Thing is, though, I think as residents we're likely to look at it from that micro-perspective. The province system as it is doesn't really support that, though, which means we have to compromise. It wouldn't necessarily be a bad idea to split Wellington and the lower North Island into its own province, for example, but then that still contains land you could call farmland, hills, highlands, even mountains at a stretch (Tararuas, Rimutakas) and where do you stop? It's one of the failings of the one-terrain provinces. It's not how most provinces are.
you're right. i for that matter come from outside of New Zealand (although i'd very much like to visit one day), so my point of view is mostly informed by maps and other big-picture data. this makes it easy for me to choose a single terrain type for a province on the one hand, as i lack emotional attachment and knowledge of details which might prove insignificant on a broader scale, but on the other hand it makes me prone to overlook crucial points which may not be evident from the map. i very much appreciate your input, guys, thanks. and we definitely should prepare for a compromise if we want to make this new setup happen.
In saying that, you have a good point on the shapes of lower North Island provinces. In a lot of ways, Wellington (and the Kapiti Coast) actually fits better with the province Hawkes' Bay is in. Possibly you'd want to include the central plateau with Taranaki if you were going to rearrange it that way, and actual Hawkes Bay could be lumped in with the Bay of Plenty. Adding provinces isn't a great idea, though, even if it would be the easiest way to represent the climates properly. New Zealand's provinces are already more detailed than a lot of areas that start the game settled - Russia and Eastern Europe particularly spring to mind - so we can't really justify getting too precious about it.
i was somewhat skeptical of redrawing province shapes, as changes of this magnitude would likely take much more time to implement than simple changes in province terrain, and so they might make the proposition too complicated to be worth it for Paradox. with this in mind, i'm inclined toward a two-pronged approach: suggesting one layout consistent with current provinces, and another, more ambitious one, which would slightly redraw provinces in NI & SI. we can always focus on one approach if a dev lets us know that one of the options is preferable to the other.
however, in my opinion border changes would be beneficial to both islands. a new province of Canterbury would greatly improve things for SI, while in the north, your proposition to move Wellington to Ahuriri and the Central Plateau to Taranaki would increase terrain uniformity in the provinces with Taranaki keeping woods and Ahuriri moving on to highlands.
i'm not convinced about lumping Hawke's Bay and Bay of Plenty together though. a province like that would consist of two largely separate grassland regions divided by rough, wooded hills. no single terrain type could accurately represent it in regard to troop movement and development cost at the same time. i came up with the following alternative:
- the southern parts of Taranaki and Ahuriri provinces could be merged in a single province to represent Wellington and surroundings. terrain type: highlands or hills.
- northern Taranaki and the Central Plateau make up a nice woods province with its agricultural potential represented by a small boost to development/BT (probably lower development than Wellington and Auckland though).
- Kirikiriroa province, enlarged to encompass the Bay of Plenty, remains grasslands.
- the remaining eastern parts of Ahuriri (Hawke's Bay) and Tauranga constitute an East Cape province. terrain: hills.
- no change to Whangarei.
what do you think?
