Clean borders?

[Tornadoli]

Yeah sorry I was dosed on cough medicine when I wrote the OP.
I meant countries looking like countries rather than the map of Europe looking like the cover art on a '70s concept album.
This is what Europe looked like at AD1700:

Have you ever seen anything like this? I think it's a result of the weakness of nationalism in the game. Once a province is cored, its nationality doesn't really matter.

You find those borders pretty? They just seem pretty to you because they are historical. If history wouldn't have turned out the way it did, you'd scream about Austria unrealistically blobbing into Hungarian and Slavic lands (They aren't even the same nationality!!!), Poland and Lithuania forming one country (right, like those two completely different nations would ever form one country!), Spain conquering south of Italy, Brandenburg and TO forming one country, etc.etc. How is, eg. Poland conquering Hungary any less realistic than Austria conquering Hungary?

 

[SerialCereal]

I think that a decent way around this would be to make it so that Casus Bellis can only ask for a certain type of province. For example, if you declare war using CB type A then you can only conquer provinces with a nationality similar, or identical, to your own. If you declare war with CB type B then you can only conquer provinces with a core. Something like that anyhow, I think that it would better represent a system of international politics. It never made sense when a country declares a war for provinces A, B and C but instead conquers D,E and F. I could really expand upon this idea, but cba.

 

[Me_]

You find those borders pretty? They just seem pretty to you because they are historical. If history wouldn't have turned out the way it did, you'd scream about Austria unrealistically blobbing into Hungarian and Slavic lands (They aren't even the same nationality!!!), Poland and Lithuania forming one country (right, like those two completely different nations would ever form one country!), Spain conquering south of Italy, Brandenburg and TO forming one country, etc.etc. How is, eg. Poland conquering Hungary any less realistic than Austria conquering Hungary?

Noone's talking about actual shape. What everyone is talking about is that late-game there should or shouldn't be fewer enclaves and other detached parts besides islands as well as no snake-shaped borders. If e.g. Poland and Lithuania were two separate countries they would still look quite whole rather than being a collection of semi-connected territories (as is often the case in-game). And blobbing in fact improves the overall look of the borders.

 

[Eh up me duck]

You find those borders pretty? They just seem pretty to you because they are historical. If history wouldn't have turned out the way it did, you'd scream about Austria unrealistically blobbing into Hungarian and Slavic lands (They aren't even the same nationality!!!), Poland and Lithuania forming one country (right, like those two completely different nations would ever form one country!), Spain conquering south of Italy, Brandenburg and TO forming one country, etc.etc. How is, eg. Poland conquering Hungary any less realistic than Austria conquering Hungary?

Well to load up a game at random...

Other than myself as Russia and another human player as Venice, it's a mess. France doesn't care about Normondy or the OPMs, it's advancing headlong into Spain. The English have land in southern Spain for no apparent reason, Asia Minor is a mess (though this is because Castille just loves to take land there because of Holy War CB).
If it weren't for Venice and Russia being human controlled, they'd be just as messed up.
edit - look how low my manpower is. Man, that was a brutal war.

 

[Chamboozer]

You find those borders pretty? They just seem pretty to you because they are historical. If history wouldn't have turned out the way it did, you'd scream about Austria unrealistically blobbing into Hungarian and Slavic lands (They aren't even the same nationality!!!), Poland and Lithuania forming one country (right, like those two completely different nations would ever form one country!), Spain conquering south of Italy, Brandenburg and TO forming one country, etc.etc. How is, eg. Poland conquering Hungary any less realistic than Austria conquering Hungary?

Just a random screenshot I grabbed from the EUIII forums.

There's a dramatic difference in the sensibility of the borders between historical maps of the period and maps of EUIII, their prettiness has nothing to do with the borders being historical.

The most commonly cited example of ugly borders IRL is the Habsburg empire, but even that was created through inheritances, not random conquest as occurs in EUIII.

 

[Don_Quigleone]

So many things wrong with these maps. AI does not blob attractively.

Though I have to say, CK1 was a lot worse.

 

[SerialCereal]

So many things wrong with these maps. AI does not blob attractively.

Though I have to say, CK1 was a lot worse.

Dear Lord, the random Polish counts in Iberia were insane.

 

[Moltke]

Those screenshots aren't even *that* bad. I have had quite a few chuckles at the expense of a Hungary or Poland snaking around the black sea and winding up and beyond into the steps of Asia. No country like that could survive due to cultural and geographic factors. It's indefensible. There are reasons modern nation states have relatively tightly defined borders and it isn't entirely arbitrary.

Hopefully in EUIV the snakey bits will just have a habit of falling off naturally, so no weird mechanic will have to be implemented just to appease the OCD folk.