9 September 2024 12 May 2025
What an exciting week we have had, and best of all I finally get to say the name Europa Universalis V. It still feels weird in my mouth after carefully saying Caesar for what feels like a lifetime.
But lo, the day is finally come for the British Isles feedback thread. This short update was supposed to come out a few months ago, but I just had to teach some of you a lesson. Also I had a lot of other things on, like appearing in the announcement show last week.
Here we see the updated topography:
The updated vegetation:
Many impassable barriers have been added, for example the various peaks of the Pennines and the Wicklow Mountains. The Shannon also now poses a more significant barrier between east and west Ireland, with only a few crossing points often guarded by stockades.
Here we have the Locations map, bear in mind they are only showing the default English names but many places have Gaelic or Brythonic versions.
Every country has had a general increase in density.
England, in particular the south, has had a big revamp at Location and Province level to more accurately reflect the historical counties, many of them pre-Norman in origin and many of them still in use today in some form. Westminster as a capital has been killed and rolled into a monolithic London.
Provinces:
Areas:
And political mapmode (with overlord colouring off):
And Dynasties:
We have added the Earldom of Orkney in the northern isles as a Norwegian vassal. Meanwhile the Palatinate of Durham and Chester have both been promoted from a special set of buildings to vassals under England. Wales has also been limited strictly to the Principality of Wales, with the marcher lords existing as very low control locations under England.
Ireland has had a major rework in terms of locations and tags. Mostly there have been minor Irish chieftaincies added. As always we are grateful to the many suggestions that have come from the forumers.
Culture:
The most obvious culture change is that English has had Northumbrian split off, to represent the divide between southern and northern dialects and attitudes. A practical example of this is how in the south the English are more friendly to Normans, whereas the Northumbrians hate them (the northern shires still bear the scars of the Harrying of the North). Northumbrians and Scots also spoke a similar form of English in this period, so it helps to set them up as a sort of middleman.
Norwegians in northern Scotland and the nearby North Atlantic have also been split into Norn.
As a bonus, Court Language, showing 3 main worlds: Gaelic, Anglo-French, and Roman Catholic Bishoprics.
There have also been some changes to Raw Goods, as you can see here:
We still have time to make some changes, so let us know what we can do to push this even further towards where it needs to be.
I won’t show Population numbers right now, as it’s pending a proper rework. Among other things, the idea is to reduce the population numbers in England.
