Provinces and titles, plus naming forms.

[GaiusC]

N Africa is enough. Sure, there were Mali, Ghana, Songhai empires in the South, but they had no interaction with Europe, all was done through the Muslim N African states. And since you can only play Christian nations, so Europe, there's no need to incorporate them.
Otherwise, we might as well include Angkor

Your 2nd map is interesting and shows the whole Red Sea, Arabia and Persian Gulf, which is, to an extent, better than the current map.
That said, I really don't like having large provinces and a host of tiny little ones in some areas of Europe - I don't think it's logical and consistent to have to zoom to see some provinces, you should be able to constantly work at the same zoom level, without having to zoom in or out in some cases. (obviously, CK fails at this to a lesser extent, with the way the map is cut in Iceland, Nubia and N. Scandinavia )

 

[Mad King James]

N Africa is enough. Sure, there were Mali, Ghana, Songhai empires in the South, but they had no interaction with Europe, all was done through the Muslim N African states. And since you can only play Christian nations, so Europe, there's no need to incorporate them.
Otherwise, we might as well include Angkor

Your 2nd map is interesting and shows the whole Red Sea, Arabia and Persian Gulf, which is, to an extent, better than the current map.
That said, I really don't like having large provinces and a host of tiny little ones in some areas of Europe - I don't think it's logical and consistent to have to zoom to see some provinces, you should be able to constantly work at the same zoom level, without having to zoom in or out in some cases. (obviously, CK fails at this to a lesser extent, with the way the map is cut in Iceland, Nubia and N. Scandinavia )

There was lots of interaction between the Sahel and the north African coast, but that's not really a topic that most European history books focus on so I'm not surprised you've never heard of any. The history of Libya and Egypt is intimately tied to Chad and Sudan and Ethiopia, the history of Morocco and Algeria is intimately tied to Nigeria, Mali and Chad as well. This is ESPECIALLY true in the Crusades era.