anatolia
okay, i'm going to post this under a series of presumptions: first, that CK will have a few more provinces, and that somehow they'll have to match up with EU's provinces.
first, i'm going to write the 10th century byzantine themas that correspond to EU's provinces, and then later i am going to go down in flames in the attempt to influence how they should be drawn to simulate seljuk and ottoman expansion
okay
i'm using half-phonetic/half-latinized spellings
smyrna: except for its northern coast along the hellespont, it perfectly corresponds to the thema of
thrakesion
the northern part of smyrna, plus half of anatolia except
its northern shore, form the thema of
opsikiou
anatolia: except the part that goes to opsikiou, it combines the themas of
optimaton (the peninsula across from constantinople, on the asiatic side),
boukellarion which also includes half of angora underneath kastamon, and nothern part of
anatolikon
anatolikon is complicated, i'll get to further on
kastamon: was the thema
paphlagonias
trabzon: should be split vertically in half, into themas
armeniakon and
chaldias
angora: the part not given to boukellarion should be named the thema of
charsianou
antalya: this, along with the very western end of konya, with the 2/3 of the coast of taurus formed the thema of
kibyrraioton; it should suggest a triangular shape
taurus: the part not in kibyrraioton formed the thema of
seleukeias; in other words, it should only have an eastern shore, the southern and western belonging to the other.
konya: its middle third not in kibyrraioton plus the southern fourth of anatolia formed thema
anatolikon; it should look slightly rectangular... its eastern third formed thema
kappadokias
sivas: combines (from north going counter-clockwise)
koloneias,
sebasteias,
lykandou, and
mesopotamias
okay, now that you know that, my preliminary argument is for all provinces except optimaton and boukellarion, which can be merged into 'boukellarion'; kappadokias, which can be merged with 'anatolikon'; and the four themes in "sivas", which can be merged into 'sebasteias'. we can trim the fat from there. that's 11 provinces covering 10 eu provinces, if i counted correctly.
looking at this map again i think my earlier post was in error: samos and most of the dodecanese (except rhodes) belonged to 'kibyrraioton'. the aegean sea theme covers the other islands i mentioned before and
appears to include rhodes. cyprus is of course, a separate theme.
speaking of separate themas; kaffa at least, maybe kerch, belonged to thema 'chersonas'. i'll get to italy later.
since eu was pretty good about multiple points of view, maybe some of the anatolian themas, the very eastern ones, should get turkish names... well, scratch that; once i do some research on how the turks expanded, i'll have to drop some eastern themas altogether in favor of turkish provinces.
where do i post info on byzantine military units? (as far as army names, for flavor)
stephanos
