Does the Form Portugal decision make sense?

[Meka66]

Not to mention you must control EVERY historical Portuguese duchy (Portucale, Coimbra, Beja and Algarve) in order to unlock de decision, which is absurd considering half of this territory was controlled when the kingdom was actually founded. And of course, the choices for Portuguese culture traditions are pretty weird.

IMO, you should only need two duchies (Portucale and Coimbra) and get claims in the other two, and maybe add a certain era or innovation trigger so the thing could happen around 1100s (like historically did), but I'm not sure about the last one.

Part of the difficulty with doing that is we need to be mindful of what could potentially be happening in the game at that point. It's possible that you are playing as Badajoz, and you're about to become the king when suddenly the duke of Portucale takes this decision and now most of your kingdom is no longer de jure. It's a potential point of very high frustration for the player.

I agree that the decision needs some tweaks and changes, but when doing so we need to be mindful of what other potential problems this can open up.

By the way, this would also be a nice opportunity to revise the "Unite the Spanish Thrones" decision, which is way overpowered and prevents further Castile and Leon splits like historically happened in 1157 (death of Alfonso VII). I would rather have two sepparate decisions about combining León and Galicia (especially if the later is smaller because Portugal already exists as a De Jure Kingdom, thus) and auto-drifting Toledo into Castile. That way you would have a more historical realm consolidation. And then, maybe, another "combine Leon and Castile" for the Late Middle Ages (1200>) or something like that (union of the realms within the Crown of Castile).

Ah yes, the giga-kingdoms decisions. I did revise one of them once, specifically the "Unite the West Slavs" decision. Some people seem to really like them, when I removed giga-Poland from the game, it lead to a very lengthy Reddit post describing why they dislike this.

Personally, I'd want to do a sweep and make the kingdom merging decisions do something else, but I'm not so convinced this is something that would be uncontroversial haha.

The required duchies match real life Portugal. Even though it was recognized by the Pope as a kingdom in the later half of the 12th century as a kingdom, it really wasn’t much of a kingdom until it reached the southern coast.

Part of what restricts us from doing something like this is our de-jure mechanics don't really allow for something to be doubly de-jure. So we wouldn't be able to have a scenario where Christians view the duchies as de-jure Portugal, and the Muslims do not.

Since de-jure shift is slow, I see why the decision was originally implemented the way it is, but it should definitely be revised at some point to both be more accurate to history and more engaging to enact because I broadly agree, I would also like to see Portugal come into existence more often

 

[migdeu19]

Not to mention you must control EVERY historical Portuguese duchy (Portucale, Coimbra, Beja and Algarve) in order to unlock de decision, which is absurd considering half of this territory was controlled when the kingdom was actually founded. And of course, the choices for Portuguese culture traditions are pretty weird.

IMO, you should only need two duchies (Portucale and Coimbra) and get claims in the other two, and maybe add a certain era or innovation trigger so the thing could happen around 1100s (like historically did), but I'm not sure about the last one.

By the way, this would also be a nice opportunity to revise the "Unite the Spanish Thrones" decision, which is way overpowered and prevents further Castile and Leon splits like historically happened in 1157 (death of Alfonso VII). I would rather have two sepparate decisions about combining León and Galicia (especially if the later is smaller because Portugal already exists as a De Jure Kingdom, thus) and auto-drifting Toledo into Castile. That way you would have a more historical realm consolidation. And then, maybe, another "combine Leon and Castile" for the Late Middle Ages (1200>) or something like that (union of the realms within the Crown of Castile).

1) We should not consider the "split" of castille after Afonso VII of Gz a split at all, they still being institutionally different kingdoms and was the common heir system. What was a split was under Iuan I of Leon and Gz, as they were already kingdoms institutionalited as a single block since the Benavente Concordia (1230).
2) The idea of joining Leon and Galiza through an event, is half good actually, as they have been regarding as the same since Afonso IV, BUT, despite that after the Concordia of Benavente things start changing as Galiza with the loss of power being included into the Castillian orbit started to take space from Leon ending in several prolongued conflicts as an independent realm with Castille (and Leon), that is after the defeat in Leon of Juan I, the Castro family still taking him as nominal king of Galicia and ruling that space in his name, and after that from 1369 with the Fernandine Wars up to 1388, Galicia is at war with Castille and Leon (both) as a clearly differentiated political space (and 15th century is the full political chaos so not mentioning it but the dynamic still the same). So in that sense current state of the game is good enough just removing "Spanish Thrones".
3) And as said before, galician portuguese split makes 0 sense in medieval times.
4) And the title of King of Portugal started being used by Garcia II of Galiza after defeating count Nuno of Portucale.

By the way, wikipedia of Spain is an historical nationalistic incaurate pain as comes from 19th century spanish historiography which is romantic crap, so actually better do not using it.

 

[migdeu19]

And related to this, but not inside the threat, IMPORTANT, the counties of Astorga and Sarria are misplaced and switched, Asorga is in Sarria and Sarria in Astorga, that may should be revised as they are actually not side by side neither in game neither IRL.

 

[DreadLindwyrm]

Part of the difficulty with doing that is we need to be mindful of what could potentially be happening in the game at that point. It's possible that you are playing as Badajoz, and you're about to become the king when suddenly the duke of Portucale takes this decision and now most of your kingdom is no longer de jure. It's a potential point of very high frustration for the player.

I agree that the decision needs some tweaks and changes, but when doing so we need to be mindful of what other potential problems this can open up.

Maybe Portugal should be one of the formation decisions that requires duchies A & B, and if duchies C or D are fully controlled become part of the de jure kingdom, otherwise they don't. If you then gave *personal* pushed claims on duchies C & D, that would stop it stealing the de jure land from Badajoz unless the land was already controlled by the potential Portugal.

 

[Adrik Thorsen]

I believe the Portuguese culture in-game is a bit more like the late-medieval/early-renaissance Portuguese culture(as it settled out eventually) than the 867/1066 time period culture, but our historical knowledge is less complete than we would prefer so this may have been the best that Paradox could do. For reference, I like using form Portugal by decision then immediately hybridizing it away. So in my latest Iberia run(1.8.1) that looked like this:
I started custom Basque in Jylland, hybrid with Norse to take Visigothic Codes and Mountaineers, VA to Thuringia and hybrid with Franconia for an: Egalitarian, North Germanic, High German language culture. Now in early medieval I conquered Galicia, made it my primary, passed Thuringia off to a younger son, expanded southward. Converted all of Galicia to my Thuringian culture before moving my capital to Porto, adopted local culture, formed Portugal and then immediately hybridized it with Thuringian to create 'neo-Portuguese' with Iberian Heritage, Bellicose Ethos and High German Language. Also allowing me to reclaim the cultural traditions I had slowly built my Thuringian culture into having. Now Practiced Coastal/Hill/Mountain Pirates following Mozabarism can Reconquista while raiding between wars. Wins all around.

 

[dannazgui]

At that point are not "spanish", and Portugal is not but a galician country, despite having english, french, mozarab, arab etc. influences, as Galiza had, Leon had, Aragón, Navarre and all the other peninsular realms had too. There is not any diferentiating points in that influences.

that's why the " ", bro... it's just a wway to ppl understand the influences...

But actually, idk where you live or where you're form, if you go to Portugal, today. You see a little bit of those influences on more remote areas, people from Porto speaks what would be the old accent in portuguese, it's bit mixed on some galician (as you say, it just a vulgar latin what later influence the spanish) words together. On the southenr area of portugal, you can see heavily influence of the mozarabs and english architeture.

And No, Portugal wasn't a galician county, the province or what would be Dukedom of Porto, Guimarães, etc, were fiefs from Galicia.

Portugal is a country by itself, formed by several cultures.

 

[migdeu19]

that's why the " ", bro... it's just a wway to ppl understand the influences...

But actually, idk where you live or where you're form, if you go to Portugal, today. You see a little bit of those influences on more remote areas, people from Porto speaks what would be the old accent in portuguese, it's bit mixed on some galician (as you say, it just a vulgar latin what later influence the spanish) words together. On the southenr area of portugal, you can see heavily influence of the mozarabs and english architeture.

And No, Portugal wasn't a galician county, the province or what would be Dukedom of Porto, Guimarães, etc, were fiefs from Galicia.

Portugal is a country by itself, formed by several cultures.

1) English architecture is from 18th/19th and 20th century so not point here (and it have a huge presence in galicia as well together with "indianos" or "retornados" architecture, that u have as well in Portugal), and if english stuff is something representative, anglo-portuguese traty was done by galicians, the last galician independent ruler was a Joan of Gaunt (english), and at the time galicians and portugueses had not a differenciated identity as is very clear due 100 years war event and even during portuguese restoration that an important sector of galician population wanted to fight for the independence under Portugal.

2) the southernmost - less galician is a myth; the southernmost in fact can be some times the more galician related depending on how the area evolved during middle ages; if we take the iberian portuguese in 6 areas (Viana-Braga; Porto-Aveiro; Center block (Coimbra-Lisboa), and Setubal-Evora by one hand (aprox), and Faro & Beja in the other), u gonna find that, Braga area speak a nice non castillianized galician, Porto area speaks quite different, Serra da Estrela area is totally untelligible with galicians, Coimbra-Lisboa is maybe the most mozarabic area (as they were not expeled and have an important weight on politics), Setubal-Evora and part of Beja, speaks with a few differences a really nice galician-portuguese that is much more related to certain varieties of galician than Serra da Estrela, Coimbra and sometimes even Porto area (as lot of population there were moved from the North, some times from galician lands in 14th century). And the southernmost area is different as the galician-portuguese evolved in a post-medieval period due totally different questions.

3) Today can be whatever, in medieval period was a galician country, every aristocratic family was galician, despite the mozarabs from coimbra and leoneses from the east all plebean population was galician, the language was galician/portuguese/western iberian romance (whatever the name). So is like deny EEUU is not an anglosaxon country (despite of course have another populations).

4) Cultures in Portugal are the main one, galician-portuguese, and lesser ones, leonese, and migration related ones. So almost as every region in the world, as said before, having influence from lot of places, is normal, makes not a big difference, specially speaking about atlantic middle ages that we had the same ones.


So really, after that reasons, can u say for 15th century, galiza and portugal had different cultures (specially due foreign influence)?
As some people put it "Galicians are defeated portugueses, portugueses are succesful galicians". And if u don't like how "Portugal was a galician country" just say, "Galiza was a Portuguese country", and would accurate too.

Talking about Middle Ages, today's world is another discussion.