Two provinces? I was thinking more like 7 or 8 (two in Greenland, three in Newfoundland, plus anouther 2 or 3 in Isle Royale/Labrador areas).... Notice that all of these are very poor provinces and I'm not recommending any change to that - they *should* be poor. This is an isolated corner of European settlement that's just a bit too far north, and capable of only a touch more than a basic susbsistence level economy. Even with these 7 or 8 provinces, they will be poorer than some 2- or 3- province European nations... and any expansion at all means colonizing, which we can make rather difficult and already is quite costly compared to what such a nation could afford.
As for map knowledge, I think the graphic above is even a little generous on the mainland. They should know only their owned provinces and adjacent sea zones, plus sea access to Iceland maybe (but not the land). They could be given a couple short term conquistadors to make things interesting, but without an explorer they won't easily get even as far as Massachusetts or Hudson Bay. And for the same reason, they don't need that Massachusetts Bay sea zone.
I was figuring a low population, spread out, very poor nation that would probably be Pagan but European - an interesting cross of effects, that - with a potential to go Catholic (or Protestant) later on, after re-establishing contact with other Europeans. And whether they have their own or Scandinavian culture really is a side issue to me; either would work fine.
As far as affecting Eire's colonization - if we don't give them Nova Scotia, Eire will still have 3 colonizable provinces along their southern sea zone and 5 or 6 in the northern one (along the coast of Canada that is). It will cut down on, but not eliminate, the options.
As far as Irish port access, the AI only grants that with good relations; we could script a lot of relations-crashing events early.... say, Irish attempts to send in missionaries that offend the Vinland government....
As far as what Vinland's presence will contribute, that's
easy. There are some players who will want to play it, just like the zealots who want to play Byzantium or try to unify Europe as Navarre in vanilla..... the fact that there used to be a whole team working on a Vinland mod makes that quite clear. And the survival of the Greenland/Vinland settlements is no more absurd than some of the twists we've put into Aberration already; the disintegration of England, the survival of the Caliphate, the resurgence of Cordoba, just to name a couple examples....
Edit: I wrote up an INC file that could be workable as a starting point; of course the numbers on the units and the country tag might need changing, and the province details will need coding, but at least this will give an idea of what I meant. I was a bit generous on deep-sea zones in the North Atlantic; I was thinking that part of their economy could involve fishing out on the Grand Banks.
Code:
#Vinland#
country = {
tag = VIN
colonialattempts = 0
colonialnation = no
major = no
colonists = 0
cancelledloans = 0
extendedloans = 0
treasury = 10
inflation = 0.000000
merchants = 0.000000
religion = { type = pagan }
culture = { type = scandinavian }
diplomacy = {
}
knownprovinces = { 117 118 119 120 124 125 126 1537 1538 833 834 835
836 864 865 866 867 }
ownedprovinces = {
117 118 119 120 124 125 126 1537 1538 }
controlledprovinces = {
117 118 119 120 124 125 126 1537 1538 }
nationalprovinces = {
117 118 119 120 124 125 126 1537 1538 }
city = { fortress = { level = 1 }
population = 3000
location = 119
capital = yes
bailiff = yes
}
city = { fortress = { level = 1 }
population = 1400
location = 118
bailiff = yes
}
city = { fortress = { level = 1 }
population = 1400
location = 117
bailiff = yes
}
city = { fortress = { level = 1 }
population = 1400
location = 120
bailiff = yes
}
city = { fortress = { level = 1 }
population = 1400
location = 1537
bailiff = yes
}
city = { fortress = { level = 1 }
population = 1400
location = 1538
bailiff = yes
}
city = { fortress = { level = 1 }
population = 1100
location = 124
bailiff = yes
}
city = { fortress = { level = 1 }
population = 1100
location = 125
bailiff = yes
}
city = { fortress = { level = 1 }
population = 1100
location = 126
bailiff = yes
}
}
landunit = {
id = { type = 19988 id = 9999 }
name = "Vinland Militia"
location = 119
morale = 2
inf = 1000
cav = 500
art = 0
}
navalunit = {
id = { type = 19988 id = 9998 }
name = "Vinland Navy"
location = 119
morale = 2
warships = 0
galleys = 5
transports = 0
}
technology = {
stability = { level = 0 value = 0 }
infra = { level = 0 value = 0 }
trade = { level = 0 value = 0 }
land = { level = 0 value = 0 }
naval = { level = 3 value = 0 }
group = latin
}
}
