Duchy of Berg (and Jülich)

[Twoflower]

Hello everybody,

to begin with, it's been an awfully long while since I last posted on these forums - some might still remember me back from the days of EU2 and the AGCEEP - and essentially I am posting this a Johnny-Come-Lately to the EU4 community. As pretty much everybody, I'm quite excited about the upcoming expansion and the map changes to go along with it.

One map change I particularly liked is the introduction of a separate Cleve province. I realize that this may have been done mostly to turn Cleves into a two-province minor.

However, for 1444, this does not quite reflect historical reality (which as I am quite aware is not more important than game balance, but something to consider nonetheless).

In 1444, the Duchy of Cleve-Mark and the Duchy of Jülich-Berg were two separate entities, ruled by different dynasties, who competed with each other and the Archbishopric of Cologne for hegemony over the Rhineland.

They were eventually united by marriage in 1521, forming what was at the time actually the wealthiest principality in all of Germany. When the dynasty went extinct in 1609, a lengthy conflict between the Hohenzollern and Wittelsbach dynasties ensued, which resulted in the territories being divided between the Elector of Brandenburg (Kleve and Mark) and the Wittelsbach cadet branch of Pfalz-Neuburg, which went on to inherit first the Palatinate in 1685 and then Bavaria in 1777.

So, to cut a long story short, I would humbly suggest that with the new Cleve province, there should be an independent Berg owning the namesake province, while Cleve gets Cleve.

In an ideal world, there would also be provinces for Jülich and Mark, making both countries two provinces and roughly equal in strength to the Archbishopric of Cologne (which they both were).

As can be seen on this map, particularly the Duchy of Jülich was quite large (larger and wealthier than Limburg, which is being added) and arguably might even replace Aachen (which Jülich even for a time claimed suzerainty over).

EDIT: added map, as promised.

 

[Metz]

I agree. Julich should be included. If you chip of a few areas from some provinces in the western part of Germany, you could easily fit Julich in. Aachen could be made smaller too.

 

[grommile]

I agree. Julich should be included. If you chip of a few areas from some provinces in the western part of Germany, you could easily fit Julich in. Aachen could be made smaller too.

Aachen is already kind of awkward to click on if there are armies in the area. (Not as bad as Hamburg, but getting close.)

 

[Metz]

Aachen is already kind of awkward to click on if there are armies in the area. (Not as bad as Hamburg, but getting close.)

It can still be clickable if its cut in half. Maybe depends on the resolution one uses though.

 

[Twoflower]

Also, you could take a bit of the Limburg province, which is somewhat larger than the actual County of Limburg - however, I do agree that clickability is something of an issue here. IMHO, Jülich might have been preferred for inclusion over the city of Aachen (for size and importance, and for actually having had something of a claim to suzerainty over Aachen, whose status as a Free City was not all that undisputed). I do understand the decision to include Aachen in order to have one imperial city in that region, though.
Actually, I'm not quite sure whether Jülich should be added without adding a province for the County of Mark - among the five territories of the United Duchies (Kleve, Jülich, Berg, Mark, Ravensberg), Kleve, Jülich and Berg certainly were the three most important, but I think both the balance between Jülich-Berg and Kleve-Mark before 1521 and between Wittelsbach Palatinate-Neuburg and Brandenburg after 1609 would be somewhat distorted by the former, respectively, being represented by two provinces and the latter only by one.
As I said (or implied), from a historical point of view, a good 1444 setup would be Kleve with Kleve and Mark, Jülich (or Berg - whether you call the country by its capital in Düsseldorf or by the origin and name of its ruling dynasty is really a matter of taste) with Jülich and Berg (plus a claim on and possibly at war with Geldre), Cologne with Köln and Westfalen and independent Aachen (possibly with a vassalization mission for Jülich-Berg). I am also convinced that this would be the best setup with regard to game balance and making the region fun and interesting to play in - because it both would put the three big powers in the Rhineland in 1444 - Cologne, Kleve-Mark and Jülich-Berg - on an about equal footing and, for the Thirty Years War start, allow for a good, engaging representation of an important side conflict of that war.
Of course, I cannot comment authoritatively on the obvious issues of clickability and tag/province economy. It would therefore be awesome if some dev could state whether this might be considered at all or if it is a non-starter for those reasons. If the argument would need to be a little more convincing, I could of course try to elaborate more.

 

[Twoflower]

A few more things regarding the Duchy of Kleve:
Kleve should in 1444 have an alliance and royal marriage with Burgundy. Duke Adolf II of Kleve (monarch of Kleve in 1444) was married to Maria of Burgundy, daughter of Duke John the Fearless of Burgundy. Johann I, who inherited the Duchy in 1448, was educated at the court of his uncle Philipp the Good in Brussels, and was nicknamed "Dat Kint van Vlaanderen" (the Child of Flanders) and "Johanneken met de Bellen" (John with the bells) because of his Flemish upbringing and garish outfits inspired by that upbringing.
Until the death of Charles the Bold, Burgundy and Kleve supported each other in their military conflicts, Burgundy taking the side of Kleve in the Feud of Soest, and Kleve supporting Burgundy's conquest of Gelders in 1473. Kleve's connection with Burgundy and Nevers eventually resulted in the third son of Johann I, Engelbert, inheriting the County of Nevers in 1493 and establishing the cadet dynasty of Kleve-Nevers.

Also, the aforementioned Feud of Soest might actually warrant being represented in the 1444 start. In this conflict, Duke Adolf II, acting more or less as Burgundy's proxy, and the extremely ambitious Archbishop of Cologne, Dietrich von Moers, clashed for hegemony in the Rhine area. The casus belli was the allegiance of the wealthy Hanseatic city of Soest, which belonged to the Duchy of Westphalia and had entered into a longstanding quarrel with Dietrich von Moers over the Archbishop's attempts to curb the city's autonomy. The city entered into negotiations with Johann of Kleve and agreed to swear fealty to the Duchy of Kleve (or, more exactly, to the County of Mark) in exchange for protection against the Archbishop. For that reason, the Duchy of Kleve-Mark declared a feud against the Archbishop of Cologne on June 16th 1444, that is, just before game start. The ultimate aim of Kleve-Mark in this was to gain the whole Duchy of Westphalia.
In this conflict, Kleve was supported mostly by Burgundy and several cities, while Archbishop Dietrich assembled an Anti-Burgundian coalition including the Bishopric of Münster, the Duchy of Brunswick, Saxony and Thuringia - as an interesting aside, the Wettins were in this not really out of charity, but in order to press their claim on the Duchy of Luxembourg. While the war was fought mostly by local troops in 1445 and 1446, by 1447 the Archbishop had recruited a mercenary army of 12.000 men in Saxony (consisting, somewhat ironically, mostly of Hussite troops!) and began to pillage the countryside. After the failure of an assault on the city of Soest, both parties agreed on a peace in 1449, with Kleve-Mark retaining the cities of Soest and Xanten and Cologne keeping some other smaller conquests.
This was a pretty large-scale war and quite a seminal event in the history of Westphalia - because of the destructions caused and also because it made the Duchy of Westphalia pretty much an economic backwater by separating it from the city of Soest, which had up to then been its main link to Hanseatic trade.
I would suggest representing this by Burgundy and Kleve starting out at war with Cologne, Münster, Brunswick and Saxony, and giving Kleve a claim on the Westfalen province.