Diverse terrains for Australia & NZ

[Em Ay Ef]

this was initally discussed in a thread on the general forum, but it may be time to bring it up here.

as of 1.11, Australia and NZ consist entirely of grasslands with a single jungle province in Victoria. i prepared a suggestion that more realistically reflects the terrain and vegetation of that corner of the world. hope it proves useful if you ever decide to remodel terrain types in that area.

lo and behold:

terrain types as follows (colors differ from the regular terrain map for increased clarity):
grasslands.
savannah.
woods.
forest.
jungle.
marsh.
hills.
highlands.
mountain.
steppe.
coastline.
drylands.
black dots - tropical.
red dots - arid.

some provinces could work in more than one way, so for these i provide alternatives (albeit i'd rather go with the options from the original picture above):

Spoiler

 

[PsysmicSound]

If the islands were each separate regions then you could make the whole South Island be able to produce gold. If the system changed it'd be more plausible, though. A West Coast province would have a low tax value, which (I think?) would make the gold more proportionate in its benefit to how it was in OTL.

With the whole province development thing about to be introduced, I'm not certain, but I'd imagine production level is preset for empty provinces, just like base tax is now. But with the entirety of Australia given a single region right now, good luck convincing them to give New Zealand two.

 

[generalolaf]

Like I say, it's iffy.

 

[Em Ay Ef]

I would suggest that the Wairarapa/Hawke's Bay area be hills or highlands. The Wairarapa (which I'm familiar with) has farmland, but it's cut off by the hill ranges that encircle it and has no natural harbour. The Hawke's bay area isn't exactly flat either (though I'm not very familiar with it). However, there is at least better sea access. These barriers may justify the change. Up to you though.

i see your point and it's right. the Ahuriri province (in-game name for Hawke's Bay) could work as highlands, especially so if it would encompass the Wellington area carved out of Taranaki as per Generalolaf's suggestion.

Taranaki can be portrayed as wooded, but if the east coast of the North Island needs a downgrade, the lower west coast might use an upgrade. Historically, the Taranaki region is a hotly contested piece of land. Settlers in New Plymouth were eager enough to purchase land from a dubious, subordinate chiefs in the area - an incident that kicked off the New Zealand Wars. The settlers wanted that land for farming purposes. They rated it as good land. And a lot of the land today is farmland - and it's mostly flat. It's also (I'd argue) more populated than the East coast, without even including the Wellington area.

while i agree that the lower west coast deserves an upgrade, i'm not convinced that portraying it as grasslands would be the best way to go. there is a better tool to model land value--that's development and BT. in 1.11, the highest starting BT among NZ provinces is in the Bay of Plenty. we'll see what happens tomorrow with the release of 1.12. for the future, i'd say that Wellington and Auckland might deserve a small development boost.

So there's no perfect choice, but thanks for giving it a crack.

thanks, i'm glad that quite a lot of people care for an improved map.

 

[Em Ay Ef]

Thing is, though, I think as residents we're likely to look at it from that micro-perspective. The province system as it is doesn't really support that, though, which means we have to compromise. It wouldn't necessarily be a bad idea to split Wellington and the lower North Island into its own province, for example, but then that still contains land you could call farmland, hills, highlands, even mountains at a stretch (Tararuas, Rimutakas) and where do you stop? It's one of the failings of the one-terrain provinces. It's not how most provinces are.

you're right. i for that matter come from outside of New Zealand (although i'd very much like to visit one day), so my point of view is mostly informed by maps and other big-picture data. this makes it easy for me to choose a single terrain type for a province on the one hand, as i lack emotional attachment and knowledge of details which might prove insignificant on a broader scale, but on the other hand it makes me prone to overlook crucial points which may not be evident from the map. i very much appreciate your input, guys, thanks. and we definitely should prepare for a compromise if we want to make this new setup happen.

In saying that, you have a good point on the shapes of lower North Island provinces. In a lot of ways, Wellington (and the Kapiti Coast) actually fits better with the province Hawkes' Bay is in. Possibly you'd want to include the central plateau with Taranaki if you were going to rearrange it that way, and actual Hawkes Bay could be lumped in with the Bay of Plenty. Adding provinces isn't a great idea, though, even if it would be the easiest way to represent the climates properly. New Zealand's provinces are already more detailed than a lot of areas that start the game settled - Russia and Eastern Europe particularly spring to mind - so we can't really justify getting too precious about it.

i was somewhat skeptical of redrawing province shapes, as changes of this magnitude would likely take much more time to implement than simple changes in province terrain, and so they might make the proposition too complicated to be worth it for Paradox. with this in mind, i'm inclined toward a two-pronged approach: suggesting one layout consistent with current provinces, and another, more ambitious one, which would slightly redraw provinces in NI & SI. we can always focus on one approach if a dev lets us know that one of the options is preferable to the other.

however, in my opinion border changes would be beneficial to both islands. a new province of Canterbury would greatly improve things for SI, while in the north, your proposition to move Wellington to Ahuriri and the Central Plateau to Taranaki would increase terrain uniformity in the provinces with Taranaki keeping woods and Ahuriri moving on to highlands.

i'm not convinced about lumping Hawke's Bay and Bay of Plenty together though. a province like that would consist of two largely separate grassland regions divided by rough, wooded hills. no single terrain type could accurately represent it in regard to troop movement and development cost at the same time. i came up with the following alternative:

• the southern parts of Taranaki and Ahuriri provinces could be merged in a single province to represent Wellington and surroundings. terrain type: highlands or hills.
• northern Taranaki and the Central Plateau make up a nice woods province with its agricultural potential represented by a small boost to development/BT (probably lower development than Wellington and Auckland though).
• Kirikiriroa province, enlarged to encompass the Bay of Plenty, remains grasslands.
• the remaining eastern parts of Ahuriri (Hawke's Bay) and Tauranga constitute an East Cape province. terrain: hills.
• no change to Whangarei.

what do you think?

 

[Em Ay Ef]

Gold in the SI was a big deal for New Zealand, but not for the world. Its effect is probably best simulated as a slightly higher base tax than would be expected of a population of period New Zealand's size. Anyway, discoverable trade goods are currently on a per-region basis, not per-province, and I can't imagine that changing just for us, though it might do if people think it's too abstract for other colonisable parts of the world.

i agree that a gold-producing province may be too much, although i do think that discoverable trade goods can and do work on single-province level as well as on a regional basis. the lists for geographical distribution of cloth, gold, spices and sugar make mention of individual provinces as well as regions.

 

[generalolaf]

@Em Ay Ef, with regard to this:

i'm not convinced about lumping Hawke's Bay and Bay of Plenty together though. a province like that would consist of two largely separate grassland regions divided by rough, wooded hills. no single terrain type could accurately represent it in regard to troop movement and development cost at the same time. i came up with the following alternative:

• the southern parts of Taranaki and Ahuriri provinces could be merged in a single province to represent Wellington and surroundings. terrain type: highlands or hills.
• northern Taranaki and the Central Plateau make up a nice woods province with its agricultural potential represented by a small boost to development/BT (probably lower development than Wellington and Auckland though).
• Kirikiriroa province, enlarged to encompass the Bay of Plenty, remains grasslands.
• the remaining eastern parts of Ahuriri (Hawke's Bay) and Tauranga constitute an East Cape province. terrain: hills.
• no change to Whangarei.

This sounds good, though calling it an 'East Cape' province is a bit disingenuous given the region is barely populated, rough and impoverished even today. That plan would be pretty much ideal, though.

 

[Em Ay Ef]

This sounds good, though calling it an 'East Cape' province is a bit disingenuous given the region is barely populated, rough and impoverished even today. That plan would be pretty much ideal, though.

i'll get to the drawing board, then. as for "East Cape", i used the name for quick topographical reference only. i suppose Hawke's Bay will be a better point of reference for the entire province until we come up with a Māori toponym which could be used in game. (and coming up with local names is a task i am 100% unqualified for, so i count on your input. )

 

[Titanius Puffin]

i'll get to the drawing board, then. as for "East Cape", i used the name for quick topographical reference only. i suppose Hawke's Bay will be a better point of reference for the entire province until we come up with a Māori toponym which could be used in game. (and coming up with local names is a task i am 100% unqualified for, so i count on your input. )

I'm okay with the label 'East Cape', but if you need a Maori name, 'Te Urawera' (translation: 'the burnt penis' - a chief accidentally rolled into his campfire, and his people never let him forget it) is appropriate. The region is relatively unpopulated as it's a part of New Zealand that European Colonists generally stayed away from. The local tribe was (and is) fiercely independent.

Amalgamating them with Hawke's Bay/Ahuriri works.

 

[generalolaf]

I'm okay with the label 'East Cape', but if you need a Maori name, 'Te Urawera' (translation: 'the burnt penis' - a chief accidentally rolled into his campfire, and his people never let him forget it) is appropriate. The region is relatively unpopulated as it's a part of New Zealand that European Colonists generally stayed away from. The local tribe was (and is) fiercely independent.

Amalgamating them with Hawke's Bay/Ahuriri works.

What do you think a combined province should be called? Te Urawera or Ahuriri?

 

[Titanius Puffin]

I had no idea what 'Ahuriri' was. According to Wikipedia it's the Maori name for Napier.

Fun as it might be to include 'Te Urawera' as the place name, I lean toward Ahuriri. It gives a nod towards the more populous/farmable region.

 

[generalolaf]

What about 'Heretaunga'? That might make more sense, it's the Māori name for Hawkes Bay, apparently.

 

[PsysmicSound]

Heretaunga has an odd history. It originally referred to a location in the southern HB region, but the people who lived there migrated south, and gave the same name to wherever they stopped. The Hutt River, for example, is also called Heretaunga. Using it to refer to the modern HB region seems to be a more recent thing, owing to the lack of any better ideas. Being right on the periphery of the proposed province, but being an area more welcoming to settlers than much of the rest of the area, I'm a bit conflicted on this. Provinces in North America are often named after local tribal groups; perhaps we could do the same for New Zealand? Most of the other words we'll be able to find are either names of specific settlements, or have vague meanings that shift over time. Then again, the iwi were never particularly fond of staying in one place during this time period.

 

[PsysmicSound]

As much as it may seem odd to name colonial provinces after the parts that were the least colonisable, the impression I get is that in Māori culture, the most distinctive part of any region is its mountains. Rivers were also important too, but not on as broad a scale as mountains. So I think that Urewera might well be the best name for the province, and the same logic would apply elsewhere.

 

[generalolaf]

That's actually a pretty good point, especially given it's pretty much always included in a mihi (for non-NZers, that's sort of like a speech to introduce yourself.) Wouldn't work for every province, but we already have Taranaki and we used to have Aoraki (though for some reason I wasn't really a fan of that). Dynamic names mean that if say, the English colonise the provinces they get renamed anyway, of course.

 

[generalolaf]

Heretaunga has an odd history. It originally referred to a location in the southern HB region, but the people who lived there migrated south, and gave the same name to wherever they stopped. The Hutt River, for example, is also called Heretaunga. Using it to refer to the modern HB region seems to be a more recent thing, owing to the lack of any better ideas. Being right on the periphery of the proposed province, but being an area more welcoming to settlers than much of the rest of the area, I'm a bit conflicted on this. Provinces in North America are often named after local tribal groups; perhaps we could do the same for New Zealand? Most of the other words we'll be able to find are either names of specific settlements, or have vague meanings that shift over time. Then again, the iwi were never particularly fond of staying in one place during this time period.

A search for 'Maori name Hawke's Bay' came up with Te Matau-a-Māui, which may be a decent option. It's even from a government resource: http://www.tetaurawhiri.govt.nz/english/resources_e/list_placenames.shtml which may be useful.

Edit: Though I think this discussion's been had once before and AoW made changes to New Zealand, so we're probably less likely to get name changes given they already tweaked them once and it's superficial.

 

[Titanius Puffin]

Te Matau-a-Maui seems to mean, the 'hook of Maui'.
It's a good name..

For those who don't know the creation story (presumably most here do, but I'm not going to let that stop me), Maui and his brothers pulled up the North Island, which was a giant fish. Their vessel is the south Island. The spur jutting out of the North Island round Hastings is where Maui's hook lodged in the great fish.

It looks pretty hook-like on a map too.

 

[PsysmicSound]

Lots of regions of New Zealand could be a something-of-Māui, I feel. I wasn't around for this previous discussion you speak of, but clearly it left people unsatisfied, otherwise we wouldn't be talking about it once more. I suppose other parts of the world are worse-off (Is it really that hard to find native placenames of any sort in Brazil? What the hell is going on with South African province names?), but it would make sense to tweak things further if they're going to be working with the provinces themselves, as was the original suggestion that we seem to have hijacked.

 

[neondt]

I like the ideas for diverse terrain, and have implemented them in my Conquest of Australia mod. Thanks to @Em Ay Ef for the helpful map.