Test Mod Add-On - Updated Borders

[queermobile]

Not sure about Inchfield being specifically what they held, but I know the game gives it to them until after Roberts rebellion as they were stripped of all but 1/10 of their lands by Aerys immediately preceding the rebellion. House Inchfield hides out in b_boningale until that point.

Would have to agree with above about a lord paramount of the crown lands, too; dragonstone specifically only has the few houses sworn to it that it has now (Velaryon, Celtigar, Bar Emmon and then Sunglass and Rambton who are both hiding out in baronies on dragonstone because we have no idea where they are in the lore as of yet. Hopefully it will be revealed eventually because in game terms House Sunglass should be counts, as Rambton is sworn to them.)

Excited to try out your fix! I'm without internet until tomorrow however because the snowstorm delayed the install man.


Edit: oh, and I am definitely jumping the gun on this, but as I'm rereading ASOS right now, I wanted to suggest that the Westerlings probably be reduced to a single county duchy; they were described as being so impoverished that their castle is crumbling around them. In game currently they have a three county duchy with the Baneforts under them, but the Baneforts are described as influential; one of the main vassals of the Westerlands. I would probably give them a Banefort duchy which includes that other county which is currently in the crag.

 

[Almaron]

Hmm, good point...okay, for now I think I'll restore Dragonstone as a Kingdom, and leave it at that...that way, Dragonstone can have other lords sworn to it over the course of the game, and it can also be marked as one of the most important titles in Westeros...plus it'll mean that Stannis and Renly are the same rank when the war breaks out, and...well, if Dragonstone goes independent with the other Lords, it'll mean that you can let the AI worry about getting those forces to shore! But enough of that; I'll leave Dragonstone for now, and come back to it once I've got the de jure/de facto setup sorted.

With regards to the Westerlings, I agree; I did want to replace them with the Baneforts, but was hesitant to change the Duchy or add a new one when I was first editing the mod...partly because I wasn't sure which Lords were more prominent than whom, but also because I was going for compatibility with the base game. With this new version, all bets are off; I'm wanting to change a fair bit! Having "the Banefort" as the prominent Duchy instead of "the Crag" makes more sense historically, as the World of Ice and Fire states that this was once a petty Kingdom ruled by the "Hooded King"...the Westerlings may have been their vassals, or another Petty Kingdom, and they're certainly listed as one of the principal bannermen, and thus deserve a ducal title, but since it's not clear whether the Westerlings eclipsed the Baneforts or not in the past, "the Banefort" should take priority and be the landed title, while "the Crag" is titular.

 

[Almaron]

Here's a quick preview of the map I'm working on at the moment. It's VERY much in the draft stages, but it gives a good example of what I'm working towards;

Now, as noted, I'm still figuring out just how to set things up, but at the moment, what I've done is mark each house with certain punctuation symbols to indicate what needs to be done...and I've just noticed I've left a few off, and don't have time to fix that before leaving for work. <facepalm> Okay, well, I'll fix those when I go back to editing this. But basically, an asterisk indicates that the name or house is an original one rather than a canonical one (Crow's Barrens, Hardvale, Midlor Point and Darkvale should have them), a plus sign indicates the place is canon, but the location is uncertain, and a hash sign indicates that the location is wrong (Upcliff should actually be one of the Fingers, because the seat of the family is said to be on Witch Isle; located somewhere to the Northeast). Now, the colouring system at the moment shows the houses (and their vassals) explicitly said by the original Game of Thrones appendix and the World of Ice and Fire book to be the principal lords of the Vale, whom I plan to give Ducal tier titles to (Grey, on the other hand, indicates either a ruling house, or a Knightly House, who will remain independent, but at Count tier). I know this won't be 100% accurate (House Sunderland of the Sisters rules over all three islands, so it needs to hold a Duchy), but I consider it a good starting point. The next step from there will be to assign bonus vassals to them...again, not entirely accurate, but with the vassal limit in place, if each lesser lord at Count level was independent, then the rulers would quickly be overwhelmed. Now, as you can see, most of the locations that have been confirmed are in the southeastern part of the Vale, while we don't have that many in the north. With this in mind, I plan to shift a few of the principal lord houses (Egen, Templeton, Hersy) around a bit, so that they can fill the empty spots in the north.

I should also note that there are going to be a few odd borders, no matter what we do...House Royce, for instance? Canonically, their vassals include House Coldwater and House Tollet...which you'll see aren't connected to them at all. As illogical as this seems, you need to remember that House Royce briefly united all of the Vale under a First Men King in an attempt to defeat the Andals, so this will be a leftover from that point in time (in fact, the World of Ice and Fire history notes that the Royces got the Redforts, Hunters, Belmores, Coldwaters and Upcliffs on their side; evidently the Hunters and Belmores stopped being their vassals in the aftermath, though). And House Corbray must have held Midlor Point, because the founder of House Baelish was in their service before being granted land (and this too makes sense, because House Corbray united the Fingers under their rule before the Royces showed up).

It's...complicated. But it's going to be fun to figure out!

 

[queermobile]

I think that the Westerlings should definitely have a single county duchy/titular duchy on the sole basis that they were known to have married frequently into the Lannisters and at least once into the Targaryens. I'm not sure what exactly their "deal" is... It would seem that once upon a time they would have been rather wealthy; The Crag is fairly large and strategic, they simply cannot afford to maintain it anymore, and it seems to have been that way for quite some time. It also said that they only were able to contribute around 50 soldiers to Robb...but is that because they're basically barons, or is it because their troops were off with Tywin? So many questions.

I also had a bit of an idea concerning the Sunglasses, which may or may not be appropriate. Sweetport Sound is simply listed as being in the Bay somewhere, and as Driftmark, Claw Isle and Dragonstone are the only islands listed, and all seem to be the territory of single families, that must mean they're somewhere on the mainland...perhaps it's reasonable to split the province of Sharp Point a little and put the Sunglasses as counts there? I was thinking they would basically be a little enclave carved out there, facing into the bay, with the remainder being left to the Bar Emmons, especially the tip of the Hook, as that's specifically where their castle is listed as being.


I'm wondering if the Corbrays should move north a little and become dukes of the fingers, holding Midlor Point instead of the Arryns?

Edit: Remembered to actually bring my laptop with me to campus today, and it seems that whatever you changed did fix that bug. Excellent!

 

[Almaron]

Hmm, yes, I'd like for Sweetwater Sound to be its own province, but I'm a bit hesitant to add new counties at the moment...

I'm thinking I'll make them the Dukes of the Fingers in the end...annoyingly, Coldwater Burn is smack bang in the middle of it, but I'll see what I can do. Might be able to redraw some of the borders a bit...

 

[Almaron]

Alright, starting to make some progress...so, as noted, the plan is to give all of the houses described as "Principal Bannermen" or whose shields are shown in the World of Ice and Fire book Ducal titles, and then vassalise just about every other ruler (with the exception of landed knights (effectively Dukes without the title), island groups like Skagos and the Shield Islands, and places like the Northern Mountains who are better off not united). I'm only about halfway there in my concept at the moment, as you can see (I should note this version lacks labels, because I'm still shifting around places here and there), but I have presently marked the lands of every one of these important houses (and coloured in the areas that won't be united simply for neatness' sake).

As you can see, places like the North, the Westerlands and Dorne have so far transitioned to this setup fairly well, while others are still a bit sketchy...however, the good thing is in the bulk of these lands, the houses marked as "Principal" haven't had their capitals defined, so it's possible to move them around and thus fill in the gaps (for instance, the rulers of the areas near the Green and Blue Fork are currently unknown, but after we take all of the principal lords of the Riverlands and extend their borders to include the provinces right next to their capital, we're left with House Darry controlling the south part of the Green Fork, and House Ryger with no lands at all...so Houses Darry and Ryger can take the Green and Blue Fork).

Hopefully I'll have a labelled map when I next have something to post; once I've figured out the ideal setup of all these provinces and duchies (both de jure and de facto), I'll redraw the map somewhat, and THEN I'll release an updated map. The mod might take a while to update, though, as that's a LOTTA files to update...

 

[queermobile]

The North looks particularly nice (gentle reminder about Moat Cailin, though)! My one thing is that I wouldn't say Landed Knights are dukes. They are without doubt count level; there are some that are quite influential, but they do not have the legal authority to pass laws or judgement within the lands they govern on behalf of their noble liege. The awoiaf wiki actually has an excellent page on the differentiation between the various kinds of Knights.
A notable example of a previously noble house being demoted to landed knighthood would be the Osgreys being vassals of the Rowans now.

 

[Almaron]

Oh, no, that's what I meant; when I said they'd be like Dukes without the title, I meant that they'd control a lot of land and be independent of another duke. Oh, and don't worry about Moat Cailin; it's doing to be made into a separate Duchy spanning the Kingsroad that passes through the Neck; House Reed will get the south bit, and House Stark the north bit (Moat Cailin), and that'll stop the Starks giving it up.

 

[Almaron]

Ah, now that I look at it again, the Stormlands might not be so hard to fix; two of those noble houses marked on the map (Houses Penrose and Staedmon) have no confirmed location, so I can shift them to the northwestern Stormlands to fix things. The Reach is similar; House Vyrwel (presently that tiny green province next to the Oldtown blob) has no confirmed location, so I can shift it somewhere to the north...hmm, this will still likely lead to some massive de facto Duchies in the area. Then again, the Reach is insanely powerful and House Rowan is said to be warden of the Northmarch, which would presumably cover the northern border with the Westerlands, so it could work...methinks some testing will be needed.

 

[queermobile]

Yeah, the Rowans are probably the most powerful family in the reach after the Tyrells and Hightowers. No one else seems to even come close. The North March/Red Lake/Oceanroad borders are probably fairly close to reality, i would think. It's too bad he won't ever release a map with CK2 in mind

 

[Almaron]

Hmm...might have found a setup which will work, actually, but I'll need to shift around a LOT of the provinces; expanding Red Lake's territory and shunting the tiny Northmarch provinces to the east. Currently working on that now...well, all of the provinces, really! The North, Iron Islands, Vale and Dorne are done, and the Riverlands and Crownlands probably won't take much longer to complete, so it's really just the Westerlands, Stormlands and the Reach that will take some time.

Oh, and I found a way to fix the borders in the Vale that make the Royce/Corbray vassal borders look nicer...if you look at the text for House Baelish, it notes that their house is on the smallest of the Fingers...so I split the two fingers to the south apart, made Midlor Point the smaller of the two, and gave the rest of what had originally been Midlor Point to Coldwater Burn. As a result, House Royce can control the top two fingers, and House Corbray the bottom two, which will also correspond with the de jure Duchy borders when I'm finished with them. In addition to that, I'm making sure that the borders can work with my other idea to add some extra Kingdoms into the game for pre-Conquest dates...

 

[Almaron]

Ah, I've figured out what to do now! Found a key quote in The Sworn Sword which notes as Dunk and Egg leave Coldmoat that "Summerhall is south." Now, if we take the map included with the graphic novel adaptation of the story as canon, then Coldmoat is somewhat northeast of Standfast, and the only place in the Reach that can be considered north of Summerhall (at bet it's northwest of Summerhall) is the part that borders the Riverlands...which makes sense; that'd be why it's called the Northmarch; it's the absolute northernmost part of the Reach. Goldengrove could potentially be considered a part of this vast Northmarch, but I think it more likely that they were separate, and their lords simply were fortunate enough to gain the title of Warden of the Northmarch when the Osgreys fell out of favour...suggesting that there aren't any other powerful lords between them and Standfast, which, again, makes sense, because no locations in this part of the Reach have been confirmed yet.

In any case, nearly done now; just a few messy borders in the Reach to tidy up, then the Stormlands, and then I'll put a big revised map online...adapting it to the mod will take a bit longer (some provinces have been moved around, so the in-game elements need to be moved around, the histories need to be changed, and a whole lot of new Duchies need to be added), but not too long, hopefully.

 

[Almaron]

Good lord, that took for-freaking-ever! The Stormlands ended up being ludicrously difficult because of all the mountains, meaning I had to constantly redraw provinces so that they conformed to the boundaries created by these mountains! Now, it probably still needs some tweaking in places, but for now, I think this will do! Oh, and as promised, I've done a map showing my proposed De Jure Kingdoms variant for the Pre-Conquest timeline...

...next step is putting all this into the game...

 

[queermobile]

At a glance, things look quite nice , though of course it'll have to be played to be sure.

What is that new duchy to the south of Oldtown?

Also, do you think you'll be implementing some type of Shattered World option to this to make the new Kingdoms more likely to appear?


Edit:

Was just inspecting this map, and was rather surprised to see where Baelish Keep is located...

http://awoiaf.westeros.org/images/e/e7/Map_of_westeros.jpg

I guess that would be considered the fifth of the fingers, then.

 

[Almaron]

Heh, very true! I should hopefully have some screenshots soon! Here's my "To-Do" list;
Titles, Dignity and Capitals Added: Stormlands and Westerlands remain.
Localised: No (won't take long, though; it's just adding names to a list)
Colours Updated: No (again, won't take long; just need to spend time in Photoshop experimenting)
Shields Added: No (yet again, won't take long; can just copy the county shields and make them duchy shields)
History Updated: No (...this is the hard bit; a lot of lieges need to be shuffled around, and some province histories need changing too!)
In-Game Positions Fixed: No (another slow bit...)
Kingsroad Network Fixed: No (urgh, easy, but boring; a lot of copying and pasting...)
Summerhall Event Fixed: No (this won't take long; this will just stop Summerhall from becoming a De Jure part of the Crownlands, which looks truly awful in-game at the moment)
De Jure Kingdoms Added: No (see below)

It's going to be Three Towers...in some places, the de_jure borders represent the ducal situation that will exist in the game, but in others, I've added new states for gameplay purposes. Oldtown was a bit too big and the shape of it meant it didn't work well with duchies drifting over time, which many of the duchies here have been drawn to work with...

Hmm...I'd like to, but I fear it might be beyond my coding abilities; I'd need to add a whole new start date and come up with new lords for the earlier times in addition to everything else...at the moment, the plan is to simply update the Bleeding Years start date to have the De Jure Kingdoms existing alongside the De Jure Empires...if a state breaks free, they can form one of these Kingdoms! And to ensure it doesn't cause trouble with later dates, when Aegon shows up, the event that annexes an Empire to Westeros will also update the Kingdoms (and all of the Lord Paramount titles will exist in this setup anyway, so that should ensure there's not an issue with the event)...

Although I'm leaving it in for now, I'm very tempted to get rid of the element that requires you to actually control a county directly to form a duchy; this could lead to trouble down the line if a King can't form new Duchies to group his vassals together...

 

[queermobile]

I wholeheartedly agree with the duchy creation bit. As it is now, I console myself county titles to create the duchies and then give it back to the original owners (especially in the reach, the only ones I ever leave independent are the Shield Isles lords because they are a huge nuisance as a duchy).

As for the Summerhall as part of Crownlands thing, it was done a few months ago because as part of the Stormlands it could never be used as it was historically; after Summerhall was established it was given to younger Targaryen sons, but in the game the Baratheons would declare war on whoever held it every five years on the dot and spam you with transfer vassalage requests in the meantime.

If you gave me a list of what provinces need the road updates, I could do it today while free, I'm sure. It doesn't take terribly long.

 

[Almaron]

I think I'll code it in, but then add hash keys in front of everything to disable it, while making that easy to reverse...

Hmm...I can see the necessity for it, but it just looks so awful with the current province setup; this tiny little purple dot in the middle of the Stormlands! There must be another solution...

Argh, darnit; I would, but I need to leave shortly and I haven't written the list! I'll see what I can do when home, though...

Was just inspecting this map, and was rather surprised to see where Baelish Keep is located...

http://awoiaf.westeros.org/images/e/e7/Map_of_westeros.jpg

I guess that would be considered the fifth of the fingers, then.

Huh? Let me see...

Hmm, don't think that's really canon; looks like they've taken a few guesses. In fact, they have; Tarbeck Hall's in the wrong place, and Stokeworth should be north of Rosby, since Princess Rhaenyra went from King's Landing to Rosby to Stokeworth and then Duskendale during the Dance at one point...

I should note I was actually more tempted to place Baelish's home on the tiny peninsula near Pebble...it's said that his home is on the smallest of the Fingers, after all...

 

[Almaron]

Although to be fair, I'm planning to revamp the Lord setup anyway so that for most of the game, the duchies exist and are held by the lords in that area, so in most places, it might not be problem...at first, I guess.

Hmm...with that in mind, would it really be a bad thing if Summerhall was sworn to Storm's End? The title will still remain held by the Targaryens, and thus revert to the crown if it dies out, just as it did in the books...or wait, would it? Argh, I need to test this...although, actually, I might have a solution. I've mentioned that I want to keep Dragonstone extant as a Kingdom within the Crownlands so that it can actually have states sworn to it (and thus represent Stannis' position at the start of the War of the Five Kings a bit better); perhaps a de jure Kingdom of Summerhall would help? It'd still look a bit ugly, but it'd be less noticeable thanks to the colour of the state, and as a Kingdom, it would answer directly to the King on the Iron Throne...

 

[queermobile]

Yeah, Summerhall would revert to the Baratheons if the line there died out. The other problem is that Lords Paramount absolutely love to execute or banish vassals for doing asinine things like plotting to replace a council member; it's just better to have them under your direct control for safety. A kingdom of Summerhall could work, and for some reason I believe it might actually already exist in the game as a titular kingdom? I think I remember someone talking about it on the Citadel forums recently.

I actually do quite like what you did with Baelish Keep the other day; I've always thought it bizarre for the Donningers to control the entirety of that two-forked finger.

Edit: a Titular Kingdom of Summerhall title does exist in the common/landed titles/TK_westeros folder. Not sure why it's never used.

 

[blackninja9939]

The reason summerhall is sworn to king's landing is cause otherwise there are negative opinion modifiers towards the king for people desiring to control it etc even though in lore people where generally fine with the king having it as the summer house