Europa Universalis IV

Europa Universalis IV

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Ante Bellum - Map Borders Overhaul
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70.943 MB
Sep 27, 2022 @ 9:43pm
Jan 9 @ 4:31pm
31 Change Notes ( view )

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Ante Bellum - Map Borders Overhaul

Description
Have you ever grown tired with how sloppy and inaccurate the map looks like in vanilla EU4? This submod aims to change it and replace all the inaccurate terrain with something more sophisticated while being as compatibility-friendly as possible. With this addon come reworked coastlines, terrain textures and provinces' borders for most played regions of the world. While new coastline adds a lot of missing irl features, reworked provinces offer much more detailed borders (especially showing actual bordergore that was the HRE) of both historical and alternative scope. At last, expanded wastelands create more strategic passes and holdings.

Main Features:
- Reworked regions include: Central & North America, ALL of Europe, Middle East, Indian Ocean, ALL of Africa, ALL of Asia
- Reworked, much more detailed coastline for all of regions above
- Redrawn provinces' borders in listed regions. Those allow for recreating most of real-life borders throughout game's history without adding any new provinces.
- Overhauled and detailed terrain textures. This comes down to editing terrain.bmp file, which gives land its colour and texture. In vanilla EU4, this is eather sloppy or inacurate in some places.
- Removed desert terrain in north of Florida (YES, it was a thing), Central and Northern India, Azerbaijan, Burma, Thailand and Central China
- Western Persia is now drylands instead of desert
- Italy, Spain, Provence and Greece have brighter, much warmer terrain texture to represent mediterranean climate
- Removed sloppy lines between terrain types in many regions, instead adding much smoother transition
- Added hill/montainous terrain textures to many missing ranges and highlands
- Swamp regions are better distributed across Polesie and Northern Europe with better blending
- Expanded lakes in few regions (look at the Finland! also Ethiopia and Aral Sea)
- With new coastline comes a bunch of smaller islands that were missing in base game (look Mediterranean and SEA)
- Venice is no longer a big omnious blob floating on the Adriatic Sea (it's still an island province)
- Expanded wastelands pose more strategic value and have been toned down in thickness in many places
- Added JAN MAYEN island back to the map (it was forcefully submerged before). Currently part of East Iceland province.
- Adjusted few rivers to have more accurate flow. Most of provinces' borders follow rivers much better.
- Toned town the heightmap in Himalayas, so zooming in gives you some space to navigate
- Reworked green areas in Middle East
- Arabian Peninsula is now mostly deserted wasteland with only few pockets of settled land. Much like it was for the most of history. New "islands" and oasis in Arabia are still accessible.
- Harshed the desert in North Africa. Provinces are now limited to only include its oasis and main caravan routes (as it was for the most time irl).
- All new oasis and pockets of settled land in Arabia and Africa are accessible through adjacencies. Zoom out to see all of them. This allows for some new strategic unit navigation.
- Islands in the Indian Ocean have been toned down and placed in its more accurate locations (ex. Island of Mahe was located off its correct location, on the sea basin)
- transition between desert and lush forests in Sahel is much smoother. Pushed arid transitional zone more to the north.
- Sahara Desert is much more detailed in terrain features and new terrain changes follow elevation much more accurately
- Brought back many strategical passes (like Java and Sumatra)
- Many mountain wastelands have been greatly expanded to include new strategic passes
- added 1000 islands around Korea, Japan and Indonesia
- Polynesian Islands are MUCH more detailed and there's more of them
- Many more minor terrain tweaks


Changed Files:
The mod aims to be as lightweight and as compatible with other non-map-editing mods as possible, so this addon only affects the bare minimum of files. Those iclude:
provinces.bmp heightmap.bmp terrain.bmp rivers.bmp positions.txt adjacencies.csv elevated lakes folder
(any mod that edits the files above won't be compatible with this addon)

Load and Compatibility:
Mod is currently designed for version 1.37 of EU4.
As this mod is currently an addon for main Ante Bellum, it must be loaded AFTER Ante Bellum in order to work properly. It was made specifically for Ante Bellum 1.9.1 update and WON'T work with any prior version.
Mod should easily be compatible with any other addon for AB that doesn't edit files listed in paragraph above.
This addon should also compatible with most of graphical mods out there as you can see on the screenshots.

Suggested load order for the mod (load from top to bottom):
- [Graphical mods]
- Ante Bellum 1.9
- THIS MOD
- ...
- [rest of Ante Bellum addons]

FAQ:

- Will this mod update other regions of the map?
- Mod's end goal is to eventually update the map and terrain of nearly every region in the game if the time will allow.

- Why isn't vanilla EU4 supported? Will there be a version for base game?
- The mod was created as an extension to Ante Bellum first. Port to vanilla version will be created after this mod updates most of the regions of the world.

- I don't like X feature of this mod. How do you change it?
- If you don't like certain aspect of this mod (like province design in some regions), your are free to edit the mod files yourself. It really isn't hard. All you need to do is open mod's folder and edit necessary files with editing tool like GIMP to your wish and desire.

- Bordergore in the HRE gives me seizures.
- AEIOU

- Some borders look oddly familiar.
- There are few regions in which province borders were inspired from old and forgotten mod - Historical Additions: Borders +. Though those were altered in a way to better fit the addon's style.

- I love the coastline and terrain changes but provinces' borders aren't my thing. Will there be a version that leaves vanilla borders?
- As it was suggested, such version is planned to be eventually made but that's scheduled after vanilla version of this mod.

- I don't have this game on Steam but I'd like to try this addon. Where can I download the files?
- Mod is available on Github. You are free to download it.

Changelog:
(changelogs now in versions list)
23.11.2023 - 2.0
- Complete overhaul of Africa and LAST MAJOR UPDATE for the mod
21.10.2023 - 1.9
- Overhaul to Western Pacific, all the way to the sea region border
17.08.2023 - 1.8
- Overhaul to Eastern American Coast
- 1.8.5 version compatibility
27.04.2023 - 1.7.1
- Border change/correction in Levant region
14.04.2023 - 1.7
- Complete Overhaul to China region
- Compatibility update to 1.8 Persia Update
27.02.2023 - 1.6
- Overhaul to Japan SOI
12.02.2023 - 1.5
- Rus Mini-update compatibility
05.01.2023 - 1.4
- Philippines and Papua update
31.12.2022 - 1.3.1
- Slovakia miniupdate (Thanks Parmelion!)
19.12.2022 - 1.3
- SEA Major Update
- Overhauled region of Burma, Indochina and Indonesia (excluding New Guinea and Philippines)
- New strategic wastelands and improved terrain textures. Provinces allow for detailed borders, both modern and historical.
- Strait crossing from Sumatra to Java is back
27.11.2022 - 1.2b
- Hopefully fixed missing lines in descriptor.mod which should enable the mod to load correctly.
23.11.2022 - 1.2
- Updated terrain graphics in Nile River Region.
05.10.2022 - 1.1
- Updated terrain graphics in all of Sahara, Sahel and Western Africa.
04.10.2022 - 1.0b
- (hopefully) fixed a common issue with mod not loading ingame. Added missing dependency to descriptor file.
27.09.2022 - 1.0
- initial release
76 Comments
POP May 10 @ 1:29pm 
Dude I'm dying to see this mod for vanilla
Pastilh@s Feb 11 @ 11:30am 
Please do a vanilla version.
schanta Jan 20 @ 12:43pm 
yo, I just wanted to tell u something I noticed. The province of Sopron in your mod doesn't actually hold the city of Sopron. A better fitting name would be Eisenstadt(german), Kismarton(hungarian), Železnica(slovak?/pannonian?). Eisenstadt actually tho already exists and is also in the wrong position, here Wiener Neustadt(german) would be more fitting. Bécsújhely(hungarian), Viedenská Nová Mesto(slovak?/pannonian?).
mrrobert988  [author] Dec 29, 2024 @ 9:42pm 
@venboven Sure, I'm interested in correcting this. One thing in mind, It was the original creator of AB who added those provinces and came up with their names in the first place. Egypt oases were done in the earliest versions of the submod and I probably didn't pay much attention to their given names.
Venboven Dec 28, 2024 @ 7:21pm 
Hmm, yes ok my assumption of duplication was incorrect, but the map here is still definitely wrong.

Bahiriya, Farafreh, and Kharga are correct, although their provinces are oddly shaped. But Siwah, Dakla, Ayn Dallah, and Selima are in the wrong geographic locations. And Ayn Dallah should not be a province. It is not a town or even a village. No one lives here; it's just a water source in the desert used by travelers.

I've created a map overlaying the correct locations of the oases for you. I'd post the link here, but I don't think links are allowed in thread comments, so I've sent you a friend request to share it to you personally, if you're interested.
mrrobert988  [author] Dec 27, 2024 @ 10:25am 
Also, with South America being finished, there are only couple of Pacific Islands left in the mod's scope. After that, I'll start working on vanilla port of the mod.
mrrobert988  [author] Dec 27, 2024 @ 10:25am 
@Venboven I'm not sure what do you mean by being duplicated. When I open the game they're all unique provinces with unique IDs. Names and capitals' names are also unique. Either way, mod only redraws the shapes of the existing provinces, it doesn't touch on their properties, so you should rather tell that to the Ante Bellum's creator.
Venboven Dec 8, 2024 @ 7:02pm 
Please fix the oases in Egypt. They are duplicated. The disconnected ones in the west are copies of the same oases shown closer to the Nile.
Lord Headass Dec 7, 2024 @ 10:21pm 
frfr need a vanilla version:steamhappy:
StormerXLR8 Dec 6, 2024 @ 4:49am 
Praying for a Vanilla version, the RP server I play on LOVES this mod!