Updates to City Names

[Daffy]

@Daffy
I have a some question about how you guys work on such maps:

First, did you use a modern map of germany, or do you try to take historic developments in account? Because especially in Swabia, you put a lot cities became only later (as in 17th or 18th Century) important, like Baden-Baden, but left out Speyer for example , which was de facto Capital under the Salien Dynasty in the high middle ages.

Also, do you favour geographical correctness or historically importance?
Because when I made my Changes, I thought when I never heard from a City anywhere (I'm also german, btw), it's probably shouldn't appear on the map, and honestly, when i (as the Player) found something like Offenburg or Lippstadt or Wolfenbüttel i rename it to something more important (or more known) in the wider area, which kind of beats the whole purpose of that feature.

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baden-Baden#Geschichte 1250 (Stadtrecht)
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Offenburg#Geschichte 1240 (Freie Reichsstadt)
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lippstadt#Geschichte 1184/1185 (Gründung)
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfenbüttel#Geschichte

how I did it? google maps, took several screenshots and printed them out
taped it together to a ca 60x40cm 'map'
from that map I tried to compare the civ map with the 'real' one and pick fitting cities
with a priority on many city names (max 4 tiles per city, never 3 in a row)
in SW germany max 2-3 tiles/city due to lack of space (locations don't fit anymore, or you have to leave out cities)

2. priority is geographical but only if it fits historically
most info is based on wikipedia though
I tried to give a variety of city names
personally i'd say Paderborn > Lippstadt or Soest but didn't want to seem biased
Kaiserpfalz, Erzbistum, Karl der Große(Charlemagne) etc.

I assumed several spots as 'reference-points'
Frankfurt, Augsburg, Köln, Freiburg, Lübeck, Berlin

e.g. one reason why i left out Karlsruhe (founded 1715)
a location for e.g. Stuttgart north of Augsburg was also a 'no go' for me

I left out Speyer in favor to Heidelberg, I hadn't really heard of Speyer before reading it on the map. Speyer between Mannheim and Karlsruhe, right?
Have heard/read the name but that's about it.
edit: looked up Speyer, well it beats Heidelberg
All other locations for Speyer were way too off imo, iirc (south around Freiburg?)


there was another problem which I just remembered now..
2 Frankfurts .. since Frankfurt is usually the AI's capitol I'd assume that Frankfurt(Oder) has to be renamed

 

[3Miro]

I guess I will wait at least until tomorrow so that the city names get some agreement. There is not point to update the maps today if they are just going to get changed.

Take your time and settle things, we want to get this right.

And keep up the hard work city names are among the worst to deal with.

 

[Daffy]

re-edited the german name map

-removed Heidelberg & 1 location for Heilbronn in favor of 2 locations for Speyer
-removed 2 locations for Köln(3 tiles in a row) replaced by Koblenz
-Wolfenbüttel replaced by Goslar
-Braunschweig increased by 1 tile(mud though, change terrain possibly?)

I had replaced Eger aka Cheb with Bayreuth and Amberg. The idea was that Eger should be included in the Austrian name map instead(replacing those names), iirc it is in Bohemia.
Any other ideas are welcome

Another thing.. I placed Oranienburg & Neubrandenburg but simply due to lack of other cities in the area
Imo there has to be a city location between Berlin-Stralsund or Berlin-Stettin
Neubrandenburg is OK imo but I'm completely unsure about Oranienburg

edit: additional ideas..
replacing 1 tile of Konstanz with Ravensburg
adding Schwäbisch Hall south of Frankfurt

(if a city has 'Hall' in it's name it's a good location for salt on the map)
e.g. Bad Reichenhall, Schwäbisch Hall, Halle, Hallein etc.

 

[Kartoffelvampir]

@Daffy:
I like to remind you that we are making a cityname-Map, not a townname-Map, which are different thinks (in english, that is)

with a priority on many city names

Well, my Priority was to choose just as many city names as necessary, even if i stretched geography a bit. I searched for a Compromise between: "City was actual worth something" and "doesn't make myself shiver in geographical wrongness".

I used maps in historical books, similiar to this wiki-map:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4d/HRR_10Jh.jpg
also, the top of this wiki-page gives us some cities that should be in in:
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_der_größten_deutschen_Städte.

Additonally, i did mainly go for cities with indisputable historic importance because otherwise there would be questions like: Why Reutlingen and not Tübingen? etc.
Also, I don't like to see the AI (or myself, for that matter) founding cities like, well, Offenburg, Wolfenbüttel, Ravensburg or Schwäbisch Hall (which are rather towns than cities), especially not on spots where the AI (or me) likes to found cities.

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baden-Baden#Geschichte 1250 (Stadtrecht)
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Offenburg#Geschichte 1240 (Freie Reichsstadt)
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lippstadt#Geschichte 1184/1185 (Gründung)
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfenbüttel#Geschichte

I read the articles, and didn't see why we should favour them over bigger Cities (which are actual cities and not towns). Also, there were about 100 Reichsstädte and 3000 places with Stadtrecht, so kind of weak arguments.

2. priority is geographical but only if it fits historically
I tried to give a variety of city names

Well, mine was historically but only if it fits geographical Also i tried to keep it down on lesser, but more important

personally i'd say Paderborn > Lippstadt or Soest but didn't want to seem biased Kaiserpfalz, Erzbistum, Karl der Große(Charlemagne) etc.

nah, Paderborn is fine, though Soest (which was apparently a pretty big thing in the middle ages) would fit better geographically. Also, there were several hundred Pfalzen all over Germany, and according to wiki, Lippstadt wasn't even a important one.

a location for e.g. Stuttgart north of Augsburg was also a 'no go' for me

Yeah, sorry for that one. That area was the last bit i did, and i thought, screw, Stuttgart is fine. You did it better there.

I had replaced Eger aka Cheb with Bayreuth and Amberg. The idea was that Eger should be included in the Austrian name map instead(replacing those names), iirc it is in Bohemia.
Any other ideas are welcome

Sounds good.

edit: additional ideas..

Well, like i said, i would favour cities who are actuall cities rather than just bigger Towns, so i'm really not sure about this ones...

I have a few suggestions for the map:


1 - Changed Offenburg to Freiburg: Freiburg should be between the two spots, and since the AI (and myself) likes to found cities there, i rather see a (relativly) more important city there than a town which isn't even on most maps.

2 - Changed Karlsruhe to Trier: i am Pretty sure that town village there is supposed to represent Trier, so it probably should get the name.

3 - Lippstadt to Paderborn: see above

4 - Arranged names a bit in that area, because apparantly the AI likes to found cities there and Göttingen, while still more important than Halberstadt, which was there before, was less important than Braunschweig, which dominated what now is southern Niedersachsen, at least till Hannover grow to importance in the 17th Century
Not quite sure about this one, though

5 - Oranienburg to Neubrandenburg: Well, now Oranienburg is only a till on mud, so we probably will never see it anywhere, we might just leave it there.

@Daffy again:
It looks like our oppinions how to make this maps are pretty incompatiple, so we should probably make a point anytime soon, or we may end up arguing endlessly.
What do you think of my suggestions?

 

[Daffy]

that spot was previously empty, the AI occasionally founded Essen there

I'm pretty much happy with the rest of the map so far
but..^^
The namemap in Poland is still somewhat of a mess..

 

[AbsintheRed]

I am also closer to historical > geographical: especially since the map itself is far from perfect geographically, and in this grid scale it never will be.
So priority should be a historical city name but only if it more or less fits geographically too

 

[Kartoffelvampir]

I'm pretty much happy with the rest of the map so far
but..^^

So am I, and we probably should leave it now

The namemap in Poland is still somewhat of a mess..

Yeah, I noticed that (What the hell does Cottbus there, and why is it called Kottbus?). but that area should be synchronized with the polish Map, which i unfortunaly don't have.

 

[StuartKleinsen]

Are some of those changes already in the latest SVN? 'cause I've some bugs concerning Germany's city names, e.g. Florenz on the Frankfurt spawn plot.
I could offer some help for the german city map if needed.

 

[Voyelles]

A minor point, but I thought I'd suggest renaming Kassel "Cassel" as per the pre-1926 spelling.

 

[Sian]

think part of the problem with the German name map is that there is to many cooks around the pot each trying to bring forth their opinion about how the favour should be ...

tried tweaking Norse Namemap a bit ... Mainly shuffling around with the names in Denmark (and changing some names to be the ancient name for a settlement close by, such as changing Stockholm to Birka, and Tønsberg to Kaupang, since Tønsberg is more questioned as a city of importence doing the era than Kaupang, but being more important both as an elder iron age settlement and then again from early-mid 1100s, whereas Kaupang was more importent doing its existence from ~780 till its abandonment around 950)

again ... would like to see be border between Saxony and Denmark be shuffled 1tile south (at least the easten tile)

*edit* stupid file management which doesn't want to upload

 

[Daffy]

A minor point, but I thought I'd suggest renaming Kassel "Cassel" as per the pre-1926 spelling.

imo if you start something like that with one city you have to do it with all cities..

using more authentic but older names might be a problem imo
There's the 'local' name which ordinary people used and the 'official' Latin name(language of the church).

e.g. Colonia Agrippina = Coellen = Coelle = Kölle = Köln
Another good example form a local town is 'Oppidium Sualanberg' aka Schwalenberg or Burg Schwalenberg.
And I don't even want to think about possible swabian naming

To implement that type of change would be allot of tedious work and I personally think it might add more to confusion. Some older variations of 'german' are hardly recognizable today. The 'modern' German language only became standardized in 1880 in Germany(excluding the recent change).

 

[Daffy]

Are some of those changes already in the latest SVN? 'cause I've some bugs concerning Germany's city names, e.g. Florenz on the Frankfurt spawn plot.
I could offer some help for the german city map if needed.

I'm not sure what version is available on the SVN but the map we edited certainly didn't have Florenz near Frankfurt
But I don't know about having a possible Frankfurt near the spot for Florenz(we/I didn't really look at Italy or the other surrounding countries)

 

[Kartoffelvampir]

Are some of those changes already in the latest SVN? 'cause I've some bugs concerning Germany's city names, e.g. Florenz on the Frankfurt spawn plot.

Daffy and i used the Version 3miro gave me here: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=10571571&postcount=40, only change is that Daffy put a additional tile in the baltic sea, between Rostock and Stettin.

Don't now what Version of the map is in current svn (or, to be honest, what the svn exactly is).

I could offer some help for the german city map if needed.

That is a bit late now. Daffy and I pretty much rearrenged whole Germany the last week, and since we both had different ideas about how do to this map, i'm pretty happy we found a decent agreement. We should probably look how it works in the next version, and leave it till then. But thanks for you offer

 

[3Miro]

I made couple of updates to the SVN, but people kept coming up with more. Ignore what is in the SVN, tell me what should be in there. I need a WB savegame with the names, once they have been settled.

 

[StuartKleinsen]

So, this is what I did:
starting a game with Germany in the Beta11 version, after that a SVN version (downloaded Jun18, 2011)
What I did in both games:
setttling some cities on the same spots with settlers (using Worldbuilder or the second starting one)
In the SVN version I get
Florenz instead of Frankfurt,
Duisburg instead of Hamburg,
Essen instead of Koeln and
Bonn instead of Zuerich.

What I didn't do was to check if other civs have a city-naming bug as well.

 

[AbsintheRed]

Ok guys, I made a few small changes to your german city map, and uploaded it to the svn a few minutes ago.
I attached the latest version of the names (on the latest map), you may continue to improve it further: fill in a few gaps, have the same city name only in a 2*2 radius, etc...

I have completed the namemaps of the Baltic region - everything between Danzig, Minsk and St Petersburg. I attached the Norse, German, Moscow and Sweden namemaps. I decided it's best if I add the changes to Poland and Lithuania namemaps after the glitches about "Poz" etc are worked out.

I decided to use Old Prussian names (if succeeded by Teutonic castles) on Norse namemap when available as they were important trade centers at the time of the Norse.

I have a few suggestions that I can't implement myself.

1. The spot where Tvanksta (predecessor of Königsberg) spawns turned out to be more appropriate for Memel. So I suggest renaming the indy city "Memelis" (I like this option more) or moving it 1SW.

2. I suggest moving indy Minsk 1E.

3. I suggest moving barb Riga 2E (not sure I remember the current spawn spot correctly).

4. I suggest unifying the provinces of Estonia and Livonia as they were considered as one during the era relevant to this mod. If keeping them separate is important for gameplay purposes, I suggest dividing them by the dashed line.

Spoiler :

I support Lady Eleanor's proposal of adding the Northern crusade to the German UHV, as otherwise we would waste this excellent German namemap.

What do you think?

I also updated the borders within Estonia, Livonia and Lithuania the way it was suggested here
(note that I didn't touch the eastern border of the provinces)
Btw, it's probably a good idea to move Minsk and Riga. What do you think 3Miro?

 

[AbsintheRed]

I have completed the namemaps of the Baltic region - everything between Danzig, Minsk and St Petersburg. I attached the Norse, German, Moscow and Sweden namemaps. I decided it's best if I add the changes to Poland and Lithuania namemaps after the glitches about "Poz" etc are worked out.

A few weeks have passed, can you upload your improved Polish and Lithuanian maps too?

 

[Kartoffelvampir]

@AbsintheRed
The Version of the german city map is fine be me: there's just one city with a bigger radius than 2x2 in "Germany", Prague, which i hope doesn't need to be changed.

The only thing is that Daffy added a tile in the baltic sea, between Stettin and Rostock (the coast-tile with Stralsund). Don't know if you want to put it in again.

@StuartKleinsen
Looks sounds like you in your save the naming doesn't work at all, and your cities get the "free", spot-independent name, since Essen, Bonn or Duisburg ar neither in this Version nor the Beta-11 Version attached to a place in the map. Couldn't open your file, though.

 

[AbsintheRed]

@AbsintheRed
The Version of the german city map is fine be me: there's just one city with a bigger radius than 2x2 in "Germany", Prague, which i hope doesn't need to be changed.

The only thing is that Daffy added a tile in the baltic sea, between Stettin and Rostock (the coast-tile with Stralsund). Don't know if you want to put it in again.

Oh, there is always something to do
Syncronizing with other city name maps, expanding further, or just simply improving it.
And of course the main map itself may change too :/
Btw, do you guys plan to keep those names on the British Isles?

The point is, that I will keep merging in the new changes for all the city name maps, and upload everything to the svn every now and then

Here is krieger546's latest city name map for a few other civs (merged in with the latest RFCEurope map):
Everyone, feel free to further improve them

 

[Morholt]

On the subject of changing the map: the entire area around the Neman is quite distorted in the current map, for example Minsk should probably be at least 4 tiles NE of where it is now.. the current position of Minsk is more like Brest or Nowogrodek. Also the Neman itself looks very strange.