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Dev Diary #173 - The Map of China

Good day, everyone! I'm Cordelion, one of the many Game Designers currently working on All Under Heaven, and today I'm going to be taking you on a short tour of the geographical side of our upcoming expansion - specifically, China!

The following dev diaries will have a stronger mechanical focus, but since the map extension is essentially the foundation for this new expansion, we thought it best to give you the overview first to better familiarize everyone with where all the new action is taking place and how we’re approaching that. Something I want to make note of: we're currently experimenting with several aesthetic aspects of the map while also iterating on feedback we've received from our extremely helpful beta testers, as well as external partners and consultants, in order to ensure that our map expansion is as faithful to the period as possible and feels authentic to those whose history is being depicted.

Your thoughts and opinions are extremely welcome and will absolutely be taken into consideration as this process continues: we’re starting this dev diary cycle earlier than we have for past DLC in order to broaden the window available to integrate your feedback.

As a result of this, please be aware that what I'm about to share is a work in progress, and a great deal of what you're about to see is still very much subject to change, and will not necessarily be exactly what will appear in the expansion on release. I would have liked to have also been able to show you the distribution of faiths and cultures today, but they are not quite ready to be shown at this point, but we’ll be happy to give you a more detailed look in a future dev diary.

A Brief Word About Projections​

For those who might be unfamiliar with them, a map projection is essentially a way to reconcile the fact that the Earth is a sphere, but maps need to be able to be displayed in a flat, two-dimensional form. You may have heard of the Mercator projection, for example, to name one fairly widely known.

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[Various map projection examples. Pick your least favorite and share it below!]

This inherently always results in distortion: there is no way around that. For this reason, there are many map projections in existence, each with differing degrees of distortion in different parts of the world. You can't avoid the distortion, you can only choose where it's distributed.

The map projection we used when originally making CK3 was a custom one, tailored to meet the limits of computer monitor’s standard resolution as well as the game's general needs at the time, which unfortunately did not include most of Asia. The projection is inherently imperfect: we adjusted it as best we could for All Under Heaven, but we can’t replace it entirely - at least not without starting over and remaking all of the game’s maps.

This will result in certain parts of the map, when compared to others, having a scale noticeably different than that of reality. The Chinese province of Shaanxi is, in reality, the size of Great Britain, but due to distortion and compression appears smaller in-game than the similarly-sized Korean peninsula, while eastern Siberia occupies significantly less of the game’s map than it would realistically.

We know that to many, these differences may stand out compared to what you might have expected: I just want to clarify that those differences are not because we preferred that it be this way, but rather to explain the process that produced them and why.

Heaven Has Not Two Suns, nor the People Two Kings​

The Hegemony of China: the new highest tier of title available in the game and the only one extant on the game map at each of our start dates - although certain specific other hegemonies may be formed by decision after unifying similarly vast and expansive regions (such as the lands of the former Roman Empire and the Indian subcontinent) elsewhere. As for the unique mechanics of the hegemony itself, we’ll talk more about those in a future dev diary dedicated to the subject.

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The name of the Chinese hegemony in our 867 start date is Tang. This is correct for the ninth century, but obviously not at all fitting for the eleventh and beyond. Something new we’re adding with All Under Heaven is the capacity to have a title’s name evolve over time - while still retaining its previous names in the title’s history, so you won’t have past Tang rulers being shown as if they were Song once the dynasty’s name changes.

As an extension of this, new ruling dynasties that rise to power in China will have the ability to take their name from a wide variety of historically-appropriate inspirations. Historically, new dynasties risen to power took their names not from their own family surnames, but would instead take the name of a past dynasty, or the name of an ancient state they felt they had a particular connection to. Emperor Gaozu, the founder of the Tang, had been awarded the title of Prince of Tang before he became emperor and founded his own dynasty, for example.

In addition to the formal renaming of the realm under new ownership, you will also have the ability to choose one of several potential colors to represent their title on the map. This harkens back to the practice of different dynasties assuming certain elemental virtues and thematically adopting the color associated with each element - yellow for earth, red for fire, black for water, azure for wood, and white for metal. The Song dynasty identified the virtue of fire as their guiding principle, and so red was their dynastic color.

To Each Their Own Rule​

The next step down is, of course, the empire tier - previously the highest tier achievable in the game, but no longer. The hegemony of China, as it is defined for this period, consists of five empires; Qin, Liang, Shu, Wu, and Yue, all names which echo repeatedly throughout Chinese history.

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These empires are uncreated at game start, and exist as a step on your journey to claim the Hegemony of China after the previous dynasty’s collapse in a Chaotic Era (which is a phase of the Dynastic Cycle mentioned in the previous dev diary).

As with the hegemony itself, the names of these political entities can and will change when they are formed, so you could, for example, found the historical (albeit short-lived) Qi dynasty when forming the de jure empire of Liang as the Tang rebel Huang Chao.

At this tier, you’ll possess the dignity and many of the privileges of an imperial ruler, but your rule is not so widely accepted that you can claim to be the sole undisputed hegemon. You could make the claim, but there are enough others outside your borders powerful to call your invocation of Heaven’s favor into question. Similar to the hegemony, there is admittedly more to say about their specific components than these titles themselves, so we’ll discuss their distribution more in the next section.

Heaven Is High and the Emperor Is Far Away​

And now it comes to the kingdom tier, and here we’ve had to be a bit more flexible in terms of our approach. While ample references exist for administrative jurisdictions at the historical equivalent of our county tier, the same is significantly less true at the kingdom tier. We can’t exactly do without them, however, nor do we wish to have them of wildly inconsistent sizes or degrees of game balance, as it is not unlikely that China will at some point fracture into these units.

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As a result, the configuration at this tier is currently set up instead using a Song dynasty period administrative unit called a circuit, which historically was a bit more supervisory in nature and a little less hands on, but lines up reasonably well with the approximate size of many of our preexisting kingdoms, and gives the ducal tier player a higher layer of titles to which to aspire and pursue, even if they may not have been quite as prestigious a posting in time in which they existed.

We recognize that the Song system of circuits was fairly unique when compared against the administrations of other dynasties, but the Song’s existence spanning two of our three start dates makes its influence more natural to adopt than that of future dynasties, or those further in the past whose practices did not persist into this time.

There are some peripheral entities here worth making special mention of. The northern portion of what is modern day Vietnam was known as Annan in this period, nearing the end of around two centuries under Tang rule as its southernmost mainland province. In our later start dates you will see it appear instead as a neighboring state known as Đại Việt (Great Viet) under its own distinct ruling dynasty.

Similarly worthy of note is the Xia kingdom in the north, previously one of the easternmost regions of our map’s former borders. In the space of our three start dates, this region evolved from a semi-autonomous military regime within the Tang state into a self-proclaimed independent kingdom before being overrun by Tangut invaders, who declared the foundation of the state of Dà Xià (Great Xia), the product of an interesting mixture of Tangut, Han, Uyghur, and Tibetan influences that at one point managed to compel the Song dynasty to pay it tribute for a time.


Additionally, while we don’t have time to go into too much detail about them at the moment, special mention must be given of the Khitan-led Liao dynasty of the north, supplanted by the Jurchen Jin dynasty by 1178, which invaded and occupied much of northern China in a conflict that displaced millions of peasants and taking the emperor himself as a prisoner of war.

In All Under Heaven, both the Liao and Jin dynasties will mix Chinese administrative and bureaucratic practices of their imperial government with tribal and nomadic vassals whose traditions and inclinations may clash with the oft-Sinicizing ways of their rulers and those at court. Further worthy of note, historically the Jin themselves would eventually experience a dramatic reversal of fortune in the early 13th century at the hands of a nomadic chieftain named Genghis Khan, with whom some of you may already be familiar…

And, of course, this section would hardly be complete without mention of the Nanzhao kingdom in the southwest, which goes on to reincarnate as the state of Dàlǐ in our latter two bookmarks, its ruling family perhaps better known among the general public for featuring prominently in the popular martial arts novels by Jin Yong (such as Demi-God and Semi-Devils and The Legend of the Condor Heroes) than for their actual historical achievements. But then again, many things are possible in our game, and perhaps some of you will raise them to legendary levels of Prowess.

Governing a Large State Is Like Cooking a Small Fish​

As the primary tier of governorship under the Chinese hegemony is the duchy tier, we’re going to compress duchies and counties into the same section and show off the former while talking mainly about the latter, since the precise borders counties are undergoing a bit of adjustment right now (to try and further minimize the projection distortion mentioned earlier) and are small enough that their names don’t appear at this scale, either.

One of the main challenges we encountered in drafting the province and county map for China is the fact that while it does possess a dizzying array of historically-documented administrative jurisdictions, they tended to undergo noticeable changes from one dynasty to the next.

Names were particularly subject to alteration, sometimes going through quite a number of them before then returning to their original or an earlier name: for this reason, please don’t take any of the names you might notice as odd to be final. Names from a mixture of times and places, including the present day, have been used as points of reference throughout development due to many different maps and sources being used, and will be subject to further revision.

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In addition, settlement patterns tended to (understandably) heavily favor the rich Central Plains in the north, the Sichuan basin in the west, as well as key coastal areas, leaving much of the comparatively less populated interior and border areas to be partitioned among a relatively smaller number of jurisdictions encompassing vast swaths of land - their effective equivalent of our game's baronies or small counties sometimes exceeding the size of entire duchies.

In the interests of being as consistent as possible in our depiction of the Chinese administrative apparatus, we have drawn primarily from administrative units used during (but not exclusively by) the Tang dynasty known commonly as zhou, an element recognizable even today in the names of great cities such as Guangzhou and Hangzhou. This does not apply, however, to the name of the ineffable and inestimable city of Zhoukou, which uses a completely different character for the first component of its name.

Some artistic liberties have had to be taken, of course - some of these borders resulted in units that were simply far too large and had to be partitioned, others far too small and had to be merged, and while river crossings play an important role in our game's combat calculations, the assessors of administrative geography in the ninth century clearly played by different rules. That having been said, we still hope to strike a balance that favors historical accuracy as much as the necessary concessions to game mechanics and balance allow.

The Nation Is Ruined, but Mountains and Rivers Remain​

I would be remiss in my duties as designated dev diary author if I did not also take a moment to give you a glimpse of some of the (still very experimental) new aesthetic alterations to the terrain map. This is, as mentioned before, absolutely still a work in progress; it quite likely has changed even further in the simple span of time between my writing this dev diary and your reading it. That, however, is a subject for further discussion another time, so I’ll leave you with a taste of it and move on.

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Something that those of you familiar with Chinese geography may have noticed is that the Chinese coastline in All Under Heaven has some noticeable differences when compared to the modern day. The twentieth and twenty-first centuries have seen extensive land reclamation efforts totaling thousands of square kilometers won from the sea, so in some areas of our map the coastline is distinctly different from how it appears on a map today, and we’ve made efforts to ensure our depiction will be as close to that of the period as possible.

Similarly, the course of some major rivers may be a source of momentary dissonance when you note that they are not quite exactly where you recall them being. The Yellow River, for example, changed course significantly even within our game's time period, but since navigable rivers are themselves inherently a component of the province map and not something able to be altered without major changes to the game’s fundamental underlying architecture, we had to settle on only one of its courses, the most enduring and the one in place in 867.

Geniuses Emerge in Every Generation, Each of Whom Is Remembered for Centuries​

Populating China with historical figures is, as you might imagine, no small task, and has quickly proven itself to be the largest scale addition we’ve made to our historical database since release by a significant, all-encompassing margin. After the vagaries of historical research carried out for much of the rest of the game world, it's almost refreshing to encounter documentation as rich and abundant as it is here, a testament to the diligence and dedication of millennia of bureaucrats and functionaries.

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[Wang Anshi’s two sons were indeed both named Wang Pang - but only in English: the Chinese characters for their names were different!]

That having been said, in some ways the system that produced such a treasure trove of documentation itself poses a challenge as much as it is a boon to our researchers and design. Magistrates and governors in China held office for what we would consider to be extremely short periods of time, very often only a year.

As a result of this, some ruler assignments (at least when the game starts) have had to be a little less rigid than we might usually prefer in cases where we don’t have known placements available for the exact years in which the game starts.

Something else we're specifically working to do as much as possible here is to also include significant numbers of historical figures and their families (such as the patriotic general Yue Fei, the Jin founder Wanyan Aguda, or the Tang warlord An Lushan) who lived during or prior to our gameplay period in our game files, and not just those who were alive or had living descendants at each of our current three start dates.

This way, modders who wish to explore alternative periods in Chinese history will have an easier time and find them already populated with key figures, as well as making things simpler for ourselves, as well, should we choose to add another start date to the game. This is not a declaration of intent to do so (nor not do so), but rather just an investment in making things more straightforward for future developers should we choose to pursue that possibility further.

But What About Performance, You Ask?​

There is one more thing I would like to briefly discuss, as I know full well that for a great many of you this aspect of the expansion is of paramount concern: performance.

We have significantly extended the existing map to encompass the rest of Asia, adding thousands of historical figures to ensure the same degree of fidelity and depth as we have to Europe or anywhere else in the game world. We are aware, of course, that this raises concerns of potential performance difficulties.

For that reason, improving performance is something that we're also working on very seriously while developing All Under Heaven, to ensure that your enjoyment of the game will not suffer or be reduced from this broadening of its horizons, and that you can freely and thoroughly enjoy all that the expansion has to offer.

Please be assured that we're working hard at it just as much as the rest of the expansion, and we will go into more detail in the future in a developer diary dedicated exclusively to this subject.

The Play Is at an End, and the Audience Dispersed​

And so we come to the conclusion of today’s dev diary. I hope this has been an informative glimpse into what China will look like in All Under Heaven, and maybe you’ve already spotted somewhere you’d like to play in.

I’m happy to take any questions or feedback that you may have. My capacity to answer mechanical and gameplay questions related to China right now is limited, though, because that’s what we’re going to be digging into in next week’s dev diary. Look forward to it, and thank you for reading!
 
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In map 05, all the duchies share a color palette similar to that of their respective kingdom level, except for part of the Tibet Empire (for example, the Kingdom of Gyalrong and its respective duchies of Gyalrong, Gainlho, Golog etc.). Additionally, it seems that you have changed the colors of some duchies in the region. I assume this is not final and everything is still under evaluation and subject to change, correct?
 
The founder of Tang was not GaoZu, I'm assuming GaoZu you used is 高祖, which is not a name but a title per se. The founder is Li Yuan or 李渊. And his more famous son Li shi ming. On this note, will titles be given? as many emperor of china have a title after they die where people refer to them as such title.
 
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These names seem a bit weird outside of having rebels break free according to these regions for gameplay reasons

For example, in common parlance, Wu doesn't refer to that large of an area, and same for Liang, which is only the old Wei proper.

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My objection is that you can't use events from the BC era to make assumptions about the Tang Dynasty.
 
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My objection is that you can't use events from the BC era to make assumptions about the Tang Dynasty.
When did I say this was exclusively supported by the division from the Warring States?

Wu has consistently referred to the areas corresponding to Jiangsu/ Zhejiang/ Anhui since time immemorial.

Where has the capital of every Wu state been lol?
 
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When did I say this was exclusively supported by the division from the Warring States?

Wu has consistently referred to the areas corresponding to Jiangsu/ Zhejiang/ Anhui since time immemorial.

Where has the capital of every Wu state been lol?
What I mean is that these are imperial-level titles, not kingdom-level ones. An imperial title should represent a relatively stable regional power spanning a larger area—not just Jiangsu, Zhejiang, and Anhui. Therefore, titles like Wu (吴), Song (宋), Qi (齐), Liang (梁), Chen (陈), and Jin (晋) are all appropriate choices.
 
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Yue being what it is is fine IMO. It hearkens back to Jiaozhi and Lingnan as terms, and as a state it does make a teeny bit of sense for it to divide along that line if history turned out different. The reason that Vietnam was able to defend against chinese domination(after the starting date) is that the Red River delta was a (relatively) rich area that was stable in itself, bordered by Guangxi(and Guangdong a bit further on) which were comparatively extremely remote and poor. Chinese forces trying to pacify Vietnam would have to travel through areas of low development and limited resources in order to conquer an area of high development. As such Vietnam was materially able to resist the Chinese after this period(with brief exceptions) and was always something of a region apart even during the eras of chinese dominance.

As such, if there was to be an exceptionally strong state centered in the red river valley, and considering that gameplay wise these Empire titles will only come into use should the Dynasty collapse, it does make some sense that the strong and developed Red River Valley would be able to exert influence over and dominate Guangxi and Guangdong, if only as a buffer region. Comparatively the Yangzi delta and Basin are about as far away. Ultimately I think it's fine. Plus the alternative would be having Vietnam as a de jure empire stretching into Champa, which IMO should not be some super easy thing but should be something you have to make happen(especially since it happens mostly after this period historically). I don't think it's unfair to say that, at least at the start of the game, Vietnam is more closely tied to China than other parts of southeast Asia.

As for other empires, IMO the borders of Liang are fine. Only one I would quibble over is the Fen river and the Taihang mountains, IMO that could be argued to be more historically dominated from the west, and so by Qin. But it could go either way. I could see the argument for splitting the further northeast off into its own de jure empire centered around Beijing(and grabbing Liaoning as part of its territory) which I would call "Yan". But honestly I am not too bothered by it, I think it's mostly fine especially for the time periods.

Wu and Shu are also fine in terms of borders, yes Wu is a bit big compared to states that actually called themselves "Wu" but it's a famous state and the capital would make sense to center around the Yangzi Delta(especially in this period). While there have been times of the middle Yangzi being its own power center, historically I'd say it's mostly tied to the delta area, especially in this period.
 
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it will be hard to separate with manchuria.
This isn't an issue...
We can simply set different legal titles for the three starting time periods: in 867 AD it defaults to [the original title], in 1066 AD it belongs to the Liao Dynasty, and in 1178 AD it belongs to the Jin Dynasty.
 
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Awesome work!
Two suggestions:
1. The de jure empire of Liang could not reflect the traditional name of the region. Though the first regime of the Five Dynasties named itself 'Liang', a more commonly used name for such a regional regime should be 'Jin' (晋) or 'Wei'(魏).
2. The name of a de jure kingdom should be different when it's an independent regime. E.g., the independent ruler of Fujian would call himself 'King of Min' (闽王) instead of 'King of Fujian'. Similarly, 'Jinghubei' would be 'Chu' (楚), 'Jingdongdong' would be 'Qi' (齐), etc. On the contrary, 'Xia' could also be 'Hexi' (河西) when it's under the Chinese empire.
 
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Can a game rule be added to disable regions of the map to help save performance? If I’m playing in Japan I may have no interest in the happenings of Europe or Africa. Would it not make sense to be able to disable those areas I will not be using?
 
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We had not planned on it, but it does seem like a good opportunity to do so if it clear what to change. Do you have something more to point us towards to read up on the historical irrawady delta?
I'm so sorry, but I can't provide you any good sources. I have seen a different shape of the Irrawaddy delta in historical atlases. I mostly don't ever read about history in english. Sorry.
 
I have a complex post

1. House Aspirations and Merit points sound cool - and it feels like this should be in some form in any bureaucratic state. Otherwise, China and Japan will be the most developed and worked out due to the abundance of mechanics. They are rich in different mechanics. Well, and the ability to make your own mansion under certain conditions should somehow be available to feudal lords too. Will the rest of the world have an improvement in connection with the new mechanics? The same mansions are appropriate all over the world for some families (or a mansion that is passed on only by inheritance)

2. In the context of communicating with the developers in places that they will definitely see. In patch 1.15, if you get the position of a courtier with the help of a hook and blackmail, then you can be fired right there and then. Is it possible to make the same conditions as with the council, when you cannot be fired for a long time?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but this is still in the game. If you have imposed your role on the court, you can be removed from there even the next day. What is the benefit of the influence hook here?
 
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volthe92
Which part of my statement are you disagreeing with? Am I just pointing out a factual error about a river's course, or are you blindly clicking 'X' simply because I'm Chinese?
 
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What I mean is that these are imperial-level titles, not kingdom-level ones. An imperial title should represent a relatively stable regional power spanning a larger area—not just Jiangsu, Zhejiang, and Anhui. Therefore, titles like Wu (吴), Song (宋), Qi (齐), Liang (梁), Chen (陈), and Jin (晋) are all appropriate choices.
That makes sense given the time period that these were the larger states.

But I do have some gripes just in general since it isn't clear a lot of the time what the historical parallels of "kingdom" and "empire" in the context of CKII. Historically, tons of regional claimants are calling themselves "emperor", but there are also large areas of fiefs that correspond to "kingdom-level" titles in the traditional sense for nobility.

One person suggested here revisting the empire mechanic but I guess that is out of scope.
 
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I as a Taiwanese, am very excited that Taiwan could be represented in CK3.

Although the map has some mistake about Taiwan, like:

No indigenous people called Taiwan as "Dongfang".

Hoanya people wasn't located at northern Taiwan, and it could be a false ethnic group.

Otherwise, I'm very impressed that they make administrative division of year 997 become dejure kingdoms of year 867 of China. Why not use the 820's division?

Besides, what are Chinese king tier and duke tier titles? I'm very curious about it.

Thanks for your hard work!
 
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View attachment 1312080
Edit: tried to highlight most of the mountainous impossible terrain in pink

One thing I am curious about is that, whether it's just the map modes being tricky on my eye but there don't seem to be a lot of impassible mountain ranges. Now, I know that there are various people living in mountainous communities across China and there were passes available, but, if all of Mount Tai (highlighted in blue) is going to be treated as an unsettled area, I think there could be some more impassible ranges outside of the Central Plains, to help demonstrate the geographical scale of south/west/northern China.

As it presently looks, it'll be possible to get from Chengdu to Lhasa in a straight line, as the crow flies. While I am not an expert on Tibeto-Sichuan mountain ranges, I don't think it's as simple as marching from Paris to Berlin. That being said, I don't mean to make everything slightly steep into impassible terrain, but maybe just a few guiding corridors, with the occasional pass out of the area (like my red lines on the terrain map) that can at least channel movements of armies and characters so that they're not casually scaling the karst pillars of Zhangjiajie on their way to hunt down the 500 bandits who survived the battle, or hiking up Huashan Mountain while going for tea in Xi'An.

The Three Kingdoms games (13 pictured) sometimes have these kinds of chokepoints, and even have a few "mountain pass" gatehouses that secure the approaches in and out of the valleys, just as historical fortresses are intended to do; else, there were historical bastions, like the Great Wall, that deterred attackers, forcing them into making detours into less populated areas that had limited mobility, making them more advantageous to the Chinese than their steppe counterparts
AFAIK, it wasn't until the Song that the passes of southern China became fully under the control of the Chinese, as they mostly just ran networks of client kings and other tributaries, rather than direct administration, because getting men and material to survive in that terrain, climate, and the local populace, was just a difficult administrative and logistical task. It was just easier to pay the local headmen to become representatives for the Imperial Government than for a Chinese army to impose order, only to get bogged down in subtropical forests passes, especially when the trees started speaking Miao.

What I'm saying is I don't want to chase an enemy army from Guangdong to the Liaodong Peninsula, only for their forced retreat to make me chase them back to Chongqing, all because I cannot intercept them at any point along the way

There's also the classic phrase, "The mountains is high and the emperor is far away" (山高皇帝远) about how provincial administration can be separated from the Dynasty in the capital, and, while used during the Yuan, I think it can be just as applicable for our characters.


yes i have a fetish for having chokepoints in my grand strategy games; I don't like playing year long games of whack-a-mole, especially since there's not a "follow and attack enemy unit" order, like in RTS. Playing games in Italy is GOAT, the mountains, rivers, and sea barriers actual force fights between armies
Can't agree more
 
I as a Taiwanese, am very excited that Taiwan could be represented in CK3.

Although the map has some mistake about Taiwan, like:

No indigenous people called Taiwan as "Dongfang".

Hoanya people wasn't located at northern Taiwan, and it could be a false ethnic group.

Otherwise, I'm very impressed that they make administrative division of year 997 become dejure kingdoms of year 867 of China. Why not use the 820's division?

Besides, what are Chinese king tier and duke tier titles? I'm very curious about it.

Thanks for your hard work!
Well it's the default name. If an indigenous chief manages to found the duchy he could use the name in his language.
So how do they call the island? Hawaiki?
 
Question: Why Pracya and not Gauda. From my understanding that was the term for the region in the medieval era. Both the Sena and Pala IIRC called themselves Gaudesvara referencing the region.

Nothing is set in stone and real life is also always a lot messier than a neat de jure map like ours, but here is why the decision landed on Pracya:

So, like many titles Gauda is used for more than one thing. It is often used for the city itself, as well as for the region around it and then rulers based in that city or region might also use it as a title when referring to themselves as you note.
For now we still use Gauda for the Duchy that covers the area where the capital many of these states were based. The duchy covers not just Gaur but also for instance Laksmanavati, and Pandua). In practice the rulers of a Pracya empire would be able to refer to themselves as rulers of both that empire and Gauda in the game since both titles would be held.

So why Pracya for the bigger thing? Mainly because it has always referred to the grander entity, it is "the east" and it is a lot easier to have it then cover a lot more than just the Ganges Delta.
Additionally in the game I would also say that from your examples the Sena dynasty never ruled something nearly as grand as the in-game Pracya.
 
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