So Portugual will have 13 provinces, which represents how much higher the population density it had than the rest of Iberia? Cool.
Not quite.
Only 2 provinces were added to "Portugal", the other was Hielba added to Andalucia, "Spain".
Which makes Portugal with a total of 12 provinces, and Spain with a total of 57, for a Portuguese density of 12.9, not 14.1, and Spain with 11.2, not 10.9. (This number reflects desmenese per 100 000 km2), which is still a slightly higher Portuguese density, but barely noticeable.
And although Portugal indeed always had a higher populational density than most of Iberia, it was the coastal-northern areas of Portugal that were the most dense, but these two new counties were added in the inland-center and the coastal-south, which have always been very sparsely populated (The exception being during the muslim golden age, when the south did feature some impressive urban centers, but the rural areas were still sparser than in the north).
Besides, as you can see in your map Iberia as a whole has almost 3 times less the density of France and England&Wales, despite having roughly the same population as France (in 1066) while being slightly smaller, also it had over 5 times the population of England&Wales (in 1066), despite having only 4 times the size (so, iberia in 1066 was actually both denser than France and England&Wales).
Granted, as the reconquista progressed, the massive war casualites alongside the Muslim expulsions and fleeing did cause Iberia to fall behind France significantly in population, and England to catch up in the following decades, having only 1/3 of France's population in 1300 and only twice as much as England&Wales (so roughly around a third of France's density and half of England&Wales'), so its acceptable that Iberia has a smaller density than these areas, but the difference seems a bit too much, expecially considering the game is played far more often in the 769-1066 startdates than the 1241-1337 ones.
Last edited:
