Suggestion: Map changes

[Mordkalb]

The map for the expanded campaign is great and I thank all who put in the work for it, but it has issues - some who were already present in the old map, some new - that I am trying to address here. These issues are:

• The inconsequential nature of terrain. It really only makes movement faster or slower, but it doesn't allow natural frontiers like the Pyrenees, the Caucasus or the Alps.

• The interconnectedness of the map - you can walk from anywhere to almost anywhere - makes it necessary to fortify everything to an unfun degree. The AI knows how to seek out and assault poorly fortified provinces, walking past many formidable castles to do so.

• Turn times. Especially late in the game, turns can take minutes to calculate. I've been told that this comes mainly from the amount of provinces.

• The square shape of the map cutting off areas in the middle. I realized this is because video games started out as digital adaptations of board games and it's tradition, but is there really any good reason to keep it? Still, I've tried to respect it as much as possible.

Keeping in mind that this is a game and fun is always more important than realism, I've formulated the following suggestions for change to the map and game mechanics:

West Africa - current state above, suggestion below
The map cutoff destroys ways for countries like Mali, Kanem Bornu, Ghana, Songhai etc. to expand they did historically. At the same time, people are running through the Sahara everywhichway and building cities like it's a playground. This is not what deserts should be. It's especially baffling because it goes directly agains the correct decision to make the Arabian Desert and the Libyan desert completely impassable. Now that is not to say that West Africa and North Africa should not be able to interact at all. People - traders and armies - went through the desert all the time, they just didn't live in the desert (in significant numbers or organized states). I've tried to represent the Trans-Saharan trade routes here, with armies being able to traverse them, but they should take several turns and also take effectiveness damage to simulate the arduousness of the journey. Also, the endpoints should have natural resources and countries can construct special trade buildings on them to simulate the extremely profitable nature of the Trans-Saharan trade routes. It also may be possible to add oases as regions on the routes. This change will allow the Sub-Saharan states to have much better gameplay while reducing the number of regions in total.

Note that the Sahara is compressed to allow West Africa within the square shape of the map in total!

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Africa idea.jpg (362.55 KiB) Viewed 760 times

Other regions to follow in separate posts because of the image limit per post.

[Mordkalb]

Europe - current state above, suggestion below

The thick black lines represent impassable terrain, to represent the obstacle mountains like the Pyrenees, the Alps and the Carpathians actually are - while making the narrow passes like the Saint Bernard, Mont Cenis, Brenner, Dukla etc. real impactful chokepoints. Generals from Hannibal to Napoleon and everyone inbetween were aware of the immense strategic importance of those passes, and the game needs to reflect that.

I did not work out similar changes for the Balkan and Greek mountains and the Apennine mountains, because I am not as familiar with the local geography, if anyone with more knowledge would like to add their work, you're welcome!

In addition to this change, I would like to propose two new buildings: one called "Strategic Barricade" buildable only in Alpine terrain, which requires a high fortification level to become possible. Its effect is that armies hostile to the region controller can only leave in the direction of the region they entered from, unless they siege down the defense and then control the region. This means you can stop enemy armies at the border, if the border is a mountain range, without having to immediately worry about your heartlands. The second building is called "Toll Collector" (also buildable in Alpine terrain only), to simulate the financial advantages of local governments collecting fees from merchants and pilgrims wishing to traverse the few viable passes there are. It requires a tiny bit of manpower for road maintenance, but grants a large amount of money and a commerce bonus.

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[Mordkalb]

The Baltic - current state above, suggestion below

The Baltic area has a very high province granularity inconsistent with other areas. This is most likely due to the smaller map for the Alexander Nevsky campaign, where it works fine, but in the Grand Campaign map, it sticks out. I propose the following changes to increase consistency:
1) Combine the three islands into one Baltic Islands region. Delete the Ösel domain and move the new region into the Estonia domain.
2) Combine the two regions into a Reval region
3) Combine the two regions into a Pärnu region
4) Combine the two regions into a Tartu region

Even with these changes, Estonia will still be one the largest domains in the game, in regard to number of regions.

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Baltic idea.jpg (121.84 KiB) Viewed 737 times

[Mordkalb]

Central Asia - current state above, suggestion below

Siberia/the area east of the Urals is a baffling addition. The only reason for it to be there is to fill in the square map. The Mongols didn't care about these lands at all - they went west through today's Xinjiang and Central Asia, then south and north of the Caspian. Removing them will disallow blobbing of the Seljuks or other hordes into Siberia. Also, passing through the Caucasus is prohibited except for the edges and the Darial gorge. If people have further suggestions on deserts/desert passages or mountain blocks in the area, please contribute!

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[Mordkalb]

India - current state above, suggestion below

(Please ignore my extremely poor MS Paint skills) The Hindu Kush is currently also not the barrier it needs to be, allowing the Seljuks to take all of India far too easily. Removing many of the regions also allows shifting India to the west to fill in the empty ocean space - this, too, goes against the real world map, but will enable fitting a larger part of India into the square game map, as the cutoff was very jarring previously.

In total, even though more of India means more regions, the number of regions should still remain the same or even slightly lower.

Also, I left Greater Persia and the Levant as it is, because I am also not too familiar with the topography. It would be great to give the Zagros, Taurus and Alborz mountains and the Kavir and Lut deserts their proper representation!

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India idea.jpg (330.72 KiB) Viewed 731 times

[Patrat]

I just completed a game where the Seljuks blobbed into Siberia. They had a huge empire there, which made them by far the leader in legacy. I came all the way from southern France with a huge English army and conquered Iraq and Mosul provinces, and smashed one of their armies after another. It didn't matter, their legacy generation was over 2k a turn.

It was rather annoying, to be honest.

[Surt]

There is at least one desert region in Persia that might be considered unpassable, at least Alexander lost half his army marching through there.
How much the Iranian plateau blocked movement is a good question, Alexander had only two paths to Persepolis, but that might be relative local.
Elam resisted attacks the the plateau due to the Zagros mountains and afaik only fell to invasions from east and west.

[SuitedQueens]

I second this as officialdo of this game. Maybe @Kronenblatt can work some magic. He still waits on modding this game due to all updates planned that will make his current mods incompatible.

[Mordkalb]

I just completed a game where the Seljuks blobbed into Siberia. They had a huge empire there, which made them by far the leader in legacy. I came all the way from southern France with a huge English army and conquered Iraq and Mosul provinces, and smashed one of their armies after another. It didn't matter, their legacy generation was over 2k a turn.

Yes, the Seljuks have a far too easy time of it. Topographic constraints not doing their job is only a part of it, tribal societies not being differentiated between settled and nomadic is another - but that's a different topic, on which I'm also preparing a longer thread.

There is at least one desert region in Persia that might be considered unpassable, at least Alexander lost half his army marching through there.
How much the Iranian plateau blocked movement is a good question, Alexander had only two paths to Persepolis, but that might be relative local.
Elam resisted attacks the the plateau due to the Zagros mountains and afaik only fell to invasions from east and west.

I'll use the holiday time and do some research, maybe I can put together a suggestion here as well!

I second this as officialdo of this game. Maybe @Kronenblatt can work some magic. He still waits on modding this game due to all updates planned that will make his current mods incompatible.

Oooh, that would be great. Yet I hope modding won't be required!

[kronenblatt]

The thick black lines represent impassable terrain, to represent the obstacle mountains like the Pyrenees, the Alps and the Carpathians actually are...

It's quite easy to enable this in mods through adjusting the accessibility between pairs of regions, using the in-game editor.

I second this as officialdo of this game. Maybe @Kronenblatt can work some magic. He still waits on modding this game due to all updates planned that will make his current mods incompatible.

Yes, that applies for Empires and my v.1.3.9 mods for which I reckon it will simply just take too much time to port to the upcoming (?) v.1.50. But I really hope that Slitherine will keep v1.3.9 as a Legacy branch on Steam as I’ve asked them to, because then those mods can be continued to be played and developed further. Empires even in v.1.3.9 is such a wonderful gem of a game that it would be really sad and a loss to see v.1.3.9 go.

For Kingdoms, I am, given the above, looking at spending more modding time, because it is too a great game! For example, to develop my ExCoB Mod further and above all develop a total overhaul 899 AD Mod. But as you say, I need to wait for the next DLC and its patch to be released first and to be sure that no further patches á la Empires' v.1.50 is in the pipeline.