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Dev Diary #90 - Splendid Scandinavia

As most of the team enjoys the summer, I thought I’d try to write a couple of smaller rogue Dev Diaries to get us through the summer. I will mostly discuss smaller additions, rather than the big sweeping features in these Diaries.

For the first one, it seems the vikings have pillaged a cartographer and found some more defined maps of their own homes, of all things.

We will start with the most important of the viking Kingdoms, Norway. What is that? What do you mean Norway stopped being a Kingdom in the late Middle Ages? Sounds like Swedish and Danish propaganda to me, they are just jealous of our mountainous glory.

Clipboard01.png


The previous map of Norway always had certain issues with the western coast being quite the slog to move through, and the Kingdom feeling split by the mountain range. With a bit more definition to it, as well as a way to move between the two parts, we have found the region to be a lot more interesting of a place to hang out. In mainland Norway, 6 New Provinces and 2 New Duchies have been added.

Clipboard02.png


Far to the north-west, Iceland has been updated a little bit as well. We have increased the province count from 2 to 4, though knowing that Iceland was far from the most populated of places, we have made sure that they haven’t gotten too strong.

Clipboard03.png


In Sweden, we have increased the definition of southern Sweden somewhat, breaking up some of the provinces to try to show the relevance of the Geatish areas. This should hopefully help somewhat in rivaling the powerhouse of Uppland. 6 New Provinces and 1 New Duchy have been added in Sweden.

Clipboard04.png


And finally, in Denmark we have new pathway across the islands and added Lolland as its own island. Both Jylland and Holstein has been split up and reorganised somewhat, to increase the definition of these areas and show their relevance in the era. In all, there has been 5 New Provinces added and 2 New Duchies.

We hope these changes to Scandinavia will be an interesting addition to all of the updates made to Pagans in Holy Fury, and make certain parts of the region a better experience. Next week, we will take a look down south, towards the changes around the Alps.
 
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Thure said:
Not if they kept the number of holdings around the same.
Click to expand...
You can increase the number of holdings slots. Also arent generally province capital holdings generally always stronger than province sub holdings? Some buildings which can only be built in capital holdings for an example.

Patroclusmega said:
too many useless provinces are being added, it would have a very bad effect on late-game performance, unless they optimize it more, but I don't think they will. And really? new provinces added to Iceland? Why? It is the most isolated place on map, rarely being bothered by others, why put more strain on the cpu? I really hope that performance will remain stable.
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It's not useless it's very nessecery since it makes the region playable. Playing in Norway was annoying it took something like 6 months to get one province over.

benjaseth said:
I am Norwegian. I'm just trying to weaken the Swedes.

No :)

If you read Swedish history you realize that the Svealand / Gotaland distinction was quite substantial in the early period. There never arose a lasting state that was purely Geatish and encapsulated all the Geatish lands. But there could easily have been one.

This isn't more "fantastical" than an Anglo-Saxon England in the 1350's or a Muslim conquered Europe, but both those are possible in the game.
And it is far less unrealistic than an Aztec invasion if you know what I mean.
Click to expand...
We can't keep using unrealistic features to justify more unrealistic features. That said I have no problem with Gotaland being a kingdom in the early start dates to slow the unification of Scandinavia down.

And also keep the norse kingdoms in the early starts roughly the same power.
 
My remarks on the whole Geat discussion is that quite a number of the royal houses of Sweden were Geatish notably Stenkil, Sverker and Bjalbo. However as the Dungen pointed out, historically there never was a formally independent Geatish kingdom even though the title of "King of the Geats" is one of the titles used by Swedish kings although there were a few petty kingdoms that were Geatish before the kingdom of Sweden was formed.
 
TheDungen said:
It's not useless it's very nessecery since it makes the region playable. Playing in Norway was annoying it took something like 6 months to get one province over.
Click to expand...
You know, I personally believe in some balance between playability and realism. Take Ghana/Mali, for instance. As a West African pagan country it's poorly playable - but it's just like it should be, and it adds challenge to it. Otherwise we'll all end up playing some other Civilization (where, indeed, all civilizations have nearly equal possibilities... and which has nothing to do with the real history, since in reality they AREN'T equal and never were).

Playing as East Slavic tribes since 700s is also difficult enough, especially if you have in mind the historical unification of "Rus" and "Ruthenia". Yet I would prefer the developers rather to do something about the absurdly expanding and surprisingly stable nomadic empires (with Horse Lords, i.e.) than to simply buff Rus through modifying the map.

(And yes, I believe the developers start abusing the emperor title a lot, as if "emperor" khans weren't enough. With the new map, early Rurikids are supposed to be emperors as well, which is absolutely ahistorical in any manner.)
 
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Awwal12 said:
(And yes, I believe the developers start abusing the emperor title a lot, as if "emperor" khans weren't enough. With the new map, early Rurikids are supposed to be emperors as well, which is absolutely ahistorical in any manner.)
Click to expand...

How are they in any way Emperors? They are at best Kings, often Dukes.
 
Awwal12 said:
You know, I personally believe in some balance between playability and realism. Take Ghana/Mali, for instance. As a West African pagan country it's poorly playable - but it's just like it should be, and it adds challenge to it. Otherwise we'll all end up playing some other Civilization (where, indeed, all civilizations have nearly equal possibilities... and which has nothing to do with the real history, since in reality they AREN'T equal and never were).
Click to expand...
Well, you chose probably the worst place to use as example.
Ghana/Mali region is totally underrepresented and it seems like increasingly more people are realizing it and demanding West Africa to be improved. You particulary chose one of the regions which desperately NEEDS some buff.

I really don't understand your points. You oposed the increased number of provinces for certain regions like Norway. But the increase of provinces serves both accuracy and playability of the region - it is now better both from gameplay and historical perspective. I really don't understand what's wrong about it
 
Snow Crystal said:
How are they in any way Emperors? They are at best Kings, often Dukes.
Click to expand...
I mean particularly that:
rageair said:
- e_russia is now created through 5 kingdoms (Ruthenia, Novgorod, Vladimir, Chernigov & Galicia-Volhynia)
- 3 new kingdoms : Vladimir, Chernigov, Galicia-Volhynia
Click to expand...
All these territories were unified under one banner from at least Svyatoslav Igorevich to Yaroslav the Wise, that is, for about a century. Even if you don't actually make the respective Rurikids emperors (purely for the reasons of historicity), instead presenting them just as holders of 5 kingdoms or so, a player during this timeframe will try to create the emperor title, and most likely will succeed in that soon enough.
 
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really stability would not be an issue if they added 4 or so counties to bohemia. In fact I would say Bohemia is a bit unstable now with Moravia frequantly splitting off when controlled by ai due to the strength of each duchy in the kingdom. I realise its a bit difficult to divide as Bohemia was never divided into smaller parcels like other parts but the creation of an extra ducy or two would make sense. maybe use the following counties rather

Or some combination of them rather then the current 5 actually this page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Bohemia has some good maps also though they are all a bit later
 
elvain said:
I really don't understand your points. You oposed the increased number of provinces for certain regions like Norway. But the increase of provinces serves both accuracy and playability of the region - it is now better both from gameplay and historical perspective. I really don't understand what's wrong about it
Click to expand...
The thing is I strongly doubt it makes that "better from historical perspective". The first thing about the historical accuracy is correctly representing the balance of power, including future capabilities of certain realms. It's perfectly historical and natural (even from purely economical reasons) that Sweden and especially Denmark are stronger than Norway, and the united Frankish kingdoms are considerably stronger than all of those combined. It's also natural that it's not that easy to unify Norway, taking its geography into account. Ghana/Mali is weak for the same reasons it actually was: its geographical position, economic weakness (its considerable numbers were mitigated by the lack of basic natural resources - gold won't buy you everything - and by suboptimal climate), religious isolation and technological backwardness (which the game mechanics cannot even represent accurately enough in general).

So generally it's perfectly fine by me that making your mark on history as Ghana or Finland requires a lot of concentrated effort and a bit of luck (and that with Ghana you will need to Islamize or Christianize). After all, they ARE playable (unlike many countries in EU4, for a comparison).
 
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Awwal12 said:
The thing is I strongly doubt it makes that "better from historical perspective". The first thing about the historical accuracy is correctly representing the balance of power, including future capabilities of certain realms. It's perfectly historical and natural (even from purely economical reasons) that Sweden and especially Denmark are stronger than Norway, and the united Frankish kingdoms are considerably stronger than all of those combined. It's also natural that it's not that easy to unify Norway, taking its geography into account. Ghana/Mali is weak for the same reasons it actually was: its geographical position, economic weakness (its considerable numbers were mitigated by the lack of basic natural resources - gold won't buy you everything - and by suboptimal climate), religious isolation and technological backwardness (which the game mechanics cannot even represent accurately enough in general).

So generally it's perfectly fine by me that making your mark on history as Ghana or Finland requires a lot of concentrated effort and a bit of luck (and that with Ghana you will need to Islamize or Christianize). After all, they ARE playable (unlike many countries in EU4, for a comparison).
Click to expand...

So to make it short: You know nothing about medieval Norway and Mali. Everything you say about Mali here is wrong. Mali wasn't weak. Especially not economically.
 
Awwal12 said:
The thing is I strongly doubt it makes that "better from historical perspective". The first thing about the historical accuracy is correctly representing the balance of power (...) Sweden and especially Denmark are stronger than Norway, and the united Frankish kingdoms are considerably stronger than all of those combined. It's also natural that it's not that easy to unify Norway, taking its geography into account.
Click to expand...
So, It's natural that it isn't easy to unify Norway. What Norway is easier to unify? Norway with fewer provinces in which the King in Oslo is clearly stronger than any of his vasals, or Norway with more provinces, in which king's position is relatively weaker in comparison to other Norwegean princes?
I am pretty sure that fragmented Norway is much harder to unify.

Yes, regions should be weaker or stronger. But as it was said here about bazzilion times, the number of provinces is not the only one thing which counts. The number of holdings per province, the way the provinces are distributed into duchies, terrain etc. it all affects how the region is strong or not.
And I have a reason to believe that the balance of power between the regions is one of the very important factors which are being considered during all these map improvements of all those various regions.

Awwal12 said:
Ghana/Mali is weak for the same reasons it actually was: its geographical position, economic weakness (its considerable numbers were mitigated by the lack of basic natural resources - gold won't buy you everything - and by suboptimal climate), religious isolation and technological backwardness (which the game mechanics cannot even represent accurately enough in general).

So generally it's perfectly fine by me that making your mark on history as Ghana or Finland requires a lot of concentrated effort and a bit of luck (and that with Ghana you will need to Islamize or Christianize). After all, they ARE playable (unlike many countries in EU4, for a comparison).
Click to expand...
1) Wagadu (Ghana) in its time was more technologically advanced than those parts of Europe which weren't part of Roman empire. And before climatic change in late 11th century which caused intense desertification of previously fertile plains, it was able to feed strong populations which, especially in areas like inland Niger delta, used quite advanced agriculture which was beyond capabiliies of most contemporary Europeans. Yes, they lacked some important resources (salt, horses), but they managed to trade them for gold.
It has all changed during the 12th century when the Sahara moved 100-200 kilometers southwards, weakening the entire civilization and making it more vulnerable... that was the time when the core of power moved southwards, to Mali.
Btw, the gold fields were actually outside of Wagadu (Ghana) itself. The empire only managed to get profit from them, just like the merchants of Jenne and later the mansas of Mali.

2) Geographicaly Wagadu/Ghana was anything but isolated. It was actually a crossroad of trade networks. The one most well known to us was north-south routes, which provided salt to the Sahel and Gold to the Mediterrean area. But there was also intense trade across the Sahel in east-west direction where Wagadu and Jenne were producing fish, agricultural and manufactured goods and were centres of political power, getting salt, iron and cloth from west; copper and textiles from east; kola, timber, slaves and gold from south and salt, luxury goods and horses from the north. The researchers call the Sahel area as optimal zone (that is before the desertification which shrinked the prosperous area and forced the core of population and political power southwards to Mali).
Calling this region as technologicaly backwarded isolated place indeed only shows your ignorance of the area.
 
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nestorius said:
really stability would not be an issue if they added 4 or so counties to bohemia. In fact I would say Bohemia is a bit unstable now with Moravia frequantly splitting off when controlled by ai due to the strength of each duchy in the kingdom. I realise its a bit difficult to divide as Bohemia was never divided into smaller parcels like other parts but the creation of an extra ducy or two would make sense. maybe use the following counties rather

Or some combination of them rather then the current 5 actually this page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Bohemia has some good maps also though they are all a bit later
Click to expand...
Bohemia definitely should not be divided into more duchies. It would be totally ahistorical and extremely destabilizing from gameplay perspective. Bohemia was always, during the entire middle ages, controlled by one single ruler who resided in Prague. Nobody has ever challenged his central power and creating a separate duchy would cause its separtism... just as you describe them with duchy of Moravia (the case of Moravia has historical precedents)

If you really want to divide Bohemia into more regions, it isn't that hard. But for CK2 you should use other divisions than those you did, originating from late 15th/16th centuries.
For instance, here is a map of possible territorial units based on my research of Přemyslid castellanies of 11-12th century (I only slightly misplaced Přimda there). But those are too small for CK2 if we consider the game's rules and mechanics.
Pol-Boh_jm2.GIF

This has already been discussed in several map orientated Dev diaries and we have been providing the devs with many and good resource maps which they certainly used for rework of Bohemia.

In the post I quoted above you can see how I designed Bohemia for SWMH
lnm5DUH.png

where it had separate provinces for Plzeň, Žatec, Litoměřice, Hradec, Kladsko, Doudleby (picked simply one of the castellanies in the region) and naturaly Praha. With the exception of Doudleby these were the major centers and anything beyond that is too much. Even SWMH which has many more provinces than vanilla, later removed Kladsko for being too small.
I think that having these provinces is enough.. and I actually discouraged the devs from adding more.
In Moravia it is simimar, there are 3 clear centers: Olomouc, Brno and Znojmo. For SWMH I also added Opava as region which later was separated and joined Silesia, but again even SWMH removed this region AFAIK.

While Bohemia surely has fewer provinces than surrounding regions, it should OTOH have provinces with 5-6 and even 7 holdings, while everything around has only 3-4. That will nicely simulate the centralized strong power of dukes/kings of Bohemia.
If Bohemia/Moravia ratio is kept at 5-6/3, Bohemia still remains substantialy stronger than Moravia and unles the king is weak, not even unified duchy of Moravia should be a challenge to his power.
On contrary, if Bohemia itself has 6 or more provinces, all but exceptionaly strong kings will be forced to hand over at least one province to somebody else, offering a potential internal ally(allies) for Moravian duke.
If you have 7 or more provinces in Bohemia, you will have to divide the duchy, which would make it much more unrealistic and unstable than a setup with 5 provinces (IMHO ideal) in Praha, Plzen, Litomerice, Hradec and south Bohemia

I believe that sanity will win in the end and Bohemia won't be destabilized by adding too many provinces.
 
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Monks in Island starting 769 is playable new Theocracy or Monastic feudal ?

Edit:

If it is playable to Iceland, there are Irish monks in 796

I will be able to create Monastic feudal or new Theocracy for Irish in Ireland ?
 
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Snow Crystal said:
As most of the team enjoys the summer, I thought I’d try to write a couple of smaller rogue Dev Diaries to get us through the summer. I will mostly discuss smaller additions, rather than the big sweeping features in these Diaries.

For the first one, it seems the vikings have pillaged a cartographer and found some more defined maps of their own homes, of all things.

We will start with the most important of the viking Kingdoms, Norway. What is that? What do you mean Norway stopped being a Kingdom in the late Middle Ages? Sounds like Swedish and Danish propaganda to me, they are just jealous of our mountainous glory.

View attachment 386480

The previous map of Norway always had certain issues with the western coast being quite the slog to move through, and the Kingdom feeling split by the mountain range. With a bit more definition to it, as well as a way to move between the two parts, we have found the region to be a lot more interesting of a place to hang out. In mainland Norway, 6 New Provinces and 2 New Duchies have been added.

View attachment 386481

Far to the north-west, Iceland has been updated a little bit as well. We have increased the province count from 2 to 4, though knowing that Iceland was far from the most populated of places, we have made sure that they haven’t gotten too strong.

View attachment 386482

In Sweden, we have increased the definition of southern Sweden somewhat, breaking up some of the provinces to try to show the relevance of the Geatish areas. This should hopefully help somewhat in rivaling the powerhouse of Uppland. 6 New Provinces and 1 New Duchy have been added in Sweden.

View attachment 386483

And finally, in Denmark we have new pathway across the islands and added Lolland as its own island. Both Jylland and Holstein has been split up and reorganised somewhat, to increase the definition of these areas and show their relevance in the era. In all, there has been 5 New Provinces added and 2 New Duchies.

We hope these changes to Scandinavia will be an interesting addition to all of the updates made to Pagans in Holy Fury, and make certain parts of the region a better experience. Next week, we will take a look down south, towards the changes around the Alps.
Click to expand...
looks nice
 
Kymetra said:
Monks in Island starting 769 is playable new Theocracy or Monastic feudal ?

Edit:

If it is playable to Iceland, there are Irish monks in 796

I will be able to create Monastic feudal or new Theocracy for Irish in Ireland ?
Click to expand...

Presumably they will be regular unplayable theocracies since the devs' position on playable theocracies has been the equivalent of "We will not make a non-dynastic government playable in a game that is about managing your dynasty" when they've answered questions about it in the past (and if HF was to change that I would imagine that it would have been a major enough feature to mention in the announcement as it is requested semi-frequently).

As for Monastic Feudal, that would be extremely weird since that is meant to represent Tibet and Iceland (and other places nearby) is not developed enough to be feudal pre-1066 as things currently stand...
 
Kymetra said:
Monks in Island starting 769 is playable new Theocracy or Monastic feudal ?
Click to expand...
Without them mentioning anything, I expect Iceland will be 4 tribal counties. The aforementioned decision by Skandinavians will probably simply flip culture and religion if you conquer one of the counties and the decision has never been taken for that county.
 
Thure said:
Holdings are more important than provinces. If they kept the holdings around the same or just added some it's not that bad. People should learn that holdings are the biggest factor here, not provinces itself.
Click to expand...

Holdings are important but provinces matter more. A) Every province gets a guaranteed top holding. As a feudal this means 2 provinces with 3 holdings each are going to have at least 2 castles in total whereas one province with six holdings could easily only have one and the rest bishoprics or cities, or empty. B) As a tribal this means more holdings since tribals only have a tribe in the top holding. C) Capitals get levy and income bonuses and more capitals means more of these bonuses if there are lots of one-province counts.

This shows clearly that an area with more provinces is going to be stronger, especially for tribals. Provinces with lots of holdings are only strong if you can actually fill those and even then it is preferrable to go wide instead of tall most of the time, whereas if you took a 6 holding province and split it into 6 one-holding provinces they will all be filled.

The downside being, since you have a demesne limit, you can only hold so many provinces, so with bigger provinces you can have more subholding vassals yourself and they are less rebellious than full province holders as baron tier characters do not have a court or a full AI (which also means they are less taxing on performance).
 
transylvanier said:
Holdings are important but provinces matter more. A) Every province gets a guaranteed top holding. As a feudal this means 2 provinces with 3 holdings each are going to have at least 2 castles in total whereas one province with six holdings could easily only have one and the rest bishoprics or cities, or empty. B) As a tribal this means more holdings since tribals only have a tribe in the top holding. C) Capitals get levy and income bonuses and more capitals means more of these bonuses if there are lots of one-province counts.

This shows clearly that an area with more provinces is going to be stronger, especially for tribals. Provinces with lots of holdings are only strong if you can actually fill those and even then it is preferrable to go wide instead of tall most of the time, whereas if you took a 6 holding province and split it into 6 one-holding provinces they will all be filled.

The downside being, since you have a demesne limit, you can only hold so many provinces, so with bigger provinces you can have more subholding vassals yourself and they are less rebellious than full province holders as baron tier characters do not have a court or a full AI (which also means they are less taxing on performance).
Click to expand...

You completelly ignore that tribles profit if the provinces have more empty holdings. Holdings are not all for tribals, empty holding slots are important for them too.
 
Snow Crystal said:
As most of the team enjoys the summer, I thought I’d try to write a couple of smaller rogue Dev Diaries to get us through the summer. I will mostly discuss smaller additions, rather than the big sweeping features in these Diaries.

For the first one, it seems the vikings have pillaged a cartographer and found some more defined maps of their own homes, of all things.

We will start with the most important of the viking Kingdoms, Norway. What is that? What do you mean Norway stopped being a Kingdom in the late Middle Ages? Sounds like Swedish and Danish propaganda to me, they are just jealous of our mountainous glory.

View attachment 386480

The previous map of Norway always had certain issues with the western coast being quite the slog to move through, and the Kingdom feeling split by the mountain range. With a bit more definition to it, as well as a way to move between the two parts, we have found the region to be a lot more interesting of a place to hang out. In mainland Norway, 6 New Provinces and 2 New Duchies have been added.

View attachment 386481

Far to the north-west, Iceland has been updated a little bit as well. We have increased the province count from 2 to 4, though knowing that Iceland was far from the most populated of places, we have made sure that they haven’t gotten too strong.

View attachment 386482

In Sweden, we have increased the definition of southern Sweden somewhat, breaking up some of the provinces to try to show the relevance of the Geatish areas. This should hopefully help somewhat in rivaling the powerhouse of Uppland. 6 New Provinces and 1 New Duchy have been added in Sweden.

View attachment 386483

And finally, in Denmark we have new pathway across the islands and added Lolland as its own island. Both Jylland and Holstein has been split up and reorganised somewhat, to increase the definition of these areas and show their relevance in the era. In all, there has been 5 New Provinces added and 2 New Duchies.

We hope these changes to Scandinavia will be an interesting addition to all of the updates made to Pagans in Holy Fury, and make certain parts of the region a better experience. Next week, we will take a look down south, towards the changes around the Alps.
Click to expand...
Am i looking at CK2+/HIP or the devs have finally decided to include Deutsche Schleswig?
 
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