Full map screenshots

[wolfgag]

That's a curious resolution. The maps we've seen so far haven't been as wide as all that. If you fit the images we've seen into a 2:1 image you would be left with a gap on the side(s). A very curious gap indeed. Overlay a world map and squeeze it to fit CK3 proportions and who knows what you might be able to broadly infer about the future direction of game development.



EDIT: By the way, using Lake Baikal as reference I wouldn't be surprised if Japan were included in the top right corner. I'm onto you, Paradox

All I can say is Tennoheika Banzai!

EDIT2: I stitched together a *tentative* *speculative* map extension.

View attachment 607841
My method was first to create a 2:1 file in GIMP (2,000x1,000 for ease). Secondly I grabbed a map screenshot, square-cropped it to the edges of the actual map, with some give at the edges just in case, and resized it using the height (1,000) as benchmark. After that I further traced along the eastern "torn edges" of the map and cut out the table there. I then cut out a piece of East Asia from a world map I had on hand and scaled and rotated it to match the in-game coastline of Burma, paying special attention to that indentation that leads into the rest of SE Asia. I then traced Lake Baikal as it appears in-game on a separate layer and put it at the top so I could use it as a reference. Then I used the Unified Transform Tool to push and pull the corners of the overlay image so that Lake Baikal on the overlay would be aligned with the in-game map, while keeping it (somewhat) aligned with the southern coastline of Burma. Needless to say the alignments are not exact: the Burma-India coastline ended up being off, and the lake is also stretched. I also made an effort to insert Japan within the boundaries for the only reason that otherwise I always ended up with a cheeky Kyushu and cutoff Honshu at the edges, but this made no difference to the Burma-Baikal alignment. A small limitation to this method apart from the problems already mentioned is that the border of in-game Eastern Tibet intrudes into the overlay of China too much. A huge limitation to this method is, obviously, the screenshot is (seemingly) distorted to begin with, the map being narrower at the top. If the apparent perspective of the map is distorted then the proper location of Lake Baikal should be slightly further to the east, affecting the proper placement and distortion of the overlay.

NEVERTHELESS Paradox is pretty creative with coastlines and projections, so while there are obvious drawbacks to this method, it makes little difference because as we know from their treatment of the Mediterranean, for instance, they are perfectly free to twist and turn the map as they see fit, provided only it looks and feels right. Hopefully this *total speculation* is instructive on just how feasible it is, given what we know about the map resolution and how it looks in screenshots, to include East Asia on the map, even as far as Glorious Nippon.

This post seems relevant to the discussion. (see the attachment)

We know the map resolution is 8192x4096 (2:1).

 

[SMiki Lorebringer]

Is there really a need though when you can easily see what titles the ruler has by looking at said rulers character screen?

Depends on taste I guess. I'd rather differentiate between the situation when a ruler inherits a second kingdom and titles himself king of both, and when he invades a foreign kingdom and utterly destroys the title.

 

[Masternachos]

ADD THE MOON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The Vikings* landed on Mars, so we need Mars.

*Viking 1 and Viking 2; space probes, but still VIKINGS.

 

[dragonluke]

The bottom of Africa isn't level. They go up and around the Congo basin.

The thing is there are states on either side of the congo

yet they didn't decide to tear that part of the map despite there also being civilization in that direction (Congo, the Swahili Coast, Great Zimbabwe).

why does civilizations existing south of that border matter?

Also they could easily have made the projection/provinces work to get a flat border on the eastern side of the map, if that's what they wanted. They have full control over how the eastern edge of the map looks, and they chose a torn border.

And Paradox knows how people will interpret a torn map, and they even let their early press videos point out the torn edge of the map (they also haven't tried to kill the rumour, which they often do when things are flat out wrong). So either they are building up some of the fan base up to letting them down (which seems like bad long term marketing) or they have plans to add China at some future point (even their current map projection seem designed to just leave just enough room for Southeast Asia).

To be honest I think paradox wanted to add as little of china as possible to the map,if they were to have a level edge on that side of the map they'd have to add a quite a bit of wasteland,which would look weird.

 

[SargonAkkad]

Venice again in de jure Byzantine Empire, please not

 

[Rubidium]

Venice again in de jure Byzantine Empire, please not

It's complicated, because in 867 it absolutely should be (you could even argue for making it part of Byzantium), but by 1066 it's a bit more debatable, and of course by the 1100s it's absolutely not (and by the 1200s parts of the Byzantine Empire start becoming part of Venice, but that's a separate issue).

 

[klopkr]

Not going to lie. I much prefer the cultural colours to the national colours.

I get that norway is 'red' but it's just so much more visually appealing if all the colours in a region blend into each other like a rainbow of lands.

You think expanding the map will cause people to stop demanding even more map expansions?

You sweet summer child.

Are people going to be asking for Mars once we have a global map?

 

[Pied-Noir]

I get that norway is 'red' but it's just so much more visually appealing if all the colours in a region blend into each other like a rainbow of lands.

Norway shouldn't be red anyway - grey is fine. Why should England, Norway and Denmark all be more or less the same colour? Not a fan of that.

 

[AHumpierRogue]

Because Red is literally the national color of Norway. Also Denmark is Orange, no one is going to be confusing orange with red, especially not Norway's shade of red.

 

[Byzantium2000]

Venice again in de jure Byzantine Empire, please not

Gameplay wise Honestly I feel you though I still see Venice eaten by the HRE or killed by a measly peasant revolt in Ck2. I’m surprised they added it back to Byzantium and I’m not sure why.

Historically Venice was still officially part of the Empire in 867 and 1066. We usually attribute the treaty of 1082 as a point of de facto independence but the Truth is the Republic never legally left the Empire.

Enrico Dandolo himself was a Protospatharios( which he used to legitimize his rule over a section of the empire as a actual Byzantine official. Though dropped in favor of Lord of 3/8s of the Empire of Romania during the partition when it was evident Venice has superiority over the Latin Empire )

Heck the 1082 treaty itself granted the Doge the title Protosebastos and Doux of Dalmatia. A Doge would later ask Alexios to recognize him as Doux of Croatia as Venice expanded there. The area being considered a lost province in their eyes with the Hungarians taking over Croatia.

So really you could justify it being dejure untill 1204.

Infact Ironically you could consider the Republic Of Venice the last Roman State.........

 

[pengoyo]

The thing is there are states on either side of the congo

Same with the Gobi on the eastern edge of the map, but only one of them in on a torn edge.

why does civilizations existing south of that border matter?

Just point out that if the reason for tearing the map is to indicate that there are civilizations off map, it would apply to both the eastern and southern edge.

To be honest I think paradox wanted to add as little of china as possible to the map,if they were to have a level edge on that side of the map they'd have to add a quite a bit of wasteland,which would look weird.

It would look no weirder than the southern edge of Africa (which I'm fine with). Also, tearing the map to not have awkward wasteland was one of my first thoughts too. But that doesn't seem to be the case if you look at the torn edge. Burma has a lot of awkward wasteland around it on the map that easily could have been torn off. In fact, if they had modified the project ever so slightly to reigned in Tibet a bit (or push Mongolia a little further east), then they pretty much have it so they could easily make that side flat and actually have less awkward wasteland (and be able to have less wasted space in the map image file).

But if their goal was to tear out China (as they don't want to implement it, at least yet), but still have a projection that allows for the possibility of adding it later, then IMHO the eastern edge makes a lot more sense.


So my main point with these is that if it's purely an aesthetic choice, it's very weird that it only applied to one edge of the map. As many of the reasons for making that aesthetic choice apply to the other edges of the map, especially the southern edge. Especially, since a map torn on one edge gives the impression that the map is incomplete, which is not the best thought to place in player's mind if you have no plans to rectify it.

 

[Riamus]

Although I'm sure many would be upset to hear this opinion, I think the south edge isn't torn because they aren't planning to expand further into Africa with CK3, but are still planning to expand eastward. That's just an assumption, but I think it's a good bet. Add in the map file sizes and it suggests eastern expansion rather than southern even more.

They commented on the fact that adding too much additional area (the comment was in regards to adding the Americas) would put too much strain on the game engine. Obviously the Americas would be a huge addition, but there would be some lesser point in additional size where you go from "the resource usage of the game isn't too bad with this amount of additional territory" to "the resource usage is too much for additional map territory to be of any value." We don't really know where that point is. Would they be able to add China without crossing over that line? I'm assuming so, but not certain. Could they also add the rest of Asia, including Japan without crossing that line? What else might they add "safely"? Greenland for some Viking stuff? Perhaps even some of the closest edge of Canada, also for Viking stuff? Could they go further south into Africa? And if so, how far? These are all questions they have to answer when trying to decide where to expand and how much they can expand. And then they have to decide which area(s) add the most enjoyment to players -- what are players most interested in and what areas provide the most interesting gameplay mechanics and histories and events? It's definitely a challenge.

Other than the fact that feudalism wasn't worldwide and there was a LOT of empty territory in the world at that time (or minimally populated), I'd love to have the game cover the entire world just to see what I could do with it. But that would be just for a fun thing to mess around with. Obviously colonization of the Americas wasn't something that happened in this game's time period, so wouldn't be even remotely historical. It might be fun, though.

You know, there is a Fantasy/SciFi book series by Piers Anthony from the late 70s/early 80s called the Apprentice Adept series, which also included a "sequel" series. One of the things in there that really got me interested was the Game. It was designed where two players would each select one item on a grid which would then determine part of what game they'd play. So, for example (just made up and not from the book as I don't have it in front of me), one player might have the rows and choose Uneven Terrain and the other might have columns and choose Liquid. Normally they wouldn't know what the other chose until they both made their choices unless they were working to get a specific result. Those two choices would then open up the next grid, which in this case would relate to categories that might involve things like racing jetskis. This really isn't a great example and I wish I had the actual grid information in front of me, but the idea is that after you go through 2-3 grids to choose the type of game, you'd then fill in the last grid with games that fit that final type of game and then each choose their column or row and the result of where those cross would be the game they'd play. It made it so you'd never know what you'd end up playing, though you'd of course strategize to get what you'd be best at. Anyhow, the point is that it got me thinking of how we could have a developer like Paradox who has games involving different time periods set it up so that you could literally start playing a game in an earlier time period and play through to the end of that, then carry over your save into the game that covers the following time period, then repeat. It would seem like it's one game, though gameplay would change at each step and would allow a "seamless" game from long ago to very recent, with each game being designed for the time period it covers. Of course, even if they wanted to do something like that, all of their games that covered the time periods would have to be very well made and fun to play games. Just imagine how much time you'd spend in a game that spanned multiple different video games but continued the save through all of them and covered a time period of, for example, 2000BC to 2000AD (or BCE/CE for anyone after my generation). Talk about epic!

I always thought it would be fun to have a game of games that allowed two players to go through that kind of grid and use it to determine what game to play between them and then load up the appropriate game. Of course, about the only way that could ever work would be if we ever get really advance virtual reality (holodecks?) that would allow us to play a ton of games from one. I would love to see that!

 

[Rock Lord]

In the recent livestream, I think they mentioned that holding a single county of a duchy is not really a good situation, because the count wouldn't consider you their dejure liege. In light of that, I've gotta say I think this whole "Lori is dejure part of Georgia" thing is likely going to really irritate me. So I hope they change it.

So, just to expound on what I said before: Lori is kind of on the historical border of Armenia and Georgia, but in the Early Middle Ages it was ruled by the Armenian Bagratids. The "Kingdom of Lori" was granted by the King of Armenia to his brother in the 10th century. It wasn't until the 12th century that the Kingdom of Georgia controlled Lori. In fact, by the 12th and 13th century, most of Greater Armenia came under the rule of the Kingdom of Georgia. And even after that, Queen Tamar granted control over Armenian territory, including Lori, to her Armenian vassals in the Zakarid Dynasty. When the Mongols conquered the Caucasus, the Zakarids then became vassals of the Mongol Empire. From what I can determine, it wasn't until after the decline of the Zakarids in the late 1300s that Lori became consistently part of Georgian kingdoms.

So for most of the period that Crusader Kings will cover, it would have been directly governed by Armenian rulers. Certainly it would be during 867 and 1066. Maybe if a game was covering a later period, like Europa Universalis, it would be make more sense to include it as a dejure part of Georgian territory.

It's especially weird, because it was part of the Duchy of Armenia in CK2, so I'm not positive why they changed it. Maybe they wanted to make sure both Armenia and Georgia had the same number of counties in their kingdoms for gameplay reasons?

 

[Parokki]

Hmm.. the map of Finland includes at least Pietarsaari, a city founded in 1625 and carrying the name of Saint Peter, as well as Olavinlinna, a castle built by the Swedes in the late 1400s and named after Saint Olaf. I made a big thread about feedback on the Finland map revamp for CK2 a couple years back, so I appreciate the difficulty of what the devs are doing, but I hope they'll listen to feedback after we see the final map and have time to think it over.

Greatly looking forward to the game, although playing as the pagan Tribe of Saint Olaf's Castle is going to feel hilariously weird.

 

[SMiki Lorebringer]

Other than the fact that feudalism wasn't worldwide and there was a LOT of empty territory in the world at that time (or minimally populated), I'd love to have the game cover the entire world just to see what I could do with it. But that would be just for a fun thing to mess around with. Obviously colonization of the Americas wasn't something that happened in this game's time period, so wouldn't be even remotely historical. It might be fun, though.

Let's be honest – I don't think the vision you describe would fit CK gameplay, which is focused on role-playing influential families of the era. While expanding the map to cover more areas connected into Old World trade network, from Iceland to Japan, might be plausible, a line will eventually be drawn somewhere; New World and Australia, while occasionally reached by Old Worlders before age of exploration, has never participated in continuous exchange of goods and people.

Forming an alternate history in which as a viking family I can establish lasting outposts in Vinland and eventually create a "Cocoa Road" would be extraordinarily awesome. But it's RPG first, not a map-painting strategy: what use would I have of the whole globe if I don't feel it? If it's full of empty land and feature-less cultures, it feels cheap.

Deep first, wide second. If CK3 manages to model its diverse world in immersive fashion, I'm all for the full global map in CK4. But not before the game is so deep so all of us, with one accord, advocate to add Australia.

 

[Battlex]

I have quite many issues with the culture of 1066, which seems inconstant for the most part. I mean, German culture is split into several parts but many others who with same logic could be split aren't.

• Belgium is French when they should be Franconian. Belgium was the heartland of Franks and remained culturally isolated when Latinization occured. Therefore, it should be an extension of Franconian, and become Dutch if it remains under French rule for a century.
• Berbers should be subdivided into various cultures, they were very un-unified as a culture.
• North-eastern Anatolia should have Pontic Greeks
• Russian should be subdivided into Novgoridian, Russian and Ruthenian

why would flanders swap from franconian to dutch under french overlordship? in 1066 flanders has a dutch duke.
dividing berbers up could result in ahistorical cultures, like 'ryzanian' in eu4
german culture being split up means they'll have less 'control' if they inherit a duchy the other side of the empire, and so the marriage game wont be as easy. berbers are tribal at game start so dont need different culture to make controlling provinces harder

 

[Karlington]

dividing berbers up could result in ahistorical cultures, like 'ryzanian' in eu4

I saw a screenshot of the culture map somewhere on the forum (not in the culture or map dev diaries, so maybe it was from a stream or something) and the Berber culture had been split in two, one northern and one southern Berber culture. I forgot the exact names, but they were reality-based (I looked them up at the time).

 

[General Von Trapp]

Does anyone know if the paper map changes with culture or hopefully at least for the different periods? So for example you see a Viking ships illustration in the North Sea during before 1066.

 

[ArVass]

Does anyone know if the paper map changes with culture or hopefully at least for the different periods. So for example you see a Viking ships illustration in the North Sea during before 1066.

Not at release. It may come later tho

 

[Zeeg]

Was going through the maps and noticed Kerman, Sistan and Makran are missing as counties in Persia, I noticed Makran is a dejure kingdom?
Don't recall Bampur, Khawr and Kiz being in CK2, there's a real life city named Bampur but a whole historical country with that name, would anyone with versed in history on the region be kind and shed light on this?