraw parts of the Danube to make it more accurate (as we all know, the old Danube was not quite where it was supposed to be). It now flows much closer to its actual location. The counties along the river have been adjusted accordingly. Pecs, for example, is now located on the correct side of it. The rest of Hungary has also been adjusted so that the kingdom is placed within the Carpathians.

Instead of taking my word for it, you can see for yourself in the screenshot below, in which you can see the updated coast of Croatia as well.

ck2_danube_new.png


ck2_danube_old.png


Does this make the map perfect? No. But I do think it’s a step in the right direction and an improvement over the previous one.

Let me know what you think!

- The Ural mountains are now impassable
- Removed the duplicate island of Kolguyev, in the Barents Sea
- The most northern part of the Onega is now properly filled with water
- The mountains in southern Abyssinia no longer stretches onto the frame of the map
- Fixed an issue in the lower part of the river Don, where the river bed would go above water level
- Removed a bunch of trees that were placed in major rivers
- The terrain around lake Balkhash has been smoothed, to avoid sharp/rough edges
- The terrain around lake Baikal has also been smoothed, no longer will the steep cliffs surround the lake
- The Indus and the Ganges have both been cleaned up:
- The terrain now matches the actual river
- Smaller rivers no longer flow so far into the major rivers
- The borders of the rivers has been made smoother to avoid sharp/rough edges
- The Danube has been redrawn, to better represent its actual location (!)
- The county of Constantinople is now only located on the western side of the Bosphorus, merging the eastern side into the county of Nikaea, connected with a strait
- The duchies of Samos and Cibyrrhaeot are now de jure part of the kingdom of Anatolia, rather than Greece
- The duchies of Trebizond and Armeniacon is now de jure part of the kingdom of Trebizond, rather than Anatolia
- Removed the kingdom of Taurica
- The duchy of Crimea is now de jure kingdom of Khazaria
- The duchy of Cherson is now de jure kingdom of Khazaria
- The coastal counties of Croatia and Serbia have been adjusted and moved slightly to better represent their actual locations
- The eastern counties of Hungary and the surrounding area has been moved and adjusted in order to properly place the kingdom within the Carpathian mountains
- Changed the name of b_mirabel to "Majdal Yaba"
- b_mirabel will be named "Mirabel" if ruled by most European cultures
- b_mirabel will be named "Antipatris" if ruled by Byzantine cultures
- The county of Tobruk is now only located along the coast
- Moved the northern part of c_dalarna to c_herjedalen
- Moved k_venice to de jure e_italy
 
I bet @SBolshevik will love this...
Well, I'm not an expert on this matter, so I can't say for sure if it's better or not. Still, any improvement is great!
 
The Ruthenia and Rus thing however yet problematic, beacuse rus was historically where the ck2 ruthenia is, so this is quite mess. Well, I offer to seperate the kingdom of ruthenia into two: In the west there is the kingdom of galicia-volhynia and in the east the grand-duchy of kiev (like HPM mod). Rus should be seperated as well to become grand duchy of Novgorod and grand duchy of Moscow. The empire title is Actually rus' (Russia). This also goes well with conversion to eu4 where both Novgorod and Moscow are kingdom tier.
 
I thoroughly approve of the Danube fix, and while it's sad to see Taurica go, it certainly was a bit too large in-game. Yours is a reasonably elegant solution, I think, though I would possibly suggest moving the duchy of Cherson itself into Trebizond.

Any chance that we could get the thing that EU4 has, where realms that control most of the territory around an impassable/wasteland province will colour that province their colour, and their name will stretch over it as if they owned that territory? Would make trans-Alpine, trans-Carpathian, etc. realms look a bit prettier IMHO :)
 
Any and all changes to the ck2 map that provide at least some sort of accuracy are alright in my book. Hell, it now even almost looks like the Kingdom of Walachia could have reasonable borders. Now.....about Brandenburg...
 
Great work ! Hope all the map will get reworked.
 
Venice will be made de jure part of the empire of Italy?

I really like this. Ought to make it much likelier for at least one republic to survive until the endgame, which is nice.
 
Greetings everyone!

Today I’m here to talk about one of my favorite parts of our games (a very important one too) and something I’ve been working on. I’m going to talk about the map.

Looking at the work @Trin Tragula does for the map on EU4, I started thinking. Why don’t we do something similar to CK2? So I went looking at the map for various possible improvements. I have not added anything new in terms of provinces or areas. Instead, I wanted to focus on improving the existing map and give it some needed polish.

The CK2 map is not perfect, so there are a quite a few places to look at. But I wanted to start with the terrain and topology. As there several places on the map that, frankly, look out of place. As such, I swooped the map of the most hideous offenders. Several lakes and most major rivers are now much smoother, avoiding ugly and sharp edges.
Please, adjust the D'Niester too, it's innacurate.
I have the solution here:
1aof8f2.jpg
 
Is there a chance of moving d_Nikaea to Anatolia too? k_Anatolia looks kinda ugly now.
 
I shed tears of joy on this day.

Granted, improvements could still be made, but the physical map is better than it ever was before. The afformentioned Dniestr is still inaccurate, but this is otherwise a job well done!

On the note of the Danube, the historical boundary of Moldavia was the Danube, so it really should include Galaz as well.

The Ruthenia and Rus thing however yet problematic, beacuse rus was historically where the ck2 ruthenia is, so this is quite mess. Well, I offer to seperate the kingdom of ruthenia into two: In the west there is the kingdom of galicia-volhynia and in the east the grand-duchy of kiev (like HPM mod). Rus should be seperated as well to become grand duchy of Novgorod and grand duchy of Moscow. The empire title is Actually rus' (Russia). This also goes well with conversion to eu4 where both Novgorod and Moscow are kingdom tier.
Moscow became important only very late in the timeframe, having Vladimir-Suzdal as the kingdom makes a lot more sense in most of the timeframe.
You also have Polotsk-VItebsk which was ruled by a separate branch of the Rjurikovič dynastyfrom all the others and was because of that a bit more distant.
 
Venice will be made de jure part of the empire of Italy?

I really like this. Ought to make it much likelier for at least one republic to survive until the endgame, which is nice.
Yeah, I always disliked the fact that the ERE would go and conquer Venice so soon whenever you start a game. This should keep them protected from that at least.

Is the Dniester going to be redrawn? It's one giant mess that's not even flowing where it's supposed to flow right now.
It wasn't something I prioritized this time around. But I might look at the Dniester the next time I decide to do some adjustments. It's on my wishlist. :)

Is there a chance of moving d_Nikaea to Anatolia too? k_Anatolia looks kinda ugly now.
I did consider moving it as well. But chose to not do so for now, mostly for historical reasons, though.
 

This will be in patch 2.7 which will accompany Monks and Mystics. The release date will be revealed in time.

Hmm. Do map changes usually mean that saves from the current patch version won't be compatible with the new one?

We always recommend that you finish off any old save before applying the new patch.