You're missing a key part a key part of the idea.
Going to the north sea requires technology that Muslims and other Mediterranean powers don't possess. Acquiring the tech without actually conquering a province that already has it is very difficult.
Actually I was arguing that anything that had to do with technology could be worked in to another non unit based naval system as well. Anything that has to do with province control can also be worked into a non unit based system.
The way this would manifest in-game is that if your province doesn't have "North Sea Trade Routes" as a tech the ships you buy their can't leave the Mediterranean.
So how're you gonna model that a Med power based in Alexandria can land in Gibralter, but a Med power based in the Balearics can't land in Brittany?
I haven't calculated the exact distances, but by eyeball they look comparable.
Several ways. Using a tech system similar to the in CK1 (ei, tech is tied to provinces) I would simply let Alexandria have the "Ocean going rigging", "Naval tradition" etc. technologies and not put them in the Baelerics. If you want further limits some naval range modifiers could be tied to army culture etc (to represent the naval culture of the actual army doing the crossing and such). Building such as advanced habors could also modify naval range and the size of the army that you could dispatch from a given province. Further it wuld be easy to use a system like in EU3 and mark the mediterranean as shallow water and the atlantic as ocean, causing vast differences in naval range.
That being said, I'm not even sure that there was any direct naval invasions from Alexandria to Gibraltar. There was a reason that the first crusade went by way of Constantinople, that the Muslims invaded across the strait of Gibraltar and that Richard the First took Cypres as a staging base. So really no-one would ever sail directly from Norway to Alexandria or anything like that.
Alternatives exist.
Trouble is they all seem to be based on attrition, which is also easy for the AI to handle, and if they're based on distance they have to a) keep Eastern and Western Med powers from ever fighting, because it's a big Sea, or b) allow North Africans to invade Ireland.
I assume you mean hard for the AI to handle, and I agree, the AI doesn't deal well with attrition either. However mostly the idea is based around a simple hard range limits - if you embark from Gibraltar to say Tripoli at cost X, and no futher, if you embark from Venice you can get to any part of the Med etc. This should be relatively easy for the AI to understand, as it is simply part of route planning and path finding, a problem which has been solved efficiently for a long time.
And really east and west Med powers did not make direct ocean invasions. Armies were marched to the closest friendly port, and if that wasn't close enough they didn't fight. But if that seems too simplistic I've already pointed out how adding different tech to different provinces can help distinguish between different Med powers.
In CK1 every time anybody complained about the Sheik of Praha Paradox would claim Muslim incursions into Europe were necesary for game balance reasons, because the decision to invade Egypt should be risky for a player.
Do you really believe those guys are gonna write an AI that allows the player to declare war at no risk, because Muslims stay home?
Moreover since in Paradox games the only way to win most wars is take the enemy's provinces do you really think they're gonna write an AI that refuses to take your provinces?
Nick
Well, I agree with you that this is how it was in CK1. I guess my point was that I would rather see Paradox focus their efforts on these fundamental problems than on making a complicated naval system.
Risk could be added in plenty of ways. Ways that would refelct the period better. So lets say you are not going to loose you lands to muslim invaders - but you could see nobles conspiring against you at home, peasants rebelling etc. And if the ruler stays at home, but dispatches his nobles, they might reap the prestige and political power when they get home. And what can the muslims do? They can capture and ransom the leaders you send down their, making an already costly war even more expensive.
Besides it should really be possible for a crusading army to conquer provinces in the middle east anyway. It should be possible to liberate them, form the crusader states and so on of course, but those provinces should not become part of England or France or whoever did the liberation, because that is not what happened. So if the player does not have a hcnace of really gaining provinces, the is not big gameplay reason that he should be able to loose provinces.
As for winning wars, this could be based on something other than province control. Victorious battles. Capturing hostages. Casus bellis and claims.
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And funny enough America was discovered during the dark age.