Paradox and when Maps Mess Up

Paradox Interactive has a strong grasp on the GSG genre. Within that genre (though maybe beyond it) they also produce most all of the “Map Games.” I thought it would be interesting to look at the maps themselves and how elements of real history feature into or are absent from their depictions. Further, there’s something to be discussed in the inconsistency across maps and how that speaks to the primacy of gameplay.
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My Links:
/ krosencreutz
/ rosencreutz
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Videos I mentioned:
Mine:
DC video:
• A Fake Grassroots Move...
Victoria 3 video (one of many):
• Victoria 3 and the Dec...
‪@JohntheDuncan‬ :
• Scottish Imperialism, ...
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Times:
00:00 intro
01:47 Getting “on the map”
11:18 Topography and Play
14:42 Historical Predestination
19:29 Player Expectation
22:29 Conclusion
24:29 Outro

[@KarolusImperator]

My biggest gripe with Paradox maps is that they never always align borders for counties and states and whatnot along rivers and mountains. I want my Roman Empire to have it's border *along* the Danube, not have little weird enclaves *across* it

[@thomasrinschler6783]

But Rome *did* have forward bases across the Rhine and Danube (and I'm not talking about the Rhine-Danube angle or Dacia either, but elsewhere along the rivers). The border is shown along the rivers since it's simpler that way than drawing a jagged line that sometimes goes along the rivers, and then moves forward (and then back) a few miles to show those outposts.

[@KarolusImperator]

@@thomasrinschler6783 I want my French Empire to have it's border *along* the Rhine, not have weird little exclaves *across* it I want my Mexican Empire to have it's border *along* the Mississippi, not have weird little exclaves *across* it I want my Persian Empire to have it's border *along* the Indus, not have weird little exclaves *across* it

[@jbb4105]

Then just do that ? You don’t have to full conquer an entire area/region lol just stop where you want to stop Edit: I guess this only works in CK2 and EU4; I haven’t played CK3 or VIC3 yet so idk if you can just choose to only conquer a few provinces rather than the whole area/state/ whatever they’re called in the new games

[@KarolusImperator]

@@jbb4105 I'm talking visually, on the map.

[@42carlos]

I get that, this is especially annoying where the states are massive and the provinces (which you cannot individually own) are tiny. I like EU4 and VIC2 better since States/Regions are relatively big, but you can actually own individual provinces (which are kind of large compared to hoi4 but still pretty good). I also really like having natural borders for some reason. It's just nice. I sometimes do alternative history maps and i have a bias for natural borders in them too Though with rivers you have to consider that they are always boundaries, but also often centers for civilisations. Like how Ukraine is centered around the Dnieper, Egypt on the Nile, or even more extreme - Gambia and its namesake river

[@hughoriordain372]

The Ireland map in Victoria 3 contains the "city" of Shannon, a town which was built from the 1960s onwards, rather than the nearby city of Limerick which is and always has been more significant.

[@parokki]

I probably have one of the rarer relationships to Paradox map games and my hometown. When Paradox redid the map of my country Finland 5 years ago it had a bunch of problems. The game runs from 769 to 1453, but a majority of place names were from the 1500s or later. What's worse, many of the names and coats of arms had clear Christian influences (coats of arms with churches on them, places named after saints etc). I put up a small campaign to help them out, which included making a thread on the biggest Finnish subreddit, studying a few (easily found online) sources and intending to ask my old history professors about the stuff, but never getting around to it. The task was pretty difficult, since there are extremely few medieval place names for anywhere other than the coast and especially in the earlier start dates most of the country was effectively uninhabited. What we ended up doing was giving a list of the most inappropriate names/coats of arms and suggesting they use the names of major lakes or rivers whenever possible, since those are usually the oldest place names and feel less jarring than cities commonly known to be modern. They were very polite and grateful in their response, but the only thing they did was change Joensuu (where I lived at the time) to (nearby lake) Pielinen and Kuopio (my hometown) to (lake) Saimaa. So basically all I did was make my favourity games devs remove the towns where I grew up and currently lived from my favourite game. Also I think they messed it up for CK3 and now Pielinen is where Saimaa should be, but I never got around to finishing my long feedback post about CK3. (maybe messed up some details, it's been a few years)

[@HappyBeezerStudios]

When there is so little information, I would be fine with having slightly anachronistic names, because that is better than nothing.

[@KuK137]

Why are you surprised, they are Swedes, of course they love names of their colonial occupation and forced Swedisation of Finland, simple as that...

[@neoqwerty]

....That sounds like a massive "fuck you" to me, am I being uncharitable in interpretting it as extremely petty name changes?

[@10z20]

Sorry, so they did exactly what you asked...? They changed the names to lakes, which is what you wanted?

[@user-js2zt5lk7m]

So you know the place was a wasteland for most of the time and still get pissy at them for naming places that didn't even have names? Which is probably for people who are not Finnish history nerds to be able to recognize. Y'all need to get out more

[@forihrd]

For me a good example is Vladivostok in Victoria 3, a city which literally translates “power over East” from Russian and should not exist under this name in Outer Manchuria, a territory of China at the start of the game. But because historically it eventually became Russian and the hubs names are immutable this promise of colonisation is present at the game start. No matter who controls the territory the city there exists and called a Russian and explicitly colonial name. Locals call it 海參崴 or 永明城 much much earlier. Arguably at the game start there no important city hub there at all. Vladivostok only established in 1860s and needed extreme level of investment to become the base for Russian fleet and important military base.

[@С.Н₀]

Lol, they really can't just rename it by the decision like in EU4?

[@benismann]

yea siberia in general is quite bad in pdx games. In EU4 it at least has "native" names for places and stuff

[@forihrd]

@@С.Н₀ According to developers hubs cannot be renamed in the current build of Vic3, I hope they will change this in the future. It is way too rigid.

[@EvilParagon4]

Why would you write what locals call it in their script? For all I know, you just wrote Vladivostok in Chinese. I can't read that. What you just wrote meant absolutely nothing and is worthless without using latin script to give sound to the characters.

[@wales2815]

@@EvilParagon4 that sounds like a you problem

[@LeSingeAffame]

Something that's also interesting is how map control is absolute. If the game says you own a province, you can do everything on it, while the rest of the world sits on their thumb. There is no uncertainty, no conflicting allegiances, and no real way to share control. Vic3 kind of moved away from that, with split states and treaty ports, but on the other hand CK3 reinforced it by making it so baronies are always under their de Jure county, while in CK2 you could have barons being vassals of another count than their direct de Jure liege (at the top of my head a church in England had that, as well as Axum in Ethiopia).

[@Rosencreutzzz]

I remember taking a really long time to learn that about ck2, and I think it was somehow relevant for my goal, like I was trying to control a kingdom, maybe for an achievement? I don't remember the exact details but I went half crazy trying to get the thing to work before realizing it was because of a bunch of independent barons, or in one case, I think one owned by Byzantium??? CK3 tries to also add the granularity of the control stat, but that's more like authority being wielded and rule of law than it is any rival sovereign laying claim to part of the land. Still, it can partially represent loyalties on a magistrate level I suppose.

[@timothyhicks3643]

The absolute control thing is very interesting and still pretty rough even in Victoria 3; you get some weird situations from the fact that there is no elegant way to represent stuff like condominiums, confederations, regional autonomy, Indigenous reservations, etc. The nature of the game systems ends up reinforcing the idea that absolute centralization is the default way for "civilized" countries to operate.

[@strattaravar]

One that stands out to me as a former resident of the Atlanta metro is that Atlanta is essentially entirely absent from the map of Georgia in the game. Instead the game chooses Macon as the major city for the state, even when it's been decently developed and connected up to the train network. By the time of the American Civil War, Atlanta was a major railroad hub, so it's weird to see the space near the Chattahoochee completely empty for most of the game's timeline when I play as the US.

[@samfann1768]

Major railroad hub during the civil war? Yes. Large city? Not so much. The city wasn't even really founded at the time the game starts, so I guess it makes sense that it would be absent at least to begin with.

[@strattaravar]

@@samfann1768 I'm not saying it was a large city, but like, it did become a larger population center than Macon by the end of the 19th century and was made the capital of the state in 1868. My point isn't that it deserves to be in the game from the start, it's just weird to me that Chattanooga shows up at some point but Atlanta never does from what I've seen. Same with Buffalo, NY as mentioned in the video.

[@samfann1768]

@@strattaravar Yeah that's fair. Buffalo being absent is even weirder.

[@sebastianvargas7614]

Atlanta is on the map actually; if you build logging camps in Georgia, the game will generate a logging town called “Thrasherville” located where Atlanta is. Thrasherville is an old name for Atlanta. It never changes its name to Atlanta, though.

[@frozenflame5858]

As a Californian, I think its weird that Los Angeles never develops past a little hamlet even if CA is heavily industrialized. All the development gets concentrated in San Francisco, even though today Southern CA is MUCH bigger than Northern CA.

[@SDM-Zone]

I think the capital of the Aztecs was like this massive logistical, argriculutral marvel. It should be WAY more powerful than it is in EU4, but this is limited because everything is somewhat development controled to Constantinople. I also remember and miss the Ck2 mechanic where you could burn down cities for horse grazing spots. With each tile representing "fertility" but I'm pretty sure the Ukraine region should be like, the best most fertile region ever, but for balance reasons, I think the more Greek and Bulgarian lands are more richer in comparion, which seems a bit silly but again everything is pegged to the Byzantines.

[@superdark336]

that gets into the problem of what Development means, is it aggregated infrastructure? is it amount of People who can do complex jobs? is it the quality of management? who knows

[@MCArt25]

If playing a Steppe Horde in EU4 you could reduce a province's development for some kind of bonus, no idea if this is still the case as that was a dozen DLCs ago.

[@nexus6755]

@@superdark336 Development is literally based on nothing OPM's can have, without the dev cap that paradox placed on AI OPM's, the highest development provinces even if it's in the middle of the desert or himalayas.

[@plebisMaximus]

@@MCArt25 It's a central mechanic to hordes, they'll never remove it.

[@youtubehasbigcringe]

If by “marvel” you mean “comparable to any old world city” then I guess

[@gamaheri]

In Victoria the entire fayoum oasis and lake are absent from the map of egypt we're just deleted out of the desert. Also the state divide is overly simplistic reducing it to lower, middle and upper egypt with each state being represented with only with one city of course.

[@EmperorTigerstar]

Really enjoyed this video. I honestly never considered the "city erasure" for lack of better phrasing like with Glasgow but you're totally on the mark. I would say in terms of historical accuracy there's objective historical reality and then the average player's awareness of historical reality and that the developers are going to care more about the latter than the former to compromise with gameplay functionality.

[@Heshla_Biea]

Vic2's coal in the American Midwest is really sus. There's a huge cluster of coal provinces in Minnesota and the Dakotas where there isn't coal production that I'm aware of. When I first checked the RGO map and saw that southwest Minnesota was coal, I thought, "Since when does the area that's an endless sea of corn produce coal?" At least they put the iron in the Iron Range.

[@Rosencreutzzz]

Lol that's a good one, according to the Department of Natural Resources for Minnesota, they're the largest producer of iron in the US, and a relatively big peat producer...so maybe *somehow* the coal is meant to represent peat? But that just seems like a nonsensical decision. Honestly, looking at the map it feels like way too many US states are capable of near autarky or just loaded with deposits they shouldn't be.

[@pupyfan69]

theres a lot of coal and iron potential in the US that seems to represent deposits that existed but were exhausted pretty quickly, like the iron ore on the east coast. the coal seams of minnesota seem to be a total asspull though

[@martenkahr3365]

@@pupyfan69 It's probably representing the potential for peat production. Much like "Lead" as a resource represents a wide variety of rare earths and metals besides iron. Peat-derived charcoal was a pretty big household heating fuel in many parts of the world from the 1800s onward, in the Eastern Bloc and the former USSR regions it was still relatively commonly used until the 1990s. But treating it as a functional equivalent to industrially useful coal is... yeah, more than a bit dubious. Also, don't get me started on Japanese resources potentials, which literally has the deposits for all the coal, iron, "Lead" and sulfur it needs to be an autarky right there in the home isles. Just ass-pulled because game balance needed their economy not to be completely paralysed by resource shortages until they open their market.

[@leoF_0312]

Bro, I've seen the map of my country and I see a place where rice production it's unsustainable as a "rice-fertile". Also just the opposite goes on in the real and historical rice-production region

[@KatherineFtw]

Fun fact, there IS coal out west and it is where most of the coal in the U.S. is “mined” today. The main thing is it’s extremely impure and might as well not be classified as coal. It is mainly dirt with some coal dust in the mix. The only reason coal doesn’t come from “coal country” anymore is because of anti-acid rain regulations. Companies went to dig up that really impure crap instead of investing in anthracite coal mining.

[@porktomas]

Living in the most populous and better known region of my country, Buenos Aires province, Argentina, I see major cities around me almost always being represented in games, for example, the biggest and closest city to me, Mar del Plata, appears in Victoria 3 (Despite being founded in 1874 lmao), and it is the province's designated coastal city, which is one of their main things today. My city never appears in any game, which is fair, it was founded in the mid 20th century, and is quite small to be noteworthy. However, there is something I do have to contribute, and that is, more states need more cities, not because "we need to represent that one village with 25 people in northern australia", but for immersion, if you build a livestock ranch in northern australia, you should be able to see a small small city with only one building, being by the main road/railway, as I said, mainly for immersion, otherwise it feels like you're simply building inside a void, or in a wasteland. For this, every state should have a designated city for each type of industry, rural, urban and coastal. In terms of other map games, they always fail to capture Argentina, in every game, it is shown different, from rivers appearing or disappearing, cities appearing or disappearing, even more important things, like immigration. Argentina is always shown as either too stretched, too squashed, too twisted, there's no consensus and it does matter, it is a huge country, and that is something important for things such as troop movements in games like HOI4, the geography also always changes, from Patagonia being mountains, hills, or just steppes, or even desert. Something else that Paradox seems to miss about Argentina, is its resources and economy, as some may know, the Pampa region is some of the most fertile land on earth, we also have part of the world's largest fresh water reservoir, some of the world's biggest lithium deposits, large oil deposits, but it doesn't really matter, as it is almost never shown. It is interesting to see how Argentina is depicted in every map game, from having conquered all of Patagonia in the Vic 2 start, to only controlling very few lands in Vic 3, and so on.

[@PoolNoodleGundam]

What shocked me was that Yorkton, a podunk nowhere town in east saskatchewan I'm very familiar with, *was* in the game, and usually gets pretty large in my Canada games. I don't think it's ever been that strongly represented in any digital media (let alone video games) before.

[@swagmund_freud6669]

Am from Alberta, can confirm I have never heard of Yorkton.

[@yearslate9349]

On the subject of province terrain in EU4- when the game first released, provinces actually contained multiple terrain types in them. During combat, terrain would be selected based on the percentage quantity of the province that terrain was designated as containing. This was simplified in order to make combat less random. There's not a lot of information about this even on the wiki, and I had to look at old edits of the land warfare page in 2013 to verify my memory on this matter.

[@fearedjames]

tbf, from a gameplay perspective, randomized terrain types is an absolutely atrocious idea, because the literal only reason a player would be paying attention to terrain is to exploit a terrain advantage, and thus it makes no sense if the battle ends up anywhere except in the intended terrain type because if a General was choosing to attack in a specific environment, it is unlikely he would commit to a full battle willingly outside of the terrain in the location, or if fighting defensively, choose to defend in the wrong location.

[@darksuperganon]

I really hope that future versions of the Clausewitz Engine (which Paradox uses for their map games) allows for more dynamic maps in terms of provinces and geographies. On top of counties like you mentioned, given the time scale of some of these games things like coastlines changed too; this might be part of the reason why the Lowlands are kind of like that, the engine simply can't model a changing coastline mid-game.

[@richardvlasek2445]

i hope they just ditch clausewitz because it's terrible lol

[@CivilizedWasteland]

their games are only marginally better than they were 10 years and they have even less coders than before so thats not happening

[@Cassandria]

mappa mundi for hoi4 used a country for the water in order to make changing coastlines, but the game doesn’t run. still interesting though.

[@IronWolf123]

My first nation in Victoria 3 was New South Wales. The first thing I noticed is the capital is Canberra. Canberra didn't exist until the 1920's, but Melbourne was the capital of Australia from 1901 until then. New South Wales's capital has always been Sydney.

[@alekssavic1154]

Canada has sort of the same thing now. "Bytown" (the name for Ottawa between ~1832 and 1855; so it did technically exist for the whole of the game's time frame but it was basically a small logging and army town until confederation) is the capital & main city of Ontario, with Toronto being a small farming town. When the game launched Toronto was the capital of Upper Canada, but that's also weird because then of course it ends up as capital of a united Canada most of the time (which there was a lot of drama around IRL, hence the eventual selection of Ottawa). So basically there's no good solution because of how the game handles provinces/cities.

[@alyssinclair8598]

So as a scot something that annoyed me was the scottish lowlands didn't get a buff to shipbuilding. during the victorian era the bulk of british shipping was built in glasgow, 25% at its peak, which makes it kinda annoying that's not represented in game. I know it's small but for a game called victoria I kinda hoped at least british economics would be reflected accurately in game.

[@Rosencreutzzz]

That's like literally where one third of my original motivation for this video came from, so I get it.

[@subashchandra9557]

I dont think we can expect them to know everything about every part of the world at release. They generally start with a broad brush, and then slowly expand sections of the world over time. That's the beauty of PDX games, because you can mod them however you want. I have mods that makes Slavs obsessed with Liquor, Americans obsessed with Small Arms, and European upper class to be obsessed with Coffee. There are several mods that add better buffs to natural harbors, cold water ports, forests, rivers, and add those traits to several states.

[@colscottoneill]

On my relationship to paradox maps, I have always noticed a uniformity to the East Coast of America when paradox draws city lights in games like HOI4, The lights tend to portray the east coast as a continuous string of lights hugging the coastline as if every major population center is a port city. While this is relatively true for the North East, once you hit the Carolina's the population moves inland to Raleigh Greensboro and Charlotte then down to Atlanta in what is know as the The Piedmont Crescent. Yet if you look as hoi4's night map, the lights would lead you would believe the population of the North Carolina lived entirely in the outer banks despite the one city for war score being Charlotte on the other side of the state. This was interestingly inverted in Vic 3 where Raleigh is where the buildings will spawn when your start developing and Wilmington is where the port will develop. But Charlotte, which in Hoi4 is the only city of note in NC, will be nothing but a small lumber mill in Vic3 while Raleigh becomes a metropolis. Games with maps rarely show both the Research Triangle and Charlotte Metro as equally important to NC, usually only showing Charlotte if anything at all. Not to mention on the military strategy side of these games Fort Liberty (formerly Bragg) is one of the most important military bases in the US and one of the largest military installations in the world. Not to mention Cherry Point or Camp Lejeune. Although this would only really apply to games set in WW2 or after as, WW2 and the Cold War specifically is when it became important as a hub for global operations. TLDR: As someone who lives in North Carolina, many map games that show NC as a blank state with no cities or industry tend to reinforce the perception that NC as another backwards southern state with no value.

[@ColumbaMacFearghas]

Having lived in and around Glasgow my whole life I really appreciate this video and it seems really strange to me that paradox made this decision. I understand that game mechanics are in tension with history and I suppose a relatively minor mod could 'fix' this. It would be interesting to discuss this with you further some time.

[@hannahb6249]

As a Glaswegian, (who used to do tours along the Clyde when I was a student) it was so nice to hear someone talk about some of the history of the city in video like this. I was quite disappointed in Vic 3, that the most impactful era of the city has it relagated to playing 2nd fiddle to the -at the time- diminished Edinburgh. I know that's totally my home town bias but it was still nice. The Clyde shipyards had a big role in British naval dominance, triangle trade, the American civil war and plus, the civil engineering projects were very closely linked with a lot of at the time growing American cities. I totally understand how it happened but it just makes me happy to hear it from a KZbinr I really respect. Thank you!

[@Dr-Jesus]

As a portuguese person, the worst map error I noticed is probably the banana slots being placed in the northern islands of Azores and not Madeira, which is where almost all portuguese bananas actually come from. For CK3, there are a few baronies which didn't even exist at neither of the game starts, a couple of which never even became particularly relevant

[@brunobaia7898]

At launch, Lisbon was south of the Tegus river estuary instead of north where it is supossed to be.... and the azores practiced whaling

[@truedarklander]

​@@brunobaia7898proof of margem sul Supremacy tbh

[@StrangeGamer859]

You should make a video on the most important political issue of mapmaking: Which color should each nation be?

[@Rosencreutzzz]

Fun fact: there are actually a fair few things I cut as concepts to expand on either because they got far too tangential or the point was already made in another way. Primary among them was a rant about India in Imperator, which got way too tangential, going into how it felt odd to add it to the map but not the "game" so to speak-- that the techs were all Roman centric in ways that left India especially awkward. Somewhere else I talked about a good thing they've done here and there, which is fixing up states that are just waaay too blobby or broken up. Worst offender was Ankara being merged with adana in Vic 2, so taking your small core bit as Egypt meant just ripping a bordergore chunk into Anatolia. A lot of small ones I crossed off were just listing small ones I've noticed, weird city placements relative to rivers and the like.

[@superdark336]

India in Imperator was worth it if only for the way you would move the map around. that game had one of if not the most gorgeous maps paradox ever made.

[@thescorpion2758]

Its because Indian tribes can conquer Rome in the first ten years of the game. Thats why they have Roman centric tech.

[@nox5555]

@@superdark336 they couldnt cut of India because of the setting. The game is more about the end of the Greek world order and less about rome and parts of India were Greek at that time(and for a couple more decades).

[@sajt6619]

Ah i remember the Ankara/Adana travesty. Great video mate,

[@dx3217]

Just Imperator rome? CK3 well i think... has a wierd way of doing things were sucession and governments are far more... Euro centric, feudalism is the main system and the only divergence is islamism and republics more akin to Italian Merchant Republics in CK2 This results in a world where everyone acts like they are france or germany in the medieval time period of europe.

[@lovemufffins]

The life rating system for provinces in Vicky 2 is pretty buck wild. Its in affect setting a soft cap to the population growth in provinces, and is only modifiable via event or a few preset decisions. It plays pretty directly to you're idea of the limitation of the land guiding outcomes. The most directly weird utilization of this mechanic is that most provinces in continental France are actually below average life rating. This is apparently there to recreate the real decline in the birthrate of the country of the time period. You can end up making very weird comparisons though were apparently most jungle provinces in central Africa or Brazil are of a higher life rating than Paris.

[@Rosencreutzzz]

Now *this* is a great example of using a mechanic to brute force a historical outcome while breaking from reality. Good catch.

[@randomguy-tg7ok]

No they aren't? Paris is just about the only part of France with a "normal" life rating (35, or a base growth rate of 0.05% per month, which is the "default") while practically all of the Amazon and especially all of Central Africa are below 30 (giving a base growth rate of 0 - before techs, obviously).

[@lovemufffins]

​@@randomguy-tg7ok I did check this later after writing this and you are right that my specific examples are wrong. That being said, the remainder of France is 30-33 LR which is below average and weird when compared to most provinces in Iran, Egypt, Afghanistan, or Madagascar as some examples. Really the big point here is that the land in which the French sit on at game start is being mechanically disadvantaged in a way which the player cant control.

[@KuK137]

@jeansanchez2805 Why? If country followed different economic policy, the concerns would change, no? Players absolutely can change that part, at least...

[@vonvonvonvonvonvonvonvonvo7009]

​@jeansanchez2805 This is false, policies shape how people think and feel about things to a very large degree, it just may not always be obvious at first glance, but the situation in france was largely caused by political instability and economic uncertainty, and you ask how the player can change this? You should be able to formulate how the player, in control over france, would be able to solve the political and economic struggles.

[@mitchm4992]

You make, legitimately, some of the most fascinating videos I've ever seen on here. Your vids make me *think* more than virtually anyone else. Keep up the good work!

[@guilherme77088]

Love the video, succint and well explained. One minor correction that I feel many people don't realize, specially those who're particularly keen on cartography, Paradox does not use the Mercator projection. In their Global sized games the distortion in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres are not on a North-South Axis (that is to say Vertical), they are West-East (Horizontal). This is a somewhat distinct projection that uses a similar methodology to Mercator called the Equirectangular Porjection by Marinus of Pyre. Albeit with the caveat that often PDX manipulates the projection to emphasize or deemphasize different parts of the Map. (I.e Europe relative to other continents in EU4 or the relatively small North-South span of America.)

[@Rosencreutzzz]

I thought it was Mercator given the emphasized Europe and squished Africa. Interesting.

[@Andrei-vv4ou]

Wallachia and Moldavia in 1066 in both CK2 and CK3 are completely under Pecheneg control, would've been cool to see some independent counts next to the Carpathians

[@genovayork2468]

Were there any?

[@Andrei-vv4ou]

@@genovayork2468 There's barely any sources on the region in this time period, but we do know that Romanians were living there in this time and it seems a bit unreasonable to think that nomads would find a bunch of peasants living in the mountains worth their time to conquer, so there were prolly some villages that just got ignored by everyone around there. It would be about as historically accurate as the current setup given the lack of sources.

[@genovayork2468]

@@Andrei-vv4ou You disgust me, especially since I'm also Romanian. Several villages don't make a state. This setup is accurate.

[@Andrei-vv4ou]

@@genovayork2468 Strong words lol, especially since most one province tribals in this game are literally just whatever villages existed in that area at the time

[@KuK137]

@@genovayork2468 Look up Monaco, Liechtenstein, Andorra, and like a thousand more (especially in medieval times when free cities were everywhere) and say this nonsense again...

[@hika5251]

Here's how paradox butchers the places I lived in: Nizhny Novgorod: god is the presentation of the sixth largest russian city so egregious in most paradox games that i cant even play anywhere near it, in ck3, the county of nizhny novgorod (or obran osh as its known at game start) isn't even anywhere near NINO irl, being on the completely wrong bank -- which isnt a rare occurence in paradox games... -- but also graphically not even being near the river and instead being several 100km inland in a... taiga forest? the city that is practically characterized by being on a hill overlooking the oka and volga river meeting is in game in the middle of a taiga forest, which isnt even the local biome irl... not to mention that the DUCHY of nizhny novgorod in game doesnt even include the place where nizhny novgorod is irl Antwerpen: in victoria 3, antwerpen isnt even a major city, its represented as a small village without even a port despite irl it being the second biggest port city of europe

[@spaguettoltd.7933]

Not having the Erie Canal and Rochester, NY on the Vicky 3 map really bummed me out. Rochester was a major U.S. city throughout the 19th century. Just because it’s not today didn’t merit its exclusion. Another thing: the “Niagara Falls” bonus should really be renamed the “Niagara Escarpment,” since multiple towns and cities in upstate used waterfalls over this cliff to power their industries. Including, and perhaps especially, Rochester! Most people who haven’t visited don’t know that there’s a massive waterfall plunging into a massive gorge right in the middle of downtown. If it weren’t nearby Niagara, the High Falls of the Genesee would be famous in their own right.

[@dandankovsky7968]

I live in Kazakhstan and one thing I feel quite ahistorical in EU4 is that in the game you can develop a province into a metropolis on a barren land. I think development costs are far too low and there should be a hard cap on usable development level unlocked by technology or proximity to trade nodes. I think my country and China should be an example: you can build a sprawling city in Inner Mongolia or in Central Kazakhstan, but good luck attracting people to live there unless you coerce people to stay there.

[@alexmckenny2035]

My personal "weird representation of my home in a map game" is my home city of Adelaide, South Australia in Hearts of Iron 4. Adelaide is the capital, and only major city, of South Australia. Adelaide is depicted as a 'victory point' in the game, but for some reason Adelaide has been annexed into the neighbouring state of Victoria. Even weirder, South Australia exists as a state within the game. It just doesn't include SA's capital city. Or any city/victory point at all. Some important context for why this is such a bizarre decision: Today there are about 1.7 million South Australians, with 1.3 million of them living in Adelaide. After Adelaide, the largest town in South Australian is Mount Gambier, which has a population of about 30,000 people. Both Adelaide and Mount Gambier are within the borders of Victoria in HOI4. Adelaide being a smaller city in a smaller Australian state (by population) doesn't fly as an excuse either, as Adelaide was Australia's 3rd/4th largest city during HOI4's timeframe of World War II. It's just a really weird decision on Paradox's behalf...

[@theslenderfox]

Paradox's map games really need dynamic terrain. Being able to turn Marshes into farmland or even shallow sea tiles into land would be sick.

[@majormissile5596]

I was gonna make a stellaris joke, but then I realized you said map games and I think that disqualifies Stellaris.

[@phineas7423]

No map game maker ever gets the Delmarva peninsula right. Its full of rivers and wetlands but those are rarely representated. Also in Viki 3 Easton for some reason is made the biggest town in the eastern shore, when that doesn't make much sense, it should be Camebridge or Saulsbury.

[@CameronAB122]

Have you looked at the Crusader Kings 2/3 mods After the End that take place in the Americas?

[@Fitzgerald934]

The Arable Land Argument is a very intresting one as Paradox fixed it somewhat as before arable land was 100% fixed to pop numbers making japan a food net exporter and the middle west barely able to produce a nice surplus of food. The terrain issue of not being able to change the terrain is something i deem a permanent issue, ck3 has fixed terrains, eu4 aswell giving for example dev cost mali because of forest, but no way to the player to actively change the terrain which i find a bit sad. The only case of a later arable land change in vicky 3 is in holland being able to expand its arable land via decision.

[@Rosencreutzzz]

(So idk how this happened but somehow my comment on this post instead went to one that said "Buffalo Mentioned" so uhh, here it is again) This structure of tying it to starting peasant pops has been haunting me since launch. While everyone else has been musing over how to fix war or whatever, I've just been stuck on thinking about how Kyushu had more agricultural potential than like all of Argentina (which, as mentioned has been partly patched). I don't know if there's a way to change this system, or if it's too foundational. I do think, however, that Vic 3 does have the potential for "land clearances" that alter terrain as a mechanic. It's an era where that really became possible, at least with respect to forests and jungles, and to some degree, irrigation projects

[@Fitzgerald934]

@@Rosencreutzzz They introduced rice paddies as a building with the same patch which are just a different kind of subsistence farm that needs more peasant labor, it was introduced to not have large amounts of unemployed people in the game. But yeah land clearance would be intresting like the draining of the marshes around pinsk. Last semester i wrote a little paper on the depiction of colonization in africa in vicky 3 (you have inspired me to do this indirectly) and one can also see how neglected that entire area is when it comes to provincial modifiers. Like pdx decided to have cattlefarms avaiable everywhere while large cattlefarms arent able to be effectively worked in west africa due to the tse-tse fly existing there.

[@GoosieGoos]

My home state of Colorado always has wildly different terrain depending on the game. Either it's pure mountain or plains. Victoria 2 does an interesting take on it where it's half mountain and half "steppe-land" which on paper may seem incorrect, it's actually pretty accurate. Much of Colorado is classified as a "high desert" a fairly arid land with minimal vegetation and a high elevation. Aside from the mountains, I wouldn't put it past people to mistake the landscape for like, Kazakhstan if placed in the middle of no where in geo-guesser. This is a pretty trivial and unimportant part of any paradox game, Colorado is not very strategically important, at least in the timeline of their games. I wouldn't expect them to get city placement right or even climate, I think it just proves to show how immensely difficult accurately depicting maps are in their games.

[@Rosencreutzzz]

Lol the steppe thing is kinda great. I think creative approximations are a good use of terrain types on Paradox's part tbh. Steppe is something we're, in the real world, a bit too used to using to exclusively describe central Asia, and I've always found that funny. If anything it does remind me of the Spanish drylands thing and how people often say Mexico/New Spain had a lot of terrain that felt "at home" for the colonizers-- which is also why they filmed a lot of the Spaghetti Westerns in Spain. The Good Bad and the Ugly was filmed in Andalusia.

[@electricVGC]

Part of the problem is also states as a structure that permeates games by paradox which requires false capitals

[@jaceladag]

Being from Guatemala I found it weird how EU4 had Central America as part of the Colonial Mexico region because it makes it impossible to model the fact the Kingdom of Guatemala (covering the Mexican state of Chiapas as well as the modern countries of Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Costa Rica, which btw the territory of those last two is part of Colonial Colombia in-game), although nominally under the Viceroyalty of New Spain, answered directly to the Spanish crown. This doesn't matter too much since the stretch of history for which this fact is most relevant is outside the scope of any Paradox games, 1822-1823, when the newly independent colony was voluntarily annexed into the First Mexican Empire until it collapsed, leading to the formation of the United Provinces of Central America. But still, to me that little fact about our history always stuck out to me when playing any European colonial power.

[@battlez9577]

Theres no venezula colonial region in eu4 either, so you cant have the two CN of Colombia and Venezula, so many of them are based upon later or greater borders. Brazils colonial region borders are vaguely the modern day ones, despite initially only being allowed settlement along a thin strip of Eastern Brazil prior to the Iberian Union

[@hlibushok]

So the TL;DL is: Every Paradox game should have it's map be comprised of tiny autonomous provinces like in Crusader Kings, which would allow for greater historical accuracy and more possibilities.

[@woomod2445]

Laaaagggg.

[@hlibushok]

@@woomod2445 Worth it.

[@MCArt25]

They actually are in Vic3, it's just that all management is done at the State level, with provinces only existing for the sake of aesthetics essentially.

[@hlibushok]

@@MCArt25 Well yes, the same is the case in HoI4, this is exactly what I dislike.

[@KuK137]

@@hlibushok No. Just no. EU2 had just the right size provinces and from that era it was downhill all the way...

[@DamnUsernameAvailabi]

It's important to mention that Paradox is relatively small as far as professional game studios go. I think the devs would agree with a lot of your critiques--areas should be represented accurately, player choice should be able to affect land, and the game should be able to show how history played out as well as alternatives for how it could have played out. All of those things have solutions that could be implemented/improved on but that requires a ton of manpower that Paradox just doesn't have

[@wotanvonedelsburg1610]

Isn't paradox a stock exchange company? And why small if they have subsidiaries?

[@leoF_0312]

I mean, at least they could have done it right with resources specific to each country region. Or maybe at least base some countries states with maps of the era

[@Aldrahill]

I totally understand the nitpicks for Scotland, I’m in Perthshire so you can imagine my depression going from eu4 / ck (where it’s the capital) to where it’s basically nonexistent :P

[@Rosencreutzzz]

Oh how the Perthy have fallen

[@timothyhicks3643]

Having lived in Aotearoa New Zealand for a while I have gotten fixated a couple of times on the psuedohistorical determinism in how resources are given to NZ in Victoria 3. New Zealand is as big as Britain in terms of area and by modern numbers has a comparably large agricultural industry. However, starting as a British colony and continuing to today, the vast majority of NZ's agricultural products are exported. In vanilla V3, though, all of NZ has the same amount of arable land as just the West Country by itself, presumably in order to keep the population small. It's kind of the opposite problem to that of China. So you as the player have no ability to realize NZ's potential in agricultural exports or domestic population growth. This, the starting borders being so bad, and the lack of a Treaty of Waitangi event ended up bothering me so much that I learned to mod just to fix them. I'll also mention the Washington, DC metro area since that is where I have lived most of my life. One of the big reasons why the representation of Washington, DC in Victoria 3 is so strange is that the game has no concept of commuting. At a glance that wouldn't seem to matter much, but the fact that pops are forced to live in the state where they work means that it's difficult to get DC to support more than a few buildings, and it completely nullifies a core aspect of the existence of the wider DMV metro area. So you get a weird situation where most of the US's government offices in V3 end up in New York or the like. Unrelated but also what is going on with the Maryland-Virginia border... gah

[@Rosencreutzzz]

I spent most of my life by a wide margin living in DC and it's just so funny the way they gave it that weird shape, presumably to give it ocean access... And like, I get why it's autonomously a "state" in game, but I wouldn't have been mad if was just "in Maryland" as an abstraction. In fact I might prefer it to the way things are. In a funny way, this might be another example of the map accidentally reinforcing something, which is that DC "can't be big" because it has no population incentives... but at the same time, in real life, the building heights and the legal boundary size of the city are both enshrined in law, so the city is *kinda* (again accidentally) fittingly and permanently small.

[@battlez9577]

Is having a limited amount of land compared to England not accurate for how much of the land was cultivated back then?

[@Fin55Fin]

As a canadian, most if not all of our cities in paradox games are ignored and our northern territories not even seeable (looking at you hoi4).

[@Yaseenicus]

This is one I think everyone who plays EU4 knows but something that bothers me a whole lot more than it should is how far north the new world is shifted in the base game, i.e. if you went directly west off the coast of Lisbon in game you would end up in Florida, where as in real life you'd end up in Virginia. I see how it makes it easier for AI and players to find the land and build colonies where they historically did in real life, (avoiding Spanish New England like every game) but it just bothers me, ya know?

[@Rosencreutzzz]

Yeah. But then again, in real life, lots of people I've talked to on either side of the Atlantic don't seem to notice that Paris is basically north of all the mainland USA (or within one degree of latitude of the border). That said, I get it. It's weird when you notice it.

[@thecrazyanarchist3596]

Me and my friend group's pet peeve with paradox has always been that Pittsburgh is almost never positioned properly on the peninsula of the Allegheny and Monongahela. In hoi4 it's in the north, in EU4 its too far south, and in Vic 3 it's not the major city of PA despite being one of if not the most important producer of Iron, Steel, and Glass in the United States during the time period.

[@boxcarz]

Don't get me started on my hometown of Williamsport...

[@thediversifier1739]

As a Missourian I had a few notes on the portrayal of Missouri in game, while my actual hometown has a limited population I know quite a bit about the state. The first note is the complete of absence of Kansas City from the map, which makes absolutely no sense considering how important Kansas City was in the plains. The other huge note is that the Missouri Lead belt in the Eastern Ozarks is one of the largest and most mined areas for lead in the world and besides St. Louis and the boot heel was where the original settlement of Missouri began. Despite this Missouri has almost no lead and Illinois has taken the lead that was mind and processed in Missouri in game.

[@dante3664]

A city I lived in named Dalton is a city in North Georgia (US), is not in Victoria and this is a slight problem since the city was the last attempt to prevent Sermon’s March to the sea. Also it has a weirdly large impact on global trade with the city (at its peak) producing 90% of the world’s carpet.

[@etepeteseat7424]

Lol. I'm from Chattanooga. I'm sure any Vic players working at Shaw share your concerns. 😅

[@aquitainedugascon4726]

This while video could have been made on a per-state basis for most of Iran, Central Asia, and Afghanistan as well, with quite a few cities being selected seemingly purely by what shows up first on Google Maps in that region. That means a few of the important centres of this timeframe exist, because they are big centres today. Ontop of that, Iran is severely resource deprived (its only really got its historical oil deposits, most agricultural, mining, and logging deposits are missing) so many states dont even have that many cities because they have based the entire map on modern Iran, sometimes containing major cities that were irrellevant before the Pahlavi period, with their Pahlavi names instead. Another effect of that is (and this goes for Central Asia and Afghanistan as well) the cultural setup is mostly based on the current situation, and the highly complex ethnic patchwork that defines the region is entirely lost. And lets not start about the Arable Land... Iran vs Japan is a similar comparison to UK and Borneo, though Iran did not need to clear most of that land as it was already in use, but Japan gets 800 vs the 335 of Iran, even though Iran has far more arable land. Honestly, that whole part of the map is so much copy pasted from Vicky2 and so far removed from the historical situation that besides a few cities, some of the cultures, the states/tags (there were a couple dozen large and small states in the region, Iran did not even control 2/3rds of what it does in Vicky3 and keeping it all together and expanding was a major theme for the Qajars *and* Pahlavi's (and even Iran today)) and a few characters almost everything is in need of a rework. And yet this has informed the playerbase of the "historical" situation of the region and its considered fine. Its infuriating since it actively hinders any interest in improving the region from the playerbase, even though its a very interesting and dynamic one during this timeframe with far more potential (because of the highly divided nature of the region) for interesting outcomes.

[@shippoboy__]

Yay another Rosencreutz video :)

[@vonvonvonvonvonvonvonvonvo7009]

I'm late to the party, but I actually noticed a HUGE error in Victoria 3, and that is that Sweden, specifically the Falun area, does not have a copper mine, when historically that area was home to not a copper mine, but THE largest copper mine in the world at the time, producing upwards to 80% of europes entire copper supply for some periods of time, yet Vicky 3 doesn't even have copper in the area.

[@vonvonvonvonvonvonvonvonvo7009]

The reason I consider this to be a HUGE error btw is entirely because, this mine is of vital importance to the history and culture of all of Sweden, the entire city of Falun was built around the mine, we have types of food, especially a Sausage, that was invented because of that mine, a good portion of our entire economy was run by that single mine, yet it isn't here in a game about this exact period of time.

[@Rosencreutzzz]

maybe someday copper will be added as a dlc resource and Falun will rise

[@certaindeath7776]

one of my most favourte mods for EU4 was a map rework, that made everything much more detailed, with way more provinces (and lowered the value of development to half, to keep balance). it also made it slower to blob out extremely fast.

[@DBDpurekiller]

i enjoyed this alot. you didnt even touch on the thing that bothers most eu4 players: trade nodes no matter how big you become, no matter how rich you get you still have to trade your resources to english channel, venice, or genoa channel. And as someone who mods the game frequently its kind of baked into the game how terrain works you really cant change it which is something i would like to see fixed because how is it my 20/20/20 dev province in the forest is not a farmlands by now. or how is it that same province in the mountains didn't develop terraces so now its easier to develop those areas? the game cant handle it and i can understand that the game is over 10 years old. to me victoria 3 has one of the better albeit more confusing economies that paradox has created while conversely eu4 is really good at developing your nation and the sense of war, diplomacy and the scale of it all. if they had a way to combine the two games and give you the option to truly build your country out even how complex it is i think more players would enjoy that than not. imagine a game where you have to go into provinces and build cities but there's only a limited amount of cities due to its environment but new technology can add more city slots, and those cities can produce buildings which in turn give you more production over the natural resources over the province. you can make the resources dynamic and static so while there is iron ore in there you can also grow cattle and tea. a very complex system but it would be more accurate and faithful to how a real world would work. the only problem with this system is how do you build an AI who can take advantage of this so the player doesn't just steamroll over them as while you want to turn something like majapahit into the shiny jewel of the world it wouldn't be satisfying if you could just roll over china/ming after a couple years of development.

[@Syt1976]

How P'dox games fall short of my lived place? Currently Vienna - I think in HoI3 it was located on the wrong side of the Danube? (Technically it sits on both sides, but the "main" part IRL is on the right bank of the Danube, but in game on the left bank - meaning that if e.g. the USSR want to conquer it they don't have to cross a river (I think they did something similar with Warsaw, and at launch Stalingrad in HoI3 was hundreds of kilometers off). I'm originally from Holstein in Northern Germany - and both in HoI4 and Victoria3 the Kiel Canal is not connecting Kiel and the lower Elbe at Brunsbüttel but rather Flensburg with what is roughly the location of Husum. A place that at low tide puts boats aground in its harbor. Victoria 3 makes it even worse by having the canal exist at the start of the game when it was actually not opened till 1895 (the Kaiserreich wanted a connection from it military ports in the Baltics to the North Sea without having to rely on the goodwill of Denmark/Sweden).

[@legodude0]

As another West Virginian I'm glad you go over the political history of the state in relation to Paradox titles in this video. Also I completely feel your pain on the Country Roads thing. 99% of the time I tell people I am from here someone immediately bursts into singing the song.....

[@Hazardius]

No place in my mind, but I wanted to note that I simply adore watching your content. Thank you for making it!

[@С.Н₀]

Speaking about historical predestination, Paradox Interactive did a pretty good work to make small nations or nations which were historically annexed by their neighbours (let me call them "unsuccessful" ones) playable in later games. For example, good luck playing minor nations in HOI2 or EU2. It is hard, to say the least. EU3 is very ahistorical but playing outside of Europe or a few lucky regional powers is tough. But it is easier than before, you have meta, you can make a plan (this is why it is called a "strategy" game). EU4 still has starts that are considered "hard". Classic examples are Byzantium, Granada, Hisn Kayfa. But "hard" start in EU4 is easier than in previous games (in EU2 most non-major nations are harder to play than EU4 BYZ). And in EU4 in most cases only the start is hard (initial wars and alliances). Then you continue snowballing and play as usual. P. S. The real "hard" starting nations in EU4 are Australian tribes, American and Polynesian animist nations. They have some flavour content, but they are just painfully boring (Also Europeans desire your gold and declare wars every 5 years. The same case is with reformable religions and American totemists but their federation/feformation content is much more interesting than waiting for some reform progress).

[@frozenflame5858]

As a Californian, I think its weird that Los Angeles never develops past a little hamlet in Vicky 3 even if CA is heavily industrialized. All the development gets concentrated in San Francisco, even though today Southern CA is MUCH bigger than Northern CA.

[@youtuberobbedmeofmyname]

My home in Ulm is not present in Victoria 3 but is very significant in EU4

[@justsaychloe1060]

21:59 in general, i've always been quite annoyed with the inability to edit state boundaries, in all Paradox games, but especially when colonisation in VIC3 recognises that different countries can hold certain tiles in the same state to create two separate states. to that end, as a kiwi and history buff, i always feel like aotearoa new zealand gets unnecessarily shafted in Paradox games, even in VIC3, because it's reduced to a single or to two states (North and South Island) despite its physical size. granted, it's never been a particularly wealthy or populated place, and i can't imagine VIC3 players would pick "the United Tribes" over NSW (which, for that matter, the United Tribes is grossly misrepresented in VIC3 for gameplay purposes as this voluntarily-colonised, monarchic state, rather than the loose confederation it actually was), so in the real world it is similarly impractical to divvy up the country proportional to land-mass-compared-to-Britain. still, i always feel like "smaller" tags like NZ could BECOME more populated and developed if they had the states to build in, migrate to, balkanise, etc.

[@jasonhaven7170]

New Zealand should grow to 69 million like the UK, mainly populated by Asians and Africans.

[@beckettfordahl5450]

This is an eloquently argued and deeply personal video. You earned yourself a subscriber. Good stuff!

[@sirtiner37]

Great video! I love your style of balanced pondering of the games that really forces us to think about them, instead of simply giving a 1-dimensional opinion.

[@izayiuh]

this video was how i discovered your channel and ive started binging your entire catalog, the way you look at strategy games clicks very well with how i perceive them and i think its a big reason why the stereotype of paradox gamers and radical ideologies exists. im honestly just glad to see a history/philosophy youtuber who also plays paradox games that isnt some kind of weird nazi. definitely looking forward to where the channel goes

[@johnpoole3871]

One thing I definitely noticed as a resident of Austin, Texas is that Victoria includes it as capital of Texas despite not even being founded until 1839. Victoria starts in 1836.

[@nawade]

Yes, map games are what I call them too, though I generally include more into the category than you. I had always included Civ, though i would agree that it and Stellaris have a different vibe due to the randomized nature of the start condition. I also tend to refer to the historical start condition games as "Paradox Games" also. I don't put Total War in the same category since to me the battle simulations are the heart of that game and the big map is just getting you from battle to battle. The unchangeable nature of state boundaries in Vic 3 bothers me about WV too (and I would note there is also a western Virginia to make things in this region complicated). The other one that springs to mind is the Gadsden Purchase, which isn't modeled in game because its less than a whole state. I also dislike that all the territory purchases are handled by events that can be difficult to make happen so its easier to just go to war (buying Alaska)

[@A-Z632]

A little late on that request but one thing which I always look at in map games are the islands in the Puget Sound. There are many islands, isthmuses, and peninsulas spanning the sound and they aren't always represented. Even when they are on maps, they are often part of larger areas like seattle (which is fair given things like Vashon island being basically attached to seattle by ferry or the fact that there's such a thing as the Mount Vernon-Anacortes metropolitan area) but there's some cool things about this area. One is San Juan county, a group of islands connected only by ferry which are there own county, not really attached to anything except ferries that run to islands like Fidalgo closer to the mainland. It's been a long time since I played Victoria 3 but I wonder if they are on the map (I know they certainly aren't on EU4 which kinda makes sense considering Washington wasn't meaningfully settled by Europeans in that time period). Also, one island in particular, Fidalgo Island was very close to fame. It was nearly the terminus of the transcontinental railroad in the west, a potentiality very relevant to Victoria 3. Additionally, a large area of sea called Guemes Bay was nearly poldered to be turned into farmland (Americans don't really have a Great Gouda in the Sky... maybe it's a Cheddar?) only being stopped by the Great Depression and I'd bet there were similar projects to polder the shallow, muddy, estuaries flowing into Puget Sound. Finally, one long island called Whidbey Island is the site of a major US Navy base and is often omitted. Pretty uninteresting by the standards of your Scottish example but I always found it odd that these islands aren't very present and that games don't really include the process of "creating" new land or deforesting unless it actually happened. Great vid.

[@A-Z632]

I meant Padilla Bay, not Guemes Bay, I do not believe there is a Guemes Bay, only a Guemes Island and Channel.

[@Corbalte]

I had the exact same thought about my own 'places' and how it was made dirty. But also feared it might be chauvinist mumbling on my part. I come from Wallonia, in Belgium. The second modern industrial region in the world, right after the UK. A place where, in 1833, industries boasted 5 times more steam machines per inhabitant than in a country such as France. Belgium is never quite considered in paradox game, and the memes about it not being a real country always seem to matter more than actual history. For example in EU4, despite the first Belgian revolution happening along with the French one in 1789, I remembered one dev saying they will never include it and that revolutionary Burgundy having a Belgium flag as an easter egg was enough. So much like Glasgow, the Victorian era is the peak of Belgian relevance, in the sweetest and the most horrible terms, from the arts, the industry and the social advances to the horrors of colonialism, repressive bourgeois state and social misery. Wallonia was at the forefront of this, making Belgium the industrial power house of Europe, ahead of France or Germany. The game saw the gigantic growth of the new town of Charleroi into a massive city that will surpass the historical city of Liege as the heart of the region, before falling into misery and decline after WWII, become the grimiest example of the European rustbell. But in the game period, Charleroi was a massive city, exporting steel, glass and many other things to the whole world. There, the worker movement erected a palace to the working class and cinema, nature and industry would make it a modern and strange wonder to the eyes of Magritte, Simenon and others. And this is not even talking about Liège, a city that was once educating several popes and church official in the middle ages, was one of the center of the HRE and considered an "Athene of the north' tanks to its early social conflits between the nobility and the bourgeoisie. Liège would also become a industrial powerhouse in Belgium and is still the cultural and arguably unofficial capital of Wallonia to this day. And in the game, it doesn't even have a city like Édimbourg. The capital city of Wallonia is instead Luxembourg, in another country lol. Which also means Luxemburg doesn't have its own state.

[@tottemmc3508]

20:47 - "history as it happened"... during my gameplay of Austria, I was shocked to see that in the year 1460, both france, england, lithuania, poland and sweeden were jagiellon....

[@beepbop6542]

I'm shocked you never mentioned that fact that in Paradox Map games, the entirety of the Americas are shifted north hundreds of miles...

[@nilsc9783]

I know you already had a lot to say on this video, but a point you have avoided is ethnicity and maps of it. In particular, EU nations will be favorised if they extend among close cultures, which means that "is Breton in the French group or in the Celtic group?" is a question of what kind of empires we want to see appear. Various versions of EU3 and 4 have also put Turks in various culture groups, using either linguistic links (putting Turks in the same group as Uzbeks, Kazakhs etc), or what gameplay was encouraged (putting Turks in the same group as Arabic cultures or Balkan cultures).

[@benismann]

dont get me started on ryazanian culture

[@vladprus4019]

Also, some cultures are needlessly splitted (the Rus region in EU4), while the others are unified too much (the rus region again, but in CK3).

[@benismann]

@@vladprus4019 funny how pdx used ukrainian names for counties and the region of, well, modern day ukraine, yet it's all russian culture....

[@vladprus4019]

@@benismann The East Slavs in CK3 are a mess. They honestly should be divided into various tribal cultures, at least in the earielst start date with Rusian culture being East Slavic + North Germanic hybrid. But right now it is hard to say what even this "Russian" thing is even supposed to represent. Why it is even called "Russian" when it is not a hybrid with the Norse (you know, the people that the name of "The Rus" comes from), hybridising with East Slavs as a Norse rul;er will make you... "Ruso-Norse". I'll stop writing about it, because it gets less and less sense the more one thinks about it.

[@benismann]

@@vladprus4019 yea, no

[@dragonrykr]

I never even heard of Wheeling, Virginia in my entire life until you mentioned it. I am from Europe

[@Rosencreutzzz]

Neither has most of the US I'd wager. It's a small dying factory town with like 3/5 storefronts abandoned. I imagine most people who know it either have lived in the area or know Civil war/West Virginia history.

[@Baker0214]

I don't know if you want positive comments regarding Paradox maps, but I think the state of Illinois in the USA where I live is represented very well in both EU4 and Victoria 2/3 There is the obvious limit in terms of what resources to put in the territory over the era, but their choices are fair. Come HOI4, it's far less unique and there are some more inaccuracies, but the same can be said about much of the map in HOI4

[@Rosencreutzzz]

Oh I encourage the positive. They get a lot wrong, but they've also got quite the task in front of them, and it's also a game, and there's a lot of "engine permitting" I'm sure, when it comes to detailing the map. So yeah, I think it's worth making nods to the things they do right.

[@LasertechStudios3142]

This video was fun to listen as someone who made an argument on the paradox forums for a map change and is reasonably sure their suggestion got put into the game. My case specifically was for Korea to gain sulfur deposits.

[@jochenklausberger9076]

Great video!

[@Emperor.Penguin.]

great video! 👏👏👏👏👏

[@Reina-vh6mo]

here's my example of something weird a game messed up, in Total war: empire the town of port royal is portrayed as not the Acadian capital, despite it being the capital in real life

[@evs7434]

I'm glad you brought up straits cause the first thing that came to my mind at the start of the video is the insane crossing of Gibraltar you can do with 0 boats in ck2

[@izzybrizzie9133]

I think one of the funniest and saddest things in this issue is how Ankara, today the capital of turkey, is treated in VIC3. The "state" of Ankara takes up a large portion of central Anatolia. But there is no such city in the state. The predetermined city of Ankara is Kayseri. While Ankara was very much a very minor city at the time compared to Kayseri, I can't help but ask "Then why is the state called that at all?" Why not any other name? Central Anatolia works just as fine for one and Ankara, after my play throughs of Ottomans, can hardly be made. What's even more sad about this is, the road and rail networks on the map imply there should be something in that place where the City is meant to be, the roads inexplicably end there but yet, just like Buffalo, it's hardly a footnote.

[@Nitesurgeon]

Thank You

[@okapijohn4351]

No map is an absolute accurate representation of reality.

[@wotanvonedelsburg1610]

right

[@robinsparrow1618]

map games, map games, map, map, MAP games, games

[@anthonyclarke6620]

My hometown of Crewe is in a similair situation to Glasgow, though it is and was small enough that I never really expected it to be portrayed in a Paradox game. That said , it was a major railway hub and locomotive manufacturer. From the Wikipedia page for Crewe Works: "In 1853, Crewe had begun to make its own wrought iron and roll its own rails, and in 1864 installed a Bessemer converter for manufacturing steel. In 1868 it became the first place to use open-hearth furnaces on an industrial scale. It also built its own brickworks. Later the works was fitted with two electric arc furnaces." All of which are buildings and advancements in Victoria 3, at their forefront at this town. It is still a town so emblematic of this era, being built specifically for the rail industry, reaching its peak there and then declining slowly after the railways were privatized, with half our culture geared around an industry that no longer exists, that I did half expect it to be a possible town in Victoria 3. But I've checked the files and it's not possible. The files interestingly have the possible towns and cities separated into five 'hubs' - one for 'city', presumably the population and urban centre, one for 'port', one for 'mine', one for 'farm', and one for 'wood'. Glasgow is listed as the farm hub - 'HUB_NAME_STATE_LOWLANDS_farm:0 "Glasgow"' if you're interested.

[@zacpatproductions2052]

It's barely even a city, more of a large town so I do understand why it wasn't present, but I was a little bit surprised by the lack of Monterey California in the game, I grew up right next to it in a small town called Pacific Grove that often would get mistaken for being part of Monterey because of how close they are. Monterey was the capital of Alta California (another thing not represented in game) under both Spain and Mexico, before it was changed to San Jose under the US and later Sacramento.

[@Rosencreutzzz]

I've been to Pacific Grove, which has cannery row and all that, so it would kinda fit as an industry location. In the case of large US states, I kinda blame the fact the game wants states to be singular entities so the US flag numbers match up and all (after all Wheeling used to be a tile) and so California being just one entity means cutting anything mid sized or small.

[@Rosencreutzzz]

I really like this one tree in Pacific Grove I saw near the water, where the swan(?) boat with a plaque is set up, because in the tree there's an icon of a minion in a purple track suit.

[@MartenDE]

This has nothing to do with anything, but that part about the Netherlands reminded me that, in CK3, the North Sea coast of Schleswig and Holstein (most northern parts of Germany, for those not in the know) is surprisingly accurate to the time. Historically, a big flood happened during the game's timeframe, swallowing many populated areas and reshaping the coastline. There is no event or anything that changes the actual map as far as I know, but a friend told me that CK2's map has modern borders, which would be more inaccurate to the time.

[@pax6833]

You might be interested to know but Imperator Invictus accurately depicts Iraq as it would've looked at the time. Basra *used* to be a coastal city, but centuries of silting caused the coast to move out into the sea by about 40 miles. So it's interesting when and where they depict modern geographic changes (I suspect they may not have known the north sea coast looked different, many history youtubers use the modern map of Holstein)

[@MartenDE]

@@pax6833 Is that so? I will actually check that out, thanks!

[@i_love_hoi4164]

I like this maps, and this video is a masterpiece

[@youngstoneybologna6341]

Thank you for the buffalo shoutout

[@RovingTroll]

I was a civ player until I discovered Stellaris, then CK3, and then I was really suprised to find out my city-building game was also made by the same guys who made my spacegame, and that new succession-of-feudal-lords map game I picked up.

[@UnluckycharmsGaming]

I'm from Newfoundland, a place that has been impressively ignored in paradox games. At the time kf HOI4 it was a Dominion, a semi independent nation at the same level of Canada and Australia, in the game it's entirely owned by the UK, and doesn't have a releasable tag. It also gets a single level 1 port and no air base, despite it being a major naval base during the war, and an essential stopover for transatlantic flights up until the 60s. In EU4, the name "Newfoundland" is the default colonial nation of the UK in Canada, but, it has some of the worst state shapes in the game. The borders for two states overlap, making a squiggly mess of crossing lines.

[@np--er1ns]

By the time of hoi4s timeframe Newfoundland and Labrador had lost there dominion status in exchange for Britain taking on there debt from WW1. As for there lack of air or naval bases I would put that up to Canada's lack of a quality focus tree but you could also build it up in game time.

[@UnluckycharmsGaming]

@@np--er1ns newfoundland was still a dominion, it just lost responsible government. This wasn't in exchange for anything, a leading political party campaigned on ending its own existence. After winning, the parliament voted itself out of existence. The idea was to put a committee in place who's sole responsibility would be to correct the country's financial issues, without having to worry about being reelected. This was a temporary measure, and responsible government was always meant to return. Through this, they still remained a dominion, if even just in name. There were two referendums in 1948 to figure out what to do with the country, and since returning to responsible government only lost by 5% to confederation with Canada, I think it's more than reasonable for the country to at least be releasable.

[@jobo5300]

A lot of your paradox essays remind me of the old saying "all models are wrong, but some are useful." The model paradox works with serves a different purpose than the model you want paradox to use.

[@destroyeroffurries3582]

its so weird hearing that people outside of wheeling know that wheeling exists

[@amotaba]

I don't know why i saw the entire video, what am i doing of my life when i should ne studying for the 8th october test that i have to pass? Excellent video

[@harrybuttery2447]

'alleged native cannibalism' There is actually a lot of evidence for it but not only in the Americas it's even found in Neolithic Europe too. It seems to be the norm not the exception for less developed societies and China. But China was weird like that and I think that had more to do with Traditional Chinese medicine.

[@UnfortunatelyTheHunger]

tbh, the history of cannibalism as a taboo is quite fascinating, and i wish there was more light shed on how it became to be known as this unthinkable, barbaric act that supposedly only the most inhuman would even consider

[@EvilParagon4]

Paradox doesn't use Mercator projection, it uses Equirectangular. Considering the game at hand though, maybe it should use Mercator. Would be an easy way to fill Europe and East Asia with a lot more provinces and thus centre attention on them.

[@edwardsofgaliciabracara2547]

Perhaps one of the missing places that is most interesting to me is the Archbishopric of Braga. For most of the Middle Ages and the discoveries, the Archbishop of Braga "fought" with the Archbishops of Toledo and Tarragona over the title of "Primacy of Spain". Historically, Braga made the claim that Saint James erected a church in Braga on his way to Santiago and that same church was the first to host a bishop in all of Iberia. This isn't really a big gameplay or demographic phenomenon, but it's an interesting fight between the Portuguese, Castilian, and Aragonese clergy over the prestige of being The First™. It's also another point in which Paradox drops the ball on religious mechanics. These fights over meaningless titles, the Kulturkampf, the eternal struggle between Taoism and Confucianism in China, etc... All of them interesting aspects of history that would probably enable fun or educational game mechanics.

[@plebisMaximus]

I'll happily complain about my home being written out. My birth island of Fyn is almost always just a single province in the state of Sjælland, which makes no sense. Especially over the course of the map games, we were pretty different, both culturally and administratively. Sure, my main issue is the fact I don't much like Sjælland, but my point still stands. At least they could name the state "The Danish Isles" or something like that, calling it Sjælland is serious negligence. It's especially egregious in Vic3 where it adds Næstved and Kalundborg as major cities in this state at the start of the game instead of the third largest city in the country, Odense. Which was definitely a major hub at the time, as it has been since the viking age.

[@voodoolilium]

🎵 County roadsssssss, take me homeeee, to the place, I belongggggg! West Virginia! Mountain Mama! Take me homeeee, country roadssss 🎵

[@hebermoratillo7846]

There are so many mistakes I've noticed in Mexico's map in this game. I made a list in order to mention them: 1.- There are only 14 states represented, many decent size states were forgotten, such as: Tamaulipas, Coahuila, Nuevo León, Michoacan, Puebla, San Luis Potosí, etc. They merged some states even when many of them are important for the time. 2.- Many cities are placed where they aren't placed in real life and there's a lot of cities names duplicated. 3.- The border of the Mexican states presented in the game do not correspond to the actual state borders of them. 4.- Mexican American border always tends to become in a bordergore nightmare no matter what. I've seen some mods that fix this issue like Victorian Flavor Mod, adjusting the border to Adams-Onis treaty just like in real timeline, while still been able to colonize large regions. 5.- Initial resources for Mexico are so unfavourable for Mexico as well as industry and tech and education, Paradox did fix some South American countries in those aspects but Mexico was ignored. Mexican state traits are also completely negative while the US or South American ones provide good boost. 6.- Names of the cities and states don't change in function of the country that controls them. It would be nice to see represented in the game names in Spanish for the cities in Arizona or Nevada if Mexico manages to preserve its territorial integrity.

[@rikstan15]

With the map projections problem, I think it is actually a thing Paradox games do relatively well, aside from their provinces system. See when you are playing in Indonesia in EU4, and you take the island of Borneo to take up your whole screen and then move to Europe without zooming out, it does indeed show how immensely large Borneo is, larger than France but only having about a tenth or so of the provinces of France. When you are playing outside of Europe in basically any paradox game you automatically play at a more zoomed out camera angle because the provinces are comparatively so immensely huge outside of Europe that there is no need to be as zoomed in as you would be over for example Germany. It isn't so much the mercator projection that is hurting paradox games in my opinion, it is more the province system it uses. But this of course comes down to game balance because if you were to divide up Borneo into similarly sized provinces as you would in Europe Borneo would be immensely powerful, something it wasn't in history, which once again proves your point of places that did not develop historically having forcefully lowered potential.

[@sterlingmwatson]

I am from West Virginia too, but from an even less prominent place than Wheeling so it’s almost never displayed in a PDX game. After the End (the ck2 mod) put uninhabitable mountain range right over the valley I lived in though.

[@datbo1]

What I don't like in paradox map games is that you can't really make dynamic border or be situated in a small decentralized location. I really want to see a paradox game that has a 10 times bigger zoom in on the map than currently, there are small geographical details that determined histories of millions of people such as the battle of the milvian bridge, or the isonzo front etc. What I would really like to do, was rule a small realm in one of these games and build it up into something great. Imagine ruling idk estonia and you can see all the rivers and cities it has, and develop them, have the trade goods changable, have it so I could terraform the terrain into a big city (Moscow was built of a swamp, btw) and either keep developing inside or project my economic power outwards

[@wotanvonedelsburg1610]

direct the criticism to paradox interactive.

[@datbo1]

I am but one voice droplet in the sea of criticism

[@overlordbrandon]

I would say that map distortion is also my annoyance in this game

[@teaser6089]

Yeah one weird thing is also the fact that in Vic3 the Netherlands doesn't own Curacao, whilst historically speaking it had a colony there. In Vic3 it's owned by Venezuela, but they really shouldn't own it. It would be a nice buff to The Netherlands start to have a colony there. As historically speaking, it did contribute a lot to the wealth of The Netherlands.

[@Corbalte]

It think the game design behind Paradox map games his shifting to be more and more "player expectations" oriented than "history machine" oriented. I think this is something that you can feel a lot with CK3 compared to CK2. In other games, the scope of what the player is within the game has been shifting to this abstract "spirit of the nation" more and more imo. In Vicky 2, HOI2 and 3, it felt to me (but I might be overreaching) that the ''''government'''' was more of what the player was suppose to incarnate. Now there was element that were out of scope of what a government could do (the military), but it was more oriented toward managing some sort of weberian State apparatus. This had problematic implications as you played nations outside of the reference for the model (Some nations of Western Europe and the USA) as the "State" and the "nation" are complex institutions, dependent on previous History and not all of humanity is or was living is such a specific social system. I think the design shifted to "spirit of the nation" as a way to encompass more specific view of human social organization (EU4 and its many different gouvernement forms) without having to make an "historical machine" that could make sense of it all. Of course, it goes without saying that it's understandable why the did that (if I'm correct).