TMW (The Medieval World) *suspended*

[Ixor_Drakar]

You could add Cuenca in eastern spain to fill the gap between Toledo and Valencia. It was on the front line of the wars between the christians and Taifas and was home to an arab castle and textile center.

[knin]

@blur1811 - yeah, seems like there were only scattered Pecheneg camps and abandoned Greek colonies in the Romania/Wallachia area at the time. As of now I have Saka-kitai but I may stretch the history a little just for this region and put in Tirgoviste. Maybe.

@Ixor_Drakar - much as I'd like to add Cuenca, I think Iberia is full enough as it is, and Cuenca was constantly under the control of one taifa or another, never its own.

[NikeBG]

@blur1811 - yeah, seems like there were only scattered Pecheneg camps and abandoned Greek colonies in the Romania/Wallachia area at the time. As of now I have Saka-kitai but I may stretch the history a little just for this region and put in Tirgoviste. Maybe.

There were settlements there, but the main problem is they weren't very big and we don't know how they were called at the time. F.e. this map (on Bulgarian, i.e. with Cyrillic) shows a number of them (close-up), eventhough it's about the Middle Ages in general, but almost all names given there are the modern ones (in brackets). And the ones that we have contemporary (Slavic) names of, seem to be from somewhat later times (Kralevo, Targovishte etc).

As for a settlement of Oltenia (i.e. Western Wallachia, if I understood correctly that that's what's needed), I recommend Severin (or Chernets, as we called it), since it's on the northern side of the Danube, instead of Bdin, which is on the southern side and has always been associated with that area.

[Giorgios]

Who knows if you're adding them, but here are my suggestions for new factions...

Bohemia
Cilician Armenia
Georgia
Zirid Emirate
Danishmend Turks
Aragon
Norway
Novgorod
Kypchaks
Sultanate of Damascus

[knin]

Mini-update for everyone, with a dilemma

Here's the new Pecheneg settlement: (and notice I cleaned up my Russian borders...don't they look much nicer now?)

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

But here's the dilemma: there's a few spots, namely north of the danube and east of the Carpathian Mts, which are completely open and have no settlements whatsoever. Though my ultimate goal is obviously historical accuracy, I also have to consider game balancing and the ability for both human and AI players to comfortably navigate the map and its areas. I have a pretty good idea for a settlement between Oleshye and Peremyshl (that's the second picture), and its historically accurate to my knowledge (a bonus!), so I think that would work, but its a bit of a stretch to claim such settlements as Tirgoviste and Craiova were any more than camps or villages at this point in time to deal with the other blank spot. What do you guys think? Should I stretch the limits just a little bit for this area or just keep as is?

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

I was also thinking I could add Nish to this ^ area as well, but that's kind of off to the side and wouldn't help the problem a whole lot imho.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

[Ixor_Drakar]

Vidin would fit in the Danube area and fill in that gap. As for the wallachia province Craiova was around but I dont know its size.

[knin]

Another mini-update: the Baltics are up! (and Finland)

Estonia

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Prussia, Lithuania, and Latvia

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Finland

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

This brings me to 197 regions! I have one more to put in Central Europe, 1-2 more to put in Eastern Europe (the "gap" problem), 1-2 more to put in the Middle East, and then I'll basically be done! I'm taking 2 out of Ireland, and will probably take the third region out of either Sardinia or Wales.

[Polycarpe]

Nice job, a lot of regions you have there . +rep

[knin]

I added 3 more regions to the Middle East, and 1 to the HRE. I'm so happy with how the Middle East turned out

Syria

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Mesopotamia

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Persia

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

A slight redo in Switzerland

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

The new HRE region: Lusatia

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Just a few more revisions and tweaks and then I'll start developing the settlements!

[Ixor_Drakar]

You have done great work, this is one of the better maps I have seen for any mod.

[knin]

@Ixor_Drakar - Thank you so much!


Ok, so my magical "gap" fix settlement, Terebovlya, ending up being farther northwest than I originally thought, so to me it looks like the settlements are crowded near Peremyshl. I have a lead on another settlement in Moldova (Peresechen), but then again I am a semi-paranoid obsessive modder and nothing ever looks right to me. Haha



Opinions guys?

(Also, I ended up taking 2 settlements out of Ireland, 1 out of Scotland, 1 out of Wales, and 1 out of Italy to achieve this)

[Ixor_Drakar]

Doesn't look crowded to me. Good luck on finding the population sizes for all the settlements by the way.

[knin]

Severin seems like a good compromise, that way I can split off Oltenia and thus Saka-kitai becomes more centrally located in its region and the "gap" is gone. Another possibility to consider is shown in this map, which shows a couple of the same settlements as your map, NikeBG, but Wikipedia is unfortunately lacking in information about either (Argyas, Tervis), unless there's information in another language.

EDIT: Ok so I did find the town Argyas on Wikipedia, which says it replaced Campulung as the capital of Wallachia in the 14th century, and Campulung was first mentioned around 1300, as being built with the help of Transylvanian Saxons who didn't start arriving until the mid 1100's.

EDIT once more: I'm just going with Severin. It looks better now (especially since I moved Adrianoupolis to Philippoupolis) and the other gap doesn't bug me as much since that's how that area really ought to look. With that, I proclaim that my region map is now complete for the initial release of this mod! The next step is to finalize settlement ownership, add populations and buildings, finish a few other things here and there, and I think this mod will be officially playable in its barest stages!

Severin and the Danube



Ok so I rearranged this post a little bit, but I still definitely need some suggestions regarding population levels. I really don't want to trust vanilla populations, simply because they're vanilla, but I don't think there's any sort of scientific or formulaic way to go about attempting to figure out populations other than a load of guesswork. Perhaps I need to divide my settlements into tiers first (village, town, large town, city, etc.) and then try and guess a population? What do you guys think?

[Giorgios]

Perhaps I need to divide my settlements into tiers first (village, town, large town, city, etc.) and then try and guess a population? What do you guys think?

Sounds reasonable to me!

I'd limit "huge cities" to Constantinople, Baghdad, and Cairo for now. "Large cities" should include Milan, Corduba, and Thessalonica.

[NikeBG]

Sounds reasonable to me!

I'd limit "huge cities" to Constantinople, Baghdad, and Cairo for now. "Large cities" should include Milan, Corduba, and Thessalonica.

And the Volgo-Bulgarian Bilyar which reached over 100 000 people in its peak (12-13th c.).

[Peanut2bigforyou]

And the Volgo-Bulgarian Bilyar which reached over 100 000 people in its peak (12-13th c.).

Unfortanatly, the size of that region is much larger and longer than one region in the game, also I'm sure it was immediately cut down by the Mongols

[knin]

This is more frustratingly annoying and hopelessly inaccurate than I thought it would be. I've started the British Isles as a sort of test for my system, but your guess is as good as mine as to whether any of my numbers are actually anything close to being correct.

@Giorgios - Were there any large/huge cities in vanilla? I see the point, but starting out as a huge city doesn't give any room to grow or change throughout the game.

Right, so, British Isles. So I went ahead and peeked at the original files as a starting point, but I really don't trust them much (Edinburgh was larger than London???). So I'll post mine, and keep going, with plenty of room for revision in the coming days.

England:
London, 2800, Large Town
Norwich, 2200, Large Town
Winchester, 1900, Town
Lincoln, 1200, Motte and Bailey
Gloucester, 1000, Motte and Bailey

Scotland:
Scoine, 2100, Large Town
Carlisle, 1000, Town

Rebels:
York, 1100, Town
Exeter, 1000, Town
Dublin, 1000, Town
Aberffraw, 800, Village
Inverness, 800, Village
Cork, 600, Village

EDIT: (unrelated) Of course, being the slightly obsessive perfectionist that I am (haha), I have continued looking into the Wallachia issue all day. I just skimmed a very interesting paper called Toponymy and Ethnic Realities at the Lower Danube which examined the location, naming, and significance of the six settlements mentioned in "De Administrando Imperio" associated with the Pechenegs. In my skimming, I have learned that the "Saka" prefix in "Saka-katai" mostly likely meant "abandoned", meaning that it seems kind of silly to put an abandoned settlement on my map (besides the fact that I had to fudge the location a little bit anyway...the modern town nearby, Isaccaea, is actually south of the Danube, not west). The same paper, however, pointed me to a few new settlements: Buzau and Orsova, which I realize now is right near Severin and so would be a case of either or. I'll sleep on it and make a decision tomorrow but I think Buzau will be in.

[knin]

Does this seem balanced to you guys? (Balanced to their relative strengths, that is....not every faction is equal obviously)
(I'm not making the castle/city distinction for the purposes of this)

England: 2 Large Towns, 5 Towns
Scotland: 1 Large Town, 1 Town
France: 1 City, 2 Large Towns, 5 Towns

[Ixor_Drakar]

Does this seem balanced to you guys? (Balanced to their relative strengths, that is....not every faction is equal obviously)
(I'm not making the castle/city distinction for the purposes of this)

England: 2 Large Towns, 5 Towns
Scotland: 1 Large Town, 1 Town
France: 1 City, 2 Large Towns, 5 Towns

Looks good to me, Ill do some independent research to try and help you out.

[blur!]

Great dude, you are a artist.keep it up+rep when i can.