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This is something we've put our eyes upon... Any suggestions for a Naples color change?

(Because if we propose to change the color of BYZ, I'm pretty sure that some byzantophiles will love to blind and castrate us...)
Swap the colours of Byzzie and Naples and make Naples' colour slightly darker and more blue-ish purple. Like how they were in eu4!
 
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I disagree only on cultures as it is a modern view and there is information about older times. Still, it shows that the current map is too far away from the truth.

my proposal for cultures:
Agree, good job with the sources.

I proposed what I could quickly find as a necessary minimum that can be supported by reliable sources.
I will add the reference to your post too.
 
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Regarding Slovakia:
  1. The raw good material of Prešov/Eperjes should definetely be SALT rather than gems. I am unaware of any gems being extracted in or around the city, while salt is known to have been produced in the area. Heck, even one of the biggest neighbourhoods is called Solivar(Salt+ Hungarian "vár"= castle)
  2. The culture of Trnava/Nagyszombat is oddly Hungarian with Slovak minority, which is doubtful at best
Presov/Eperjes had both mined. I remember looking into this, and there were definitely gems mined in the area. I even considered splitting Eperjes in two in my proposal to represent this, but ran into the issue that the salt and gem mines were really close to each other.
Trnava/Nagyszombat is almost certainly correct - Hungarians inhabited most of lowland Slovakia until Austria reconquered most of Hungary back from the Ottomans, at which point there were massive demographic movements to resettle the wartorn land.
 
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Hopefully you settle for Kingdom somehow(although not sure if that’s possible given that the tag is a normal vassal). Otherwise I think it would be impossible for the player to restore the medieval Kingdom of Albania, given the population requirements for the rank upgrade. Would make it an interesting, albeit very difficult play through...
The kingdom of Mallorca is a vassal of Aragon so it should be possible
 
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Provinces
View attachment 1221245
Bîrlad should Bârlad (already corrected)
Further provincial commentary-
1. as others pointed out, Fehér (red) should be Fejér
2. Szátmár should be Szatmár
3. while no problem wiht Kraszna, might as well be Szilágy after the later county that roughly coincedes with it
4. there is was no such a county as Eger, it should be called Heves
5. what about Kolozs instead of Torda? to choose the more relevant one
6. what about Győr instead of Sopron?
7. I already mentioned before that you definitely should split Pozsony (to Pozsony and Nyitra), Trencsén (to Trencsén and the Tatras/Zólyom (in which case transfer Zólyom from Hont to this group), Szepes (what I would do is remove Abaúj-Torna from it and merge it with Gömör, reducing Nógrád to its original size while having two two-county provinces to the North), Zemplén (split Bereg and Ung from it, it would make it much more in line with the Halychian provinces) and Fehér (to Fehér and Hunyad)
8. you could make the bordergore shape of the two Banats by simply moving Krassó's territory from Western Banat to Eastern Banat. There isn't really any good reason not to do that
 
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Development.png

The first time you see this map! The more mountainous regions have less development, for obvious reasons.

Northern Dobrudja should be more devastated

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here is a great research on it
Demographic decline and the demise of the Despotate

Although I don’t have population figures, Atanasov provides an excellent overview of the demographic process underway in Dobruja during the late Middle Ages. Essentially, Dobruja contained 3 population “islands” – one along the Black Sea from Varna to Kaliakra, one along the Danube around Drastar (Silistra), and one in the Danube delta. The rest of the country consisted of empty hinterland, a fact stemming not only from the arid character of Dobruja’s interior but also from the waves of marauding nomads who attacked the region starting in 1036 AD. Pechenegs, Cumans, Mongols, and Tatars all ravaged Dobruja, which was their entry point into the Balkan Peninsula. As a consequence, hundreds of villages disappeared from the archeological record in Northeastern Bulgaria, coin circulation became restricted to fortifications along the Black Sea/Danube, and the accounts of travelers (among them 12th century Byzantine historian John Kinnamos and 15th century Venetian author Giovanni Maria Angiolello) began to describe Dobruja as a desert, which remained common until the 16th century. During the 10th century, the region contained roughly 30 stone fortifications and 280 unfortified villages, while a century later all unfortified villages were destroyed as well as all inland stone fortifications. During the reign of Dobrotitsa, Varna and its satellite fortifications accounted for perhaps half of the population of his realm. (Source: ДОБРУДЖАНСКОТО ДЕСПОТСТВО - КЪМ ПОЛИТИЧЕСКАТА, ЦЪРКОВНАТА, СТОПАНСКАТА И КУЛТУРНАТА ИСТОРИЯ НА ДОБРУДЖА ПРЕЗ ХІV ВЕК, page 13 - 19)

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Despite being crippled by this demographic catastrophe, the Despotate stubbornly clung to independence by means of clever diplomacy. Initially a Byzantine ally, Karvuna's most capable ruler Dobrotitsa warmed relations with Tarnovo to expand his holdings west into Silistra and south along the Black Sea coast in exchange for his participation in Tsar Ivan Alexander's campaign to retake Vidin from Hungary in 1369. When relations between the Despotate and its northern neighbour soured under Ivanko, a Wallachian invasion saw him temporarily ejected from his holdings in 1389 - only to be reinstalled by his Ottoman allies in 1391. Ultimately, Karvuna would outlast even Tarnovo itself, lingering on until a Tatar invasion - not an Ottoman one, destroyed the Despotate in 1399. (Source: ДОБРУДЖАНСКОТО ДЕСПОТСТВО - КЪМ ПОЛИТИЧЕСКАТА, ЦЪРКОВНАТА, СТОПАНСКАТА И КУЛТУРНАТА ИСТОРИЯ НА ДОБРУДЖА ПРЕЗ ХІV ВЕК, page 183 - 207)
 
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@Pavía Tanush Thopia should be ruling the county of Mat since that was his title not just the Thopia family, can you rename it? The same goes with the Muzaka family, they were lords of Berat, it's not wrong to leave these two as they are now but it would make things less akward if the dinastis change for some reason.
Also why isn't Arianiti ruled by a member if the Arianiti family?
 
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Hopefully you settle for Kingdom somehow(although not sure if that’s possible given that the tag is a normal vassal). Otherwise I think it would be impossible for the player to restore the medieval Kingdom of Albania, given the population requirements for the rank upgrade. Would make it an interesting, albeit very difficult play through...
I presume that similarly to CK3 they can change how the title is styled vs the "in game" definition. So Albania can be a rank 2 "Duchy" in game mechanic terms while being called a Kingdom on the map and having a "King" as a ruler.
 
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Northern Dobrudja should be more devastated

View attachment 1221357

here is a great research on it
lol, forget it dude. paradox already dismissed all of my suggestions for Bulgaria, sources be damned. Sad that we have to settle for such a sloppy and imprecise depiction, even basic things like Bulgaria sharing a border with Hungary or Plovdiv being south of the Maritsa and thus part of Byzantium are ignored. Hard to even guess what their motives are. Ah well.

Also, lol @ the ridiculous post-WW1 border for the Vidin location.
 
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I thought I would share some details I recently learned about Bulgaria and more precisely Dobruja during that time period.

For example, in northern Dobruja somewhere between 1332 and 1337 a vassal to the Golden Horde whith the name "Saqčï" was established, its capital being in Isaccea.
Wow that Wikipedia description is awful. Here's the actual source:
Untitled.png
 
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I still think the colours of certain things are kinda off as the Bulgarian, Greek and Turkish cultures all look way to alike and I still don’t like the pail white colour of Bulgaria.

Personally I would have Bulgaria and the Bulgarian culture be a grey colour similar if not identical to what it is in EU4 and to differentiate Greek and Turkish I think Greek should become the same colour as the Byzantines or any shade of purple.
 
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Here are my suggestion for location border and name corrections in Bulgaria:
Screenshot_20241125_181415_Gallery.jpg

1. Blagoevgrad is an anachronism, try Krupnik.
2. So is Bansko, a fitting replacement is Razlog

Screenshot_20241125_181011_Gallery.jpg

1. Veliki Preslav should just be Preslav. Veliki means great and it's a recent addition to honor the past
2. Razgrad should become Hrazgrad
3. I was unable to find any info about Kladentsi existing in this time period, especially under this name. Instead, extend the border southwards and rename it to Madara, which is a famous and rather important fortress from the time.

Screenshot_20241125_181220_Gallery.jpg

Archar did not exist under that name in this period. The name originates from a Turkish word "Akchar". A fitting replacement is Kiprovets (today known as Kiprovtsi). A very well known town historically.

Screenshot_20241125_175854_Gallery.jpg

Please make Vratsa flush with the mountain ridge. I know you tried to better fit those depictions of the Vidin Tsardom's borders, but they're purely guesswork anyways. As it is currently it practically infringes on the actual city of Vratsa and goes against the topology of the region. It also messes up potential future borders. A bit of a nitpick I admit, but it got to me hah.

Screenshot_20241125_180310_Gallery.jpg

Pernik should exist as its own location as it was both part of Bulgaria and also historically significant.

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1. Hiambouli is the Turkish name, under Bulgaria it should be Dabilin.
2. Pretty sure Elhovo didn't exist, nevertheless for a lack of a better replacement I think it's fitting
3. Should be spelled Lardeya

I have to also include a translation of the Romanian names in Dobrudja into Bulgarian for completeness sake, but I'll do that in a separate post if someone hasn't already.
 
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Regarding the Balkans:

Given the fact that Greater Polish and Lesser Polish, with little to no dialectal differences are treated as separate cultures, then most certainly Albanian should be divided into two separate cultures
View attachment 1221350
It would make sense, because Tosk and Gheg use different names and last names usually(Tosk use names similar to aromanians and greeks, and are of the greek orthodox religion). Customs, clothing and food differ too. But that would make the Arvanite culture unnecessary since there is no difference between Tosk and Arvanite(especially in 1337).
 
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The whole of Albania has been placed in a region called Northern Greece. I understand that this a geographical label, not a cultural or political one, but I don't think players think of Albania as part of Greece in the PC timeframe, and this is going to cause confusion. But the Area does include areas that are indisputably northern Greece.

As well as the historical aspects, I think this will be unhelpful for Content Designers and modders. For example, I can't imagine many Events or Achievements are going to require things like conquering or applying modifiers to only northern Greece (as far as Athens!) and Albania. It's much more plausible that you will want to use an Area (or combination of Areas) that covers only Greece proper and one that covers only Albania.

Therefore my first-choice solution is splitting this Area into two, Albania and northern Greece. This keeps the largest possible interpretation of Epirus in the Northern Greece Area, which I think is preferably since many players will probably mentally group Epirus into Greece in this time period, due to the Despotate of Epirus.

If you are trying to avoid increasing the number of Areas, my second-choice solution would be to split off Albania and merge actual northern Greece with Morea as "Balkan Greece" or "Peninsular Greece".

If Albania is too small due to a minimum number of provinces per area criterion, then my third-choice solution is to split the Area into (a) Albania and Epirus and (b) a rump Northern Greece area. Modern Albania incorporates much of PC's Northern Epirus region, and the northern boundary of Epirus has been set at different points down the centuries.

My fourth(!)-choice solution would be to rename this Area as "Albania and North Greece". It's a mouthful, but it's actually fewer syllables than "Basilicata and Calabria", and only one character more.
 
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