Amazing! However, feedback turn 2:
Hello everybody, and welcome to the map review of one more region: Carpathia and the Balkans! This one has taken a bit to get out, as although it was almost finished a few weeks ago, we needed to double-check and correct some issues.
This area has had a lot of border changes that are not always very accurately documented, which leads to conflicting versions depending on the author. We have tried to collect the maximum amount of sources to make the best decision that we could. If you disagree, do not hesitate to comment on it, but please remain civil. Many of these borders are up to interpretation and we might not agree with which one is the correct one, which is fine, as it's as long as we have an informed and polite debate.
Without further ado, the changelog will speak for itself, while I show some new map screenshots:
Countries
View attachment 1221238
View attachment 1221239
The two biggest changes here are the new tags in Moldavia and Albania. There still will be an event early in the game for Moldavia, although now it will be about the unification of the tags that start ruled by the Golden Horde into the March, later Principality, of Moldavia.
First thing, why is Albania, along with tits vassals, a vassal of Naples? Nice to see they new Albanian principalities, though.
Dynasties
View attachment 1221240
Notice that many places have no known rulers and dynasties are so created dynamically.
If you want to inclue Arianiti, I'm pretty sure their dynasty should be "Arianiti" and not Anjou.
Here I would like to point out a few things, from the top of my head:
1. drop the "-váralja" and "-alja" names most of the time. There is no reason to name Árva "Árvaváralja", the latter is a village meaning "at the foot of the Castle of Árva", I think it would make more sense to just use the name of the castle Árva. Similar for Murányalja
2. I'm not actually sure if your "Kiskunfélegyháza" location actually includes Kiskunfélegyháza, but either way, I would advise you to restructure Little Cumania to have two locations, Félegyháza to the North and Halas to the south; the Kiskun- prefixes were not used at the time and still dropped today in colloquial speech.
3. Vajdahunyad should be named Hunyad or Hunyadvár, because it only got the Vajda- prefix during the reign of John Hunyadi
4. drop the Hajdú from Szoboszló for similar reasons
5. why did you exactly add the mountain pass at Brassó to Fogaras? That makes zero sense!
6. Szeged SHOULD and MUST be an actual location, as it was a very important city of the period and today
On Albania:
1. Kavaje does not seem to include the actual city of Kavaje
2. Elbasan did not exist back then; I advise naming the location after
Çermenikë perhpas
3. in my understanding, Devoll should be under Muzaka control at this time, while Pogradec should be split from that location and given to Serbia
Provinces
View attachment 1221245
Bîrlad should Bârlad (already corrected)
Much better, however the provinces of Hungary still do not follow county borders in many places where they could and for absolutely no reason.
1. there is no reason for Pozsony and Nyitra to be united like that
2. Trencsén and the three Tatran counties could and should absolutely separated
3. I do not dig the Mega-Szepes. If we can't get them all separate Abaúj, maybe....
4. same with Mega-Zemplén: even a separate Zemplén and a Ung-Bereg-Ugocsa
5. not only does Hunyad within Fehér look funny, it is also completely unnecessary
6. there is no good way to divide the Southern Alföld around Bács and Csongrád, but I would still at least think about it a bit more
This one looks good!
Terrain
View attachment 1221248
Some wastelands in the Carpathians have disappeared, and are now just Mountains; however, they will continue being quite strategic in winter, as the mountain passes may freeze, blocking movement.
So I see a LOT of problems here.
1. Buda, Pécs, Eger, and Borsod too should be hills. I would representent the Bakony too somehow, either with Veszprém or with maybe Zalavár
2. the plateaus around the Carpathians are weird... I think you have based them on Fehérvári's analysis, which was far from perfect. Fogaras is a very characteristic plateau, and there is also the central parts of Transylvania which is also basically flat.
3. the biggest offender is the Northern Carpathians, this spread of mountains compared to hills has no relation to reality. The Low Beskids (which you made mountains) do not reach the height or ruggedness of necessary for mountains, while the Fatra and the Slovak Ore Mountains have locations that are justified to be mountains.
However, lovely to see some wetlands!
Made a visual representation:
Cultures
View attachment 1221254
There are also some changes in this distribution. The most important ones are the Rusyn culture being replaced by Halychian, and Moldovan being its own culture in the setup.
Still do not understand why separate Translyvanian culture, nor why is it still called that (at least name it Translyvanian Romanian, then), but please change its colour to something not another shade of grey. There are already way too many "vaguely light grey" toned cultures around (Greek, Bulgarian, Turkish, Transylvanian and Transylvanian Saxon).
On another note - there is some evidence of Jassic people still being around Iasi at this date.
Furthermore, I don't believe the core Northern Csángó group should be represented by Székelys, but either Hungarians or their own culture (Székely Csángós are a separate cathegory of Csángós with their own identity and dialect different from the "older" Csángós), but most importantly, their population center is located in and around Roman, a location that does not have them as a minority even on your current map.
Dominant Language
View attachment 1221255
The dominant language per location. We have not yet done the dialects, our lower level, which is used for flavor on location and character names, so suggestions are welcome.
As you are already probably aware, Dalmatian should not be part of the Italian language, not even according to the Romance language tree that has been used as teh benchmark for Romance languages.
The court language of Croatia, just like Hungary's, was Latin.
And I would be very surprised if the Anjou-led Kingdom of Albania actually used the Albanian language.... I would say Latin there, too.
While I do not see a dominance of Livestock and as many horses in Hungary as I would expect, my biggest issue here is that Aranyosbánya (
quite literally called "gold mine" or "golden mine") is not Gold producing. Why? It was in fact an important gold mine.
Overall, there certainly are a lot of improvement, even though you missed some spots! Hope we can see the result of this second turn feedback too.
And once again- can we get a Towns and Cities map, please?
