Does the Bannerlord map make sense, when compared to that of Warband?

Do you mind that the map doesn't seem to line up with the map from Warband?

  • Why, yes I do!

  • Nah, not really.

  • I would like some fidelity, but ultimately I don't swing either way.

  • I only want to kill those raiders and drink from their skull.


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Yes, yes, I know, the map also changed from M&B into Warband, who cares...

Well, I care. I spent a lot of time roaming Calradia, helping caravals from Uxhall to solve the grain shortages, saving Dhirim at the edge of the day, pinning down raiders with my Khergit boys, learning the backstory of those companions, trading butter in Jelkala... and I expected to see a bit more map continuity.

As far as I've seen, this was the intention with the devs, the first maps showed the map from Warband and then an eastwards expansions. I liked it, it showed the magnitude of the fall of the Calradic Empire, that MOST of it was left in ruins in the hands of barbarians hordes like the Khergits, who occupy the western-most cities.

But several years later, the two maps don't resemble each other much. Take a look:

BANNERLORD:
Mount-Blade-II-Bannerlord-Trading-Goods-Guide-2.jpg


WARBAND:
dqm1eTn.jpg


OLD MAP in DEVELOPMENT (factions overlapped; not mine):
BZezyY8.jpg


As you can see, several differences are evident from the start:

1- The city of Sargoth migrated northwards after the fall of the Empire, and it went from being a neighbour of Velgar to being a city in the northern shore, future Nord capital.

2- Ocs Hall is obviously Uxkhal, but it's kind of in the wrong place, just like most Vlandian towns except for Praven, which is just slighly northwards from where it should be.

3- Most of the Vaegir towns are pretty much nowhere to be seen. I wouldn't mind it if the geography made it easy to see where they should be.

4- I assume the Sarranid Desert is the result of centuries of climate change drying up the sort-of-Mediterranean sea down there.This would create a death-field of salt and hight pressure, the dryest place in the world, and change forever the climate of Calradia. Maybe that explains why...

5- ...the fertile plains of Rhotae, Lageta and the heartland of the Empire are in 1257 nothing but dust and steppe, and why the rolling valleys of Poros and Amitatys are just sand and dunes. Climate change is real man!

6- I would assume most of the Battanian towns have been wiped out and a mix of Vlandians and Vaegirs took over their lands long ago, extinguishing their culture. Again, confusing geography doesn't help.

7- Cultural differenciation is also a problem. The original M&B, and then Warband, was very, very clearly inspired by a Baltic scenario. The Rhodoks' names and toponymia are very Lithuanian, and they're an elective monarchy (Poland-Lithuanian Commonwealth stand-in). The Khergits and the Vaegirs are obvious stand ins for the Golden Horde and the Russian princes, like the coalition under Alexander Nevsky. The Swadians are Germans (a mod called 1257 Edition made the comparison even more obvious by making the Swadian Kingdom into the Swadian Order and it explicitly became a stand-in for the Teutonic Order. I liked that) and the Sarranids are the only ones who don't fit the bill, but not all comparisons have to be 1:1. They're making a game, not making a point.
Of course, this parallels with the Baltics don't stand to scrutiny in Bannerlord. The ancestor of both Swadians and Rhodoks (apparently) are Feudal Normans. Ok. But then the Sturgians are a mix of Vaegirs and Nords. This makes explaining the Nords away a bit more difficult, but fine. But as you can see, the Rhodoks' clearly Lithuanian names don't translate well into their new origin as originally Vlandian territory. It's like calling a town Springfield, and 8 years later telling everyone it comes from the Haudenosaunee compound phrase "Sadranegha Bra Baldi", meaning "touching the moon with the tip of my willy". And now everyone is confused because Springfield was very obviously based on, well, the English name.

Am I taking this too seriously?

Anyway, here's my best approximation, and thanks to Vesper_ for the base map:

UOFlxGs.png


As a last note, I'll say that probably the devs tried to have a pretty accurate map of Calradia, true to Warband, and decided to change it at some point. Probably with good reason. I'd just like to know the reasons, otherwise I'll keep obsessing about this and won't be able to get teleworking!
 
I would assume the time-gap explains a majority of why towns aren't in the 'correct' places, but a hundred years doesn't really make much sense in terms of places being straight up not in the right positions.

In order to reconcile it, I simply assumed that all the towns that aren't in the current "correct" places were destroyed and forced elsewhere during wartime, and castles, villages, and such were also similarly razed and moved. Doesn't really hold up to logistics and scrutiny, but it's the best guess I can take for it.
 
There are some strange inconsistencies such as "Sargot" in Vlandia being so close to "Sargoth" from Warband. I appreciate the better graphics and features of the new map. Personally I like the new map because of the diversity in the natural landscape instead of empty barren land.
 
Honestly I just chuck it up to the assumption that the maps in either games aren't the real shape of the world, and are just different renders of the same world by two different cartographers.
 
I think the reason is way more simple for all these discrepancies.

They said Bannerlord's Calradia is set 200 years before Warband, right?

That's it, apart from this sentence, and to some vague comparisons between cultures in the 2 games, this is where the continuity ends.
I'm glad they've chosen to change the map and some cities positions, cause it means they're putting wise gameplay and balancing at the top, instead of fake history continuity. Later we can discuss if we agree on their gameplay choices which might be wrong, but that's another topic.

No one from TW ever tried to explain what happened in those 200 hundred years, we assume it's inspired by the facts happenend during actual history of Europe.

But we're really far from having a faithful reproduction.
I think you're talking a bit too serious for what the devs wanted to actually do. They just took inspiration, but that's just step 1 out of 10. The you have aesthetic and strategic differentiation, map positioning, all sorts of simplifications that you have to do while creating a game like this, an extreme synthesis of what we think it was similar to reality.

Anyway it's nice to see that I'm not the only one noticing these details :grin:
 
I don't really mind either, it's just an itch at the back of my ear. At first I simply assumed Sargot was Sargoth, and it wasn't until I looked at the map that I said to myself "hey, wasn't Sargoth all the way up north?".

The best thing is that some of these problems are very easy to solve: change a couple of names. Sargot into Velgar, Car Banseth into Car Sargath, Marunath into Din Marunath (which could become Dhirim given enough centuries, just like Caesar Augusta > Zaragoza, or Maguntiacum > Mainz...), etc.
 
My biggest pet peeve with the current map is that some castles are far away from the village they got their name from, with other villages being way closer to them.
 
I think the absence of the sea in Warband might be explained better by a shift to the north - none of the towns south of the sea in Bannerlord are present in Warband. Though climate change obviously played a part, since everything on the south became a desert and the east became desert-ish steppes.
 
I mean, its not like the map in Warband was realistic or well designed to begin with. In Bannerlord they actually made some effort to make the geography believeable. Despite the games many problems and inconsistencies I think the visual design in Bannerlord is way superior to Warband.
 
Rhodoks? Lithuiania? What? They're a mix of Scots and Italians... Which makes the fact that their precursors, the battanians are based mainly on the Celts and Gauls(with a bit of thracians mixed in) all the more obvious...
 
The sea in the middle in Bannerlord is supposed to roughly correspond to the Mediterranean, right? You can definitely see a shift in the trees and climate geography as you go from Northern (pines?) to Southern Empire (Mediterranean?).
 
I was disappointed to see this much of a radical change to Calradia as well. Additionally, the geography technically does not make sense anyways for either world. Both of those aside, in the end I am content with the new Calradia and it really does feel like a very different game altogether.
 
Rhodoks? Lithuiania? What? They're a mix of Scots and Italians... Which makes the fact that their precursors, the battanians are based mainly on the Celts and Gauls(with a bit of thracians mixed in) all the more obvious...

A mix of Scots and Italians makes no sense. Italians, why? Because they use pavise shields? Scots, why? Because they have pikes and live in the hills?

Look at their place names, it's clearly Lithuanian-inspired. If Jelkala, Veluca and Yalen were called Iogola, Velocca and Ialenna, then maybe, but the sound of the placenames is so characteristically Lithuanian that they can't have been inspired ORIGINALLY (originally) by anything else.
 
Well, in all likelihood this will not be a popular opinion, but I feel considering how old Warband is and considering its map made little logical/geological sense to begin with, it would be better if they kept improving Bannerlord and make Warband fit the changes retroactively.

Think about it. Why didn't Warband have many of the things Bannerlord have? Because it is an old game, its engine was always a limiting factor. Technology at the time didn't allow most things that's possible now.

tl.dr: Improve Bannerlord, modify Warband to fit.
 
A mix of Scots and Italians makes no sense. Italians, why? Because they use pavise shields? Scots, why? Because they have pikes and live in the hills?

Look at their place names, it's clearly Lithuanian-inspired. If Jelkala, Veluca and Yalen were called Iogola, Velocca and Ialenna, then maybe, but the sound of the placenames is so characteristically Lithuanian that they can't have been inspired ORIGINALLY (originally) by anything else.
They are most renowned for their crossbowmen (like Genoa) they live in hilly terrain and eschew cavalry (Scots) they fought for freedom from a more knight-focused nation that is Swadia (again, like scots vs England and Italian city states vs France/HRE) They use pikes (scots) and other long polearms (Italians). They have a sort-of democratic system of rule, like many Italian states did. Also, I don't particularly see how the city names sound particularly Lithuanian either.
Still, it could also be that they were drawing from all sorts of influences, since this being a fantasy world, they don't have to be consistent with real life nations.
 
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