Hello all,
It's been a while since my last update or even status update...
I have been quite busy with my personal life and after some very pleasant events, I have finally found some time to resume work on this mod... and arrived to a point where I can share some progress with you.
As I started working with Rajas of Asia team and - for compatch with their mod - adapted IBL also to Miller projection map, I started overhaul of the Persian empire, and here is finally something to show:
Persia overhaul preview
(Please don't forget this is yet a preview and this overhaul will first only be part of IBL compatch with Rajas of Asia, and only later be included back in the original IBL, which still uses Paradox projection)
First let's look at the new provinces:
In the south, the heaviest changes can be seen in the area of former kingdom of Makran, where I greatly increased granularity and got rid of those huge counties there.
You can see new counties of Biaban, Bint, Tiz on the coast, Rasak, Khwash and Sarhadd in the central area and Khawash in Sistan to the north,
to the west, new counties were added mainly to the marginal areas of Fars, such as Jannaba, Sabur, Bavvan and Jarhum, and I also increased granularity in areas between centers of political gravity, hence you can see Khabis and Nayband north of Kirman, as well as Abarquh and Jarmaq around Yazd.
And one county which remains invisible on this screenshot is Qeshm - the largest island in the Strait of Hormuz.
Even more provinces were added to the northern half of medieval Iran, especially in 2 larger clusters.
In the west lot more granularity was added to the area of Daylam kingdom, namely you can see new counties of
Khalkhal, Daylam, Lahij, Alamut, as well as to the central area of Jibal/Iraq-e-Ajjam, such as Kharraqan, Mazdaqan, Farrahan, Igharayn, Gulpaygan and Qashan.
The second large area is Khorasan in general. Firstly it was the Qohestan area, where counties of Tabas, Bejestan and Khusf were added. In the Nishapur area, you can see counties of Zawa, Torshiz, Biyar, Jajarm, Isfarain, Nasa and Asfand... and in the plains around Merv and to their south, there is Zam, Jiranj, Murghab, Karabil and Upper Guzgan. 2 last new counties are Hilmand east of Ghur, and Astarabad in Caspian Gurgan.
This allowed and in some cases forced creation of several new duchies, although I still preferred to keep their numbers relatively low.
in the southeast a new duchy was created between Makran and Sistan and named Sarhadd. Although the name isn't ideal, something had to be added there and this name fits the area the best.
In the area of Fars, new duchies are named afer historical provinces of Fars: Darabjerd and Istakhr.
Daylam and Gilan were split into 2 separate duchies, Qumis got its own duchy and the historical province of Jowzjan was upgraded into a duchy.
The most debated and the hardest to make were changes in kingdom setup.
Firstly, already since painting the original map, I was unsure about status of the traditional Persian large provinces, which are:
Kerman, Fars, Jibal, Gilan and Daylam, Tabarestan/Mazandaran, Gurgan, Khorasan, Kohestan, Makran and Sistan.
The position of Khorasan was always unquestionable, but the others were always too large to be duchies, but I also considered them too small for kingdoms, at least most of them.
For this setup, I realized it is inevitable to split the center of north-western Persia from Fars - the Jibal area does indeed deserve its own kingdom.
As for Fars, I thought its 3 duchies would be 2 small for a kingdom, so I considered often shared political history with Kerman and Hormuz, and have them as kingdom of Persia.
Having learned that large parts of Makran, including its capital Tiz, were considered as start of India, I was convinced to move the duchy of Makran to be part of Indian kingdom of Sindh, which left the duchy of Jebel Qufs as part of Kerman-Fars kingdom, hence Persia.
Despite very intensive discussion, I have so far decided to keep Daylam as one kingdom, consisting of all Caspian provinces, but in the future, the western areas of Adharbaijan and Shirwan will split from it. All possible divisions were discussed and at some point even adopted, only to realize, that they would all look even weirder than this setup.
