Tinto Maps #6 Great Britain & Ireland Feedback

[Vispian]

Morris mentions that Anglesey was considered the breadbasket or granary of Wales, being the most fertile part of the country. So it may also be worth considering changing that to farmland and to producing wheat, unless of course there is also a strong case for it producing stone that I am unfamiliar with.

I was the reason Anglesey changed to Stone (posted in the original maps thread), by this time period and for a lot longer, it was the main stone quarry that serviced most of the construction in the English pale. It was a monumental exporter in the regional economy and should be represented as such imho

Matthew Frank Stevens, The Economy of Medieval Wales, 1067-1536 (University of Wales Press, 2019), p. 46.

 

[Rule Britannia]

I was the reason Anglesey changed to Stone (posted in the original maps thread), by this time period and for a lot longer, it was the main stone quarry that serviced most of the construction in the English pale. It was a monumental exporter in the regional economy and should be represented as such imho

Matthew Frank Stevens, The Economy of Medieval Wales, 1067-1536 (University of Wales Press, 2019), p. 46.

Makes sense, I just came across the description I mentioned and thought it might be useful if there was no strong reason for the current good. However what you say about stone makes sense.

 

[Liam1234]

Could we get the towns and cities map?

 

[MTGian]

I have decided to put together a more coherent and organized set of raw material recommendations. I went on a bit of a journey in the original thread, so my recommendations were spread over 20+ posts. I tried to tie it together into one final post, but perhaps my recommendations were downgraded due to the disorganized presentation.

While double checking my recommendations, I came across the article "Silver Production and the Money Supply in England and Wales, 1086 - 1500".

Here's a chart from that article:

Spoiler

The Devon/Cornwall silver mines were only briefly productive (22 years out of roughly 160 years). Based on other searches, the same is true post-1500.

Anecdotal, but I also look for whether mining is mentioned in general profiles of places. Despite the name, the Agrarian History books do mention mining when it is important in a region. Tin is mentioned for the region that includes Devon, but no silver. Also, the National Character Area profiles give a general mining description when it is important in an area. They mention tin, copper, and lead for Dartmoor and tin and copper for South Devon, but no silver (I checked The Culm and Exmoor areas too). Translation: the silver mining were pretty small scale. Much smaller scale than the other minerals.

There are two silver goods in Devon. When I originally started writing this, I was considering removing them both. However, the Combe Martin mine (the one in the north) was also highly productive in the 16th and 19th centuries. If you google it, you'll find lots of statements of its importance. I'll leave that one, but the Bere Ferrers (the one in the south) should go, in my opinion.

Makes sense, I just came across the description I mentioned and thought it might be useful if there was no strong reason for the current good. However what you say about stone makes sense.

According to the Agrarian History books, Anglesey's reputation as the granary/breadbasket of Wales is more relevant for the medieval period. The books say the reputation is based on a famous quote from the 12th century.

 

[SaintDaveUK]

Oh, Dave! To bring up a point from the last thread, did you come to a final decision on the locations of your Royal Forests?

lymington, retford, chelmsford, windsor, gloucester, okehampton, penrith

 

[SaintDaveUK]

I have decided to put together a more coherent and organized set of raw material recommendations. I went on a bit of a journey in the original thread, so my recommendations were spread over 20+ posts. I tried to tie it together into one final post, but perhaps my recommendations were downgraded due to the disorganized presentation.

While double checking my recommendations, I came across the article "Silver Production and the Money Supply in England and Wales, 1086 - 1500".

Looking forward to your final recommendations. From a gameplay perspective my primary thoughts are to generally err to the side of Wool when there is a choice, as we want that to be the base industry for Britain. Also something we are missing is beeswax but I suppose its pretty hard to find that at a greater scale than cottage industry.

 

[AHumpierRogue]

Re: Anglesey goods,


Looking forward to your final recommendations. From a gameplay perspective my primary thoughts are to generally err to the side of Wool when there is a choice, as we want that to be the base industry for Britain. Also something we are missing is beeswax but I suppose its pretty hard to find that at a greater scale than cottage industry.

Is Beeswax something that can be produced by a non-rgo building? If so IMO that might be fine to represent it for most of Britain.

 

[ItsMorkino]

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:

View attachment 1296747


The updated vegetation:
View attachment 1296748


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.

View attachment 1296749



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:
View attachment 1296750

Areas:

View attachment 1296948


And political mapmode (with overlord colouring off):
View attachment 1296751



And Dynasties:
View attachment 1296947

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:
View attachment 1296753


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.

View attachment 1296755


There have also been some changes to Raw Goods, as you can see here:

View attachment 1296756




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.

The UK now has a lot of impassable terrain, which I personally really like. I think it creates interesting scenarios of gameplay opportunities. But it seems the UK has a higher amount of them than elsewhere. Is that true? What is the criteria for getting impassable terrain? Is the UK really that much more mountainous than southern France for example?

 

[MTGian]

Looking forward to your final recommendations. From a gameplay perspective my primary thoughts are to generally err to the side of Wool when there is a choice, as we want that to be the base industry for Britain. Also something we are missing is beeswax but I suppose its pretty hard to find that at a greater scale than cottage industry.

That is helpful.

As you will see, I am going to do options. As in, you could do A or B for location X. I'll keep my eyes peeled for wool and beeswax where I can find evidence of it's presence.

 

[Mef]

What I know from reading about the Hansa is that one of their most important trades was to move furs, beeswax and honey from the East to the West, with beeswax being an especially long lasting monopoly (the main sources for it were Reval and Novgorod, which itself procured a lot of honey and beeswax from Finnic tribes).
I don't know how much of that ended up in England. In simplistic explanations of Hansa trade, you would read something like "they acquired beeswax and furs in Novgorod and exchanged them for sheepskins and wool in London" but the actual trades were a bit more complicated than that...

I think it's likely that honey and beeswax were one of the goods that England imported, and considering that it wasn't known for producing a lot of the goods that were typically associated with very sparsely populated and forested regions, I'd expect there to be less production of beeswax in England than there is demand.

 

[MTGian]

What I know from reading about the Hansa is that one of their most important trades was to move furs, beeswax and honey from the East to the West, with beeswax being an especially long lasting monopoly (the main sources for it were Reval and Novgorod, which itself procured a lot of honey and beeswax from Finnic tribes).
I don't know how much of that ended up in England. In simplistic explanations of Hansa trade, you would read something like "they acquired beeswax and furs in Novgorod and exchanged them for sheepskins and wool in London" but the actual trades were a bit more complicated than that...

I think it's likely that honey and beeswax were one of the goods that England imported, and considering that it wasn't known for producing a lot of the goods that were typically associated with very sparsely populated and forested regions, I'd expect there to be less production of beeswax in England than there is demand.

I agree with this. This matches what I have read as well.

 

[macd21]

What I know from reading about the Hansa is that one of their most important trades was to move furs, beeswax and honey from the East to the West, with beeswax being an especially long lasting monopoly (the main sources for it were Reval and Novgorod, which itself procured a lot of honey and beeswax from Finnic tribes).
I don't know how much of that ended up in England. In simplistic explanations of Hansa trade, you would read something like "they acquired beeswax and furs in Novgorod and exchanged them for sheepskins and wool in London" but the actual trades were a bit more complicated than that...

I think it's likely that honey and beeswax were one of the goods that England imported, and considering that it wasn't known for producing a lot of the goods that were typically associated with very sparsely populated and forested regions, I'd expect there to be less production of beeswax in England than there is demand.

My understanding is that England’s production of beeswax definitely didn’t meet demand, and that imports (mostly from the east, as you say) were a key trade good, but on the other hand England produced about 80% of the beeswax used.

I think problem is that beeswax was produced all over the place, just in small quantities. There doesn’t seem to have been any one location in Britain that we could point to and say “beeswax was the heart of this region’s economy”. There doesn’t seem to have been one place that was notably producing large quantities of the stuff and supplying other regions - most of it would have been used locally.

 

[MTGian]

There is a passage in the Agrarian History volumes that may be relevent. It's on beekeeping rather than beeswax, but the one google search that I did said that honeybees produce beeswax, so the two should align.

"Finally, among the activities of the peasant, from which the poor were not debarred by the cost of equipment, was bee-keeping. Since honey was the main sweetening agent in the kitchen, there were beehives everywhere. In the forests they were made of hazel wood, in champion country of long rye straw, and in the west country of wheatstraw. If they were more in evidence in some districts than others, it was on the moorlands where heather honey was produced."

 

[TartanClad]

lymington, retford, chelmsford, windsor, gloucester, okehampton, penrith

Good choices!

 

[Fawr]

At this point I'm mostly looking for feedback on attributes of the locations more than shape or number of them.

View attachment 1299489

You didn't show the development map again, but just checking the new mountain provinces had it lowered and the ex-mountain province had it raised (17s are high for north Scotland)?

I assume we want consistency with the -70% to development provincial modifier from mountains. If they are well developed mountains then maybe they aren't really comparable to other mountains in the game.

 

[Grouchio]

So what's next on the Map Feedback docket?

 

[natevandrake]

I think there should be a lot less sparse vegetation, especially in England. England is a very green place and it gets a lot of rain. It doesn't make sense that a place like Plymouth or Scarborough would have the same vegetation as Gabes in Tunisia and Central Anatolian. Plymouth get around 40 inches of precipitation annually, while Gabes gets about 7.5 inches and Konya in central Anatolia get about 13. Also, the places in England are in an Oceanic climate, compared to a semi-arid climate in the other locations.

Plymouth
View attachment 1296872

Konya
View attachment 1296873

If you look on Google maps you'll see the major road to Plymouth, the Devon Expressway (A38) straddles the south of Dartmoor. On the south side the vegetation looks like the first picture and the north side more like the second picture. I'd say though the current location borders of Plymouth cover all of the south hams and if you Google south hams you won't find any pictures that look sparse, but other than that I would definitely classify locations around Dartmoor as sparse.

Dartmoor isn't sparse because of rainfall, mostly it's the granite everywhere, radon gases and acidic soil.

 

[SaintDaveUK]

A sketch of the marcher lordships if they were countries on the current map.
I don't think gameplay will support the intention very well without designing a IO or something, but thats a lot of effort so I can't guarantee this is the direction we will take for release. But it's a conversation starter at least.

A weird thing I notice here is how England, Wales, and Chester, essentially 3 countries representing crown interference, now exist in close proximity in several places. I'm leaning towards merging the Earldom of Chester into the Principality of Wales, maybe moving the capital of that to Chester.

 

[GenericUsername1444]

A sketch of the marcher lordships if they were countries on the current map.
I don't think gameplay will support the intention very well without designing a IO or something, but thats a lot of effort so I can't guarantee this is the direction we will take for release. But it's a conversation starter at least.

A weird thing I notice here is how England, Wales, and Chester, essentially 3 countries representing crown interference, now exist in close proximity in several places. I'm leaning towards merging the Earldom of Chester into the Principality of Wales, maybe moving the capital of that to Chester.

View attachment 1302279

I'm neither English nor Welsh, so my opinion regarding this situation is quite worthless, but as a player I believe I speak for most people when I say that a politically fractured Wales would be more fun to play in (as seen in the newest post), rather than a consolidated one, with barely any control from the English side. We don't really know how BBC countries work, but I have my own apprehensions about them.

I don't think gameplay will support the intention very well without designing a IO or something, but thats a lot of effort so I can't guarantee this is the direction we will take for release.

That's completely understandable. Either way, thank you for posting here so often!

 

[SaintDaveUK]

The ancient kingdoms as Welsh culture releasables, as a big releasable Wales tag didn't feel right.