[MOD] La Couronne des Alpes / The Alpine Crown : a large scale map and overhaul mod

[Arko]

La Couronne des Alpes / The Alpine Crown

Hi everyone ! You'd likely know me from my other modding projects, the "Arkopack" and "Les Trois Tours".
Today I am coming with another and quite big project called "La Couronne des Alpes", or "The Alpine Crown" in English.
You can either call it LCDA or TAC or whatever you'd find good to use over time.



THE MOD

This mod brings a very large scale map focused on the region of the Alps and unique mechanics.


WHY ?

First, it is more or less my originating region, so I know it quite well and bringing up to life those magnificient mountains is an awesome project.
Next comes the historical context of the region in the middle ages: Until 1032, existed the Rodolphian kingdom of Burgundy, that more or less in name came to the Holy Roman Emperor. In name because the emperor had very grasp over the region, even none for most parts.
That is were it becomes interesting : it offers a very sandboxy playground of independant lordships that is already nice in vanilla game. Historicaly it brought up entities like Savoy, Dauphiné, Swiss confederacy... So let's see what you'll do there.
Finally, such scale permit to specialze gameplay, f.e. there's no need to have a generic feudality that have to fit either Scandinavia, Italy, HRE, Spain etc. Having no pagans, nomads or a lot of religions allows to focus on the region and its dynamics and flavour.


A BIT OF HISTORY :

I started working on a similar project back in the days for CK1... that proved being not very modding-friendly in regard to the map and was definetly very limitative feature-wise.
I initiate the new project in 2012, as a full overhaul this time. I soon split the project in two : "Les Trois Tours" that represents a bit part of the gameplay, and the map I more or less stalled until now, updating it over patches but not really expanding it.
Ii've recently came back to it, updated it, made a lot of cleaning, a lot of feature design with the great help of new vanilla features (tributaries, offmap power etc.)
Lastly I dedicated a lot of time into porting the initial map from 2048*2048 into 3072*3072, well I only ported already drawn provinces, all the rest was done again from scratch (topology and such).


FEATURES :

• a large scale map that runs from Provence to the Konstanz lake, on both sides of the Alps (the size it 3072*3072 pixels, vanilla is 3072*2048)
• First bookmark will be 1032, I'll try to spread the playable period until ~1400/1500
  
• full historical and detailled setup (as much as sources can bring on such scale by the way)
  
• playable inland republics
• alliances system to simulate the swiss confederacy formation, its politics and its satelites
• regional and medieval flavour (abbeys, wälser migration, passes, dioceses... )
  
• interacting with The Holy Roman Empire through an offmap power panel (à la China in vanilla)

THE DEVELOPMENT :

Currently the mod is at an alpha state. A small part is playable, features are incomplete for most. I'll keep you informed through previews and DevDiaries.
I'll bring soon a test version.


PLAY !

(Download link will come later)


MODS COMPATIBILITY & RECOMMANDATION :

The mod is designed to work, and will require L3T. Arkopack CoA will likely be required too.
It is likely that I'll distribute everything into a single package. Workshop is an option either, I have not decided all the details yet.
As an overhaul mod, It won't work with most mods.


CONTRIBUTE !

You are a modder and interested into this project ? Contact me if you want to contribute.
Usual work tools are Github and Slack, a dedicated google map to compile historical research.


If you want to support the project :

 

[Arko]

reserved for download link and changelogs.

 

[Arko]

DevDiaries index

• THE MAP
• THE TITLES
• Drawing the map
  

 

[Arko]

DRAWING THE MAP

Still a bit on the development tools side, let's talk about Border gore historical map conception.

To draw borders and find historical holdings for the mod, I am collecting a lot of data. I am retrieving all these into a google "My map".
For the Swiss region for example, a wonderful source is the trilingual "Historical dictionary of Switzerland" (DHS). It permits to affect almost the tiniest village to its medieval local power.

Let's see what it gives in the works.

Basically, orange castle are.. castles, blue neo-classic style icons are cities, purple "M" are monasteries, crosses are bishoprics, horses commandries, generic blue points geographical marks to help fixing borders or general infos.
All of these are entries with some data or links or even local maps.

To illustrate a bit further the process, here is how I "compose" a map province.
With keeping in mind the big scheme of historical bigger entities (counties) I have to divide into provinces, trying to keep their size province wise reasonnable (there will be quite diversity there though).
I am starting with local powers, trying to spot the important one(s) within an area.
Then trying to scope their extension and possessions, those that could fit within their area, and secondary ones that could be within another province as a secondary holding f.e.).
The composed provinces can be more or less large or small, compact or not, depending of the powers fluctuating within the period in there. Usually tricky choices to do in terms of what representing and abstracting or ignore.
In above example example, at the north in purple area, you have the swiss city of Fribourg, a new city founded in 1157. There's no way it can be there from start before that date. So it does require to get a setup that fit the era before (with various lordships, imperial influence, bishop power etc.) and the era after until it became a free-city and a state as a swiss canton later on. A nice headache !