We have now seen all maps for the upcoming 1.29 'europa' patch, highly anticipated it has provoked mixed reactions, with a lot of good work contrasted with criticism for particular decisions. This is a post where I express not so much a question of which provinces should or should not be added to the game (though there will be particular case studies), but rather discussing the thinking behind the map update
Now I'm not gonna be as simplistic to say: Me want more provinces! or Me want particular favorite region of mine to be represented. I have observed two tendencies in the creation of new provinces that I disagree with.
1. or the totem pole model. Remember EUIV when it came out? I barely do despite having played it from start. But most people have heard about stuff like square memel. Point is, EUIV were very blunt, often deciding on a province (based on a city or area) and then just drawing big circles around that city with little regard for historical accuracy or detail. We had Magdeburg controling all of altmark, northern caucasus were divided between Georgia, Crimea and one horde (was it QQ?) not interesting countries were not given a chance to exist but merged into larger more relevant countries. At that point that was fine, it was a game with comparably little pretention.
Now the game has changed, and the level of detail is sometimes astonishing and I have enjoyed following the journey of EUIV to it's current shape, but in the last few (3?) patches I increasingly felt that (and I feel I'm not alone doing so) that this crude totem pole style of adding provinces has resurfaced, plant a totem pole/find an important city and draw an adequately sized province around it.
Myself, a history nerd since age of 10 and anthropology student, I love studying the development of countries, how they were structured, how they changed; administrative, cultural and political boundaries shaping our world are more interesting than arbitrary totem poles based on larger cities.
Case in example: Brandenburg
Adding a new province to Brandenburg they decided to give it to the city of Brandenburg an der Havel, spliting Potsdam in two according to a north-south line. Problem here is that Brandenburg, for all it's existence had a continuous administrative division in traditional lands, here the area west of Berlin would better be better split in an west-east line between the lands/provinces of Havelland and Zauche.
Likewise they maintained the Ruppin province, ignoring the split between Prignitz and lordship Ruppin, something motivated by the comparably low population of Prignitz, yet Prignitz stands as one of the most distinct parts of the original mark Brandenburg, viewed as it's own mark outside the core mittelmark region, and the ruppin lordship would actually be independent (here though I agree their doesn't need to be any over spamming of OPM's in HRE)
More notable case is the case of Moldavia, redrawn in patch 1.27, and to my knowledge it's 100% a totem pole redraw, not considering the historical development of the region. Now @fr-rein did a suggestion for how to redraw the moldavian provinces, (without adding new provinces) representing the historical development of Moldavias political and cultural borders. Leading into part 2
2. or not solving past mistakes. Original EUIV were riddled by weird borders, many of them have been cleaned up, but not all (and some updates have actually made new, weird borders like above mentioned Moldavia). This is basically when EUIV just draw blunt provinces, sometimes missing the city the province is named from, sometimes just dividing a general area in 2-3 provinces without looking how they could look. old inaccurate borders around the globe becomes more and more glaring the more accurate and detailed the game becomes. Brandenburg once again can serve with a few example: 1. Only the northern half of Berlin is in the province of berlin 2. The pannhandle of Neumark extends in the wrong direction (and some other minor details)
My case study here though will be Münster:
.png "Skärmbild (12).png")
Nothing has been changed in Münsters internal borders with the upcoming patch, but when looking at how the joint prince bishoprics of Münster and Osnabrück looked, the current set up comes across as random and arbitary.
How Münster looked for most of the euiv timeline
We can see a clear north south divide between the main holdings of Münster in it's upper and lower part. Osnabrück were in PU with Münster and I see little reason to add it as it's own OPM, but the province should optimally look like it did in history,
Whatever the current province of Meppen is trying to be is a mystery to me, Meppen is a city in Emsland, but only the southern part of Emsland is part of the province, that instead extends south taking the County of Bentheim with it and the western parts of Upper Münster.
Simple and accurate solution would be to rework The Prince-Bishopric to 4 provinces,Upper and lower Münster, Osnabrück and a province for the united counties of Bentheim-Tecklenburg-Steinfurt (IMO it should be an independent OPM, but it's fine to have it start as part of Münster with a Tecklenburg revolter tag)
Now I'm not gonna be as simplistic to say: Me want more provinces! or Me want particular favorite region of mine to be represented. I have observed two tendencies in the creation of new provinces that I disagree with.
1. or the totem pole model. Remember EUIV when it came out? I barely do despite having played it from start. But most people have heard about stuff like square memel. Point is, EUIV were very blunt, often deciding on a province (based on a city or area) and then just drawing big circles around that city with little regard for historical accuracy or detail. We had Magdeburg controling all of altmark, northern caucasus were divided between Georgia, Crimea and one horde (was it QQ?) not interesting countries were not given a chance to exist but merged into larger more relevant countries. At that point that was fine, it was a game with comparably little pretention.
Now the game has changed, and the level of detail is sometimes astonishing and I have enjoyed following the journey of EUIV to it's current shape, but in the last few (3?) patches I increasingly felt that (and I feel I'm not alone doing so) that this crude totem pole style of adding provinces has resurfaced, plant a totem pole/find an important city and draw an adequately sized province around it.
Myself, a history nerd since age of 10 and anthropology student, I love studying the development of countries, how they were structured, how they changed; administrative, cultural and political boundaries shaping our world are more interesting than arbitrary totem poles based on larger cities.
Case in example: Brandenburg
Adding a new province to Brandenburg they decided to give it to the city of Brandenburg an der Havel, spliting Potsdam in two according to a north-south line. Problem here is that Brandenburg, for all it's existence had a continuous administrative division in traditional lands, here the area west of Berlin would better be better split in an west-east line between the lands/provinces of Havelland and Zauche.
Likewise they maintained the Ruppin province, ignoring the split between Prignitz and lordship Ruppin, something motivated by the comparably low population of Prignitz, yet Prignitz stands as one of the most distinct parts of the original mark Brandenburg, viewed as it's own mark outside the core mittelmark region, and the ruppin lordship would actually be independent (here though I agree their doesn't need to be any over spamming of OPM's in HRE)
More notable case is the case of Moldavia, redrawn in patch 1.27, and to my knowledge it's 100% a totem pole redraw, not considering the historical development of the region. Now @fr-rein did a suggestion for how to redraw the moldavian provinces, (without adding new provinces) representing the historical development of Moldavias political and cultural borders. Leading into part 2
2. or not solving past mistakes. Original EUIV were riddled by weird borders, many of them have been cleaned up, but not all (and some updates have actually made new, weird borders like above mentioned Moldavia). This is basically when EUIV just draw blunt provinces, sometimes missing the city the province is named from, sometimes just dividing a general area in 2-3 provinces without looking how they could look. old inaccurate borders around the globe becomes more and more glaring the more accurate and detailed the game becomes. Brandenburg once again can serve with a few example: 1. Only the northern half of Berlin is in the province of berlin 2. The pannhandle of Neumark extends in the wrong direction (and some other minor details)
My case study here though will be Münster:
Nothing has been changed in Münsters internal borders with the upcoming patch, but when looking at how the joint prince bishoprics of Münster and Osnabrück looked, the current set up comes across as random and arbitary.
How Münster looked for most of the euiv timeline
We can see a clear north south divide between the main holdings of Münster in it's upper and lower part. Osnabrück were in PU with Münster and I see little reason to add it as it's own OPM, but the province should optimally look like it did in history,
Whatever the current province of Meppen is trying to be is a mystery to me, Meppen is a city in Emsland, but only the southern part of Emsland is part of the province, that instead extends south taking the County of Bentheim with it and the western parts of Upper Münster.
Simple and accurate solution would be to rework The Prince-Bishopric to 4 provinces,Upper and lower Münster, Osnabrück and a province for the united counties of Bentheim-Tecklenburg-Steinfurt (IMO it should be an independent OPM, but it's fine to have it start as part of Münster with a Tecklenburg revolter tag)
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, but your attitude is what gets the devs to ignore you.
