Tinto Maps #6 Great Britain & Ireland Feedback

[phantasmAgaric]

Oh, one last thing - it's a shame that despite having a tier below provinces we still don't have Lincolnshire's historical division in Lindsey, Kesteven, and Holland represented properly. If we just shift boundaries around slightly we can represent these really nicely, as well as the three subdivisions of Lindsey. I also took the chance to replace the relatively unimportant market town of Spalding with the ancient walled town of Stamford, the only of the Five Boroughs not to be represented. I also think Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire, and Leicestershire would look much nicer with some slightly tweaks to their borders, and I think there's just enough space to maybe represent the autonomous Soke of Peterborough in Northamptonshire. Also, going by the standard of naming locations for settlements, Rutland should be called Oakham.

 

[SaintDaveUK]

I wish you'd be consistent with -shire as a suffix. Either use it for all counties that ought to, or drop it altogether.

Which provinces are missing a shire? Off the top of my head only ones that aren't named after towns like Devonshire and Morayshire, but they are more commonly displayed without.

 

[TartanClad]

Not criticising, but just curious.

Before you had the larger london area divided into 3 separate places. What was the thinking behind merging Westminster and London together again?

(Also, on a side note; is there any content on the ancient Corporation of the City of London?)

 

[livebythecreed77]

@SaintDaveUK Since the first tinto maps for ireland theres been quite a few improvements to the map which is awesome, but i did notice there were some locations that were not in the correct in game areas / irl irish provinces. The locations of killeshandra, cavan and killycolly, which comprise the county cavan irl should be in the ulster area as cavan is in the irish province of ulster irl. The dundalk location is the county louth irl and should be a part of the leinster area as the county is in the irish province of leinster irl, and the entire province of kildare, which includes the counties kildare and carlow irl should also be a part of the county leinster. Ive overlayed a screenshot of the map in game with a map of the provincial borders irl and circled the areas to show these discrepancies.View attachment 1297790

If possible could you also post the dialects map of both ireland and britain and a zoomed image of the political map mode of just ireland, with the country names based on the primary culture of the nations? The names 'East Breifne' and 'Owill' dont sit right.

Also what culture is the orange striped culture in pembroke?

View attachment 1297801

County Louth was transferred out of Uladh (Ulster) under the English administration in the 1600s others in the thread have addressed the other discrepancies, better than I can.

 

[Katana500]

I feel like Shropshire and Herefordshire should have some Welsh minorities. There were definitely Welsh speakers kicking about in both regions.

 

[Katana500]

I think Malise had already 'volunteered' to give up his position in Caithness? Not entirely sure.

It seems Malise's earldom's was forfeited to the crown for agreeing to marry his daughter to an Englishman John De Warren who would in turn be granted the Earldom of Strathearn (An act viewed as Treason).

However it appears it wouldnt be until 1344 that he was summoned to parliament for a trial. Perhaps this could be added as a Scottish event with the historic option of forfeiting the lands and annexing them as Scotland or for more lenient players restoring the earldom making Caithness a vassal.

 

[MTGian]

Sooo...

I thought the resource map would be much closer to what I posted in the main thread. When I put this map together, I went through it in minute detail. Hundreds of hours. I had the best historical books that I am aware of (Agrarian History of England and Wales), googled major towns for their economic history, looked at resource maps, found historical writeups of resource production, found historical information on geographic regions, etc, etc, etc (all of this is in the main thread). Left no stone unturned. Went a bit mad, actually. It became a weird sort of obsession. I was dealing with some health issues (sleep issues), so I just kind of embraced the obsession and went down every rabbit hole.

Here's the map (and link: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...4-great-britain-ireland.1687953/post-29855860)

Spoiler

Obviously, there are places with judgement calls. I talked about that in the main thread. Figuring out whether to put wheat, wool, or livestock in places with mixed husbandry was always going to a judgement call. I expected those to be different. I also specifically referenced some questionable choices in the map above where a resource was only discovered late in the game period (copper and gold in Wales). That said, in another thread, we were told that resources that were exploited during the game period were fair game. So, that actually would include those mines in Wales.

I also understand that gameplay is going to trump historical reality. I mentioned this in the main thread too. If there was too much of a resource so England didn't play as occurred historically, then that requires some modification. It may be that Paradox tried out the above map and it simply didn't produce historical outcomes, which is totally fine. Gameplay > history. But, in that case, I would have thought that the result would be a modified version of what I produced above. However, that doesn't seem to be what happened. I say that because the outcome is not just the above map with less coal, iron, etc (there is lead in places where I didn't have lead, iron in places where I didn't have iron, etc).

Anyway, it is what it is. This is an imperfect way to create these maps. In a perfect world, I would have met with the Paradox folks and worked with them on the choices. They could have given me a more clear set of instructions on how they wanted resources chosen, I could have done the research with those instructions in mind, I could have presented my findings, they could have explained why gameplay trumped a choice, etc.

Obviously, that wasn't possible.

All that said, given the assignment to determine raw materials for England and Wales based only on historical reality, I stand by my map as much, much more accurate than the one produced in the review. Every single location was heavily researched in my map and the raw material was chosen for a reason. I agonized over every choice.

I'll probably mod the above in when I play as England/Wales so that the time doesn't feel completely wasted.

 

[Rule Britannia]

Problem is that leaves rNorthumbria as a really strange "r" shape.

Why not split Mercia into West and East Midlands, have Yorkshire and Lancashire, and the shrink Northumbria to just be the very northern bit?

 

[SaintDaveUK]

Why not split Mercia into West and East Midlands, have Yorkshire and Lancashire, and the shrink Northumbria to just be the very northern bit?

That makes them too small for areas imo

 

[Chief of Staff]

Or three, if you're feeling particularly Parliamentarian.

Ah, yes, remember those so-called Rage of Party? It was quite the time, I tell ya.

 

[livebythecreed77]

That makes them too small for areas imo

Just curious are you not open to changing the name of the "Irish" culture? Thanks for all the work everything else is a master piece in my mind.

 

[Rule Britannia]

Not independent countries or vassals of course. But that areas should have claims of Mercia, Kent e.g. etc.

With the exception of Cornwall, I do not believe that the people in any part of modern day England ever claimed to be a separate country. England was already fairly centralised at the time of the Norman conquest. You already have the division with England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland (with various sub-divisions), and the potential for Cornwall within the British Isles, I do not see any need to artificially add extra complexity.

 

[Rule Britannia]

Given that rivers will help propagate control, I was wondering which of the major rivers in the British Isles will actually be depicted in game as I do not think we have seen this on any officially released maps yet? From some of the videos released last week, I think I have been able to spot the Thames, the Severn and the Mersey, but I was wondering which other rivers are included and how you decide which to include and which to exclude. I found the map below (from Wiki) for England, and thought it may be a good reference point.

On a different but not completely unrelated point. I noticed in some of the videos released by the streamers with early access that when you click on a city or town that is on a river, e.g. London, then the river is depicted in the picture. I also saw elsewhere that bridges are buildings that can be build. Now I have no idea how easy or difficult the following would be, however, it would be very neat if the picture contained a bridge over the river if a bridge was present in the location (I assume that a bridge exist in the London location since London Bridge certainly existed in 1337).

 

[matfer13]

That makes them too small for areas imo

There are already areas of the same size around Europe like Lyonnais and even here you have the Hebrides which also have 8 locations in two provinces, so it doesn't seem too problematic to me

 

[Don_Quigleone]

There are a number of gaps (Wicklow Gap, Sally Gap) that facilitate east-west travel.

In theory an army could make its way through Wicklow and attack Dublin from the south (or vice versa), but in practice it was rare (I believe the Normans might have managed it?). While the troops might make the journey, keeping them supplied would be nearly impossible, so armies would travel to the east or west of Wicklow (creating bottlenecks which could be fortified).

I’m not sure if making the province border impassable is the best way to represent this, but it does have the benefit of being the simplest…

I agree it was practically simpler to go around it, but I don't think that's a standard used elsewhere on the map, and there are plenty of other spots in Ireland no army was going to march through practically speaking (bog of Allen anyone?). Are the Wicklow mountains as impassable as the appenines or mountains in Wales?

Better I think would be a movement nerf for certain terrains, and make it expensive to build in these regions (and even more difficult to get control).

 

[Rule Britannia]

The closest thing England had to mid-level administrative divisions during this time period were its assize court circuits, which served an administrative function and are essentially the right size. Given that much of the purpose of counties in this time period was judicial already, these seem appropriate for the next level up, and are definitely more appropriate than Anglo-Saxon kingdoms or modern statistical regions.

There were six circuits in England from 1328 until 1876, with minor changes over this period. Here's a map of the circuits judges took in 1531, which was essentially identical across the time period.
View attachment 1297691

If that's a little hard to read, the circuits for most of this period were the following:

View attachment 1297701
I think these are a pretty sensible basis for English areas, given that they were literally designed as groupings of counties it would be feasible to travel between within a couple of weeks and had similar enough needs the same judges could assess cases across the whole area. I think they could handle a little bit of tweaking: the Oxford Circuit should swap Monmouthshire for Cheshire (which was actually subject to Welsh courts through this period), which had more in common with other counties along the Welsh border than it did with the North. Cheshire was part of neither Northumbria nor Danelaw, and was heavily linked to the administration of Wales. This would only change with the explosive growth of Liverpool and Manchester during the industrial revolution. The Oxford Circuit and Norfolk Circuit salients in Oxfordshire/Berkshire and Buckinghamshire/Bedfordshire are also a little awkward - it might be better to group these with Northamptonshire as a "South Midlands" region.

The names also need sprucing up: the Home Circuit can become the Home Counties (much more appropriate for the time period in this reduced state), the Western Circuit can become either "Wessex" or the "West Country", and the Northern Circuit can be "Northumbria" or just "Northern England". If you make an extra "South Midlands" area, then "East Anglia" works perfectly for the rest of the Norfolk Circuit (but no matter what Essex belongs with London in any area setup at this time). If not, then the larger area can be something like "Eastern England" or even just "Anglia", but I don't really like either.

Obvious names for the Oxford and Midland Circuits would be the West and East Midlands, particularly if Oxford and Berkshire are removed from the West Midlands (though during this period it was common to consider them Midland counties). Alternatively the Midland Circuit can just stay the "Midlands", and the Oxford Circuit (particularly without Oxfordshire and Berkshire) can become the "(Welsh) Marches", but I don't particularly like that. Regardless, "Mercia" as a term had been out of favour for centuries at this point, and something like "Danelaw" would be even worse.

I must admit that these circuits are new to me, but I quite like the idea and I agree wholeheartedly with you that Essex should be together with London rather than Norfolk and Suffolk. However, from a purely aesthetic point of view, I would perhaps suggest making the following changes (though I recognise this would take it further from the historical).

Home Circuit: What you show on your map plus Hampshire, Berkshire, Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire and Bedfordshire.
Western Circuit: As you show it plus Gloucestershire but minus Hampshire (simply for the nicer boundaries).
Central Circuit: Herefordshire, Worcestershire, Shropshire, Staffordshire, Cheshire, Warwickshire and Derbyshire.
Eastern Circuit: Rest of Midlands circuit plus Cambridgeshire, Norfolk and Suffolk.
Northern Circuit: as you suggest.

This would leave the Home Circuit with 11 counties while the rest have 6-8, but given the smaller size of some of these counties, I do not think that would be an issues and still leave all the circuits with a sensible size and fairly neat borders.

 

[Rule Britannia]

View attachment 1297732
Here's what my personal prefer for English areas would be, for what it's worth.

I am not a big fan of using Northumbria for the entire northern part of England, nor do I like the use of East, West and Soth Midlands. However, my issue is predominantly with the naming rather than the division, which does not look too bad.

 

[Antor Seax]

Just curious are you not open to changing the name of the "Irish" culture? Thanks for all the work everything else is a master piece in my mind.

He's already told you.

 

[livebythecreed77]

He's already told you.

In a different post months ago. And the response he made clearly was not implemented

Some good points, I find the idea that Irish could be a unification culture of native Gaelic and Hiberno-Norman especially interesting.

Our decision to use the name Irish for the native culture is because Gaelic is also used as a wider term that encompasses a spectrum of related cultures across Britain and Ireland, so IMO we lose a bit of precision if we rename Irish to Gaelic. Scottish Highland culture for example is also often referred to simply as "Gaelic".

Irish as a unification culture of Gaelic and Hiberno-Norman which is exactly what Irish is btw, but we do not see that in the above map. Again with Gaelic Formables of Ríocht of Éire, if the people in in Ireland are Irish why not just form the Kingdom of Ireland? The Scottish Highland culture were also Gaels so just add Gael to the end of their name like Norse-Gael which is accurate. Why have accuracy for Norse-Gael but not for the people in Ireland who also were Gaels?

Not to mention does it not sound weird that a term the normans used to describe themselves is the term used to label the native people who didn't call themselves that.

 

[Argent Eagle]

That makes them too small for areas imo

Could you not just add more locations and spread out the dev/pop a little, it also lets you fit in the places that should be there like Sheffield.