• We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.

Tinto Maps #1 - 10th of May 2024 - Low Countries

Hello everybody, and welcome to the first post of Tinto Maps! This is a new weekly series that we will be running about the top-secret game Project Caesar.

Let me introduce myself before I continue, as some of you may get to know me from the development of the latest EUIV DLCs, but I might not be as well-known to everyone as Johan. I’m Pavía, the Content Design Lead at Paradox Tinto, which I joined in 2021. Before becoming a videogame developer, my background was as a Historian, which led me to work on a PhD. in Medieval History (fool me!), which I finished in 2020. Besides that, I’ve spent several thousands of hours of my life playing Paradox GSGs since I discovered and started playing Europa Universalis 20 years ago, in 2004.

What this new series will be about is quite straightforward: each week I will be sharing with you maps of a new different region, so you have an outlook of them and we are able to receive early feedback (because as you may already know from Johan’s Tinto Talks, there is still a lot of WIP stuff ongoing).

About this feedback, we’d like you to take into account a couple of things. The first is that we’ve worked really hard to gather the best sources of information available to craft the best possible map; we used GIS tools with several layers of historical map sources from academic works, geographical data, administrative data, etc., to help us ensure the desired quality. So we would appreciate getting specific suggestions backed by these types of sources, as others (let’s say, a Wikipedia map or YouTube video with no references) may not be reliable enough. The second thing to comment on is that sometimes a certain decision we made was an interpretation over an unclear source, while sometimes we have just plainly made some errors when crafting the map (which on a 30,000 location map is a normal thing, I guess). I’ll let you know when any of these happen, and I’m also going to ask for your understanding when an error or bug is found and confirmed as such.

With those forewords said, let’s start with today’s region: the Low Countries! This is what the political map looks like:

Countries.png

The regional situation in 1337. The counties of Hainaut, Holland, and Zeeland are ruled by William of Avesnes, who is married to Joanna, daughter of Duke John III of Brabant. Another John, the Duke of Luxembourg, might be the strongest power, as he is also the King of Bohemia. The County of Flanders is the wealthiest country in the region, controlling such important cities as Brugge and Ghent. Up in the north, we have other interesting countries, such as the Bishopric of Utrecht or the Republic of Frisia (you might notice that we're using a dynamic custom country name for them, 'Frisian Freedom').

And here we have the locations:

Locations.png

We had a fun bug for some time - Antwerpen didn’t have any pixels connected to the sea, which we found because we couldn’t build any type of port building there. There’s a happy ending, as the bug has already been corrected, and Antwerpen can finally have a proper port!

Provinces:

Provinces.jpg


Terrain (Climate, Topography, and Vegetation):

Climate.jpg

Topography.jpg

Vegetation.jpg

We are aware that the Netherlands looked differently in the 14th century, as several land reclamations took place during the Late Medieval and Early Modern periods, but we are using a 20th-century version of the map for the sake of consistency. Most of the regions throughout the world would look quite different from nowadays, and documenting those changes (especially the coastline shapes) would be a non-trivial problem to resolve. As a side note, we already removed Flevoland from it, and have already identified some other modern ones that slipped through and we'll eventually remove them, as well.

Cultures:

Cultures.png

The stripes mean that there are pops of different culture inhabiting in those location. Also, the German and French cultures are WIP, we’ll show you a proper version on later Tinto Maps.

Religions:

Religions.png

Not many religions here yet, although there will be interesting religious stuff happening eventually…

Raw Goods:

Goods.png

Goods get regularly swapped around here and there to have a balance between geographical and historical accuracy, and gameplay purposes. So take this as the far-from-final current version of them.

And an additional map for this week:

Markets.png

We reinstated a Low Countries market centered on Antwerpen, after doing some balance tweaks that made it more viable.

And these are the maps for today! I hope that you have a nice weekend, and next Friday, we will travel down south, to Iberia!
 

Attachments

  • Climate.jpg
    Climate.jpg
    357,1 KB · Views: 0
  • Topography.jpg
    Topography.jpg
    402,8 KB · Views: 0
  • Vegetation.jpg
    Vegetation.jpg
    414,6 KB · Views: 0
Last edited:
  • 338Love
  • 129Like
  • 6
  • 3
  • 1Haha
  • 1
Reactions:
Will Flanders have locations that are part of the HRE and some others that don't? AFAIK Aalst and Hulst were part of the the HRE, while the rest of Flanders was de jure French.
 
Hello marvelous people.

I had a few things in mind regarding the map :

1. As someone else said, Mons should be split in a few parts (with Ath in the north) and I would also maybe suggest to add Charleroi (originally named Charleroy).
It was an unimportant village up to the 17th century when it was bought by Spain. The Spaniards started to build a fortress there to protect the low countries from the French. Then Louis XIV took the place when it wasn't completely built and finished the fortress (Vauban was apparently involved).
After that, it remained an important fortress during the following conflicts and switched side a few times.
Finally, during the 19th century, it became one of the big industrial cities in Belgium (thanks to all the coal mines) but that may be irrelevant for this game.

2. Concerning the topography, I find it weird that Ostende and Brussels, for example, both are flatlands. I live south of Brussels and it definitely isn't flat. To be honest, the region I am living in is called "les Ardennes Brabançonnes" (Brabantian Ardennes) because there are hills (it's included in your "Wavre" location).
So, it could be a good idea to change the topography of the following locations to hills : Namur, Dinant, Wavre, Brussels, Walcourt, Mons and Liège.
Alternatively, you could maybe create a new topography layer to differentiate these locations from the Luxemburg (which obviously has bigger hills). I can't think of an adequate name though, sorry.

Thanks for your work !

Have a nice day !
 
  • 3Like
Reactions:
Thank you for this look at the map, I'm looking forward to my Frisia -> Netherlands runs ;) Since I haven't seen anybody provide feedback on East Friesland, I'll give you my take. I'm more knowledgable about the 16th/17th century political and religious history of the region, but have some general knowledge about other aspects and eras.
Wikipedia has some accessible and useful maps, but I've only included those that accord with my reading. I'll drop some references at the end.


Political Map
I like it! Having West and East Friesland unified certainly makes sense to me for the period, since power was so decentralized and having every local chieftain on the map would be overkill, while the political division which forms the national border today came later (after the Burgundian/Habsburg conquests to the west, and local big-wig Ulrich I. Cirksena managing to have himself declared Count of East Frisia in 1464). However, I concur with the feedback that Groningen should be better represented, and possibly even be a tag if that doesn't complicate things too much for Frisia (see Jonathan Israel in references).

Locations
These I think could use some tweaking. Basically, what I am going to argue for is new location borders, *very* roughly like this:

Screenshot 2024-05-11 190829.png


On the names: "Emden" being a location name makes perfect sense to me, since it became quite important as a European center of Calvinism in the 16th century, due to a large presence of Dutch/Walloon refugees (see Pettegree and Schilling), achieved de facto independence from the Lutheran counts ("Emden Revolution") and became a Dutch protectorate until the 18th century (see Jonathan Israel). And I do believe the game's map should be a good representation of the whole timespan of Project Caesar, more than a snapshot of the situation in 1337. "Wittmund" should be replaced with "Aurich", since that is where the semi-mythical Frisian assembly at the "Upstalsboom" took place, and where the Cirksena counts had their residence and administration from the 16th century. "Varel" should be "Jever", since the Counts of East Friesland often tried, but never quite managed, to acquire the Lordship of this name.

Alternatively, if you want to keep things closer to the 14th century, you could take inspiration from the medieval location names:

Ostfriesland_um_1300.png


https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ostfriesland_um_1300.png
In which case, I would advocate for "Emsigo", "Auricherland" and "Harlingerland" or "Östringen" as the three northern locations (but closer to the Frisian forms than the more High German ones on this map from Wikipedia). But since the Early Modern history is closer to my heart, I would prefer "Emden", "Aurich" and "Jever".

On location borders: As mentioned, some borders should be adjusted. Most important to me is a new shape for the "Emden" location along these rough lines:

Locations.png


The new border should end at the Leybucht, south of Norden. I believe that this new borderline represents the principal divides in East Friesland in the Early Modern Era much better, as regards, politics, religion, topography, agricultural productivity and wealth. The border as shown on Tinto's map cuts right across these divides.

Giving the northwestern corner to "Wittmund"/"Aurich", and the lands along the River Ems, including the town of Leer, to the "Emden" location, represents the political and religious makeup for the bulk of Project Ceasar's timespan much better. These areas eventually became Reformed, ie. Calvinist, and were oriented towards Emden and the Dutch Republic, while the east, dominated by the Lutheran counts, looked toward the Holy Roman Empire. In the late 16th century, Emden burghers and wealthy farmers from the surrounding areas formed an alliance against the count (see Ensink and Luebke), counting on the Dutch for support.
Here is a map of the confessional landscape in the early 17th century:

Ostfriesland.png


https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ostfriesland.png
Of course, if Leer is included in the "Emden" location, the "Leer" location becomes superfluous. The rest of it could be given some of "Aurich's" southern lands, and be renamed with the late Early Modern name "Fehn" (see below), or the Late Medieval "Moormerland".

Provinces
Looks good to me. The only thing is that the area immediately south of the Jadebusen (historically "Rüstringen"), which is now a part of "Varel", and thus East Friesland, might be more accurately placed with Oldenburg.

Topography
Ooohh, am I right in assuming that "Marsh" does not represent the english "marsh" in the sense of swampy wetland, but rather something like German "Marsch", i.e. the clay-rich, fertile soils along the North Sea coast? If so, I am absolutely in love with this setup! The distinction between the richer soils along the coast, and the poorer, sandy soils (the "Geest") and moorlands in the interior had a huge impact on the history of East Friesland, I am very happy that this can apparently now be represented on the map. It also roughly maps onto the changed location borders I suggested above. The wealthy, confident farmers of the coastal "Marsch" did not like being bossed around by the counts (who, after all, were of quite recent vintage, as the educated farmers certainly remembered) and struck an alliance in the Estates with the new burghers of Emden (see Ensink and Luebke), with whom they also shared their Calvinist religion. See this map, which illustrates the convergence quite nicely if you compare it to my proposed location map and the confessional map above:


Topographie_Ostfriesland.png


Sorry for the poor quality, I took it from page 4 here: https://www.jade-hs.de/fileadmin/fb_wirtschaft/4_Forschung-und-Praxis/Forschung/WIOS/WIOS_EMD_Kapitel_03_01_bis_02neu.pdf
Ultimate source is Behre, K.‑E., & van Lengen, H. (Eds.). (1998). Ostfriesland: Geschichte und Gestalt einer Kulturlandschaft. Ostfries. Landschaft, p. 24.
If you look at East Friesland on Google Earth, you'll also see little chunks of woodland spread in a NW-SE line along the Geest.


As you can see, "Emden" in its new borders, incl. along the Ems, would be all "Marsh", while my suggested location "Aurich" is mostly "Geest", which I think "Flatland" works quite well for. There is also quite a bit of moorland in the interior, which was cultivated from the 17th century on, intensifying under the new Prussian overlords in the 18th century. Canals were dug for drainage and transportation and peat was an important export good. The settlers here had quite a hard-scrabble existence, and same as from the relatively poor soils of the Geest, there was a huge amount of migratory labor to the big, wealthy farms of the Marsch up to the 20th century. This history could potentially be represented by the new location formed out of the remnants of the old "Leer" location (see above), which should have a "moor" type of topography, if possible. So instead of the whole East Frisian peninsula being represented as "Marsh", I would suggest at least a "Marsh"/"Flatland" split, according to the new location borders I have suggested above, and a three-way split if possible to represent all the relevant landscapes. A good name for the "moor" location would be "Fehn", since that became the local name for this cultural landscape. The medieval name "Moormerland", which references the moorlands and is still used for a local municipality, might also be good. The borders I have suggested for this location are somewhat inaccurate, but compromises have to be made.

Coastlines
The coastlines do look a little to modern for me, but the tweaks here are small. The Dollart bay and the Leybucht were probably just beginning to form in 1337. But they were present for most of Project Caesar's time span, so, in the same logic as argued above, they should be on the map. They could stand to be a little bigger even, but what mostly bothers me is the "smooth" look of the coastline. This "smoothness" is the result of the various reclamation efforts over the centuries, some of them quite recent, so I would be happier with a more "rugged" look. (I don't think land reclamation can be depicted on the map, but should definitively be used for flavor.)
Here is a map created by local scholar Ubbo Emmius around 1600, showing what the Early Modern coastline looked like (his dating of the Dollart's formation to 1277 in the corner box is apparently not universally accepted):

Frisiae,_about_1600,_by_Ubbo_Emmius.jpg


https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Frisiae,_about_1600,_by_Ubbo_Emmius.jpg

Cultures:
Here, too, the new locations fit the later history better. "Emden", which in my proposal includes the western bank of the Ems (see above), should have the same cultural setup as their neighbors to the west, to represent the close cultural ties across the Ems estuary. When Dutch refugees arrived in the 16th century, they just joined the existing Reformed Church, because there was basically no language-barrier. French-speaking Walloon refugees, in contrast, set up their own church (see Fehler, p. 122-123). As I said above, these southwestern areas were oriented more towards the Dutch Republic. The language of the calvinist Reformed Church remained Dutch until the 19th century. The Emden city council also did its business in Dutch/Low German (not really strictly distinct at this time), whereas the Lutheran church and the count's court used High German for their official documents. Now, this is not quite the same as the Medieval Frisian/Low Saxon split, on whose geography I am definitly not an expert. Maybe the "Emden" location should be "Frisian", and "Aurich", "Jever" and possibly "Fehn"/"Moormerland" should be striped for "Frisian"/"Low Saxon". Later developments (like the eclipse of the Frisian language by Low Saxon) are of course not predictable in the game, what is important to me is that the principal East/West split should be set up by the locations. Because for the Early Modern Era, the differences in orientation towards the Netherlands, or towards modern Germany, are definitly important.

Religions:
Same of course goes for the Reformation's impact. I am not saying the game should railroad the outcomes I discussed above, but the map should set up possibilities for relevant flavor.

Raw Goods:
This part of Tinto's map makes very little sense to me. The coastal soils ("Marsch") are clay, and thus have no sand. Beaches only really exist on the islands, and I have never heard that exporting sand was a major industry there. On the contrary, islanders have struggled to keep their beaches from being washed away. What was important in the "Marsch" was cattle, think fat, happy Frisian cows in a polder. I'm less sure when grain/wheat became relevant here, since keeping the land drained took some effort. So the "Emden" location should produce Livestock. If peat was a raw good in the game, that would be what my proposed "Fehn"/"Moormerland" location should produce. Since for now at least it isn'nt, any agricultural product would be fine here. Fish would work for "Jever" (formerly "Varel") I think, I'm not quite sure about "Aurich" in my proposed new borders. It does include quite a bit of coast and some islands, so Fish would make sense, but most of it is sandy inland soil. Maybe Sturdy Grains or Wheat?

Antwerpen Market:
Wonderful, no notes.

Thank you for your time!

References in order of citation:

Jonathan Israel (1998). The Dutch Republic: Its Rise, Greatness, and Fall, 1477 - 1806. Clarendon Press.
For Emden and East Friesland's links to the Dutch Republic see pp. 164 and especially 251.
For Groningen's importance in the Late Medieval/Early Modern Era, see pp. 33, 60-67, 108, 114, 119.

Andrew Pettegree (1992). Emden and the Dutch Revolt: Exile and the Development of Reformed Protestantism. Clarendon Press.
See pp. 219-225 for an overview of conflict between Emden and the counts of East Friesland.

Heinz Schilling (1991). Civic Calvinism in Northwestern Germany and the Netherlands: Sixteenth to Nineteenth Centuries. Sixteenth Century Journal Publ.
See Chapter I for Emden's 16th century rise to prominence.

Ensink, J. (1993). Hero Boyen: East-Frisian Farmer and Politician. In F. Akkerman, G. C. Huisman, A. J. Vanderjagt, F. Akkerman, G. C. Huisman, & A. J. Vanderjagt (Eds.), Wessel Gansfort (1419-1489) and Northern Humanism (pp. 210–244). E.J. Brill. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004246898
For an examination of the wealthy, educated (this dude wrote his letters in Latin) and politically active marshland farmers.

Luebke, D. M. (2010). Of Liberty and the Upstalsboom: Urban-Rural Alliances and Symbols of Freedom in Early Modern East Frisia. In C. Ocker (Ed.), Politics and Reformations: Communities, Polities, Nations, and Empires: Essays in Honor of Thomas A. Brady, Jr (pp. 259–282). Brill. https://doi.org/10.1163/ej.9789004161733.i-630.60
For the ties between Emden Burghers and wealthy marsh land farmers, which suggest having them in one location to me, see especially pp. 264 - 272.

Behre, K.‑E., & van Lengen, H. (Eds.). (1998). Ostfriesland: Geschichte und Gestalt einer Kulturlandschaft. Ostfries. Landschaft.
I haven't yet had a chance to check out this volume, but it looks like it has alot of the information I discussed in one place.

Fehler, T. G. (2016). Coping with Poverty: Dutch Reformed Exiles in Emden, Germany. In T. G. Fehler, G. G. Kroeker, C. H. Parker, & J. Ray (Eds.), Religious Diaspora in Early Modern Europe: Strategies of Exile (S. 121-135). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315654317
See pp. 122-123 for the lack of a language barrier for Dutch refugees in Emden.

Finally, Diarmaid MacCulloch's Reformation. Europe's house divided 1490 - 1700 mentions East Friesland/Emden quite a bit (check the index), and is probably relatively easy to get a hold of.
 
  • 14Like
  • 6
  • 2Love
Reactions:
Since I haven't seen anybody provide feedback on East Friesland
Well I assumed it would be part of the German map thread, rather than low countries. I guess it could fit both.

Anyway, I do think that marshes are kind of tricky to represent, because once they are cultivated, they are very fertile (as opposed to the mentioned geest), but before dikes and the likes are built, land use is pretty limited. Some parts of the North Sea marshes were already cultivated at the start of the game (like Dithmarschen, I believe), others were not.
Also, there was a way to create aritifical soil on top of geest, called Plaggen soil. I don't think it was present in East Friesland, but south of it in the Emsland and in the Netherlands, but it probably wasn't significant enough to be represented on the map.

Also, as far as I know, marsh can be rich in sand or rich in clay, it depends.
 
Last edited:
  • 1Like
Reactions:
Hello everybody, and welcome to the first post of Tinto Maps! This is a new weekly series that we will be running about the top-secret game Project Caesar.

Let me introduce myself before I continue, as some of you may get to know me from the development of the latest EUIV DLCs, but I might not be as well-known to everyone as Johan. I’m Pavía, the Content Design Lead at Paradox Tinto, which I joined in 2021. Before becoming a videogame developer, my background was as a Historian, which led me to work on a PhD. in Medieval History (fool me!), which I finished in 2020. Besides that, I’ve spent several thousands of hours of my life playing Paradox GSGs since I discovered and started playing Europa Universalis 20 years ago, in 2004.

What this new series will be about is quite straightforward: each week I will be sharing with you maps of a new different region, so you have an outlook of them and we are able to receive early feedback (because as you may already know from Johan’s Tinto Talks, there is still a lot of WIP stuff ongoing).

About this feedback, we’d like you to take into account a couple of things. The first is that we’ve worked really hard to gather the best sources of information available to craft the best possible map; we used GIS tools with several layers of historical map sources from academic works, geographical data, administrative data, etc., to help us ensure the desired quality. So we would appreciate getting specific suggestions backed by these types of sources, as others (let’s say, a Wikipedia map or YouTube video with no references) may not be reliable enough. The second thing to comment on is that sometimes a certain decision we made was an interpretation over an unclear source, while sometimes we have just plainly made some errors when crafting the map (which on a 30,000 location map is a normal thing, I guess). I’ll let you know when any of these happen, and I’m also going to ask for your understanding when an error or bug is found and confirmed as such.

With those forewords said, let’s start with today’s region: the Low Countries! This is what the political map looks like:

View attachment 1130588
The regional situation in 1337. The counties of Hainaut, Holland, and Zeeland are ruled by William of Avesnes, who is married to Joanna, daughter of Duke John III of Brabant. Another John, the Duke of Luxembourg, might be the strongest power, as he is also the King of Bohemia. The County of Flanders is the wealthiest country in the region, controlling such important cities as Brugge and Ghent. Up in the north, we have other interesting countries, such as the Bishopric of Utrecht or the Republic of Frisia (you might notice that we're using a dynamic custom country name for them, 'Frisian Freedom').

And here we have the locations:

View attachment 1130589
We had a fun bug for some time - Antwerpen didn’t have any pixels connected to the sea, which we found because we couldn’t build any type of port building there. There’s a happy ending, as the bug has already been corrected, and Antwerpen can finally have a proper port!

Provinces:

View attachment 1130889

Terrain (Climate, Topography, and Vegetation):

View attachment 1130626
View attachment 1130627
View attachment 1130628
We are aware that the Netherlands looked differently in the 14th century, as several land reclamations took place during the Late Medieval and Early Modern periods, but we are using a 20th-century version of the map for the sake of consistency. Most of the regions throughout the world would look quite different from nowadays, and documenting those changes (especially the coastline shapes) would be a non-trivial problem to resolve. As a side note, we already removed Flevoland from it, and have already identified some other modern ones that slipped through and we'll eventually remove them, as well.

Cultures:

View attachment 1130590
The stripes mean that there are pops of different culture inhabiting in those location. Also, the German and French cultures are WIP, we’ll show you a proper version on later Tinto Maps.

Religions:

View attachment 1130591
Not many religions here yet, although there will be interesting religious stuff happening eventually…

Raw Goods:

View attachment 1130592
Goods get regularly swapped around here and there to have a balance between geographical and historical accuracy, and gameplay purposes. So take this as the far-from-final current version of them.

And an additional map for this week:

View attachment 1130593
We reinstated a Low Countries market centered on Antwerpen, after doing some balance tweaks that made it more viable.

And these are the maps for today! I hope that you have a nice weekend, and next Friday, we will travel down south, to Iberia!
Cheers, Pavía!
Thank you for the new series about maps.
I'm a medievalist too :), with an old (voluminous) Master's Degree and also started a PhD, which, alas, I didn't got the motivation to end. But as a History teacher, the passion is always there. I too, started playing Europa Universalis many years ago, with the first game, in 2001. One of these days I have to start a thread to praise Johan and his old mates who started from humble beginnings with Paradox Entertainment back in those good old days and gave us so many hours of pleasure (as an historian, there's still always a "special" feeling when playing a campaign with AGCEEP in For the Glory).
All the best to you and for Europ... sorry, Project Caesar!
 
  • 1Love
  • 1Like
  • 1
Reactions:
Will there be industry independent from the raw material? We know that Flanders had a great and lucerative textile industry in these periods, processing the wool that came there from England. Will such a thing be possible? And if it is possible, how will you implement it so that Flanders would actually be a more viable area to process these goods and not Frisia for example?
 
Topography
Ooohh, am I right in assuming that "Marsh" does not represent the english "marsh" in the sense of swampy wetland, but rather something like German "Marsch", i.e. the clay-rich, fertile soils along the North Sea coast? If so, I am absolutely in love with this setup! The distinction between the richer soils along the coast, and the poorer, sandy soils (the "Geest") and moorlands in the interior had a huge impact on the history of East Friesland, I am very happy that this can apparently now be represented on the map. It also roughly maps onto the changed location borders I suggested above. The wealthy, confident farmers of the coastal "Marsch" did not like being bossed around by the counts (who, after all, were of quite recent vintage, as the educated farmers certainly remembered) and struck an alliance in the Estates with the new burghers of Emden (see Ensink and Luebke), with whom they also shared their Calvinist religion. See this map, which illustrates the convergence quite nicely if you compare it to my proposed location map and the confessional map above:
Something I really badly want the game to represent somehow is soil quality, which as you say has had a great and wide-ranging historical impact on the comparative development of various regions. It's probably too late to add a fourth category to the topography/vegetation/climate system though. But I hope that something can be done.
 
  • 1Like
Reactions:
Something I really badly want the game to represent somehow is soil quality, which as you say has had a great and wide-ranging historical impact on the comparative development of various regions. It's probably too late to add a fourth category to the topography/vegetation/climate system though. But I hope that something can be done.
Yeah, good point. Food is a mechanic, so there should be some way to indicate the maximum theoretical agricultural potential, absolute and per capita, of a location.
 
  • 1Like
Reactions:
Regarding the location Mönchengladbach:

Location Monichgladbach.png

I think the red marked area shouldn't belong to Jülich.

The area was a mess, as it was a part of the HRE, with the central part of what is now Krefeld belonging to Moers and all of modern Krefeld's districts belonging to Köln (and some of them being given as a fief to Kleve by Köln). But no part of it belonged to Jülich and neither did Willich, Osterath, Kaarst and Meerbusch, the municipalities between Neuss and today's Krefeld, belong to Jülich. To the west of Krefeld there are Kempen and Tönisvorst, both towns belonging to Köln. See the following map showing the area in the 14th century:

I think adding the part to Neuss would be fine (and connecting Mönchengladbach to Jülich proper). (Or if you want to make a new location, important municipalities in the area would be Krefeld [Moers!], Linn, Uerdingen and Kempen [all three being the names of administrative districts of Köln in the area].

And a second note: On the political map C/Kleve is called Cleve and on the location map it is called Kleve. If Koblenz is Coblenz, then it should be Cleve on the location map.
 
  • 4Like
  • 1Love
  • 1
Reactions:
Regarding the location Mönchengladbach:


I think the red marked area shouldn't belong to Jülich.

The area was a mess, as it was a part of the HRE, with the central part of what is now Krefeld belonging to Moers and all of modern Krefeld's districts belonging to Köln (and some of them being given as a fief to Kleve by Köln). But no part of it belonged to Jülich and neither did Willich, Osterath, Kaarst and Meerbusch, the municipalities between Neuss and today's Krefeld, belong to Jülich. To the west of Krefeld there are Kempen and Tönisvorst, both towns belonging to Köln. See the following map showing the area in the 14th century:

I think adding the part to Neuss would be fine (and connecting Mönchengladbach to Jülich proper). (Or if you want to make a new location, important municipalities in the area would be Krefeld [Moers!], Linn, Uerdingen and Kempen [all three being the names of administrative districts of Köln in the area].

And a second note: On the political map C/Kleve is called Cleve and on the location map it is called Kleve. If Koblenz is Coblenz, then it should be Cleve on the location map.
Very nice suggestion! Also, shouldn't Mönchen-gladbach just be Gladbach?
 
  • 1
Reactions:
What's the justification for having Dutch and Flemish cultures be separate in 1337? Obviously there's different dialects here and there but they are more related to one another than to for instance Low German, and I'm not sure there would have been a sharp distinction between a northern "Dutch" and a southern "Flemish" before modernity. Full disclaimer it's not like I'm an expert in the area, just wanted to ask.

Shouldn't Overjissel be Low German culture as well, given that that's the main language there?

A Picard culture is exciting though.
Accounts (Both English and French) from William the thirds invasion of France call them "Flemish" or "Flemings", without calling Hugh Hastings' army a "Dutch" army. So I'd say that there was still a difference back then.

As for a united "Low German" culture, I don't think it should exist. Maybe split it into Hanoverian and Elban cultures, or something else, but it shouldn't be a single culture in-game.
 
  • 1Like
Reactions:
Ooh, nice!

On terrain:
mandatory "what are the comprehensive possible climates, topographies and vegetation levels?" question, so that we can react on those with better insight
mandatory "will any or all of climate/topography/vegetation be dynamic?" question

On trade goods:
legumes => vegetables, medicaments => drugs/medicine (do you have a mad frenchman on the team doing the naming^^?)
fruit => fruits?
What is Alum? short for aluminum, or a hydrated double sulfate salt (thanks wikipedia)? or something else?
Legumes does not mean vegetables in english. Legumes are the family of small dry beans like chickpeas and lentils. Also, medicaments is a normal English word, if a bit archaic.
 
  • 7Like
  • 1
Reactions:
I think there is a lack of a few types of vegetation types for provinces.
Namely the 'bush/chaco/dense savanna' kind of type, which is a semi arid forest with thorned bushes that are almost impossible to traverse sometimes, but feel still quite arid.
Additionally, it makes sense to separate forest from conniferous forest/taiga.
 
  • 5Like
Reactions:
This is really amazing!! I'm very excited to see more maps going forward, but there is ONE thing missing here!!..

Look, I get that I'm in the minority when it comes to these games but we are actually quite a few people who care about it.
I BEG you guys!! Can you make the actual visual terrain map as detailed and beautiful as possible and include it in these map talks?!!? I ALWAYS play on terrain map mode because it just creates better immersion.. inclusion of visible weather, seasonal changes in climate with different areas in the world visibly having a different feel, animals, towns and trade routes, maybe even dynamic changes of the vegetation could be visible if that becomes s feature.. Just PLEASE make the visual terrain map more detailed than anything you ever made before! It would mean more to me and players like myself than what you can probably imagine.. And of course, include it in these map talks for feedback like the rest
 
  • 2Like
Reactions:
First of all brilliant idea. I love that you give us the opportunity early enough to listen to feedback!
Im from the German area near Luxembourg and its so amazing to see all the places I know!

Regarding the RGOs having to be balanced around historical occurence and gameplay balance; have you considered allowing locations to have multiple RGOs? Im not saying that you should use em everywhere but for your sake and our sake ( also on the modding side of things ) it might be a godsend to allow it to make some places better to portray and balance. You could even reuse more detailed rgo map that shines through like with cultures.

Anyhow heres the map feedback Ive got from looking at it:
- Location Prum near Bitburg is supposed to be Prüm in German. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prüm
- Location Coblenz is Koblenz in German. It was Coblenz till 1926 and im not sure if youre going for time accurate names or modern names that people associate with it. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koblenz
- Location Duren is also missing the ü, its supposed to be Düren https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Düren
- Province Hunsruck is supposed to be Hunsrück https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunsrück
- Probince Hattuarien sounds very unfortunate and unrecognizable, you better go with the -gau suffix you use everywhere in the region which would be "Hettergau" https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hattuarien

I know you wanted primarily lowlands but this feedback will save you hopefully some posts when you get to west Germany :p
 
  • 2
  • 1Like
  • 1
Reactions: