Xylephony
commented
7 months ago Another issue I saw, Kunduz has a core on Balkh but no territory surrounding it, so if it enforces its cores it will get Balkh as a complete exclave.
Open Xylephony opened 1 year ago
Xylephony
commented
7 months ago Another issue I saw, Kunduz has a core on Balkh but no territory surrounding it, so if it enforces its cores it will get Balkh as a complete exclave.
Working on yet another update to the P&E patch and I came across some info about Afghanistan that warrants a major modified setup at game start. In 1836 there was no unified Afghanistan due to a civil war which had broken out during the reign of Timur Shah Durrani, and several Emirates had broken off from the unified tag. The Emirate of Kabul controlled most of the country, but there was also the Emirate of Herat in Herat and the Principality of Khandahar, which appears to have controlled most of the territory of the Vicky provinces of Khandahar, Zaranj and Gizab.
This is important to model in part because there were Persian invasions of Herat: several raids before the Vicky time period and even a brief conquest in 1816, but also a conquest attempt in 1837, and again in 1857, which was actually the catalyst for the Anglo-Persian War.
Based on this information, Afghanistan should be divided in three at the game start, with the Afghanistan tag holding just the territories of the Emirate of Kabul. Herat should be independent with cores on the rest of Afghanistan (it was ruled by a Durrani), and should be allied with Bukkhara and Khiva as they supported it both against Persia and seemingly against a resurgent Afghanistan also. Khandahar is harder, but it seems like Kalat and Makran were at least nominally tributaries of the territory, so perhaps they should have an alliance at game start, once again to offset the risk of the Afghanistan tag reuniting things too quickly.
I also think Persia should start the game with cores on Herat - their constant attempts to annex it are more than just random chance; they viewed it as a core territory, and even had Russian support for their attempt in 1837 - and, if they conquer Herat, the ability to add a core to Zaranj as well without needing to wait for irredentist decisions, to represent Naser al-Din Qajar viewing renewed expansion east as possible if and only if Herat could be captured and held.
Personally I would recommend cannibalizing the Tuamotu and Greenland tags for the changes. Neither are useful; neither was a realistic prospect for independence in the period due to ridiculous isolation, poor economies and small populations. Neither needs to worry about POP assimilation either, at least as long as Danish cores are removed from Greenland. I actually think that's better modeling too, because it will make the Subarctic Islands realistically less efficient.