comments on the new northern germany

[AirikrStrife]

Given today's dev diary reveals changes to Germany, I'm gonna give a few comments on northern Germany. It's an area I know better than central & south, though I believe those areas looks very good now.

County of Mark:
I would suggest to at least consider replacing Dortmund with the county of Mark (would include some redrawing) and give the province to Cleves, which now has been reduced to an OPM, a fate it doesn't deserve.

Prignitz:
Of all the possible border changes in Brandenburg & Neumark, making a province for Prignitz was the one to make the most sense, alas not, and with two new provinces in the area I understand a third might be too much, but it should definitly be considered!

Principality of Lippe:
I would suggest replacing the Bielefeld province with the Principality of Lippe (renaming it and making it it's own tag

County of Bentheim-Tecklenburg:
I would suggest to consider working in a province for the counties of Bentheim and Tecklenburg

Pomerania:
The big disappointment in the area though, is Pomerania. Not only did they not fix the borders of Pomerania towards Neumark. The Neumarkian panhandle (new Dramburg province) is in the wrong place.

Plz fix

Furthermore the "conservative" split of Pomerania into basically a vorpommern and hinterpommern duchy, is below the level of detail I'd expect from an overhaul which gave so much detail to other areas.

Without redrawing any provinces in pomerania with the exception of fixing the Neumark border, I will suggest a more appropiate Pomerania which will include one new tag:

First though, the current province of Wolgast doe not include the city of Wolgast. The city of Wolgast is located opposite island of Usedom, i.e. in the Greifswald province. I can't figure out which city Anklam province would be in, otherwise Passewalk is a good choice.

The issue though with the tags are really that they're basically wrong. Pomerania-wolgast didn't control "Passewalk" province, and pomerania stettin did not control Kolberg and Stolp.

Best option giving current province is following:
Wolgast: Rügen, Stralsund, Greifswald
Stettin: Passewalk, Stettin
Stolp: Kolberg, Stolp


Schleswig-Holstein:
I assume they don't change anything here because they'll consider it for another patch, since the area is terribly poorly drawn, by current standards.

@Caligula Caesar

 

[AirikrStrife]

So then this game was first made, the map was very....generalized; square memel and so on. Often just making provinces simple squares with little regard to historical detail as the game was not that much about detail anyway. With patch after patch, the game is made increeasingly detailed and has reach a fantastic level. Having been part of this journey since the game was released (and the original EUIII too) has been awesome.

Sometimes though when the game is updated and updated, certain areas still suffers from having been set during the initial days of the game, and then for later updates, updated based on previous, heavily simplified representation of the area instead of a proper overhaul (Kashmir-Ladakh-Baltistan is such an area plz fix)

Is Brandenburg also one of these areas? I previously never bothered looking that deeply into Brandenburg, but after this recent map change I decided to do just that (the life of a map lover indeed) and come to realize how sort of strange and arbitary the borders of Brandenburg seemed to be, for example the city of berlin, straddling the Spree river is basically not located in the province of Berlin which ends at the northern banks of Spree.

I went into the tedious task of making sense of rivers and cities and plateaus to come up with a from the scratch overhaul of Brandenburg, basing my new provinces in part of historical regions, scratches of historical development, a little bit on the later Brandenburg province to try and make a Brandenburg which would feel more historical than the current or future 1.29 update.

I have looked at many region specific maps, though this has been my main map to go after:

I have made approximate borders primarily focusing on rivers as guidlines, I'm not good at drawing, so when I can't follow a river or in game border I mostly draw straigh-isch lines to mark. If @Caligula Caesar is still open to look at Brandenburg, he would still have to deal with some of the minutia himself (or ask @Mingmung who tends to be really good at this)

I will post a map of the Brandenburg province later down, and refer to it's administrative division what kreiser I include in each of my own provinces

My map:

Niederlauzitz: I redrew it's borders a bit, taking some pixels from Sternberg, the northwestern part of the current province, are in reality a number of smallish states which in history variously associated with either Lauzits/Bohemia or Brandenburg. The area in question are marked with a dotted line and includes the territories of Beskow and Storkow (part of Lebus prince bishopric until inherited by Brandenburg, Lordship of Teupitz and and duchy of Zossen. I suggest adding this area to Berlin province, which has been moved largely south (note approximate location of Berlin-Cölln on the Spree river as a purple spot).

Duchy of Crossen (yellow circle): Most of later Neumark started out as part of SIlesia and were gradually acquired by the Margraves of Brandenburg, the duchy of Crossen (here also including the territory of Schwiebus) would not be permanently annexed by Brandenburg until late 15th century, but be under the control of the dukes of Glogau and have Silesian culture, but can remain in the Neumark area
Crossen would incorporate the kreiser of Crossen and Züllichau-Schwielbus. I realize this is the trickiest province to include, and my province is not perfect, I still think if they managed to make room for Dramburg, they could do for Crossen, which have more reason to exist than Dramburg.

Sternberg and Neumark have been adjusted to be more historical, meaning Neumark get's a new border on the Warte river. Sternberg has become quite small, but can retain it's development due to what should be it's capitol city, Frankfurt and der Oder (in below map, Sternberg should correspond to west and east sternberg, + lebuser land and frankfurt city)
I did sort of like Dramburg province for aestetic reasons, and I can make nicer pomeranian borders using it, but tbh I would probably scrap the province as their are more interesting provinces to make

Barnim (Blue circle): I did make a province for Barnim, pushing Berlin province to the south, with the capitol of Eberswalde. The region is sparsely populated.

I split Ruppin into Prignitz (Brown circle) and Ruppin (light green circle) and I don't think they need much introduction.

The western part of Brandenburg, the historic Havelland (red) and Zauche (teal), I did them in north-south split, and overlapped the borders to imply that one would use Brandenburg and the othe Potsdam as main city, from a geographic POW it makes sense to use this split It would also be possible to have one rich Havelland province containing both of those cities, with a much poorer, rural Zauche province.

Berlin has been quite reworked, moved farther south to incorporate the whole city around Spree and the Teltow area.

In general applying at least some of these map changes, such as reworking Berlin, would allow for greater historic accuracy, and create a strategically more interesting region. Most of the development would be applied