Revamping the Low Countries (important proposal and open discussion)

[Metz]

I worked on these to present a visual image on what the Low Countries currently offers and what it is missing. Not only is it the Low Countries, but also provinces and areas outside of the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg.

What we currently have:

A proposed rough draft I made:

In my additions which may not be fully 100% accurate but close enough I hope, I included several missing key locations.

- Friesland was cut up as it was too big and the missing counties were added.
- Gelre was moved to a more accurate location and it surrounds Utrecht now.
- Holland was cut up into Amsterdam and Den Haag. The choices were either Den Haag or Rotterdam as they are close by but I chose Den Haag due to politics significance in the time frame and events surrounding Spanish occupation and the 80 Years War.
- North Flemish provinces cut up to include significant key cities. Leuven specifically, and it had an influential university.
- Aachen was reduced in size and the Duchy of Julich was added around it. An important Duchy that has been excluded from the game.
- Added Counties/Lordships of Groningen, Overjissel, and Drenthe.
- Added County of Mark.
- Added Imperial City of Ravensberg. This is important currently because Friesland as of 1.12 always gets invited to be a Free City due to Austria eating up a nearby Free CIty neighbor I assume. This complicates the game for players in the area who want to create a unified Netherlands.
- By adding provinces in the northern areas of the modern day Netherlands, it opens up future development and the transition of wealth going from the south to the north.



Italy currently was buffed up in provinces as to show it had highly urbanized cities, especially in the north. Some places are still missing in Italy though like Alessandria, Bologna, splitting Abruzzo, and splitting Rome.

I believe the same should be done with the Low Countries, as it would add more competition and fun to the area as well as increase reality and make Netherlands (if it consolidates) a strong and interesting opponent in Europe and around the world.



Opinions? Suggestions?

 

[Grubnessul]

I studied in Groningen, having it in the game is a must

IIRC Drenthe (Assen in your set up) belonged to the bishop of Utrecht for most of the period.

 

[Metz]

Can someone confirm if Gelderen is in the wrong place? I think it was an important city that was an exclave that should cut off parts of my Maastricht, Den Bosch, and Cleve provinces. That would make the area prettier as Maastricht is kind of long and Cleve is kind of pointy. If so then the Gelderen I put should be renamed Nijmegen.

 

[Lapoleon]

Your Gelre seems okay, but your Mechele is a bit odd. Its area is mostly the current Dutch part of Brabant and Breda might be a better fit for that area. It seems to be a rather large amount of provinces for such a small area however. Especially with all the extra unlawful territory it will be incredibly difficult to unite.

 

[Willem IV]

Holland should be spilt in Holland/West Frisia or South/North Holland. The southern one should have The Hague as capital. It has been the capital of the county of Holland from before the game start until today. Amsterdam could get the northern part, its rich history and being the capital of the country since Napoleon.

Oversticht is the other province I would love to see, it could be a battleground for Utrecht, Gelre & Munster, as it was during histroy.

Even with those two provinces, forumvisitors were complaining that it would be way too small. I do disagree on that.
But with your amount of additions...

 

[Metz]

Your Gelre seems okay, but your Mechele is a bit odd. Its area is mostly the current Dutch part of Brabant and Breda might be a better fit for that area. It seems to be a rather large amount of provinces for such a small area however. Especially with all the extra unlawful territory it will be incredibly difficult to unite.

It's not that hard if you diplo-annex. There can always be ways to work around such things though.

 

[Woody19]

I like your proposition, especially the addition of Mark/Hamm and Jülich!

 

[Metz]

The Den Bosch I did is kind of weird.

I should make Mechelen smaller and split Den Bosch into west (Den Bosch) and a eastern province (Eindhoven). That way there is a perfectly aligned Netherlands with Middelburg. if you exclude Belgium.

 

[Koivin]

You should make a correct culture map to go with it.

 

[Lapoleon]

The Den Bosch I did is kind of weird.

I should make Mechelen smaller and split Den Bosch into west (Den Bosch) and a eastern province (Eindhoven). That way there is a perfectly aligned Netherlands with Middelburg. if you exclude Belgium.

If your goal is to be more realistic you should under no circumstances add Eindhoven. Eindhoven is a collection of minor towns and villages that agglomerated together in the 19th and 20th centuries. For the area you currently have on the map Breda or Dordrecht are far more important historic cities.

 

[Metz]

Here is an updated version. A Den Bosch split and a Julich touching Liege as it did historically.

 

[Metz]

If your goal is to be more realistic you should under no circumstances add Eindhoven. Eindhoven is a collection of minor towns and villages that agglomerated together in the 19th and 20th centuries. For the area you currently have on the map Breda or Dordrecht are far more important historic cities.

Have Breda on the west and Den Bosch on the east instead of Eindhoven then?

 

[Metz]

Also Maastricht seems strange being so detached, but the provinces did get reworked in the 19th century after the game's timeframe to make it look how it is today. Although maybe some sort of compromise could be made up.

 

[Vaximillian]

But they're so tiny! And probably unclickable.

 

[repent]

I wish the low countries felt a bit more like Northern Italy instead of just an appetiser for France.

 

[Daema]

You're remarkably close to how I've done the Low Countries in the mod I'm working on:

They're some of the smallest provinces in-game (barring the tiny islands), but I had a working version pre-CS and you naturally zoom in further. Rather than the provinces feeling excessively small, it makes the map feel much larger.

EDIT: Found a screenshot (the positions weren't set, so ignore the random city splatter and in-land ports):

 

[LordSolar]

Here is an updated version. A Den Bosch split and a Julich touching Liege as it did historically.

Nijmegen and Arnhem should be the other way around

 

[springel]

In EU IV game terms adding Drenthe as a region makes no sense. It was even too insignificant to be a province in the Dutch Republic.
As long as Utrecht was independent, Overijssel and Drenthe formed the Oversticht part of Utrecht, and they can very well be represented by one region called Oversticht.

The county of Drenthe never - in human memory - had a count on its own, but was always part of a larger personal union ever since it became part of the Carolingian Empire.

The city of Groningen was formally part of Drenthe but it had a separate legal status for being personal property of the King (until 1040), and it gradually started to dominate the Frisian lands to the North, and Drenthe to the South. In 1400 it leased all remaining feudal rights of the Bishop of Utrecht on itself for a lump sum of money. At the end of the 15th century it was offered the status of Free Imperial City, but it regarded the financial demands from the Emperor too high, so it never got that status, but it did take the Imperial Eagle into its coat of arms.

So don't create a region of Drenthe. Assen was a tiny village around an abbey that formed a small administrative centre for the Bishop. The only city that formed in Drenthe was Groningen. Only in 1807 King Louis Napolean started to develop Assen, because he wanted to create a Dutch Versailles there as new capital of his Kingdom, in the middle of nowhere.

Also, naming the Northern part of Holland Holland is not right: all of Holland (and Zeeland) started as West Frisia, but the core of Holland is in the Southern half where a local dynasty rose to power after killing the Danish ruler. The Northern part was West Frisia for much longer (~1300). After it ceased to be Frisia, it became known as the Noorderkwartier of Holland (while only the upper Northern part is still known as West Friesland, with the other parts being Kennemerland and Waterland).

 

[Metz]

But they're so tiny! And probably unclickable.

They are not. Calais and Gibraltar are clickable, and all the provinces made above are larger than those.

 

[Twoflower]

This is really nice. Since this already looks a lot better than anything I could manage to draw up, would you be willing to turn this into a map mod? Or perhaps even a more far-reaching project to improve the Lowlands and Rhineland with an improved setup, DHEs, national ideas for the countries in the area that don't have any etc.? This is something I had thought about doing, but had refrained from so far, because I have no map-modifying skills at all.
Some thoughts on the map:

• I might be wrong, but maybe you are confusing the County of Ravensberg with the Imperial City of Ravensburg, which has been added to the game already in 1.12? That said, adding the County of Ravensberg is not a bad idea as such (or rather: a very good one ), as long as it is clickable. It was the third territory (alongside the Duchies of Jülich and Berg) ruled by the Jülich dynasty in the 15th century, quite wealthy because of its cloth industry and strategically quite important because of its location in the middle of Westphalia, especially to Brandenburg-Prussia
• of course, the idea of adding another Imperial City makes a lot of sense, since it is indeed quite weird for Friesland to always become an Imperial City. Isn't Groningen an obvious candidate for that? It never was de jure an Imperial City, because of the Bishopric of Utrecht's claims for suzerainty, however de facto it acted like one, and in the end of the 15th century even added the double-headed Imperial Eagle, which was reserved to Free Imperial Cities, to it coat of arms.
• adding Mark (Hamm) and Jülich of course gets my thumbs up
• I am not sure if there really need for separate Arnheim and Nijmegen provinces; an Upper Gelre/Lower Gelre split makes more sense, I think. The city of Geldern and the area around it, sometimes called Obergeldern/Upper Gelre is the historical core of the Duchy, which remained Spanish in the Eighty Years War and part of which, including the actual city of Geldern was ceded by Spain to Brandenburg-Prussia in the Peace of Utrecht (on the base of Kleve's ancient claim on Geldern!) . The northern part, collectively called Lower Gelre/Niedergeldern, was acquired later and consisted of the ancient county of Zutphen, the territory of Veluwe and the city of Nijmegen with its surroundings.
• The Imperial City of Aachen should be southwest, not north of Jülich, bordering Limburg.
• this is really a matter of taste, but I personally prefer using the names of territories rather than capital, as long as it makes sense. Thus, I would propose Mark rather than Hamm, Obergeldern and Niedergeldern, Drenthe rather than Assen, Nordholland and Zuidholland etc.