The map - are changes possible?

[elvain]

Is there any chance that you would want to do anything with the map? And if yes, what would you need to do the change? Because if you would be willing to change it, I could give you suggestions for West Africa - paint the map for you and also do the dejure setup for you, possibly and if necessary also with holdings..

In fact, I would really like to change it for you, because when I checked it, I realized that somehow it is even worse and less accurate than vanilla, what I considered impossible.

Not only the connection was moved from its historical route across the Adrar plateau and relatively well-wealthy inland route to ever-deserted and virtually uninhabitable coast.
Furthemore, with one exception, not a single of added provinces makes any sense. Either they are complete fantasy ones (or named after some totally irelevant place in that region), or anachronistic (named after a modern city, but many of them are completely misplaced, like Bamako). What's even worse, some of provinces, which are in vanilla only slightly misplaced, got completely wrong not only in their absolute location, but also in relative placement (in relation to surrounding provinces) - the worst are Oualata(should be east of Ouadane), Ghana(should be SE of Audaghost and SW of Oualata and north of Mali/Bamako) and Mali(west of, not east of Dje, but even Timbuktu and Djenné are moved away from their actual location.
The only actual improvement is the correct location of the Yaresna province, which is a nice addition! OTOH, Yaresna was an opening gate to Bambuk (which lies south-west from the city, just across the river)

Could I offer you some help in this respect? I know you probably don't want neither the acuracy nor detail of SWMH map, but I could reshuffle this part of map for you so you'd have the same number of provinces, but more or less at their actual places and they would be based on some real or or historical places and not modern and fantasy ones.

 

[Rylock]

What we have in Africa we inherited from a map mod that Wiz (or perhaps Schwarherz) incorporated a while back. To be quite honest, I care so little about that portion of the world that I haven't given it a second thought -- if I were to do anything with it, it would be to revert both West and East Africa back to vanilla in order to make updates easier.

Since it remains changed, however, I don't mind if someone wanted to do the work to change it. So long as the overall # of provinces was maintained, and it looked alright -- and it didn't cause any other problems -- I'd definitely consider incorporating it into the mod.

So feel free to change things around. You can even alter the provinces.bmp file if you feel the actual structure of the provinces needs to change. I'd want to know exactly what was changed, however, prior to putting it into the mod -- surprises would not exactly be welcome.

 

[zeress]

As Rylock said, I can confirm that the map came as far back as Wiz, and I am unsure where he himself got it.

Don't forget that any map changes should also be reflected in the converter. If need be I can help guide you on how to do that step as well.

 

[elvain]

okay, thanks for your answers (frankly, they're very nice, considering how strict and negative my previous post could have been understood). Wiz probably took it from some early versions of NorthAfricanExpansion or All the way to Timbuktoo mods, which were later reviewed...

anyway, I guess I will start with some sketches. I certainly don't plan to add provinces to West Africa, actually I think it could be very well portrayed even with fewer - parhaps, i you'd agree, some of them could be moved to East Africa instead (especially from the south-westernmost corner of the map, where there was very little population/civilization, but quite many provinces based on early modern states).

I will definitely first like to do some sketches for you and consult them with you whether or how much you like them and only after that start some work, as I don't have that much time for doing something completely useless (e.i. the veryreason for this thread before making any real suggestions).

One more important thing is whether you think cou and CK2+ would welcome a connection between Libya and West Africa (some 3 provinces would be enough for that from that coastal nonsense)

 

[zeress]

No worries on your first post. Literally no one on the team made that region, so there's no particular tie to it for any of us.

I am in Japan until Tuesday but I'll offer to work together with you on the details of the matter once I am back. The work itself however I will have to leave to you, just to put that out there.

I'd suggest even looking at the EU4 map itself to see if (where possible) we can arrange a clean conversion. But that should be an after thought regardless and we can figure that out later.
If you prefer we can use Skype to communicate, just Pm me in that case.

 

[Rylock]

One more important thing is whether you think cou and CK2+ would welcome a connection between Libya and West Africa (some 3 provinces would be enough for that from that coastal nonsense)

Not really, to be honest.

 

[NecroGangster]

Not related to West Africa but if you gonna do some map fixing may I suggest fixing the corse of the Danube? It just needs to run east of Esztergom and Fejer instead of west.

 

[Arcvalons]

Just one thing, do you think you could make the provinces less blobby and more "natural borders". That goes a long way to make it look "detailed" and is what makes SWMH look so pretty, that unlike vanilla, most of the provinces aren't squarey blobs.

 

[Kalista]

Not related to West Africa but if you gonna do some map fixing may I suggest fixing the corse of the Danube? It just needs to run east of Esztergom and Fejer instead of west.

Rivers really cant be modded without tossing us over the filesize limit for workshop.

 

[Rylock]

Like Kalista says, making _physical_ changes to the map is a no go. Changes to the province or de jure layout, however, are fine.

Just one thing, do you think you could make the provinces less blobby and more "natural borders". That goes a long way to make it look "detailed" and is what makes SWMH look so pretty, that unlike vanilla, most of the provinces aren't squarey blobs.

If you have something specific you'd like to see addressed, we'd consider it. If you just mean "in general", then no -- I have no plans to make general revisions to the map, not to mention I don't particularly know what you mean by "less blobby" or "natural borders". Those could mean a lot of different things.

 

[elvain]

Just one thing, do you think you could make the provinces less blobby and more "natural borders". That goes a long way to make it look "detailed" and is what makes SWMH look so pretty, that unlike vanilla, most of the provinces aren't squarey blobs.

If you have something specific you'd like to see addressed, we'd consider it. If you just mean "in general", then no -- I have no plans to make general revisions to the map, not to mention I don't particularly know what you mean by "less blobby" or "natural borders". Those could mean a lot of different things.

I think what he meant might be the cubic provinces especially in the middle east, Africa etc, which are clearly just outcome of to-lazy/not-interested-to-give-a-damn-about-province-borders policy almost everywhere outside West Europe and Byzantine empire - that said the province there respect no natural obstacles of cummunication and are just randomly painted in square-like shapes. Often even bearing semi-random names. Look at Persia for example.
I believe that with only slight re-painting of the province map a lot could be done.

Not really, to be honest.

I thought so. But I think I will still make one of the sketches with this variant just so you could chose if you like it, Maybe in the end - if you see it you might change your mind even if I don't think it's very probable.

 

[elvain]

As for West Africa itself. Including the routes northwards, in CK2+ it currently has 34 provinces. After some cuts in SWMH I proposed a version with 40 provinces.
IMHO the minimal number needed to represent the basic structure of regions and cities would be 22-23, I think that for CK2+ som 28-30 could be enough (there is some additional place to play, but not too much) with the additional 4-6 which could be used either in this region, or (my preferrence) in Fezzan (Libya) and East Africa

btw, here is a first sketch with very rough borders:

Spoiler

or with original provinces:

I expect that you possibly won't really like to have the Libyan connection - especially the provinces of Ahaggar and Ghat are added only in order to give Tadmekka some sense to be in.
The other possibility would be that those provinces are used somewhere else. This setup has 33 provinces with the last one possibly being used in East or north Africa, or it could be used to split Manding.
There are also several other variants - that the route across central Sahara will be disabled and therefore there would be 3 provinces for free usage (I'd still prefer to keep Nafusa, Waddan and Fezzan in with a possible trade route going from West Africa via Tadmekka and Fezzan to Egypt or at least the mediterrean coast.

The next sketches will come later