Tinto Maps #12 - 26th of July 2024 - Germany

[Zerodv]

What was the threshold for a minority culture to be shown with the dashes?

 

[Lt. Ungustl]

Some Notes for Lower Austria / Niederösterreich (or, properly for this time period Austria below the Enns / Österreich unter der Enns):

Locations

These seem fine for the most part. A few suggestions:

• Gänserndorf was a minor village for most of this period. I suggest replacing it with Enzersdorf (modern day Groß-Enzersdorf), which was a walled city. Somebody already mentiond that Enzersdorf was owned by Freising a the game, although I believe that was only the city itself, not the surrounding area. I don't know wether this means it should be under Habsburg or Freising control at the start of the game.
• Purkersdorf was a major village, but Klosterneuburg was far more important in this area.
• Mariazell was a regional center and a major pilgrimage site, but unfortunately it is located in Styria, not Lower Austria. Scheibbs is the major town in this area in Lower Austria.
• Waidhofen an der Ybbs could be added taking some of the southern part of Amstetten and the western part of Scheibbs. Although that would mean that you have both Waidhofen an der Thaya and Waidhofen an der Ybbs on the map, which means that both need to keep their suffixes and that will make the map pretty untidy.

Also note that Melk and Tulln should be on the southern bank of the Danube, while Krems is on the northern bank. The modern day districts of Melk and Tulln span both sides of the river, but this is because the Danube is much less of a barrier in these days than it was in the medieval and early modern eras. So Melk and Tulln need to be moved south a bit, and Zwettl, Krems and Korneuburg should expand to fill the vacated area.

Provinces

This setup is a bit confusing for me, although I think I see what you were going for.

North of the Danube you have the traditional quarters which is fine and they have their historic names Ober dem Mannhartsberg and Unter dem Mannhartsberg which is great. Except they seem to be slighty misspelled (it should be dem not der) and those names are of course terrible. They can be shortend to Ober-Mannhartsberg and Unter-Mannhartsberg, although those versions don't seem to appear until the 18th century.

As far as locations go, Gänserndorf resp. Enzersdorf should be part of Unter-Mannhartsberg, since it is north of the Danube. Melk and Tulln should not be part of Ober-Mannhartsberg since they are south of the river.

The southern provinces are a bit of a mess, I'm afraid. You have the third of the four quarters Unter dem Wienerwald, but it is shifted west to the point where it is no longer "under" the Wienerwald at all. There is Pitten, representing the old county of Pitten, which is reasonable enough, and then there are the two ahistoric provinces Amstetten and Wien. Meanwhile the fourth quarter Ober dem Wienerwald is missing completely.

If we use the historic quarters north of the Danube the obvious approach would be to use them south of the Danube too. That would give us:

Ober dem Wienerwald (or Ober-Wienerwald): Amstetten, Melk, Tulln, Grafendorf, St. Pölten, Lilienfeld, Scheibbs (and Waidhofen an der Ybbs, if it is added)
Unter dem Wienerwald (or Unter-Wienerwald): Klosterneuburg, Wien, Bruck an der Leitha, Baden, Pitten, Wiener Neustadt, Neunkirchen

Now these provinces are pretty big (although you could drop Pitten in this version and split its territory between Wiener Neustadt and Neunkirchen. Pitten quickly lost the importance it had at the beginng of the game). And if you want to have smaller provinces, splitting off Pitten and the western edge of Ober-Wienerwald actually does make sense.

Pitten was a historic county with its own government (although by 1337 it is owned by the Habsburg Dukes of Austria), and there were some differences to the area to the north. For one Pitten had long been part of Styria, not Lower Austria (it actually still is at the start of the game). So splittng off Pitten (Wiener Neustadt, Pitten, Neunkirchen) from the rest of Unter-Wienerwald makes sense.

In the west, the area Melk/Amstetten/Scheibbs also was distinct from the eastern part. This was the "Eisenwurzen", which had its own rather different economy. Essentially, iron ore from the Erzberg was shipped overland to the headwaters of the Ybbs and Enns rivers and then processed in the various towns along these rivers. The finished product would then be shipped furher downriver to the Danube and then exported from there. This made the towns of this area quite wealthy. So a province "Eisenwurzen" consisting of Melk, Amstetten and Scheibbs could be split off as well. Note though that the historic Eisenwurzen region actually included towns on the Upper Austrian bank of the Enns as well, which in the game would be the location of Steyr. If the province is restricted to Lower Austria it might be named "Ybbstal" instead.

So this is my proposed province setup:

Ober-Mannhartsberg (5 Locations): Gmünd, Waidhofen an der Thaya, Zwettl, Horn, Krems
Unter-Mannhartsberg (5): Hollabrunn, Mistelbach, Korneuburg, Zistersdorf, Enzersdorf
Eisenwurzen or Ybbstal (3-4): Melk, Amstetten, Scheibbs (, Waidhofen an der Ybbs)
Ober-Wienerwald (4): Tulln, Grafendorf, St. Pölten, Lilienfeld
Unter-Wienerwald (4): Klosterneuburg, Wien, Bruck an der Leitha, Baden
Pitten (3): Wiener Neustadt, Pitten, Neunkirchen

 

[Kernelly]

Here's a bit of feedback from my Pomeranian point of view.

The areas.

The area of Pommern (Pomerania).
It appears to have wrong borders, even in the generalised meaning. First of all. The western parts of it were connected almost solely with Meklemburg since the early Middle Ages. I get that some stuff has to be generalised and not everything can be captured in game, but I just wanted to point it out to let people know that it's rather misleading to call Meklemburg overly related to what actually is "Pommern" (Pomerania). The area called "Pommern" on the map would be more correct if Meklemburg region would be separated into it's own area, since Pomerania and Meklemburg are two significantly differing historical regions.

Secondly, same image, different criticism. If we want the game to be fair to history to a fair extent, the area of "Pommern" (Pomerania) should encompass what some call "West Prussia" and what is depicted as "Preussen" area on the image above. Why? Because Pomerania as a historical and ethnographic region has been connected to Slavic and German cultures together through the last thousand years. Region of Pomerania isn't just what used to be Duchy of Pomerania. Pomerania as a region is the region spanning from Stralsund to Gdańsk, speaking generally. Gdańsk/Danzig, actually belongs to Eastern Pomerania and the area south of it is where Pommern area should end. True Pomerania isn't just the borders of Duchy of Pomerania or Provinz Pommern, true Pomerania encompasses area from Stralsund to Gdańsk/Danzig.

Now for the cultures.
For those who don't know the region of Pomerania was mostly inhabited by Polabian Slavs and Pomeranian Slavs in the early Middle Ages and the western parts of that region were germanised since the early Middle Ages as well. The map above is showing us Pomerania in 1337 quite accurately, but there's some questionable choices I'd like to adress.

"Western Pomeranian" culture.
What became known as Vorpommern (generally speaking the Pomerania west of Oder river) was inhabited by Polabian Slavs before they were conquered by german states and assimilated into their culture. The image above seems to show us the germanised cultures as well as german settlers of that region as "Western Pomeranian" culture. The main issue with this is the name. Technically speaking it is indeed Western Pomerania, but why does it cover the region of Meklemburg? The cultures of that time were similar, but I wouldn't call them both the same or similar enough to be called "Western Pomeranian" culture together. The Meklemburg region shouldn't have "Western Pomeranian" culture, but a culture of their own consisting of germanised Polabian Slavs and German settlers of that area.

"Eastern Pomeranian" culture.
On the image above there's an easy to miss culture called "Eastern Pomeranian", which naturally consists of both Slavic and German aspects, but predominantly German ones as the German culture began dominating that region of Pomerania in those times. We can presume that what the Paradox map shows as "Eastern Pomeranian" culture is the culture that the Gryf dynasty had. A culture using German language, but with many Slavic Pomeranian words and characteristics, similarly with their way of life. The "Eastern Pomeranian" culture on this Paradox map is acceptable. In 1337 a predominantly German culture, but one differing from it's western counterpart by being highly intertwined with Slavic aspects east of it.

Both "Western Pomeranian" and "Eastern Pomeranian" cultures.
People should remember that there is no solely German or solely Slavic Pomeranian culture. The Pomeranian cultures, all of them evolved through many centuries out of many diverse, smaller cultures, which had both German and Slavic aspects. "Western and Eastern Pomeranian" cultures are a mix of varied Slavic and German cultures. "Western Pomeranian" culture certainly has more German aspects than "Eastern Pomeranian" culture, which is further east and retained more Slavic aspects in it, despite being predominantly German linguistically.

Kashubian culture.
I have described it in great detail under the "Poland, Ruthenia, Baltic" Tinto maps post. Kashubian culture is the remaining predominantly Slavic culture of Pomerania - That's the case nowadays and back in 1337. The Kashubian culture was ruled by the germanised cultures mentioned above. In 1337 there were still quite a few Kashubian nobles, but they slowly assimilated with the predominantly German Pomeranian cultures. The Kashubians were mostly the people living outside the cities, where they were expelled from as Slavic languages were becoming prohibited in the Duchy of Pomerania and it's predecessors. Even though the Slavic, so Kashubian people were shunned in the Duchy of Pomerania in the later Middle Ages, it was nothing compared to what happened after German Prussia took over the region of Pomerania. During that time Slavic culture in Pomerania was forcefully germanised and almost completely extinguished in the "Provinz Pommern" (former Duchy of Pomerania). Thankfully Kashubian culture survived at the borders of "Provinz Pommern" and in what many call "West Prussia". In reality what many people call "West Prussia" is in fact East Pomerania, which was owned by Poland for many years in the Middle Ages and Renaissance.

Location of Stettin and it's culture.
There's no real historical reason I know of that would justify the Stettin on the map having "Markish" culture instead of "Eastern Pomeranian". "Markish" culture is apparent around the Stettin location, but it shouldn't be the dominant culture of Stettin location itself.

Summary.
That's all I thought of while reading through this interesting post. Thank you for reading my comment and generally for cooperating with us while creating this game - This way the final product could be more accurate and fair to the history. Regards.

 

[Karpi_]

The first one of this I think is by far my favourite of all the area proposals so far. I have a few comments though:

Bruntál and Opava should be part of Silesia.

Shouldn't the territory of Mecklenburg-Strelitz be part of Mecklenburg? It was owned by Brandenburg a bit before the game start, but I'm pretty sure it was part of Mecklenburg throughout the whole span of the game, and Mecklenburg is already a small area anyways.

I think Lusatia should be an area rather than being awkwardly split between Silesia, Upper Saxony, and Brandenburg.

Slesvig should probably be its own area, or maybe part of Jutland.

Baden seems a bit anachronistic as a name for that whole region though I'm not sure if there's a better name for it.

Someone else pointed out the Baden thing as well, and yeah, that's a fair criticism. I still think that the split being along those lines makes more sense in terms of both geography (Rhine valley in Baden vs. the more hilly Schwaben characterized by the Schwarzwald and the Schwäbische Alb and the Allgäu) and culture (the Alemannian varieties spoken in Baden vs. the Swabian varieties spoken in Schwaben), but the names need some rethinking.
Based on that linguistic split, "Alemannien" and "Schwaben" could be an option. That terminology has the problem of not being 100% historical (the terms where often used synonymously in the past), but telling history always has a certain narrative aspect, and I believe that it would do a good job in getting the idea across to the player.
The other person also suggested to just keep the names "West" and "East Swabia", or to go with "Upper" and "Lower Swabia", which would also go well and would more historically accurate, since the area as a whole used to be referred to as just "Swabia" for much of the middle ages and into the Early Modern Period, while also constituting the "Schwäbischer Reichskreis".
So in the end, it really is a question of what you think is more important: Reflecting cultural and linguistic borders, or historical perception.
But since the game stretches over a rather long period of time (approximately ~500 years, going of the new start date and the end date of EU4), I'd personally opt for the former, as that part is a little less susceptible for change.

 

[bokorthedust]

What was the threshold for a minority culture to be shown with the dashes?

10% IRC.

 

[PatatjeFriet]

I'd like to propose a change in the borders of Cologne, Trier and the Palatinate as from the maps I know these seem way too different.

This is the region during the Hohenstaufen:

And this is in 1356, only 19 years after the start date:

In both instances, before and after 1337, the borders of Cologne are very different from Ceasar's borders. Id prefer to see Ahrweiler changed to the County of Arenberg or Neuenhahr, instead of belonging to Cologne when its exclave was smaller. In general Id wish to get cleaner and more accurate borders for Cologne, for example around Kleve and its main part surrounding the city of Cologne.

Trier is too big and St. Wendel should be made into the County of Veldenz and Kaiserlautern should probably either also go to Veldenz or to the Palatinate. Montabaur should become the County of Wied.

 

[Mef]

Trier is too big and St. Wendel should be made into the County of Veldenz and Kaiserlautern should probably either also go to Veldenz or to the Palatinate. Montabaur should become the County of Wied.

I'd say that Montabaur makes sense to include as the part of Trier on the right side of the Rhine (which was contested by Nassau), but my suggestion would be to split the Coblenz location between the Mayen location on the left bank and Montabaur on the right bank of the Rhine, while renaming Mayen to Coblenz.
It's strange that so much of the Coblenz location reaches into the Westerwald, while the fertile Middle Rhine Basin that is generally associated with Koblenz is entirely taken up by Mayen.

Edit: To illustrate, this is what the Coblenz location should look like, in my opinion (and it should be farmlands).

With Montabaur to its east to represent the territory that Trier owned on the right bank of the Rhine. There would be room to add another Westerwald location in, for example Wied.

 

[Failtier]

Does anyone else get the impression for other countries that the population numbers are somewhat off? When checking the Wikipedia for Mark Brandenburg, I got this result:

Mark Bandenburg = Kurmark and Neumark. Now obviously, I need to double-check the source cited there, but 938k (PC numbers) vs. 200k (historical numbers), that is a vast difference.

These days, Brandenburg (which is only a rump state though) has 2,5 million inhabitants, so 938k definitely does not seem right.

 

[FräscheTümler]

I already posted some feedback about Schleswig in the Scandinavia thread. Just in case you do consider it to be part of Germany, I would add a link to it here, but the forum doesn't allow it
In addition, I'd like to say - as has already been mentioned - that there should be a lot more danes and fewer Germans in South Schleswig, specifically in the locations Schleswig, Eckernförde and Flensburg. The cultural makeup you have there currently seems to represent the modern day situation rather than the medieval time frame or early modern era.

On an unrelated note, I really think that Frisian locations and provinces should be using Frisian names (or alternatively, english names if they exist).

 

[Dewit]

Hello there,

I'd like to argue for more marsh terrain along the German North Sea coast


1. Teufelsmoor, Location: Osterholz
The article (in German) mentions that the bog encompassed the majority of the district (Landkreis) Osterholz (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teufelsmoor), the bog was also only colonized in th 18t century - So one could argue for the location Osterholz to be marsh terrain in game (although tbf the bog was only the eastern part of the current ingame location, it was pretty big though)

2. Location Elsfleth
Encompassing the current district Wesermarsch (hint hint) and the southern part of current day district of Friesland is dominated by marchy terrain https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landkreis_Wesermarsch. Quoting from this article in the Geography section and translated by deepl:
"The predominant type of landscape is the marsh, which is protected from flooding and storm surges by dykes, two thirds of which lies below the mean high tide level[2] and must therefore be protected from regular flooding by water from the Weser, the North Sea and the Jade Bay. To the west and east, the marsh borders on the Geest. The “Geest-Abbruch” is located on the B 211 in Loyermoor, which bridges a height difference of a good 30 meters.

There are also various moors scattered throughout the district, for example the so-called floating moor on the Jadebusen in the district of Sehestedt in the municipality of Jade, which is an outstanding natural monument of a unique kind. The Rockenmoor and Grasmoor are located in the southwest, the Frieschenmoor in the middle of the district and the Kreuzmoor in the west near Jade. The entire district is criss-crossed by extensive networks of drainage channels and ditches."
Translated with DeepL.com (free version)

This landscape description pretty much applies to the Friesland part as well. See for example https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varel, where the Geography section mentions how the local bogs and marshes were made useful for agriculture.


3. Bourtanger Moor, location: Meppen

Although most of the in game location is not in that bog https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bourtanger_Moor, the majority of the current population centers (Meppen, Papenburg and all the towns inbetween those two) are. Furthermore, the eastern part of the location is to this day mostly nature reserves (Naturschutzgebiet) for/with other nowadays smaller bogs like https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturpark_Hümmling, https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esterweger_Dose, https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tinner_Dose-Sprakeler_Heide, https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aschendorfer_Obermoor/Wildes_Moor amoung many others, see https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_der_Naturschutzgebiete_im_Landkreis_Emsland) with few villages in between. Tldr, it's mostly marshes and bogs

Some suggetions I made are based on this Wikipedia article https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moorkolonisierung (in German) about the reclamation of bogs which you might find useful!

Thank you and best wishes!

 

[ShinsukeNakamura]

What's the large Polabian exclave in the middle of Brandenburg based on?

As much I'm glad that Polabians are represented, in that area there weren't many Slavs around that time. Slavic place names there are rarer than in Mecklenburg, while German ones occur more often, and in nearby settlement clusters. This is consistent with historical knowledge that the areas around Berlin (and Brandenburg in general) were subject to more intensive German settlement than in Mecklenburg.

 

[Mef]

Does anyone else get the impression for other countries that the population numbers are somewhat off?

Yep, I mentioned before that population numbers in Northern Germany look really high, especially the large tracts of land outside the important cities that don't have fertile soils and have had the lowest population density in Germany ever since population density has been mapped. Now that doesn't have to mean anything for 1337, but I do wonder what the source is for these large populations in the North, compared to Saxony and the South.

 

[hellfirematt]

Some ideas for the Rhineland:

The biggest suggestion I have is to make sure no location crosses both sides of the Rhine. This means splitting apart the Köln and Coblenz locations.

Jülich:
- I recommend renaming Mönchengladbach to just Gladbach, which is what the city was called until the mid 19th Century. I also recommend splitting that and Neuss so they both run north-to-south, which matches the borders of Cologne and Jülich did during the period.
- I also recommend renaming Schleiden to Kall. Schleiden was a fief of Luxembourg. Kall belonged to Jülich and was the administrative centre in this region.

Cologne and Berg:
- As I mentioned above, I think you should separate the left and right banks of the current Köln location. The right bank I recommend be Porz, controlled by Berg.
- Bonn should be Colonian, not Bergish. GIving Porz to Berg as above means that Berg won't be a location short.

Arenberg:
- If the game does bookmarks into future start dates, you'll have emerging out of nowhere the state of Arenberg in 1803 in Recklinghausen and Meppen. The Arenberg duchy was a small collection of territories between Jülich and Trier. The family was well-connected during the period though the duchy istelf was of little importance. I think I made it fit in the above map as unnecessary but nice to have.

Trier:
- As mentioned above, I don't think Coblenz should be on both sides of the Rhine. I drew a suggestion of how it can fit entirely on the left bank without removing any Trevian locations whilst still roughly matching the archbishopric's adminstrative regions.

Wetterau:
- With Coblenz on the other side of the Rhine, I expanded both Montabaur (to extend from Altenwied to Montabaur) and Altenkirchen.There's probably enough room between these two locations to add Wied should you want to. There was no need to extend so far east any more, so I gave Hadamar to Diez, extending it northward.
- With the above adjustments, enough space was created to add the lower county of Katzenelnbogen. I wasn't sure what name to give it, I just went with Rheinfels since that was where a side line of the Hesse dynasty ruled over this location, but thinking about it now I believe it was on the other side of the Rhine. The Katzenelnbogens were a wealthy comital family which had also acquired Darmstadt as a fief of Würzburg in 1330, so it would have 2 locations in 1337. The family went extinct in 1479, and after a succession dispute between Nassau and Hesse finally passed to Hesse in 1557.

Marck:
I adjusted borders a bit to get closer to the shape the county had, though it's difficult to do so with the need to make the Dortmund location larger. I wonder if a Hagen location being added in southern Dortmund and northern Altena would get it closer in shape, but I was trying to avoid adding new locations.

Westphalia:
Again, just minor border change suggestions to get slightly closer to the shape the duchy had, though this time the existence of Lippstadt makes that difficult.

 

[Palando]

Someone else pointed out the Baden thing as well, and yeah, that's a fair criticism. I still think that the split being along those lines makes more sense in terms of both geography (Rhine valley in Baden vs. the more hilly Schwaben characterized by the Schwarzwald and the Schwäbische Alb and the Allgäu) and culture (the Alemannian varieties spoken in Baden vs. the Swabian varieties spoken in Schwaben), but the names need some rethinking.
Based on that linguistic split, "Alemannien" and "Schwaben" could be an option. That terminology has the problem of not being 100% historical (the terms where often used synonymously in the past), but telling history always has a certain narrative aspect, and I believe that it would do a good job in getting the idea across to the player.
The other person also suggested to just keep the names "West" and "East Swabia", or to go with "Upper" and "Lower Swabia", which would also go well and would more historically accurate, since the area as a whole used to be referred to as just "Swabia" for much of the middle ages and into the Early Modern Period, while also constituting the "Schwäbischer Reichskreis".
So in the end, it really is a question of what you think is more important: Reflecting cultural and linguistic borders, or historical perception.
But since the game stretches over a rather long period of time (approximately ~500 years, going of the new start date and the end date of EU4), I'd personally opt for the former, as that part is a little less susceptible for change.

It still doesn't make sense to call it Baden, as that's a name it only ended up with because Baden managed to stay on top. If you want to split Swabia in general and not use geographical terms, then 'Rhenish Swabia' and '(Central) Swabia' would make the most sense for the whole time period. You could also just call it 'Schwarzwald' and 'Swabia' if you reshuffle the territories.

 

[HaxMode]

Check the Irish map, there's a country with 1396 pops (Con. - so Connaught I guess?)

"Sir, we have won the battle!"

"Wonderful, what are out casualties?"

"14 men"

"2% OF ALL MEN IN THE NATION?!"

I really wonder how that will be even remotely playable, especially when some countries there have 100k+

 

[aki-chan desu]

Trier is too big and St. Wendel should be made into the County of Veldenz and Kaiserlautern should probably either also go to Veldenz or to the Palatinate.

According to Wiki:

Der Status einer Freien Reichsstadt und die damit verbundenen Rechte ließen sich nicht lange halten. Schon 1313 oder 1314 wurde die Stadt an die Grafen Georg von Veldenz und Gottfried von Leiningen, 1322 durch den späteren Kaiser Ludwig den Bayern an König Johann von Böhmen verpfändet. In dieser Pfändungsurkunde erscheint erstmals der Name Keyserslûtern. Nach weiteren Verpfändungen wurde die Stadt im Jahr 1357 als Reichspfand an Kurfürst Ruprecht I. von der Pfalz abgetreten und kam danach an die Kurpfalz. Seit 1375 wurde die jetzt Kaiserslautern genannte Stadt an die Kurpfalz verpfändet und damit Sitz eines kurpfälzischen Amts bzw. Oberamts.

 

[Failtier]

Yep, I mentioned before that population numbers in Northern Germany look really high, especially the large tracts of land outside the important cities that don't have fertile soils and have had the lowest population density in Germany ever since population density has been mapped. Now that doesn't have to mean anything for 1337, but I do wonder what the source is for these large populations in the North, compared to Saxony and the South.

Reminds me of the description of Brandenburg as "infertile sand" or "Streusandbüchse."

 

[Pentabyte]

It still doesn't make sense to call it Baden, as that's a name it only ended up with because Baden managed to stay on top. If you want to split Swabia in general and not use geographical terms, then 'Rhenish Swabia' and '(Central) Swabia' would make the most sense for the whole time period. You could also just call it 'Schwarzwald' and 'Swabia' if you reshuffle the territories.

I agree with you on the part of not calling it Baden, but apart from administrative divisions, geographically this region can definitely not be considered to be swabia, as swabia only extends to the black forest but not across it (and most towns and population in nowadays baden are definitely on the other side of the black forest). So I think rhenish swabia is not a good fit. But I guess black forest (like you said), rheinebene or making it part of the oberrhein are probably the most suitable descriptions. I think the proposal in the following post is a really elegant solution on the province and region level:

So I tried making a province and area map of Germany. I'll post it, but I'm not really happy with it.

View attachment 1168562

View attachment 1168563

Edit: I am aware that you spoke about non-geographical terms in your reply so I get where you are coming from. Geographical terms are just my personal preference lol

 

[ArVass]

I’ll start with my suggestions for vegetation, since raw materials (I’m covering all of modern Germany) will take a while to post!

Here’s the map:
View attachment 1168146
I’ve colored in the vegetation types based on this vegetation map I made:
View attachment 1168115
Sources I used to make the map and comments:
Landscape Map from the German Federal Agency for Nature Conservation
This map is useful because it has descriptions (and names) for all the different landscapes/regions in Germany. While this obviously depicts the current state, I’d argue that land use in general did not change that much in Germany between 1337 and today, aside from the effects of industrialization and urbanization. That is to say that the regions that are suitable for agriculture today, were also used for agriculture during the time period.
I individually researched the history of many different regions on the map, specifically the important agricultural regions and forests.
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations Soil Suitability for farming, low inputs, rain-fed. I imported the data to use with the game’s projection and applied color to the scale which results in this map:

View attachment 1168123
Combining historical importance of agriculture and soil suitability for farming results in the farmlands on the map.

For forests, I did individual research, as mentioned. Most of the forests that people would categorize as forest in in-game terms today actually only became that way in the 20th century. Before that, most woodland in Germany was under heavy use and some of today’s thick forests like the Black Forest were only 10% forested at times (the most extreme example might be the Teutoburg Forest which wasn't a forest at all). While the absolute minimum was probably somewhere around the 18th century (it depends on the region), we actually start the game at the end of a period of massive deforestation, caused by significant population growth and expansion of agricultural area to feed that population. Many of the new settlements founded in this period were abandoned after the Black Death (we’re talking about tens of thousands of villages in total) and forest cover increased for a while, but this changed again when proto-Industrial growth in early modern Germany led to increased fuel demand. Laws regarding use of forests and forestry were ubiquitous, of course, and during the entire course of the game, there was basically no forest in Germany that could be compared to the great ancient forests in other parts of the world - it was almost entirely woodlands that were in use economically.

Some comments on aspects of vegetation that are quite wrong in the posted map:
-In general there is too much woods/forest and not enough farmland, in my opinion. We’re talking about a highly developed region at the start of the game already, some areas had dense populations that supplied many settlers who moved to the East.
-Switzerland’s fertile region is misrepresented. Rather than extending along the Swiss Plateau, there are farmlands locations in the Jura Mountains, while locations with concentrated agriculture like Zurich don’t have farmlands vegetation
-The fertile stretch of land along the Rhine from the Palatinate to Wiesbaden is missing (other than the random farmlands on Mainz), this is part of the Upper Rhine Plain extending from Alsace. The part around Freiburg is impossible to represent with the way these locations are drawn, because they include both the Black Forest and the fertile farmland along the Rhine. See this map for a visualization of the whole plain. If locations are added or borders are adjusted, the geography here should probably be taken into account.
-The Middle Rhine Basin south-west of Koblenz with its fertile soil and microclimate - basically the Mayen location - is not farmlands and while I’m sure many others will point this out or have already done so, this location should probably be named Coblenz instead. There is another small location with super fertile farmland, the Nördlinger Ries (an impact crater) in the Donauwörth location which isn't represented.
-The plains along the Lower Rhine and the Ruhr (Kölner Bucht, Jülicher Börde, Soester Börde) are not farmland for some reason. All of this was intensively farmed and the soil in this region is generally very fertile. It’s also a population center.
-The stretch of fertile farmland around the Harz (part of the large Central European Loess Zone stretching from Belgium to Ukraine), including the Calenberger Börde, Magdeburger Börde, Leipziger Bucht and Thüringer Becken, isn’t represented at all, other than one farmlands on Hannover. While this region’s modern importance is much lower than during the game's timespan due to it mostly having been part of communist East Germany, it has historically had the highest population density in Germany and is geologically quite blessed, having very fertile farmland surrounded by resource rich mountains.
-Some of the most famous and fertile farming regions in Germany, the Wetterau north of Frankfurt, the Kraichgau north of Stuttgart, the Dungau in eastern Bavaria and Mainfranken around Würzburg are not represented as farmlands at all.
-For some reason Bohemia & Moravia have no farmland? As pointed out in the OP, it was an important region with a high population, and it certainly had some developed and fertile farmland!

This is fabulous, but I think that the Black Forest not being a honorary forest is big big heresy lol

I also do think that there are places where you "unjustly" underinterpreted the forestation, like some spots in the mountains around Bohemia, eg. Gmünd and Zwettl etc.

 

[aki-chan desu]

By the way, most border changes within the HRE happend not because of wars but debts. Everyone was permanently strapped for cash and the main way of dealing with this was to lease, sell or pawn of territories. Would be cool if this was somehow represented in game.