Map size - then and now

[Nick B II]

I know it's pointless, and everything's been said, but after reading 9 pages of this crap I'm going to post something goddamit.

I'd say the map should extend through Greater Iran simply to give the Moslems some actual depth to defend in. Just doing the KoJ and Byzantine Imperial borders in the East forces silly kludges like magical Moslem armies appearing. To reduce the processor hit the provinces in these areas should be very large physically, that way you only add 25 provinces to the game.

In the south all of Nubia should be included because playing Nubia is cool.

In terms of total province numbers a lot more are necessary. There's a lot more strategic depth in a CK where the King of Ireland actually has to have vassals because he can't rule 32 counties all by himself. It shouldn't make that much of a difference in processor performance. HoI3 has like 10,000 and it runs, which means a 4,000-5,000 province CK should run fine on current computers.

Nick

 

[Veldmaarschalk]

I know it's pointless, and everything's been said, but after reading 9 pages of this crap I'm going to post something goddamit.

I'd say the map should extend through Greater Iran simply to give the Moslems some actual depth to defend in. Just doing the KoJ and Byzantine Imperial borders in the East forces silly kludges like magical Moslem armies appearing. To reduce the processor hit the provinces in these areas should be very large physically, that way you only add 25 provinces to the game.

In the south all of Nubia should be included because playing Nubia is cool.

In terms of total province numbers a lot more are necessary. There's a lot more strategic depth in a CK where the King of Ireland actually has to have vassals because he can't rule 32 counties all by himself. It shouldn't make that much of a difference in processor performance. HoI3 has like 10,000 and it runs, which means a 4,000-5,000 province CK should run fine on current computers.

Nick

The problem with provinces in CK will be that each province is its own country (it has a tag). So you mustn't compare the total number of provinces, but the total number of countries.

HoI3 has about 100 countries, EUIII and V2 about 150 or so. With 3,000 provinces, CK2 will (or at least should be able to support) 3,000 countries.

If you f.e. try a EUIII mod which has added a lot of countries you will notice that those mods run much slower then the original game. But even those mods don't have more then a 1,000.

Probably the game-engine can be optimized for this, but this is still one of the biggest challenges for Paradox and I am very curious on how they solve this.

 

[SchwarzKatze]

The problem with provinces in CK will be that each province is its own country (it has a tag).

I must say that I've completely forgot about thato

 

[Veldmaarschalk]

Here a post by Balor/Johan posted in the Magna Mundi forum a couple of months ago.

Adding tags and provinces in any game which has "country vs country" checks or "province vs province" or "country vs province" causes insane performance problems, and is one of the major things we have always tried to optimise for. There is a reason why HoI3 has so few country tags when the amount of provinces.

As an example.

If you have 100 countries, and your advanced diplomatic AI takes 0.1 second to perform every "day" or "hour".

Then using 150 countries makes it take 0.225 seconds instead, 200 countries, 0.4 seconds, and 300 countries almost a full second.

With Ubik and his team moving alot of event things into the engine, I'd expect MM to be running as smoothly as EU3.

 

[unmerged(84239)]

I would prefer roughly the same map as CK1. Maybe cut a bit from the east.

What I would NOT prefer at all, is to add provinces for historical accurancy. (I have read in this topic an example of +5 to Luxemburg.) Accurancy is a good thing, but slowing down the game is not.


What I would rather like is to be able to do more things with the provinces.

 

[unmerged(59077)]

What I would rather like is to be able to do more things with the provinces.

Just like I asked last time - what, exactly?

Some concrete ideas should be inplace to increas depth if one is objecting to increase in width.

In a word, yes. The focus of this game is on medieval Europe. The Muslims are simply there as a foil

You know, so this keeps coming up. What says everyone we limit Crusaders to only kingdoms that ACTUALLY historically went on Crusades, make everyone else NPC, put PTI over Russia etc (have Novgorod as a place where the Tataro-Finnic Hordes spawn to provide a foil), and in fact make all crusades take place off the strategic map as a long-term prestige goal?

Keeps focus, keeps the game running fast. Win, no?

That's the sort of thing that is normally decided in the design phase, which happens before you announce a game. What is going on now is filling out the details in accordance with the design.

It is fun participating in these "what ifs?" and I have as much fun throwing around my preferences as anybody else, but a few people are acting as if these things are yet to be decided, and that's a scary delusion.

I personally treat these threads as a prelude to the modification effort. It's not a question of how limited the map is, it's a question of how limited it MUST be.

In that sense people proposing vaguely defined "depth" as the way to go are right; modders can modify and improve for years after release, but if you by definition cannot play as a non-Crusader, then there's no point even buying the game because no mod will save it.

 

[Nick B II]

I would prefer roughly the same map as CK1. Maybe cut a bit from the east.

What I would NOT prefer at all, is to add provinces for historical accurancy. (I have read in this topic an example of +5 to Luxemburg.) Accurancy is a good thing, but slowing down the game is not.


What I would rather like is to be able to do more things with the provinces.

It would partly be for accuracy, but mostly it would be due to the limitations of the game design.

A three-tier system with creatable titles is extremely elegant, but it is very bad at simulating places small kingdoms when there are only 1,000 provinces. Ireland had a High King (King tier), and 5 Province-Kings (Duke-tier). But with only 1,000 provinces in all of Europe Ireland only ended up with 14 provinces, which means the Dukes have an average of 2.8 provinces each.

Which means any Irish Count who manages to snag a second County can become a province-King, and any High King with a decent intrigue can get rid of the entire Irish aristocracy in 1300. Both promotion to province-King and eliminating the aristocracy should be very, very, very hard, but thanks to the limits of the game-engine both happen basically by default when a human plays in Ireland.

A 32-province Ireland would be a lot more realistic.

But to get a 32 province Ireland we need a lot more counties...

Nick

 

[Caranorn]

It would partly be for accuracy, but mostly it would be due to the limitations of the game design.

A three-tier system with creatable titles is extremely elegant, but it is very bad at simulating places small kingdoms when there are only 1,000 provinces. Ireland had a High King (King tier), and 5 Province-Kings (Duke-tier). But with only 1,000 provinces in all of Europe Ireland only ended up with 14 provinces, which means the Dukes have an average of 2.8 provinces each.

Which means any Irish Count who manages to snag a second County can become a province-King, and any High King with a decent intrigue can get rid of the entire Irish aristocracy in 1300. Both promotion to province-King and eliminating the aristocracy should be very, very, very hard, but thanks to the limits of the game-engine both happen basically by default when a human plays in Ireland.

A 32-province Ireland would be a lot more realistic.

But to get a 32 province Ireland we need a lot more counties...

Nick

It would be interesting to see more local input like yours. So far I was only assuming other regions in CK-I were as distorted as the two Lorraines were from my own experience. Playing on such a distorted map cannot lead to historically plausible results...

 

[unmerged(84239)]

Just like I asked last time - what, exactly?

When did we talk to each other?

 

[ComradeOm]

You know, so this keeps coming up. What says everyone we limit Crusaders to only kingdoms that ACTUALLY historically went on Crusades...

What European region or kingdom made absolutely no contribution to the Crusades? Iceland and Rus perhaps. We're talking about an era that saw Norwegians tromping around the Levant in 1110

 

[unmerged(59077)]

We're talking about an era that saw Norwegians tromping around the Levant in 1110

...amply represented by "Varangian mercenaries". No need to overdetail things.

 

[systemlvl]

...amply represented by "Varangian mercenaries". No need to overdetail things.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_Crusade

Limiting Crusades statically makes absolutely no sense. If a country didn't participate, plenty of noblemen did (and thus the possibility of the country (King) doing so was there as well). Limiting it a bit more dynamically could be good if implemented well though, i.e. putting some economic or military requirements etc.

 

[unmerged(59077)]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_Crusade

Limiting Crusades statically makes absolutely no sense. If a country didn't participate, plenty of noblemen did (and thus the possibility of the country (King) doing so was there as well).

...and yet we can't use the same reasons regarding the preservation or expansion the non-crusading portion of this almost wholly non-crusading game?

And didn't we agree to not use the "this is alt-history" as an argument?

Incidentally - still amply represented by "Varangian mercenaries" - sea battles do not count in CK, and they did largely end up in Byzantine service.

I mean, really. This is a game about Western Lords, as I keep hearing. Make England, France, Spain, Lombardy, Germany and the Low countries playable, and everyone else can be NPC and random spawns.

 

[systemlvl]

...and yet we can't use the same reasons regarding the preservation or expansion the non-crusading portion of this almost wholly non-crusading game?

If I understand you correctly (probably not), why can't we?

If you're referring to expanding gameplay for Muslims and pagans (i.e. sarcasm on your part (based on your post before this)), have patience. It will most likely come in an expansion.

If you want more action in mainland Europe, I wouldn't worry. Paradox usually never fails to first deliver in the Eurocentric department, and rightly so in most cases.

And didn't we agree to not use the "this is alt-history" as an argument?

Did we? I only see this being a realistic outcome, as all of the Clausewitz have been alternate history based so far. Of course, modding is always an option.

Incidentally - still amply represented by "Varangian mercenaries" - sea battles do not count in CK, and they did largely end up in Byzantine service.

I can only be optimistic, which means I will end up either be disappointed or pleased. Time will tell.

I mean, really. This is a game about Western Lords, as I keep hearing. Make England, France, Spain, Lombardy, Germany and the Low countries playable, and everyone else can be NPC and random spawns.

Again... sarcasm is hard to detect without indicators on the internet. But if you're serious, you could probably easily make such a mod when the game is released.

 

[unmerged(59077)]

Eh, my apologies. You got incidentally caught in an argument I was having with everyone at once.

I'm very inclusionist, of course, so this talk of limiting the scope annoys me. I hardly ever play in Western Europe anyway.

 

[Nick B II]

It would be interesting to see more local input like yours. So far I was only assuming other regions in CK-I were as distorted as the two Lorraines were from my own experience. Playing on such a distorted map cannot lead to historically plausible results...

The whole map is that way. RL Wallachia is 14 counties, but CK Wallachia is only 3. RL Wales had 13 Counties. In CK it has 6.

The internal dynamics of a realm with 13 counties are a lot more complex then CK allows.

Nick

 

[unmerged(2456)]

What European region or kingdom made absolutely no contribution to the Crusades? Iceland and Rus perhaps. We're talking about an era that saw Norwegians tromping around the Levant in 1110

Iceland could probably be dropped. Russia on the other hand had too big of an impact on eastern Europe to ignore.

The whole map is that way. RL Wallachia is 14 counties, but CK Wallachia is only 3. RL Wales had 13 Counties. In CK it has 6.

The internal dynamics of a realm with 13 counties are a lot more complex then CK allows.

Nick

There is also the size factor. Some counties would become so small it would be impossible to represent them without significantly blowing up the map far larger any other map Paradox has done to date.

 

[ComradeOm]

I mean, really. This is a game about Western Lords, as I keep hearing

Seez who?

The whole point of the Crusades was that anyone of any status could pick up their sword and set sail for the Holy Land. And they did in their hundreds of thousands from all over Europe. Hooray for holy war and whatnot. This is the basis for CK and this is what the engine (in the original at least) was designed to capture. If I play as a Norwegian count, or king, who decides to take up the cross then the game should allow for that

What it is not set up to model, unfortunately, is the same process from the Muslim perspective. Would I like the latter to be playable? Of course. I'd prefer however that P'dox set about getting the European model (the crusaders) working right before worrying about modelling the different set-up of the Islamic powers

Now given that the game is only really modelling medieval Europe, with the ROTW serving purely as a foil, it makes very little sense to expand the map out to India. If this changes, and Muslims do get the attention they deserve, then there's perhaps a case to be made

 

[joriandrake]

Iceland could probably be dropped. Russia on the other hand had too big of an impact on eastern Europe to ignore.
There is also the size factor. Some counties would become so small it would be impossible to represent them without significantly blowing up the map far larger any other map Paradox has done to date.

also, many times it just doesn't look right to use the artifical county borders, and it is better to go more with geographic ones.

 

[Arko]

There is also the size factor. Some counties would become so small it would be impossible to represent them without significantly blowing up the map far larger any other map Paradox has done to date.

maybe a way to attenuate the blowing up would be to have a distorted map (distorted = not on scale)
Afterall maps in this era were quite imprecise and mostly out of scale.
On design i really hope seeing a map less "satelite styled" and with more medieval flavor