Hm.. methinks you need to expand map to entire world at this same scale, but blacken out countries that do not matter for time being yessss?
Methinks a map of this scale covering the entire world would be WAAAAY above the engine limitations (even entire France would not fit in the current 10Mpix limit), and would require a serious (very serious) modding team. I spent no less than 100 hours just working on the map (even before I created the first title, or character). I am willing to spend much more time on this project, but NOT working on the map, so I can assure you: the map is not going to cover more land than it does now. Sorry but it's an impossible task for a one-man team. I consider the map 97% done, it just need more details in some areas but I am very satisfied with it. I will probably add more provinces before release but that's not map work strictly speaking.
You see, the point of this mod is precisely to create a smaller scale experience for CKII. I don't care about having the rest of the world to play with! If you get into the right perspective, the British Isles and the area covered by this map are huge... endless things can happen there. The smaller scale makes the map a lot more immersive and visually convincing (in my humble opinion). It actually make things feel LARGER.
When I first played CKII, I did not love it because of one thing: the provinces were too small, the whole map too crowded. Some provinces are so small that the 3D model of the capital barely fits, and if you send four councillors over there, it's going to look like they're standing all four on a biscuit. TPATT and several other popular mods make this thing even worse (even if they add tons of fantastic features, no doubt about that!).
I didn't play more than 15-20 hours of vanilla CKII because it made my eyes go crazy with hundreds of tiny, brightly colored provinces.
Then the Game of Thrones mod came. I am a big fan of A Song of Ice and Fire and so I tried the mod as soon as I knew about it. It was love on first sight. I liked the setting, the CKII engine is a perfect simulator for Martin's world, but even more I liked the SCALE! No more tiny provinces, lots of details in the map... forests, valleys, roads... visually it was just a lot more immersive for me than vanilla CKII. It felt like being there. Honestly, Vanilla alps looks so ugly I could not stand playing as an italian ruler (and that was my first try, being italian myself). The GOT team in my opinion pushed mapmaking to a whole another level.
I played the GOT mod for more than 150 hours... (thanks Steam hours counter). And I stopped just because I started working on this mod, otherwise I'd still be playing... ;-)
I realized I wanted to try to take this approach a step further, creating a map that could feel even larger (covering a smaller area). I had no doubts about the setting... I've been trying to create a roman-britain-based game for almost ten years now (not joking). It started as a Role Playing Game project (paper and dices, not software), and I actually wrote a manual and made a lot of research. About a year ago I created a map for the RPG that was actually the starting point for THIS map (I started from the same photoshop file, I got all the land/sea borders already done, I knew the damn thing like my pockets).
Please, do not ask me to go on a larger scale with this mod, because my intent is exactly the opposite! I want it to be full of tiny details, compact but deep, not bigger but thinner...
Thanks!
L.
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