Suggestions for Lithuania Flavour

[Voidness]

Dear Paradox,

I am a graduate student of Lithuanian history and I have spend countless thousands hours in EU4. For the occasion of upcoming patch, I would like to share few thoughts of mine how to easily improve Lithuania. I saw that you listen to community feedback and it encourages to make suggestions.

First of all, naming of provinces is a mess. Samogitia is English, Palenke is Lithuanian, Vilna is neither Polish nor Lithuanian, Kovno as well. Grodno is Slavic, etc. At some point in your patches it was fully Polish, then it was made Lithuanian and I was very happy and then again it was made into Polish. I guess it could have come from suggestions of Polish people, but who knows.
My suggestion would be to name provinces of Lithuanian culture in Lithuanian. Vilna -> Vilnius, Kovno -> Kaunas, etc. My argumentation is that at this time Lithuanian nobility was just starting to get Polonized and most of them spoke in Lithuanian. Polish Language radically increases as the time goes and maybe it would be a good idea to rename them to Polish once Poland finally enforces Commonwealth on Lithuania. Then Trakai should become Troki, etc, I am not good at Polish names.

Secondly, I really like how you increased autonomy on many provinces of Lithuania. I think it is a proper nerf to the country which was not very centralized. However, some numbers probably should be increased even more so. My suggestion is to slightly increase military development in Lithuanian provinces, especially Samogitia (Zemaitija) and Vilnius. My argumentation is that Lithuanian nobility was significant compared to other countries (around 10-15% of population) and their main service was war. Realiance on Slavic troops was much lesser, since that autonomy was a problem.

Thirdly, you have removed bunch of forts recently. While most of it is fine, however it is impossible to justify removal of castle from Vilnius. My suggestion is to bring it back. My argumentation is that Vilnius had system of three castles and later on a city wall. It held agaisnt numerous sieges of Teutonic order, raids from Golden Horde and later on against Moscovites up till it finally gave in in XVII century, during decline of PLC. Heres a picture of it
Fourth, my suggestion is to add fort and swamp terrain to Samogitia. My argumentation is that this part of Lithuania held for two hundred years agains't both German orders, mainly due to many small castles and swampy terrain where Germans (and their guests) would be ambushed by Lithuanians of inferior numbers and inferior equipment and beat those knights in battle. Defence in swap could represent it.

Fifth. I could come up with numerous events for Lithuania, if people in Paradox would be interested in receiving them. For example: prolonged peace in 16th century could lead to loss of military tradition and army size representing change nobility from warriors to (for lack of a better word) businessmen as it happened historically. Other events could be about Russian wars, problems with being in a union under Poland.

Sixth, if you do not need information about events, I wish to extend any help which might be required regarding Lithuania.

 

[Trin Tragula]

We are putting the fort back in Vilnius for the next patch.
As for province names:
It is of course always complicated to decide what language a province name should be in. The base name we try to have in whichever is the norm in English (but our map is old and not always consistent in that, and not all historical places have standard names in English). The game currently does support provinces changing names depending on who owns them though so if you supply us with a list of the Lithuanian provinces with Lithuanian names I am sure we can adapt them

 

[Mortheim]

Fifth. I could come up with numerous events for Lithuania, if people in Paradox would be interested in receiving them.

Just wrote them lol. Why hadn't do it already? This can increase chances fro getting more attantion to Lit.

 

[FleetingRain]

Question: do you think it would be acceptable for Lithuania to have 1-2 Romuva provinces, representing the Lithuanian Pagan minorities in the nation?

 

[Five_X]

Zemaitija should definitely be Romuva, maybe Memel as well but that's a bit of a stretch. There should also be some way for Lithuania to convert to pagan, since pagan zealot rebels can't force-convert countries.

Here's a fairly interesting read on the Christianization of Lithuania in EU4's time period: http://www.lituanus.org/1987/87_4_03.htm

 

[Voidness]

Question: do you think it would be acceptable for Lithuania to have 1-2 Romuva provinces, representing the Lithuanian Pagan minorities in the nation?

Sadly, I have to say "no" here. While there still were practices carried on up until 18th century, what religion represents in EU4 we cannot say that it is not christian. By EU4 standarts Samogitia is a recently converted province, where the clergy was removed, practices banned and Christian institutions established. For around 2 generations.

 

[FleetingRain]

Sadly, I have to say "no" here. While there still were practices carried on up until 18th century, what religion represents in EU4 we cannot say that it is not christian. By EU4 standarts Samogitia is a recently converted province, where the clergy was removed, practices banned and Christian institutions established. For around 2 generations.

But isn't the provincial religion representing the people? And even if there wasn't a single province with a majority pagan population, maybe abstracting the minorities spread out in Lithuania to be a majority in a single province (kinda like what they did with Jewish when it was added) would work.

Or is it that even the population had been properly converted/assimilated already?

 

[Voidness]

I was thinking about representing all the Romuvan leftovers by suggesting to make Samogitia Romuvan as well.. However, again, in EU4 terms there is no way to see how could a "religious revolt" could happen. If the nobility doesn't care and there is no clergy, there is not much difference in what the common folk believe. So I think it is a tiny bit too late to add Romuvan. Article provided above actually supports my opinion as the dates provided there are 60 years earlier than current EU4 start.

I will add more information (especially maps) and will try to come up with few events later on this week. Seeing how much Poland has (never played it) and how little Lithuania has, I will try to provide some simple events using other events as templates. For now, here is website by couple of my professors, which has some information in English. I would ask Paradox to look into castle entires, especially castle of Trakai which is said to be the biggest, most modern and important in XV century Lithuania. Even now it is quite impressive and is one of the main tourist attractions. Hope it's not agains't the rules to provide a link: http://viduramziu.istorija.net/pilys/murines-en.htm

After looking at PLC events, what I feel is sorely lacking is the notion of continuous crisis and political struggle agains't nobility in PLC.

 

[FleetingRain]

Well, in this case a Romuvan revolt would be akin to peasant revolts in a province, but admittedly they'd have a limited impact.

But yes, I'm interested in such material too, will read it later.

 

[Trin Tragula]

So, did you have a list of province name in Lithuanian?

 

[Matihood1]

So, did you have a list of province name in Lithuanian?

Before that, can we have a full list of provinces that are going to be added in the 1.22 patch so we could make dynamic Lithuanian names for them as well (Polish and Czech names too)?

 

[Voidness]

Here is the list. I will also add Polish, but don't count on it. I am also adding Lithuanian alphabet letters in case you decide to implement them. People usually skip ė for e and š for s, etc.
1. Vilna - Vilnius (Pol. Wilno)
2. Kovno - Kaunas (Pol, Kowno)
3. Zemaitija - Žemaitija
4. Trakai - Trakai
5. Braslaw - Branšau. However this province is very weirdly cut. It's 80% current Lithuania and 20% current Byelorusia, yet it has Lithuanian culture and Byelorusian capital. My suggestion would be to rename it to Utena or Biržai, biggest cities in that area.

From here non ethnic provinces of GDL in Lithuanian. Usually just adding "as" makes it Lithuanian:
6. Grodno - Gardinas (Belarus Grodna) 7. Palenkė - Palenkė (you got this one right) 8. Brasta - Brasta 9. Volhynia - Voluinė 10. Minsk - Minskas
11. Polotsk - Polockas 12. Vitebsk - Vitebskas 13. Smolensk - Smolenskas 14. Bryansk - Brianskas 15. Pinsk - Pinskas 16. Turov - Turovas 17. Zhitomyr - Žytomyras 18. Mazyr - Mozyrius 19. Kiev - Kijevas 20. Chernigov - Černigovas 21. Severia - Severija 22. Yedisan - Edisanas 23. Pereyslav - Perejaslavas 24. Kursk - Kurskas 25. Poltava - Poltava (same) 26. Cherkasy - Čerkasai 27. Bratslav - Braclavas 28. Ingil - Ingilas 29. Zaporozhia - Zaporožė 30. Kharkov - Charkovas 31. Rowne - Rivnė

Few Prussian provinces:
32. Konigsberg - Karaliaučius 33. Memel - Klaipėda (I could add more, but those would be names of Prussian tribes and it is slightly anachronistic)

Few Livonian provinces (you have some of them right, so I ommit them)
34. Mitau - Mitauja (I would rename it to Žiemgala) 35. Osel - Sarema 36. Reval - Revalis 37. Narwa - Narva 38. Dorpt - Dorpartas 39. Lettgalen - Latgala 40. Liefland - Vidžemė

I'm also adding map of Lithuanian "states" Voivodships in XVII century if you might need it. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e5/Lithuania_in_the_17th_century.png

That's it. Hope you will reconcider adding Trakai castle or Žemaitija caste. Also making Žemaitija into a swamp. Also some military development in Vilnius and Žemaitija (in exchange to tax or production, if need be).

 

[Voidness]

Two more things.

Two German orders never had a land connection. For this exact purpose, to unite both orders, so much blood was spilled. If I recall correctly, once Lithuania had an entry to the baltic sea in-game, but then it was taken away. I am really not sure about reasons for this. I could be argued in 14 century, but after Battle of Grunwald TEU had to renounce all their claims on Žemaitija, especially the coastal strip.

Also please reconcider adding Vilnius to Baltic Sea trade node, as it was before. Trade with Hanza League was always emphasized in this region, for this reason there were many Germans living in Vilnius. And I never heard about flourishing trade with Kiev.

 

[Matihood1]

31. Rowne - Rivnė

About Rowne, can we please have the default name of that province changed to Rowno? Rowne is the Polish spelling of the city name and most provinces in the Lithuanian area use Russian spelling as default. The dynamic Polish name for that province is already set (Równe) so changing the default name won't affect it. Perhaps you could also change the default name of the province Trakai to Troki just like Vilnius default name is Vilna and Kaunas is Kovno and then have Trakai as the dynamic Lithuanian name. This change is not necessary but it would be nice to keep consistency with other provinces.

 

[Voidness]

Em, Matihood1. I Lituanized all the province names, Podlostė - Palenkė and Rowne - Rivnė is the same case. As all the slavic names as well. Or am I missing your point?

 

[Matihood1]

Em, Matihood1. I Lituanized all the province names, Podlostė - Palenkė and Rowne - Rivnė is the same case. As all the slavic names as well. Or am I missing your point?

I'm asking Trin Tragula and I'm talking about the default names of the provinces, not the dynamic ones. Your suggestions will most likely be implemented as the dynamic Lithuanian names for those provinces while the default names will most likely be untouched. I shouldn't have quoted your post, I didn't think it would cause confusion.

 

[Trin Tragula]

You can see them all in the developer diary about the map
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...u4-development-diary-9th-of-may-2017.1020275/

 

[Matihood1]

You can see them all in the developer diary about the map
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...u4-development-diary-9th-of-may-2017.1020275/

It's true but a list would be much more convenient, if that's not a problem, of course. Right now we'd have to find all provinces manually by comparing the screenshots of the old map and the new map and it would take quite some time.

 

[PsysmicSound]

Also please reconcider adding Vilnius to Baltic Sea trade node, as it was before. Trade with Hanza League was always emphasized in this region, for this reason there were many Germans living in Vilnius. And I never heard about flourishing trade with Kiev.

I believe the developers decided a couple of patches ago that all provinces in a given state should be in the same trade node (and the same trade company or colonial region where applicable, though there's a few places where they 'missed a spot', so to speak). I guess it's to simplify things for players who don't have a real understanding of the geography of a particular area, so that they only need to take into account states rather than individual provinces when evaluating trade nodes and the like. Unfortunately, it means we miss out on details like the one you suggested. If you could convince them to reassign the entire state that Vilnius is in to the Baltic node, that would be much more likely to happen, though I suspect that might be considered to be too much of an unwanted nerf to an already weak node.

 

[AndrejK]

I was thinking about representing all the Romuvan leftovers by suggesting to make Samogitia Romuvan as well.. However, again, in EU4 terms there is no way to see how could a "religious revolt" could happen. If the nobility doesn't care and there is no clergy, there is not much difference in what the common folk believe. So I think it is a tiny bit too late to add Romuvan. Article provided above actually supports my opinion as the dates provided there are 60 years earlier than current EU4 start.

I will add more information (especially maps) and will try to come up with few events later on this week. Seeing how much Poland has (never played it) and how little Lithuania has, I will try to provide some simple events using other events as templates. For now, here is website by couple of my professors, which has some information in English. I would ask Paradox to look into castle entires, especially castle of Trakai which is said to be the biggest, most modern and important in XV century Lithuania. Even now it is quite impressive and is one of the main tourist attractions. Hope it's not agains't the rules to provide a link: http://viduramziu.istorija.net/pilys/murines-en.htm

After looking at PLC events, what I feel is sorely lacking is the notion of continuous crisis and political struggle agains't nobility in PLC.

Memel no way!Held by monastic order. Samogitia-maybe
I am also surprised Navahrudak hasnt been added as a privince. Indeed the city maintained its administrative function till 1939, as it was seat of interwar Polish voivodship