Minor British Province Reworks

[Fishman786]

Tiny changes to England that could make the game a bit nicer/more authentic:

- Re-name "Derby" to "Nottingham" and add a level 2 fort there. The city of Nottingham had (and still has) a larger population than Derby and included the world-famous Nottingham Castle, a massive set of fortifications which were used in earlier times to command the midlands and which became the starting point of the English civil war when the king raised his standard there. The castle was repeatedly besieged during the civil war, and although it never fell to the enemy it received significant damage and was later demolished. On the other hand Derby didn't have as much pre-industrial significance.

- Move the natural harbour/trade centre in Lincolnshire up north to Hull. It's not clear what this harbour represents, the Wash is a sandy, shallow bay surrounded by fens and hardly a good place for shipping, and the Lincolnshire coast further north is also flat, marshy and vulnerable to storm surges. Hull on the other hand was an important centre of commerce (and later industry) sitting on the estuary of the Humber, a river with tributaries that link much of the north and the east midlands.

- Add a natural harbour to Chester to represent Liverpool. Liverpool is obviously a big city today, but unlike others such as Birmingham and Manchester it actually had a long pre-industrial history as a commercial centre. Liverpool was heavily involved with shipping to and from the new world, and unfortunately with the African slave trade as well.

- Move the castle in Montgomery to Gwynedd to represent Caernarfon Castle, another massive medieval fortress. This makes it less useful in game, but players usually delete the welsh fort anyway.

 

[BalticM]

Nice suggestions, or actually I would call it corrections. One of the kind which simply should be implemented to the game right away.

And I would think that Hampshire should also have small center of trade. Right?

 

[Fishman786]

Nice suggestions, or actually I would call it corrections. One of the kind which simply should be implemented to the game right away.

And I would think that Hampshire should also have small center of trade. Right?

Sounds good as well.

 

[Mingmung]

Question; I've been "fact-checking" the Spain-, Poland- and Denmark-patch. One thing all three of them have in common is the frequent mistake that cities have been placed in the wrong location (not just by an inch) or the wrong naming of provinces.

How is England (and Britain to an extent) doing, for that matter? I know that France still has some mistakes, but Britain doesn't seem to have any or many, at quick glance that is.

 

[Fishman786]

Question; I've been "fact-checking" the Spain-, Poland- and Denmark-patch. One thing all three of them have in common is the frequent mistake that cities have been placed in the wrong location (not just by an inch) or the wrong naming of provinces.

How is England (and Britain to an extent) doing, for that matter? I know that France still has some mistakes, but Britain doesn't seem to have any or many, at quick glance that is.

Accurate city placement in England is pretty hard owing to the lack of space from the small provinces. Often you need to fit a port, a name, a city and a bunch of other map items like missionaries etc in a tiny space. So I think that's mostly good enough.

Province-wise there could be a few improvements but it's hardly the worst part of the map.
- The biggest one is having Derby instead of Nottingham, a mistake that exists in CK2 as well, and which I like to put down to Paradox's Scandinavian fascination in jest, but which I can't explain seriously. Maybe it's just a shorter name and easier to fit?
- Norfolk ought to be split between Norfolk and Suffolk, with Essex moved out of the east Anglia area into whatever one London's part of. Obviously both of those provinces should be fairly low dev at the game start since they're pretty swampy low-lying places, but maybe a small flavour event could represent the coming of Dutch engineers who drained the fens there and made them more productive?
- Mann should just be Man.
- Scarborough can be re-named to "North Riding". Making York and Hull into West and East ridings respectively might not be necessary since short recognisable city names are probably more user-friendly for people, but for the sake of consistency maybe it's a good idea. It also gets around the problem of having York itself stay prominent for the whole game, when in reality the city declined to marginal importance whilst Sheffield and other towns grew in the run-up to the industrial revolution.
- The situation in the west Midlands is awkward, since there are a lot of small quite distinct counties there and Birmingham's growth hasn't started at the beginning of EU4. Maybe there could be a trade emporium in the Coventry province to represent the possibility of Birmingham's appearance there. I don't know if we have anyone on the forum who is an expert in medieval west midlands' demography, but if we do then I advise them to find a more interesting hobby wonder what their opinion is on which towns ought to have the provinces of Shewsbury and Coventry named after them.

 

[Trin Tragula]

To some extent things like province names are governed by design philosophy as much as anything.
The ridings are clearly there as you say, but on principle the map tries to avoid using east/west/north/south in province names.

The nudging of cities to be as close to the names capital of a province is also generally not adhered to. The wish has often been in the past to make sure they don’t obscure province names and other things more than anything (personally I do like when they are close to the province capital, but since this can change depending on start date or actions in game it’s not always possible).
Shapes can also at times be distorted for clarity of adjacency (connections need to be clear and more than one or two pixels) or size. London has had to eat some of it surroundings for instance, distorting the region a bit.

Now that said provinces should absolutely always contain the city they are named for, and it’s fine to argue that they should be named after another constituent city than they currently are.
Adding more trade centers is always a question of balance but moving around existing ones can always be considered (and so can adding new ones but the argument needs to be made specifically for why an additional one is needed).

Tagging @neondt for consideration of suggestions in detail

 

[Trin Tragula]

I will add that the province files for England *should* have comments in then on what they’re supposed to be covering in terms of counties, etc.

 

[rho]

If we're doing minor nitpicks over the British portion of the map, I have a few of my own (extremely minor) ones to add.

* The border between Lancashire and Chester ought to be along the River Mersey, though I appreciate that this might not be possible due to size constraints and having to fit the city, port and name.

* The terrain of Cumbria should be hills. It's the most mountainous region of England, and is hillier than the adjacent East March and West March provinces.

* Meanwhile, I'm not sure that Aberdeen should have hills as its terrain. While there definitely are hills/mountains in the area depicted in the game province, the "core" of the province is the coastal lowlands around the city of Aberdden itself. There's a reason why the area is considered part of the Scottish Lowlands both in-game and in real life. It should probably be either grassland or forest, though I'm not sufficiently familiar with the history fo the region to say which.

* I'm not 100% sure on this one, but I believe that the name "Cumbria" is anachronistic, since we're too late to be referring to the Brythonic kingdom of the Old North, but too early to be referring to the modern ceremonial county. I believe a more appropriate name would be either Cumberland or simply Carlisle.

* East March and West March really should be renamed. East and West aren't good for province names, and nor is March, since it often won't be anywhere near a border as the game draws on. Dumfries would be an obvious alternate name for West March, and East March could become Jedburgh, Roxburgh or Berwick.

* Inconsistencies in the province namings as whether to use the -shire suffix or not. We have Lincolnshire, Lancashire and Ayrshire, but we also have Cambridge, Chester, Perth, and others. These should be standardised to either all use city names (Lincoln, Lancaster, Ayr) or all use shire names (Cambridgeshire, Cheshire, Perthshire, etc.). Or at the very least, change Lincolnshire to Lincoln so it gets a larger font size that is actually readable.

* Pale should specifically be an English regional name for the province, with either Dublin or Meath being the default. It's always so odd to still see it being referred to as Pale after it's taken by another country (other than Ireland, which gets its own name).

 

[Zanko Hale]

* I'm not 100% sure on this one, but I believe that the name "Cumbria" is anachronistic, since we're too late to be referring to the Brythonic kingdom of the Old North, but too early to be referring to the modern ceremonial county. I believe a more appropriate name would be either Cumberland is simply Carlisle.

You're 100% correct. The province ingame of "Cumbria" is the combination of historic Cumberland and Westmorland. I'd rename it to Cumberland as it was the larger of the two counties "Cumbria" makes and would be consitant with the naming of Northumberland adjacent to it.

 

[gronak]

Now that said provinces should absolutely always contain the city they are named for, and it’s fine to argue that they should be named after another constituent city than they currently are.

In that case, practically anything other than "Loch awe" would be a far better capital for Argyll - the settlement is only a few houses. Campbeltown would make a lot more sense, being the much larger settlement.

Also, Argyll would be better suited as a Highlands province too, a lot of steep mountains and glen's are present.

* East March and West March really should be renamed. East and West aren't good for province names, and nor is March, since it often won't be anywhere near a border as the game draws on. Dumfries would be an obvious alternate name for West March, and East March could become Jedburgh, Roxburgh or Berwick.

Completely agreed, I was campaigning for this since we found out to shortly after it's release.

* Meanwhile, I'm not sure that Aberdeen should have hills as its terrain. While there definitely are hills/mountains in the area depicted in the game province, the "core" of the province is the coastal lowlands around the city of Aberdden itself. There's a reason why the area is considered part of the Scottish Lowlands both in-game and in real life. It should probably be either grassland or forest, though I'm not sufficiently familiar

The actual province in game contains mountains, so I think hills represents it fairly. Most settlements in mountain provinces/highlands in europe are on a flat area for it. If it didn't contain the mountains, then I'd say grassland would be suitable.

 

[Calanon]

- Mann should just be Man.

No, it shouldn't. It only has one n if it's Isle of Man, otherwise it's Mann.

Some more changes:
-Capital of Cornwall should be Truro, not Penryn
-Devon's capital as Plymouth is okay, but Exeter would be more accurate
-Capital of Dorset should be Dorchester, not Weymouth
-Taunton is the county town of Somerset, but Bath does work
-Winchester or Southampton should be the capital of Hampshire, not Salisbury! Winchester was the county town but was in decline compared to Southampton during EU4's period; in addition Southampton was a major port so making it a CoT makes sense
-Capital of Sussex ought to be Chichester or Lewes, Hastings makes not one lick of sense
-Personally, I think Scarborough ought to become York, whilst York ought to become Leeds

 

[Mingmung]

@Trin Tragula I fully agree with you, one point though; having the capital in a completely different province is not the way to go. As well as capitals that get clearly confused with other important cities (like with Inowroclaw and Bydgoszcz)

I look at you, Notec and almost all Red Ruthenian provinces. As well as most of Moldavia.