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EU4 - Development Diary - 18th of June 2019

Hello and good morning. Today we will finally unveil our long-anticipated changes to the map and political setup of the Balkans, as well as taking a look at Austria. This will be our final dev diary on map changes for the European update.

As befits the fragmented nature of the Balkans, today’s dev diary will be divided into three parts, each written by a member of the Content Design team who personally worked on each region.

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I’ll begin with my own work on Greece and Bulgaria. You’ll notice that province density has noticeably increased, but rest assured we have taken care to avoid adding a net development boost to the Ottomans. We feel that their current level of development makes them a sufficiently powerful force, and any further advantages would harm the experience for players in their vicinity.

We’ve split the Bulgaria area in two, with most of Bulgaria remaining in “Bulgaria” but with the east in the new Silistria area. Bulgaria in total has gained 3 new provinces: Tolcu, split from Silistre, allows for a more accurate Ottoman-Moldavian border. Tirnovo, once a major cultural, military, and economic center for the Bulgarian Empire, declined under Ottoman rule but remained a thorn in the side of the Turks as it was a hotbed for Bulgarian resistance. Finally, Kyustendil/Kostendil was the center of an Ottoman sanjak and an exploitable mining site.

Thrace and Macedonia have also been updated with new provinces. Edirne has lost its access to the sea to the new province of Gelibolu/Gallipoli, home to a mighty fortress and naval arsenal. Parts of the former Edirne have also been added to the new Gumulcine province. Lastly, Selanik is now confined to the area around the city of Thessaloniki, as Siroz now occupies the outer reaches.

Moving down into Greece proper, a new nation has appeared while another is notable by its absence. Epirus, with its capital in the new province of Arta, is ruled by the Tocco dynasty who for whatever reason were previously represented as the rulers of the Venetian vassal-state of Corfu. Corfu no longer exists in 1444, but it retains its core on the island. Epirus also rules the island of Cephalonia, which has been separated from the Corfu province and gives Epirus the ability to produce wine. Fans of Byzantium will be pleased to hear that they now possess an additional province at the start of the game, based around the historic city of Corinth. And in the Aegean Sea, Lesbos has been split from Scio - Lesbos has a strait connection to Biga while Scio connects to Sugla.

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I'm @Caligula Caesar, and I'm here to tell you about our changes to Austria. Now, some of you may be aware that there is a good case for splitting Austria in three at the start of the game and requiring them to unify their territories. However, as a team we elected NOT to do this. Our reasoning is simple: For an enjoyable and challenging game on continental Europe, it is necessary for there to be a strong Austria. As Austria is already one of the more vulnerable superpowers in the early game, making their starting position significantly weaker by reducing their directly held territories by 2/3 would simply not make a better game experience.

We felt that Austria's starting development was fine as it was, but its province density was not quite at the level we wanted, so we added some new provinces by splitting existing provinces' development. As we have already shown, Tirol was split between Inntal and Etschtal and South Tirol became Trent, now an independent tag; also, some impassable mountains were added between Tirol and Venetia. Moving east, we split Kärnten in two between Oberkärnten/Villach and Unterkärnten/Klagenfurt. In the north, Linz's province (now known as Oberenns) was reshaped significantly and room was made for Traungau (with the significant ironworking town of Steyr as its capital) to the south of it. Wien province, too, has been split, with Wienerwald/Sankt Pölten taking its place to the west.

Finally, in the south, we added the Slovene culture. This culture is present in Görz, Krain and Celje. The last of those is owned by a new tag, the Counts of Cilli - known by their German name as its rulers were the German von Cilli family (the tag itself retains Slovene culture, however, and has some dynamic province names for surrounding areas).

Now on to @Ofaloaf 's work on the Western Balkans:

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This work owes a tremendous amount to @otaats and his suggestions in Serbia & friends, which (in a truncated form) served as an inspiration. I also want to give a shoutout to @Wokeg, whose enthusiasm for the region and its history has been an excellent inspiration and motivation.

Most of the mapwork simply provides greater provincial fidelity, but there are some significant changes and additions. Starting with the smaller stuff, Venetian holdings along the Adriatic coast are better defined, with old Dalmatian province now split between Zara and Spalato and Cattaro now spun off from the province of Zeta. Albania also gets a second province, Krüje, which was one of the strongholds of the Albanian ruler Skanderbeg. Fortified and mountainous, Krüje should be a real pain to crack early in the game.

One of the most major additions to the region is the inclusion of Herzegovina. It's a relatively new state in 1444, being largely the creation of Stjepan Vukčić, who inherited those lands in 1435. Stjepan was an incredibly ambitious nobleman who took on the title of herceg (borrowed from German herzog) and ruled a portion of the Kingdom of Bosnia as a de facto independent realm called the Duchy of Saint Sava, which is the name its contemporaries knew it as. While Stjepan had the chops for independent rule, his sons weren't quite as canny, and in 1483 the realm was conquered by advancing Ottoman forces. However, Stjepan's title, herceg, lived on in the Ottoman name for the territory, and this eventually became the name Herzegovina, which is what we know the area now as and, for the sake of familiarity, the name which the realm (and its capital province) is called in-game.

You may have also noticed that Croatia is now present on the map. It starts in a union under Hungary, and depending on Hungarian fortunes may now either break away in one fell swoop or be more firmly incorporated into the Crown of St. Stephen. While the inclusion of Croatia does provide some interesting opportunities for Hungarian expansion or wresting parts of the Hungarian domain away from Budapest, the inclusion of Croatia as a separate entity has called for a little historical fudging. Rule of Croatia and Slavonia was split in 1444, although the two entities were ruled by Croatian brothers at the time of the Grand Campaign, and the titles would be merged together into a united Banate in 1476. To prevent Hungarian diplomatic relations from being eaten up by subjects and give it a slightly more powerful vassal to keep in check, Croatia here is unified slightly early.

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Thank you all for reading this and our other map-based dev diaries, it’s been a pleasure to present our work to you and to read your feedback and ideas. Next week we will take a look at some of the new mission trees coming to this region - most likely Austria, one of the Balkan minors, and something you might not expect. We’ll also talk a little about the Hungarian succession. Until then, have a great week!
 
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Will Slovene be a unique culture or not within Austria's Slovenian provinces?

Finally, in the south, we added the Slovene culture. This culture is present in Görz, Krain and Celje. The last of those is owned by a new tag, the Counts of Cilli - known by their German name as its rulers were the German von Cilli family (the tag itself retains Slovene culture, however, and has some dynamic province names for surrounding areas).
 

That's what I saw as well, we are getting Slovene culture, but only in Slovenia-proper which brings up the question, was Carinthia still Slavic in 1450? For example the "Historical Dictionary of Slovenia" by Plut-Pregelj, Kranjc, Lazarević, and Rogel state that only b y the mid 19th century the main city of Klagenfurt was Germanized.
 
EDIT: The quote isn't displaying for me. I'm replying to @EasternTiger

I didn't see that. Thanks for pointing it out to me! :D

(However, I still haven't gotten a response on my post about Edirne/Adrianople though, but hey, it's ok)
 
Love it all, just one little complaint. As a man from Bosnia, I can tell you we do NOT call it Herzegovina, that is a German adaptation from the times of Austria-Hungary, we call it Hercegovina. One letter difference but have in mind this is a phonetic language and Herzegovina is read differently from Hercegovina.

In this case, the letter "Z" would be pronounced the same way as the letter "C" in Serbocroatian, therefore Herzegovina it should remain, it is the only option that makes sense in English, otherwise people may pronounce it as HerKegovina and that would be lulzy.
 
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it also is disingenuous of them to essentially refute their promise to incorporate more of what the community asks by now saying that no more major changes will be made to the map. There are some really good ideas in here and valuable feedback - I know you can't change everything, and that July is coming up, but there is a lot that the community has provided with all of these map dev diaries that is worth more than a second look.
Indeed. At the very least, if they don't want to add a new tag and don't want to change the map, Lesbos should just be given to Byzantium. There's no reason for it to be Genoese.

Honestly, though, the rulers of the island of Lesbos seem like REALLY interesting and dynamic people from the history I read, and I'd love a chance to play as them.
 
As a Byzantine player, I'm actually glad they added Gallipoli and a fortress there. It's historical and shows the true challenge on what the Byzantines were facing up to. Even at times when the Ottomans were very vulnerable like after the battle of Ankara or the Pyrrhus victory at Varna at 1444.
 
You know, the more I think of it, the more I feel myself in the crowd for divided Austria. There are effective tools like events and missions to give us united strong Austria, just like in case with Bavaria. It's not even needed to be strictly tied to 1490 - they may have low MTTH.
 
How about making them historical friends?

It's because they're historical friends with Hungary. I mixed it up in my personal mod made Hungary HF with Poland instead. And both Hungary and Austria HR with the ottomans. Also I removed the HR between Austria and France. It gets added back by the burgundian succession. Also it would be nice if great powers that border the HRE always have a malus to relationship with the emperor.

Yes to the first no to the second. Most colonial nations in the Americas never ran a profit at all. It was the east India trade that was valuable not the west Indies one. Both the British South sea company and the Dutch counterpart was essentially worthless.

I do like Varna being on the map.
This is exactly the thing i have been asking for monthes. Why Rivalry between France and Austria, except to nerf those two countries?
Why no HR between Poles + Austria and Otto? That good nerf of Otto would be deserved and not game Breaking.
 
1. Is there a Bosnian culture. And if not why not ?
2. And will some Bosnian provinces become Sunni in the Ottoman empire, and if not why not ?
I thought this game will become historically accurate with every version.
 
1. Is there a Bosnian culture. And if not why not ?
2. And will some Bosnian provinces become Sunni in the Ottoman empire, and if not why not ?
I thought this game will become historically accurate with every version.


Historical acuracy is a difficult thing to achieve as different nations have a different view on history. To give you an example I was never happy with the addition of slovaks in Nyitra as I consider it inacurate as well as many other people. Others (especially people from slovakia) consider it historically acurate. Regardless of how paradox choses someone will say its inacurate. In my oppinion what they should be doing in this case is either have the provinces Hungarian or Bohemian (slovaks originate from migrants hungary called in to replenish its depleted population after waging war with the mongols). Should hungary fall and the austrians there should be an event chain with the region that can lead to the creation of the slovakian culture (considering that slovakian sources state that the national identity of slovaks
crystallized between about 1700 and World War I) they could be designed into an interesting late game change with a unique situation instead of a relesable weak tag that is likely to die anyway between the nearby great powers.

Read more: https://www.everyculture.com/Sa-Th/Slovakia.html#ixzz5rOSsAkvO
 
priamossz, I "respectfully disagree" about your statement that a historical game should be done after how certain nations see history, it should rather be made after well documented facts and how history actually was.

It's well documented historical fact about the "good bosnians" and the bosnian culture. In fact, some of the oldest documents mention this from that area of the world. The culture in Bosnia was definately not serbian at all. The state religion as the Kotromanic dynasty were catholic bosnians, although the bogomilist bosnian church had a strong presence in the kingdom. This is not from some "biased source" but from documents from the italian nations of the time that witness this.

There is absolutely no reason why Paradox haven't implemented bosnian culture to the game, seeing that they in general have done good historical research.

I also noticed that there is a function in these forums where you can "respectfully disagree" or "agree" and I noticed that many hit the red X button on my question about wether bosnian culture was rightfully implemented or not, without even writing anything constructive to why it should not be added? Read a history book, it's there, well documented. I think the red X on my post from these anonymous "historians" were rather made from some sort of dislike towards how history really was.

Over and out.
priamossz, I "respectfully disagree" about your statement that a historical game should be done after how certain nations see history, it should rather be made after well documented facts and how history actually was.

It's well documented historical fact about the "good bosnians" and the bosnian culture. In fact, some of the oldest documents mention this from that area of the world. The culture in Bosnia was definately not serbian at all. The state religion as the Kotromanic dynasty were catholic bosnians, although the bogomilist bosnian church had a strong presence in the kingdom. This is not from some "biased source" but from documents from the italian nations of the time that witness this.

There is absolutely no reason why Paradox haven't implemented bosnian culture to the game, seeing that they in general have done good historical research.

I also noticed that there is a function in these forums where you can "respectfully disagree" or "agree" and I noticed that many hit the red X button on my question about wether bosnian culture was rightfully implemented or not, without even writing anything constructive to why it should not be added? Read a history book, it's there, well documented. I think the red X on my post from these anonymous "historians" were rather made from some sort of dislike towards how history really was.

Over and out.

When I wrote that I simply stating why its an issue for Paradox to make choices regarding to cultures. They simply try to balance it to try to make most people happy. In regards to the bosnian culture question I did not meant to either support or argue aganist your point it self just wanted to point out how paradox thinks. I am well versed in Hungarian history but I cant say the same about the Bosnian-Serbian cultural debate so I cant make a comment on that.
 
If you are well versed in hungarian history then you definately should know about the bosnian culture, just sayin'. ;)

The relation between Bosnia and Hungary was weird, with both royal marriages and hostility. Mainly due to the papal state which wasn't very fond of the widespread of the bosnian church in Bosnia which he considered heretic. Fun fact: There is still a minority today in Hungary (Pecs-area) who are originally bosnian catholic who fled to Hungary when the ottomans attacked. Anyway, I understand your point now, it wasn't really clear, but I still insist that there is no reason to not add bosnian culture in the game, to the south slavic group, seeing that they already added bosnian ideas, which mention both the bosnian church and about the rise of the bosnian Kotromanic dynasty into an independent kingdom after being a banate and a sort of vassal to Hungary.

The Banate of Bosnia (Bosnian: Banovina Bosna / Бановина Босна), or Bosnian Banate (Bosanska banovina / Босанска бановина), was a medieval state based in what is today Bosnia and Herzegovina. Although it was a part of the Hungarian Crown Lands, the Banate of Bosnia was a de facto independent state.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banate_of_Bosnia

Serbia was a kingdom itself, with it's culture and the orthodox religion, whilst Bosnia was it's own, with catholicism as state religion and own culture.

It's also documented that people in Bosnia during the middle ages called themselfs nothing else than bosnians or good bosnians. Bošnjani) or dobri Bošnjani

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bošnjani

Bošnjani (singular: Bošnjanin; Latin: Bosniensis), meaning Bosnians, is the archaic name for inhabitants of Bosnia during the Middle Ages. The demonym appears in Bosnian state documents (povelje) since the 14th century, as used for the people of medieval Bosnia until the last Bosnian king Stjepan Tomašević prior to the Ottoman conquest of Bosnia.

I hope Paradox reads this, my message to you is "Gör om, gör rätt" ;)

thank you that was a great read and yep i didnt really know much about Bosnian-Hungarian relations so thank you. If this is the case on the other hand, would it be not interesting to add events about this half friendship half enemy situation? Currently if you play Hungary you just want to quickly conquer/vassal Bosnia serbia and walachia to give you a fighting chance aganist the ottos. some interesting events that may make Bosnia a vassal temporally would be interesting as a Hungarian player may have to think "when they break away" while if you play bosnia you can use the vassalage as a way to protect yourself from ottos ant try to play tall for a while only to slip out of vassalage once the otto danger has been dealt with. mixing in the church to this would be the cherry on top, making both nations far more interesting to play.
 
You know, the more I think of it, the more I feel myself in the crowd for divided Austria. There are effective tools like events and missions to give us united strong Austria, just like in case with Bavaria. It's not even needed to be strictly tied to 1490 - they may have low MTTH.
Yeah, if they're worried about the AI being able to handle it, they could always railroad it a bit for the AI in a way that it isn't for the player.
 
If you are well versed in hungarian history then you definately should know about the bosnian culture, just sayin'. ;)

The relation between Bosnia and Hungary was weird, with both royal marriages and hostility. Mainly due to the papal state which wasn't very fond of the widespread of the bosnian church in Bosnia which he considered heretic. Fun fact: There is still a minority today in Hungary (Pecs-area) who are originally bosnian catholic who fled to Hungary when the ottomans attacked. Anyway, I understand your point now, it wasn't really clear, but I still insist that there is no reason to not add bosnian culture in the game, to the south slavic group, seeing that they already added bosnian ideas, which mention both the bosnian church and about the rise of the bosnian Kotromanic dynasty into an independent kingdom after being a banate and a sort of vassal to Hungary.

The Banate of Bosnia (Bosnian: Banovina Bosna / Бановина Босна), or Bosnian Banate (Bosanska banovina / Босанска бановина), was a medieval state based in what is today Bosnia and Herzegovina. Although it was a part of the Hungarian Crown Lands, the Banate of Bosnia was a de facto independent state.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banate_of_Bosnia

Serbia was a kingdom itself, with it's culture and the orthodox religion, whilst Bosnia was it's own, with catholicism as state religion and own culture.

It's also documented that people in Bosnia during the middle ages called themselfs nothing else than bosnians or good bosnians. Bošnjani) or dobri Bošnjani

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bošnjani

Bošnjani (singular: Bošnjanin; Latin: Bosniensis), meaning Bosnians, is the archaic name for inhabitants of Bosnia during the Middle Ages. The demonym appears in Bosnian state documents (povelje) since the 14th century, as used for the people of medieval Bosnia until the last Bosnian king Stjepan Tomašević prior to the Ottoman conquest of Bosnia.

I hope Paradox reads this, my message to you is "Gör om, gör rätt" ;)


Well, what are your sources on Bosnian as a culture instead of a nationality.

An example: Belgian is a Nationality but not a culture, the culture is Flemish (dutch) or walloon (french).

From what I can see Bosnian seems to mostly be a nationality instead of a culture, so if we look at cultures in Yugoslavia we can see interesting details:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_groups_in_Yugoslavia

yugoslav.jpg

Now the yugoslavian civil wars of independance really changed things and I would say yugoslavia was a complicated nation, but here in this picture we see Bosnian not existing, and on the page there are only Muslim cultured Yugoslavians.

Now considering that muslims werent there in 1444 yet, this seems to imply they were not a culture.

Even to this day we see that Serbo-Croat is a very similar language only really differentiated between nationalities, but not language.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serbo-Croatian.

Sure we see that every nation names their language as its seperate language, but linguistically they seem to be merely dialectic differences and other more defined dialects seem to exist:

Serbo_croatian_dialects_historical_distribution_2.png


Shtokavian_subdialects1988.png
 
Lower Carinthia (Kärnten) should also have Slovenian culture.

I believe Carniola (Krain) should border on Trieste, the Görtz as depicted is of late 18th century.

Görtz should really have its own tag, it was only inherited by Hapsburgs in 1500. Yes, I'm for a divided Austria.
 
Back from the dead!
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Anyway, a bit of feedback for my pet-region:
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1: Move Silistre(Tur.)/Silistra(Bul.); it's on the border, so a bit of the province has to be adjusted in terms of borders. The current location of the town is in the location of Constanta (which luckily didn't get added).

2: Kirkkilise isn't located there, but in the Edirne province. Burgas is still the capital. If you guys don't mind a Byzantine-province, call it Mesembria and give it #1 as capital (Nesebar/Mesembria), no border-changes needed. If you guys want it to stay Ottoman, then move the capital to #3 (Islimiye(Tur.)/Sliven(Bul.). Border-changes would be necessary. Both options are viable, in my opinion. The current province is just flawed.

3: Slightly moved Filibe/Plovdiv. It's above the island of Thasos and at the Maritsa river.

4: Slightly moved Sofya.

5: Trikala/Tirhala should be the capital and moved there.

6: Glarentza should be the capital. It doesn't exist nowadays anymore.

7: Mystras should be the capital, not Nafplio. The latter was Venetian.

Also, both Achaea and Morea could use a namechange, as Achaea and Morea refer to the same peninsula.

8: Moved Vidin. Also; riverbends are kind of wonky, but that's minor at best. City-location is a bigger issue.

Oh and Kostendil should be Köstendil. And as pointed out by @withche.07 Gümülcine except of Gumulcine.

@neondt
 

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