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.
______________
My Links:
______________________________________
Videos I mentioned:
Mine:
DC video:

Victoria 3 video (one of many):

@JohntheDuncan :

____________________________

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

[hughoriordain]

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.

[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

[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)

[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.

[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).

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[hika]

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

[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.

[alyssinclair]

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.

[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.

[yearslate]

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.

[StrangeGamer]

You should make a video on the most important political issue of mapmaking:

Which color should each nation be?

[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.

[mitchm]

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!