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So just how many provinces should other places have? If Wales, a relatively small kingdom, has 12 provinces, then how many would England need to have? If you massively increase the number of provinces England has, then you need to increase those of its major rival France, and this then gradually means that you end up with everywhere having lots of provinces, and no one actually being able to control their historical lands through going over their desmene limit, or alternatively historically small kingdoms end up able to control vastly more territory than they actually have, or should ever have.

Maybe, mercifully for all, Wales will not have 12 provinces.
 
I don't really want to read through 22 pages of text, so I'm just going to ask here.

Is the map hand drawn again or is it traced from actual maps like in Vicky 2? The funky looking maps in EU and HOI were very displeasing.

It's a mixture of both. We took the old map from CK1, took an actual map and distorted it a bit and then the CK1 map was traced upon the real map, changing coast lines and other things so it should look more like a real map than the old CK1 map.
 
My first look at CK2. :)

One thing interest me, will the Character texture be procedural so that the picture of a heir of a King for instance, could change dynamically following their previous descendant facial features? (No fixed texture of a character)

look is inherited though a simple string we call "character dna". When a child is born it gets a mix of both parents dna. each part of the dna describes how a part of the face should look (nose, eyes, chin, hair color etc). These dna string can be scripted (or modded) for characters, so if we script someones great grandfather to look a specific way the game will extrapolate on that if you start playing his great grandson so he might end up carrying the "family nose". Characters also have other properties affecting look (hair style, age, clothes) that has nothing to do with dna, these are not inherited but can be based on work position/wealth/social status/traits or whatever you want. I hope that was clear enough.

Example: both your character and his wife are blond, and she gives birth to a black haired daughter. This might be cause for concerns about her honesty :p (there is a small "mutation chance" however to simulate genes from ancestors popping back up etc so it might be a coincidence, but currently the chance is only 2-5% or so)
 
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King, I think you should read this article (which is also linked to in the article you referenced)

http://tleaves.com/2006/07/04/the-design-of-everyday-games/

It basically says that successful games are the ones that provide more content, not necessarily the ones that use cutting edge technology. It uses diablo 2 as an example.

I agree with you that selling more games is the way to go, but rotating angles and topographical maps do not (in my opinion) present a better user experience even for non-hardcore strategy gamers. It is just a feature that serves as a distraction. And in the end, word of mouth and reviews about a good gameplay experience will sell more games than screenshots showing off rendering technology.

I don't want you to go back to the 2d maps of the old engine, but the DW map is certainly an improvement over HTTT.

I agree with you. Having a topological map and a rotating camera does not mean better gameplay nor a better game(which is the most important part, in the end).

We're in the business of making strategy games. We're not here to push rendering technology to it's limits, we'll never be. There are plenty of other game studios that tries to achieve that, we'll never be one of them. But in my opinion, that does not necessarily mean that we should not work on improving our graphics.

To give a more concrete example, I think that Civ IV has fairly good graphics. But compare Civ IV to Civ V, you can definitely see the improvement in graphics they made. I'm not arguing it's more useful, or that it in any way improve gameplay. But if you were to rate the games based purely on screenshots, one provides quite a bit of more oomph over the other.

I think that the same thing applies to our games. I'm happy with what we did with the graphics in Victoria 2 and Divine Wind. Yet, I still feel that the style used in those games can only take us that far. We have improved the underlying tech used in CK2/Sengoku quite a bit, but we still have some ways to go.

In conclusion, our goal is not to provide the best topological map of Europe ever, nor is it to push rendering tech to its limits. Our goal is simply to take our graphics to the next level for Paradox games, to give a CK2 a little more oomph when you see the game for the first time. We still have things we want to improve upon graphics-wise, but that doesn't mean we won't continue to focus improving gameplay and make CK2 a worthy successor of the original Crusader Kings.
 
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If any developer or tester still reads this old DD, I have a little question: let's take you are an independent simple count, ruling over a province named Södermanland with your capital at a settlement called Stockholm... are you the count of Södermanland, or the count of Stockholm?

I would think you would be the Count of Södermanland and the Baron of Stockholm.
< - Not on team CK though!
 
If any developer or tester still reads this old DD, I have a little question: let's take you are an independent simple count, ruling over a province named Södermanland with your capital at a settlement called Stockholm... are you the count of Södermanland, or the count of Stockholm?

:)
Since the title for a settlement is a baron title, the count title would take precedence in this case and you would be called Count of Södermanland.

However, if you were to hold two count-titles, say Södermanland and Uppland, you would be called Count of Uppland if your capital settlement was there and Count of Södermanland otherwise.
 
They are reworking the provinces. They have done this to France as you noticed and Poland too. There might be more changes as the version that the reviewers are using is older than the beta version. I would think that Germany will be on the "to do list".

They have still three months to work on the game so they have time to finalize the province borders.

The map is pretty much set in stone now. Changing maps this late in a project is not something you'd ever want to do.
 
As Johan said, the map is not going to be changed at this point.

Ruwaard: The recent press copy should have the final map, yes. Although someone pointed out one of the recent previews was using old screenshots, as could be seen from the lack of demesne limit in the top corner etc.