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Dev Diary #91 - Altering the Alps and Idealizing Italy

Hello there! I hope everyone’s summer is going well, and that you are as excited for this week’s Dev Diary as I am to write it!


As I mentioned last time, this week we are going to take a look at the area around the Alps, as well as take a look at Italy. For our first preview, we will take a look at the western Alps, around the Kingdom of Burgundy, southern Germany and northern Italy.


Keep in mind that not all the changes are finalized, so there might be more updates before everything goes live. All the pictures will be taken from 1066 and with De Jure map modes, so things might look somewhat different in other bookmarks.

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So the first change we will be talking about is the changes to the County of Burgundy. We have cut it up, and made it into its own Duchy (of Franche Comté). The old Duchy of Upper Burgundy has lost its headway into the Swiss heartlands as well, moving the county of Schwyz (old Grisons), Zurichgau (old Schwyz) and Thurgau (old St. Gallen) into the new Duchy of Upper Swabia. In the later starting date, they will be part of the Duchy of Switzerland instead of Upper Swabia, a change that can happen throughout a game as well.

The county of Vaud has been added to the game, to the old Duchy of Upper Burgundy, cut out of certain parts of Geneva and Neuchatel. The final noticeable change on this side of the Alps, is that we have added Aosta to the mountains between Savoy and Italy.

For that part of the Alps, we wanted to make smaller changes, cut up some of the larger provinces and fix a lot of the barony errors and some of the county errors (see Schwyz further up the text). It was important for us to try and fix a lot of these minor issues, as it felt weird seeing some areas so misplaced on the map.

On the other side of the Alps, we have cut up some of the larger provinces. Monferrato has been cut up to make room for Ivrea, Lombardy has been cut up to make room for Milano, Como and Leventina, and Genoa has been cut up to make room for Noli.

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We can start out in Italy, where we left off from the previous picture. Trent has been turned into its own minor Duchy, opening up Brenner Pass between Bozen and Innsbruck. Innsbruck and Tirol has moved a bit westwards, to make room for Pongau as part of the new Duchy of Salzburg. In Bavaria, we have added the county of Regensburg, as it was the capital of the Duchy for quite a while, and we wanted to see that reflected in the game. Passau has also been moved into the Duchy.

To the east, Austria has gotten quite the rework. We have added Traungau, Steyr Freistadt, Krems and Melk as Counties, moved Znojmo into Bohemia and Passau, as previously mentioned, into Bavaria, and Styria has been moved south into its own Duchy. The Duchy of Carinthia has been cut up into Carinthia and Carniola, and the Duchy of Friuli has been added around Aquileia.

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So for our last location, we have central Italy. I figure I will talk about the mountains first, as we have added parts of the Apennines throughout Italy. We’ve felt this has increased the tactical value of Italy somewhat, as the choices you make for movement and county conquering feels a bit more valuable, and we also felt it cut up the county more nicely, particularly considering the new Kingdom we added in central Italy (this will be discussed further down).

We have added Perugia into the Duchy of Spoleto, moving the whole Duchy a bit further north. Rimini has been added to the Duchy of Ancona, turned the two county Duchy into a three county one, to lessen the amount of chokepoints post-mountainfication.For the old county of Aprutium, we have turned it into the Duchy of Abruzzo and moved it into the Kingdom of Sicily. And we have taken parts of the old County of Firenze, and added the county of Arezzo, to make sure Firenze doesn’t stick its fingers into everyone else, as it has had a tendency to do.

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So for what I assume will be the most controversial change to the region, the two new Kingdoms added.

For Carinthia, it felt weird giving even more land to a Kingdom that is meant to reflect the historical Stem-Duchy of Bavaria, when we have the Principality of Carantania, the March of Carinthia and later on the Duchy of Carinthia as inspiration that could take the same role. We have made sure, as this is quite the small Kingdom with a lot of land held by the same person in some bookmarked starts, that the AI won’t create the Kingdom right away, so it should be more of a player goal than an AI goal.

And… For Romagna, we wanted to cut Italy into its more historical pieces, without adding a Kingdom called “the Papal States” that was only for an unplayable Theocracy. This was done for several reason: having the Pope try to seek out central Italy as he did throughout history, having the old East Roman areas be more difficult to hold onto for the Kingdom of Italy in the first bookmarks, and to lessen the massive size of the Kingdom of Italy.

So I hope the Dev Diary didn’t get too wordy this time around, and that people can learn to love the changes made to the region! Next time around, we will have a (probably smaller) Dev Diary about the changes made to Holy Orders in Holy Fury!

PS. For those of you with an interest in the Habsburg jaw and the Archduchy of Austria, we have something special for you as well! (A special decision to create the Archduchy.)

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One possible solution could be to separate the southern lands from Vienne county. You would get two counties: one with the traditional counts of Albon's lands (Albon, Vienne, Grenoble, Briançon), and the second with the territories added to Dauphiné in the XIVth century (Valence, Die, Romans, Crest...)

Then you could split the duchy into a "Dauphiné duchy" and a 2 counties "Lyon duchy" (Lyon + Forez)

About splitting the county of Vienne between the county of Viennois/Dauphiné and the county of Valentinois/Diois, I think I agree with this.
About the duchy of Lionnais including the Forez, I have no idea whether this would be plausible. Then, something would have to be done with the county of Vivarais and I don't know whether attaching it to the duchy of Provence would be correct.

But we are deviating a bit from the DD... I'll start a thread to list the problems and discuss about it.
 
@Snow Crystal I just want to get this cleared up. The papal states is still a titular kingdom right? So its land will slowly drift out of the Italian empire as usual and it doesn't have de jure cbs in romangna right?

On one hand i'm sure the de jure power of the papacy would make its historic goals a bit more common and keep the italian empire from developing a hole but on the other hand if someone can usurp the papal state or the player can never form the middle italian kingdom that would be trouble.

Is there a way to make the titular papal state kingdom title a part of the Italian empire?
 
I think that there are a lot of considerations to be had with Venice.

Before it was correct that it was de-jure the Byzantine empire because it was as in history.

But I also feel like they were correct to move it out of the Byzantine's de-jure territory because it did eat up Venice more often than not, often turning it feudal.

Technically I really think the argument could be made that Venice was a direct vassal of the Byzantine Empire. But if they were to make it a vassal you would then also have no independant republics in 769.

Venice could be made a tributary of the ERE.
 
I wonder if that Upper Swabia duchy shouldn't be named Churrätien?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raetia_Curiensis
Look at the area it covers:
index.php

That's below the Bodensee. Now this is Upper Swabia, from Wikipedia:

800px-Map_Upper_Swabia_%28Oberschwaben%29.png

That's above the Bodensee. Meanwhile, here is Churrätien, aka Raetia Curiensis:
795px-Churraetien.png

That's below the Bodensee, and fits much better with the area on the map.
The 3rd map shows that rhaetia covers not much more than ingame Chur province.
Upper Swaben (or something Swaben at least ) sounds fitty to me https://fr.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duché_de_Souabe
 
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Three two province duchies right next to three six province duchies, my eyes, my poor eyes. I have to go and instill some acid drops. Sorry but these changes are as bad for balance as good were the one for Scandinavia.

Except for Central Italy, this looks fine.

How is that bad for balance, Salzburg is a bishopric in all start, if I remember right, so you cannot play it and Karthen is a small duchy justly for balance reason, as anyone who hold it get a highly defensible terrain with high attrition, dev want those around it to fight over it.
 
Were there even enough counts in middle ages to fill all these counties in franche comte duchy? I think it would be weird to split one county to five, only to have them all held by same person all the time.

I see one county out of these fives is held by someone else and another is held by France(?). I would love to see some more info about this new duchy. You can't even really see names of those new counties.
 
Really pleased to find out the Pope won't always be a sitting duck that could not even get Latium under its banner.

I think that there are a lot of considerations to be had with Venice.

Before it was correct that it was de-jure the Byzantine empire because it was as in history.

But I also feel like they were correct to move it out of the Byzantine's de-jure territory because it did eat up Venice more often than not, often turning it feudal.

Technically I really think the argument could be made that Venice was a direct vassal of the Byzantine Empire. But if they were to make it a vassal you would then also have no independant republics in 769.

Or there should be a way to get a CB to vassalize MR and the AI should be prone to use it to fill its coffers and feel the bitter taste of gold - trouble?