The vandals were arian I believe, not catholic as suggested here.

I think the saxon provinces should be extended a bit up into lower denmark.

I would create more independant rebel provinces, especially in the berber territories. Many of the civs in this mod are not truly united. With the coming of the germanic kingdoms the feudal system replaced the centralized government of the romans.

Btw, I don't think the WRE will be able to regain it's strength with just 1 province, unless they will have large starting armies(financed perhaps by the ERE)

[This message has been edited by Thompsoncs (edited 01-13-2011 @ 11:14 AM).]

I'm still not too keen on the situation in the Balkans, with the Ostrogoths and the Illyrians. I do think that that could do with some revision, as could the religions.

It could be personal taste, but I'd also propose we do an additional campaign, all the same except factions start with fewer regions. I much prefer building up to being thrown into an empire at the get go. Or we could just reduce the number of regions each faction holds.

So this is the map thread? If it isn't, let's do it in the specified thread

Please confirm if it is or not Mod Leaders

This is the map thread.

The map was posted in the original thread, which doubled as the Romano-Celt thread. I felt it necessary to have a handy reference, thus this thread.

Here is a loading friendly screenshot of a 500AD map of the area we are interested in. The original was quite large and took a little while for even my browser to load it.

500 AD map

Mm. Notice the differences between the currently proposed map in the Balkans and Spain/Languedoc, in particular.

I like to see Spain altered slighty, adding Gallaecia as a rebel territory, and dividing Carthageninsis into Toletum and Carthago Nova. Dijon in France and Saxon Britain as Londinium and Eburacum would also be good, as would dividing Sicily between the Ostrogoths and the Vandals.

Well, we can definitely add regions. Any given that not all of the kingdom/peoples on my map are factions in our mod, we can make them a strong rebel settlement.

Several changes to the map have been made in the faction threads. Londinium will be going away, and the British provinces on the island will be split north-south.

Also, not all factions on the other map will be on ours (Bavarians, for example) due to the hardcoded limit on number of factions. Plus the other map shows Allemagne as part of the Frankish Kingdom, but it actually fell 507- so we left it in as a faction and gave it some space. Why? Mostly because the Alemanni already exist in the game, and we only need to tweak it, whereas for the Bavarians we would need to create an entirely new Germanic faction- more work than the value it would give.

I do think we could cut down some of the strongest kingdoms by turning some of their border provinces rebel- but that would reduce the historical accuracy by quite a bit. By 500AD, as opposed to Vanilla's 270, most of the known world was already lumped into kingdoms and empires- whereas in 270, most were wild areas.

Rule of Thumb- factions must have a minimum of two provinces, so that one bad battle does not eliminate the faction. If the faction loses two bad battles in a row, then they don't deserve to live (or we have some tweaking to do)

Still only 3 regions in Britain? I think another one at least would be nice.

As for historical accuracy - just look at the faction list and the balkans situation. And Hispania/Gaul! Either way, I'm just suggesting a reduced start as a possibility, or a provincial campaign. Having played on a map following (quite accurately!) the situation as we believe it to have been in 500AD, I can tell you with full confidence that the gameplay just didn't compare to forging an empire from near scratch.

This is, of course, entirely my opinion- although I am quite sure that many feel the same.

Oh, don't get me wrong. I like the idea of re-doing Spain to put in the Suevi Kingdom as a rebel area. And probably a few of the other, smaller areas of historical small factions could also be made rebel.

Also, Britain was resolved into two Romano-British provinces, one Saxon province, one Scots rebel province, and one Anglo-Jutish rebel province (Kent). I am sure other changes will be made as well. The map as proposed is a proto-type.

Romano-British Provinces:

1. Dumnonia, would incorporate the extreme Southwest of England: Dorset, Somerset, Devon and Cornwall today.
Capital: Isca Caster, modern Exeter

2. Cambria, composed of Wales and Old Cumberland.
Capital:
- Deva Caster OR
- Dinas Emrys (a legendary city on the other side of the Cambrian mountains) OR maybe
- Caer Maridunum (Carmarthen)
Note: Will have ONE Saxon army in here.

3. Armorica, occupies vanilla Condate Redonum.
Capital: Redones
Family member: Aldroenus, King of Brittany (c.AD 373-464).


NON-RB Provinces below:

(Rebel) Hibernia, occupies Ireland, more or less.
Capital: Campus Colinius, on modern Cork (Easter Egg!)

(Rebel) Caledonia, occupies Scotland down to Hadrian's Wall.
Capital: Arclota/Arcluda, ancient Glasgow.

(Rebel) Britannia Interior, composed of "Northern, Central and Central Southern England".
Capital: Eburacum. Represents Bernicia and other invaders' kingdoms.
Note: Will have ONE Saxon army already in here.

(Saxon) Anglia, "broadly speaking Kent, London and East Anglia and everything in between."
Capital: Londonium. Or Lundene.

* * *

And Terikel, that map you have in the title post is way too small IMO, and since we talked about copying Medieval 2's map over for use in this mod, perhaps we could base our efforts on that one instead?

Another option would be to use Mundus Magnus and cut it down to the region we want. Copts starting as a horde, or a semi-settled horde in Aethiopia would then be possible, ready to take down Egypt, the Norse would get more room and the Sassanid Empire could be better demonstrated and also somewhat easier to balance againt the ERE.

Anything further east could be abandoned.

Soz bout not using proper region names but in 500 AD the huns were somewhere in the region of Aquincum & was past its prime. Also have you thought about the slavs (horde or settled) & perhaps a faction like the Bosphorus kingdom or something like that (thats just my suggestion but you guys do what you like).
Great map though

Actually by this point the Huns were hanging out the Black Sea for the most part.

I quite like the idea of the Bosphoran kingdom, actually. Had occurred to me before, but I wasn't sure who we'd use...

It has since occured to me that if the Ostrogoths get fixed, the Illyrian slot would be open - that could be used for the Lombards but perhaps someone like the Suevi or Bosphoran Kingdom could be better, je ne sais pas. Others could be rebels and AoR units. Opinions, folks?

From the research in the planning phases, it seemed that the Slavs descended from the Venedae in the centuries after this time, thus we have the Venedae representing their ancestors.

The Huns we kicked back to northern Russia- should have been further east and less north, but again, in the planning phases and what we had to work with, that seemed the logical place to put them at the time.

Mythic- do you think you could rework the map and repost it here, taking into account the changes already suggested?

Ok, my bad.

One thing on the bosporan kingdom. some people think the bosporan kingdom was a semi-romanised ally of ERE, although they could have been decendents of Alans, Samaritans etc.

Im not sure though if they were steppe peoples or romanised, or semi-eastern but part of the bosporus (sorry if spelt wrong) was taken over or a vassal to the byzantines but has unkown history (at least no where i can find) it could have been taken over by the Venedae or raided by russian steppe tribes

It could be an idea to have one but the problem would be with its weak tribal economy & the neighbours behaviour to such a small (if) kingdom

You could keep it rebel or bring it as a faction

If you want I could get info on the locations and peoples at the time (the Bosporus)

[This message has been edited by Alpha211 (edited 01-23-2011 @ 06:24 AM).]

Was there actually a bosphoran kingdom in this period? And did it play any significant role at all?

I would choose the Lombards as extra faction. They played an important role in Italy

Well strictly speaking there wasn't a bosporan kingdom but there were independent peoples in there & it did exist before the start of the fall of the west but it was an idea to have a faction up there & it could have some unique units, but yes there could be certain "weaknesses" in the idea.

We could have the lombards but could it be possible that we incoporate it into another faction (such as the gepidae), as there alot of barbarian factions around there (Franks, Alemanni ,Gepidae, Burgadians etc.) though it is a good idea to have a lombard faction.
perhaps have them based in the regions of western vendae (split the vicus sarmatae region in half perhaps) one of the eastern regions of the alemanni & northern illyria (or somewhere around there)

[This message has been edited by Alpha211 (edited 01-23-2011 @ 10:40 AM).]

Quoted from Terikel:

Mythic- do you think you could rework the map and repost it here, taking into account the changes already suggested?

Will do.


Just as a note to everyone, I think the factions have pretty much been set in stone.


EDIT:

And what do we all think?

[This message has been edited by Mythic_Commodore (edited 01-23-2011 @ 02:27 PM).]

Upper left corner of Spain to Rebels, customize them as Suevi Kingdom.

Lower left corner of 'France' to Visigoths. Clovis will be fighting them to take it soon enough.

Upper right Saxon province in Britannia to Rebels, though we will put a Saxon army near it if not in it. Customize to Angles and Jutes.

Maybe make the two desert provinces south of the Vandals rebel?

Vandals should probably get the Baleares and Corsica/Sardinia, too.

And... well, the Illyrians?

There needs to be many more rebel regions to start with. Not everybody likes being handed a built empire to administer, with no clear direction towards which to expand.

good map, just two things

1) do the norsemen only have one settlement? or have they got two settlements up there in scandanavia

2) will the ERE or another faction have a strong army in/ near the ostrogothic greek settlements or will they rebel or something (sorry if incorrect) as i thought they had their empire based in Italy & greece was mainly in the hands of other factions

i'm not trying to "pick holes" in the idea though

just some thoughts

[This message has been edited by Alpha211 (edited 01-24-2011 @ 12:50 PM).]

The Norse have two provinces, maybe three- Jutland, Sjælland, and Skåne as I see it (Mainland Denmark, the Islands, and the tip of Sweden).

RE: Visigoths

Quoted from Terikel:

Lower left corner of 'France' to Visigoths. Clovis will be fighting them to take it soon enough.

In support:

Quoted from Wiki:

The Visigoths' second great king, Euric, unified the various quarreling factions among the Visigoths and, in 475, forced the Roman government to grant them full independence. At his death, the Visigoths were the most powerful of the successor states to the Western Roman Empire.

The Visigoths also became the dominant power in the Iberian Peninsula, quickly crushing the Alans and forcing the Vandals into north Africa. By 500, the Visigothic Kingdom, centred at Toulouse, controlled Aquitania and Gallia Narbonensis and most of Hispania with the exception of the Suevic kingdom in the northwest and small areas controlled by the Basques and Cantabrians. However, in 507, the Franks under Clovis I defeated the Visigoths in the Vouillé and wrested control of Aquitaine. King Alaric II was killed in battle.

After Alaric's death, Visigothic nobles spirited his heir, the child-king Amalaric, first to Narbonne, which was the last Gothic outpost in Gaul, and further across the Pyrenees into Hispania. The center of Visigothic rule shifted first to Barcelona, then inland and south to Toledo. From 511 to 526, the Visigoths were ruled by Theodoric the Great of the Ostrogoths as de jure regent for the young Amalaric.

Yes, it's true that the Visigoths probably ruled all Spain plus Aquitania and Gallia Narbonensis (the two southern-most regions of Gaul), but as I said, to make it fun for a Visigothic player in the beginning and to add some challenge, we could rebellize the five Spanish regions south of Tarraconensis (the northeastern-most province) as shown:

(from top to bottom)
(at northeast actually) Tarraconensis
Suevi Kingdom (at northwest)
Lusitanian Alans || Asding Vandals || Hispanian Alans
Siling Vandals

And Mythic: what is that roped off headland, Carthago Nova?

Quoted from Wiki:

Following the fortunes of the Vandals and Suevi into the Iberian peninsula (Hispania, comprising modern Portugal and Spain) in 409, the Alans led by Respendial settled in the provinces of Lusitania and Carthaginiensis: "Alani Lusitaniam et Carthaginiensem provincias, et Wandali cognomine Silingi Baeticam sortiuntur" (Hydatius). The Siling Vandals settled in Baetica, the Suevi in coastal Gallaecia, and the Asding Vandals in the rest of Gallaecia.

In 418 (or 426 according to some authors, cf. e.g. Castritius, 2007), the Alan king, Attaces, was killed in battle against the Visigoths, and this branch of the Alans subsequently appealed to the Asding Vandal king Gunderic to accept the Alan crown. The separate ethnic identity of Respendial's Alans dissolved. Although some of these Alans are thought to have remained in Iberia, most went to North Africa with the Vandals in 429. Later Vandal kings in North Africa styled themselves Rex Wandalorum et Alanorum ("King of the Vandals and Alans").

In summary, my idea is to give the Visigoths a chance to "reconquer" the Spanish lands, and establish a powerful kingdom in Hispania as the Franks further north force them south from their former capital of Palladia Tolosa in Aquitania. If we're lucky, it might even help simulate the south-going Visigothic movement due to aggressive Frankish expansion to the south and east.

The Visigoths would start with only three regions: Aquitania, Gallia Narbo (which I think can be renamed as Septimania), and Tarraconensis. They face Frankish pressure from the word go, and find themselves in need of new lands to settle, which they find in the southern peninsula that is Spain.

Sounds good?

* * *

RE: Frankia

The Franks can start with Austrasia and Syagrius' Kingdom (AKA Neustria). The region east of Austrasia, Thuringia, and the one below it, Swabia, can start as rebels.

RE: Saxony

Yes they should start a bit further north, meaning we can take Frisia away and start it as a rebel region. Also the division of regions up there in Saxony is a bit awkward, don't you all think? This map's presentation of Frisia seems better.

Upper right Saxon province in Britannia to Rebels, though we will put a Saxon army near it if not in it. Customize to Angles and Jutes.

Yes we agreed on that indeed in the Original Discussion thread.

[This message has been edited by GeneralKickAss (edited 01-25-2011 @ 09:09 AM).]

And make what should be Byzantine/ERE Byzantine, but have a decent Ostrogoth army in the Balkans.

Another thing we could do, is not have the entire map conquerable. Like for the Sahara, make a province, but no settlement. This would represent the sparse inhabitant of the lands, and would make the empires look nice and tidy without it.

Adios Illyrians.

@Punic - all provinces require a settlement. We can make an unconquerable province, but it will use up one of our settlement slots and we'll need to make the settlement of the region unreachable.

Could somebody comment on my horde of proposals please

Thy horde looks good on paper; I reserve the right to change my mind once I see how it looks on the map.

The Norse can start with only Jutland (Denmark proper), and conquer - or you can say "unite" for want of a better word - the rest of the North by themselves, which shouldn't be too hard.

What, Drakontos, were you talking about when you said Illyrians?

While the idea of a "wilderness" region is nice, I'd like to know exactly how you would go about making its settlement unreachable. Mountains all around?

Oh, and I also don't really like the big, slashing province in Gaul. Either cut it in half, or redistribute part of it to the neighbors, e.g. southeastern bit to Swabia/the region on its right, a bit to Septimania/Burgundy, etc.

[This message has been edited by GeneralKickAss (edited 01-26-2011 @ 09:45 AM).]

Same thing I've been so loudly and annoyingly commenting on since day 1 - the fact that we need to fix the Balkans, including Illyria, redistrubuting them more correctly between the ERE and Ostrogoths. Which thus kills the Illyrian faction.

If I see this map the territory limit is not nearly reached. We could make far more rebel provinces to similate the lack of central governments and tribal/civil wars.

@Punic - all provinces require a settlement. We can make an unconquerable province, but it will use up one of our settlement slots and we'll need to make the settlement of the region unreachable.

The sea is technically a province, but I see what you're saying. But I could have sworn I've seen a mod or two where they have wilderness regions.

They call them 'Wilderness' or 'Terrae Inconitae' or whatever and hide the settlement in the sea around scandanavia, or in an impenetrable corner of the map.

Alright I withdraw my previous silly question about the roped off headland that is indeed Carthago Nova.

Quoted from Terikel:

Maybe make the two desert provinces south of the Vandals rebel?

Agree. Those areas weren't vandalized just yet.

Mythic could you please update the map?

And Drak could you give a few details please?

[This message has been edited by GeneralKickAss (edited 01-27-2011 @ 00:46 AM).]

If we wanted to make a province with a blocked off or unreachable settlement, then what would happen if the city grew to huge size, because then it would look kind of weird. If we wanted to make such a city, we would have to create a resource to greatly lower population growth, sort of like the opposite of whatever Alexandria has that makes its really big growth

Not to worry, amigo, that is ridiculously easy. Each region is given a population growth rate in descr_regions. Easy enough to set it to 1, instead of the 13 which Alexandria, for example, has.

@GKA - If we're trying to be more historically accurate (which I believ right now we are), Illyria was under Ostrogothic control in 500AD, while Thessalonica and MODERN Macedonia (forget the name of the region in RTW) were part of the ERE. Our map does not show this! And if we fix it, the totally ahistorical Illyrian faction dies with it, since they'll have nowhere to live!

[This message has been edited by Drakontos (edited 01-27-2011 @ 09:05 AM).]

I thought the Ostros ruled all Italy and Illyria by 500AD?

And they didn't reach as far as Greece, according to many of the maps I've seen.



And that is a huge map, sorry.

I appreciate that I haven't verbally strung together more than 5 words of English in nigh on 3 weeks now, but I'm 90% sure I just said exactly that.

Look at your map.

Look at the DA:RR map. Notice any differences around the Balkans?

I am inclined to side with Drakontos and push strongly to have the Illyrians removed. I would like to give their slot to 1) the Gaels or 2) the Lombards.

Our "Terra Incognita" region should probably include what we have of the Sahara, Saudi Arabia and central Russia, to represent the impossibility of conquering those regions and/due to their very low population densities. It would be a simple matter to just close off the pine forests around Themiskyra (on the RTW vanilla map) thereby providing a suitable inaccessible capital.

I shall post my own suggested review of the map over the weekend. I do not think that we should drastically increase the number of provinces - add a few, yes, but not too many. One of the things I liked about BI vanilla was the relative sparsity of settlements in the civilised areas; it made the administration of the huge Roman empires far less tedious than they would otherwise have been. Also it makes far more work for me, heh heh.

[This message has been edited by Edorix (edited 01-27-2011 @ 03:51 PM).]

I couldn't agree more. Limited funds and limited empires are far more fun to work with than the management of multiple settlements. As much as it grates me to conquer half of Spain with a single siege, better that than have to endure more tedious siege battles!

I may decide to fiddle around with the map myself too - I did it earlier, but wasn't in the mood to fiddle around with colours and fill in entire regions. Looked scribbly and I chucked it...

One of the things I liked about BI vanilla was the relative sparsity of settlements in the civilised areas

Nope. Me no like.

I think it's too unrealistic and takes away the fun in conquests of some regions. That large slab of central-southern Italy could be sliced better.

And definitely cut Southern Greece up. Peloponnesus and Attica together to form, with Corinth as capital. Epirus and Aetolia come together with Nicopolis as capital.

Was going to say that Anatolia could also be rearranged, but had no idea on how. I'll throw some ideas out if you all think it needs redistribution.

RE: Sahara and N Africa

We can push north the borders of all the southernmost African provinces and fill the vacuum with the Sahara, from Libya all the way to the west.

I think that we should add a few more regions to the larger regions in the more "fought over" (similar to Med:tw Teutonic campaign) (where theres a few more smaller regions & settlements on the larger "frontiers") but dont make the sparsely populated regions too "split-up")

A 30-second draft thrown together by yours truly. 90% sure it has more or less everything I've mentioned over the ages, minus changing the actual size of the map. Chucked in the cities too, albeit roughly.



*EDIT*
Actually, I botched the edited Frankish border, and I meant to make Eburacum rebel.

[This message has been edited by Drakontos (edited 01-31-2011 @ 10:24 AM).]

One question (apologise if been asked) would they still emerge east of the copts in the desert & would they be aiming to take over egypt from the copts? or would they try to take down the sassanid empire aswell as gain the more middle-eastern settlements with Jerusalem etc. or perhaps have both as an objective because later on they had from spain to the arabian desert (on the map) & were quite a powerful united force

[This message has been edited by Alpha211 (edited 01-31-2011 @ 02:19 PM).]

I'm starting to think the Copts should start out owning the southern provinces of the ERE - a rebellion or such, yet another challenger for Rome. Giving them the rich Nile provinces ought to stop the ERE from steamrolling everyone else from the beginning.

*EDIT* You mean the Caliphate - yeah, I'm not sure what their victory conditions will be like. For a not-starting faction, Spain to Persia is quite tough.

[This message has been edited by Drakontos (edited 01-31-2011 @ 03:10 PM).]

Good job for a thirty-second effort, Drakontos. A few changes:

1.

Quoted from Terikel:

The Norse have two provinces, maybe three- Jutland, Sjælland, and Skåne as I see it (Mainland Denmark, the Islands, and the tip of Sweden).

2.

3.

4.

5.

And now, to defend myself against baseless charges

The Norse have two provinces, maybe three- Jutland, Sjælland, and Skåne as I see it (Mainland Denmark, the Islands, and the tip of Sweden)

I decided that unless we extend the current map, it wasn't really going to fit... and I had forgotten the exact discussion, just went with my gut.

2.
The Visigoths start out with Aquitania, Septimania and Tarraconensis, as per the previous proposal.

Don't get me wrong, its a good idea, but I'm still thinking that one through. Even though the Berbers are just to the south, it feels empty without the Visigoths.

3.
New Carthage/ Carthago Nova is supposed to be a province on its own.

Yeah.... I killed that one for a reason.

Although it does help reenact the Byzantine reconquest, I guess. I shall ponder this one.

4.
That long cleaver-like Frankish region is still weird.

I apologised in my edit! It was meant to take the tip off, and put it in Narbo/Tolosa-Septimania

5.
Southern Greece can be sliced up, as mentioned in post 42, into Epirus + Aetolia, and Attica + Peloponnesus.

If we do that, ERE is going to have WAYYY too much money. We've all seen the various factions in Greece in vanilla RTW - it'll happen again, and they are already the largest faction! So I didn't do it. I added another region to Asia Minor, you'll note, to make the fighting more intense there.

Five regions in Europe already gives the ERE a good hold there. Obviously they will have to defend their Danubian borders and Greece against incursion, but I think this way it draws their focus to the Middle East, which I like. For as we know, not so far into the future, a new power rises to challenge the already exhausted Eastern provinces...

Apologies for my getting straight to the point candidness.

Then rebellize Epirus - it's not so big of a province that it'll stand out, anyway. I just wanted the Greek mainland to be more fought over by the ERE, Ostros, Gepids, Lombards, etc.

The Northern islands don't have one that is big enough to land a settlement? The right one looks okay.

I remember talking to Edorix about borrowing the M2TW Map over and save ourselves the trouble of extension and stuff. It was said to be easy.

About Spain's emptiness, we can -

(at northeast actually) Tarraconensis
Suevi Kingdom (at northwest)
Lusitanian Alans || Asding Vandals || Hispanian Alans
Siling Vandals

Bolded means the regions will be actually owned by that faction. It'll be kind of fun, don't you think? Of course the Vandals will have to be stripped of at least one region in Africa (either Lepcis Minor or Cirta) to maintain the balance. As for the Alans, well the majority is already too far off to the east to help defend Hispania, and thus it won't be much different to a rebel province. An AI Alan will likely lose it, and a human player will have the fun of trying a Spanish blitz.

Also, the Alannic colony in Spain can be Lusitania instead of Hispania - depending on whether it's agreed that we'll make Carthago Nova into a separate region.

Well, we presumably have a faction slot free - I say we make it the Suevi of Spain, in Gallaecia and Lusitania. The Lombards would be nice, but frankly northern Europe already looks crowded. Greece... wasn't really the happening place in this period. I'd like to leave it that way, and keep the focus elsewhere. And as for the North, I'd just like to avoid it being a siegefest up there, which it will be unless the map changes.

I'm also not too big a fan of the Medieval 2 map, to be honest... It feels kinda twisted to me. We could instead cut down Mundus Magnus, which could give us more of Scandinavia, Persia and Arabia/Ethiopia too. And indeed, if we feel up to it, we could throw in slightly more of Mauritania and maybe even the Canaries and Iceland.