[Map] Ibn Battuta's Legacy 2 - An alternative vanilla map WIP

[elvain]

Can we get a quick and dirty guide on how to add baronies into the game?

I tried following the same system I used for CK2 but it didn't work. Seeing you adding baronies liberally and successfully makes me jealous.

it's not very different from adding a province to CK2.
- First add it to map_data/definition.csv
- then paint it with the defined RGB colours to provinces.png in the same directory
- then add the barony to the de jure structure in common/landed_titles/00_landed_titles.txt using the province ID from definition file

these are essential steps without which done correctly the game will break/won't load.
if everything is ok there and the game still crashes, you also probably need to edit the default.map

- then define its barony type in history/provinces/k_(the kingdom where it is located under the duchy and county where it is located
- then you need to add the provinces building, armies, combat and siege positions, which are in gfx/map/map_object_data
then you need to add localisations for the title (the exact file will be added later)

there's of course bunch of potential problems. will try to navigate solving them (like otgers have navigated myself when I have encountered few of them already)

EDIT: I'm sorry for not providing everything exactly. I'm not with my computer now.

 

[elvain]

After a long while I finally have something I can share with you, guys,

Thanks to @Black7Emperor7 I realized that Nubia now is worth an empire, so I reconstructed the area a little.
Now when Blemmyia was already strenghtened a little I even agreed to slightly adjust not just the big dejure entities of empires, kingdoms and duchies, but also added very few counties and baronies to areas, where I got some additional sources...

All in all, here I present the empire of Nubia with its 4 kingdoms:
Nubia/Makuria, Alodia and Blemmyia and Darfur as kingdoms within Nubian sphere of influence.

You can also see that the border between Makuria and Alodia - which should be between the 5th and 6th cataracts - has moved slightly downstream.
This change was allowed by addition of 3 new baronies in the area and 2 new counties - Keraba and Bayuda, which allowed me to create a new duchy of Abwab in Lower Alodia.

and in order to make the borders smooth, I had to move the county of Atbara to the Shamir duchy:

On the last screenshot you can also see that I renamed the county of Meroë to Makuria, so it won't cause confusion with ancient Meroë, which is upstream the Nile in the area on the border of Keraba and Abwab counties.

I decided not to make Nobatia a separate kingdom, though. Although I believe that many would think it better, I think that this kingdom would be way too small. Its 12 baronies are already on the edge of possible/playable density and adding more would make it hard to click on those provinces. It would be possible to move the border-county of Sai from Makuria to Nobatia, but still I think that even 15 baronies in 6 counties is little too few for a kingdom.
I made the exception in case of Benin, but that was an essential state and center of power and civilization. Nobatia was influential, yet I don't think it was exceptional enough for a de jure kingdom.

Question:
Lastly - I am considering to split Wadi el-Milk in 2 tiny counties so it could become a duchy, but mainly for just cosmetics - with it being a separate duchy, rather than a county under Makuria, it will make Makuria look less awfull in the duchy map view. OTOH I don't think it's enough to make it a separate duchy. What do you think?

 

[elvain]

Status update...

I'm intensively working on the mod's update and I finally got to phase where I can share something.

But before updating you about this, let me share one very important information
This is the last planned update dedicated to Africa for a while. After this I plan to - finally - move back to Europe and do some planned updates also there.

The update of East Hausaland and what used to be Kwararafa duchy is quite massive as you can see.

The former duchy of Kwararafa from the Igbo-Benue kingdom has been upgraded into a full kingsom with 3 duchies: Kwararafa, Upper Kwararafa and Bauchi.

You can see that Kwararafa region has 6 new counties and one (Katagum) has been moved from Bornu to this Kingdom.
The former province of Fika was renamed after one of the Kwararafan capitals and princedoms of Biyri.
Each of medieval principalities of the Jukun people of Kwararafa was made a separate county.

You can also see that Bornu kingdom was compensated and for the lost county of Katagum, it got a new county of Zamtam.

On barony/province level, the changes are even heavier:

The slightly anachronistic names such as Gombe or Wukari were replaced by slightly more accurate baronies Panda and Jibe,
the general barony name of Kwararafa is now called Beipi, after one of Kwararafan capitals, and so is the case of Gongola barony - instead of the river it is now called after one of Jukun principalities: Kalam.

This update will also include new cultures for this region I was updating, more info about them will come later, as well as other news about timing of the long-due mod's update.

Since the game's update/patch/DLC isn't yet announced, I guess I should be able to release the update before the game gets an update.

 

[elvain]

And now the big news.

The mod has been re-uploaded. The changes between the previous and the current version are quite large, so I decided it would be better to consider it a new mod on Steam, rather than an update of the older version.
DOWNLOAD:
The new version of Ibn Battuta's Legacy is available on Steam Workshop as well as on Paradox mods platform

I am still merging the changelogs from various working versions I had into one full changelog, but I already have it graphical:

Let's first look at Bohemia. There are no new baronies, compared to the previous version, but I slightly changed the counties, so that now Velehrad is now a better capital of Great Moravia.

Some changes happened also to terrain of Bohemia - most importantly, the barony of Doudleby now has wetlands terrain instead of hills.

Another new thing about Central Europe is that I changed the extent of Slovien culture and expanded it a little eastwards:

Now, before we move to the Sahara and Sub-Saharan Africa, there were some small changes also in Egypt - namely the desert corridors between Cyrenaica's Inland, the Siwa oasis and Egyptian oases of al-Wahat.

As I already teased, there are also changes in Nubia region. The duchies setup has changed in order to allow the split of Nubia kingdom into Makuria and Alodia kingdoms and with them creation of Nubian empire, which now consists of Makuria, Alodia, Blemmyia and Darfur:

This was enabled by adding few new counties:

Changes in the Sahara are best displayed on the video I showed in my previous post:

... but they can also nicely be seen on a screenshot of West and Central Africa, which shows the areas of West African Savanna - the new terrain added in my other mod, which is incorporated into Ibn Battuta's Legacy:

The most substantial changes of the mod (for now) and this big update are in Sub-Saharan Africa, especially its central part between Lake Chad and Bight of Benin.
As already noted, one change is the addition of (lower) Benue as a major river, but more changes took place there:

Let's start with kingdoms:

the kingdoms of Borgu and Igbo-Benue has been replaced by several other entities, better fitting the era of Crusader Kings.
There are 2 entirely new kingdoms: Benin and Kwararafa, and another 2 kingdoms were renamed: Igbo-Benue to Nri and Borgu to Banzaland.

The kingdom of Nri (former Igbo-Benue) is now named after the historical kingdom of Nri, which, however, covered only small section of the region, but was the most influential state of the Igbo people. On its edges it has 2 new duchies - Akpoto, named after the Akpoto people, who are the first known inhabitants of the Niger-Benue confluence, and Ejagham - a duchy, which covers areas of large number of smaller tribes on the edge of our map bordering the Igbos from the east.

In the Niger delta there is the new kingdom of Benin - even smaller, but even more influential kingdom of the Edo people. It's territory is small, though, so to be slightly larger, it also includes the duchy of Ijaw, named after the Ijaw people. But now let's move on to the completely newly overhauled areas to the north of these 2 kingdoms.

Banzaland is based on the Hausa concept of Hausa vs. Banza states. Its de jure duchies are the 3 of the most stable Banza kingdoms: Zamfara, Kebbi and Nupe, plus it also includes Borgu, a kingdom which is usually mentioned among Banza states.
Another of the Banza states was Kwararafa - a kingdom of the Jukun people, which was in the Benue valley and expanded from its 11th century origins in Upper Kwararafa downstream.

I was able to add all these kingdoms only by adding far more counties and baronies than we have in the vanilla.

All the red underlined baronies are new, the blue ones are renamed.

On the counties section you could see that number of counties was also added to Hausaland, which received another small overhaul:

With this great many new baronies and counties, I was able to finally break the overextended Hausa and Nupe cultures into something slightly better, so there are 2 new cultures in the area, the Akpoto and the Jukun:

These are the biggest changes. However, there are few small adjustments. Firstly, in the Niger bend area, I not only adjusted the Songhay area, but also added one more barony and county to the Gurma area:

And lastly I made several adjustments to the Ghana/Wagadu area

 

[elvain]

the mod has been updated, you can check it here: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2416949291 The new version includes overhauls of:
- Niger bend areas (Gurma and Gur kingdoms, as well as kingdoms of Jenne and Songhay)
- Kanem and western Bornu areas
- cultural overhaul of the Sahel - 2 new heritages (Saharan + Gur) and 7 new cultures (Zarma, Kibsi, Lobi, Kurumba, Dagomba, Gbagyi and Bade/Bedde), redistribution of the Sahelian (now Ayneha) and Mande groups

(all changes of the Sahel after the 1.4 update - the new counties/duchies and baronies marked

(overhaul of Sahelian cultures - all the new cultures underlined, you can see borders of old/vanilla cultural heritages how they now look in IBL. The 2 new heritages marked)

- Eastern Maghreb
- few dozen new playable dynasties in few dozen new and old counties in the Maghreb and the Sahel hundreds new characters
- improved genealogies of most Berber tribes in the Maghreb, where many of the main confederations now work as dynasties and their tribes as their dynasty houses

(IBL vs vanilla map of Maghreb with new counties marked)

(map of playable characters in 1066. Newly playable characters added to IBL are marked)

(map of playable characters in 1066. Newly playable characters added to IBL are marked)

(the new IBL dynasty tree of the Zanata dynasty. The central part shows expanded genealogy of the Maghrawa tribe. The other lines show other Zanata tribes - Banu Ifran and its sub-tribe Banu Warku; Banu Wanzamar, Maranjisa, Miknasa, Banu Rashid etc.)

- lastly there is new empire of Lower Niger, which includes kingdoms of Benin, Nri, Banzaland and Yorubaland.

Now, what's to be expected from Ibn Battuta's Legacy next?

First I will take a short break, but I don't think I'll be able to stay away from maps and map editing, so I'll keep working on another update...
I do have some plans (see below) and also if you have some particular suggestions (+ sources) about some regions, please feel free to share them and I will gladly take look at them to expand IBL.
Also if you'd have some suggestions and sources for the areas mentioned below, they will be more than appreciated.

Now finally, what's the plan?
- Firstly I will come back to Europe for a while and do some work there. I've received some great suggestions to improve Carinthia and Low countries. In order to connect the Carinthian overhaul to my previous work in Bohemia and Hungary/Slovakia, I will most probably also look at Austria for potential additions. Also, I can't rule out looking into Germany as well.

- additionally - there are 2 more parts of Sahel which still need some additional research:
a) the Banza area south of Hausaland, especially the areas between Benue river and southern Hausaland. I already researsch to add a new culture there and replace the Hausa outside Hausaland. The work has already been started...
b) the Darfur corridor between Darfur and Wadai. As side effect of my research in other areas, I found out some nice sources, which should help me improve the cultural setup and hopefully also add some provinces there.

Lastly, to keep with the mod's name, I think I will look at Arabia. I came across some sources, which will allow some minor additions to the region, so this is one of areas I would like to look at in the near future.

Some more potential areas of interest?
- Sicily, France, Baltic area

 

[elvain]

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.