Upper and Lower are not related to North or South on a map. Remember, maps have arbitrary position of north. In medieval times the upper part of a map was supposed to be the East. Upper and Lower Lorraine have this name because of height, which is correct since that's the meaning of the words Up and Low. Other examples of this use is Low Countries, for the area around Belgium, Netherlands and Luxemburg. You can also see this example in other regions: Lower and Upper Austria, Lower and Upper Bavaria, Scottish Lowlands and Highlands. Pretty much every country or land has a division based on its medium height in comparison to another. Source: I'm a historian and museologist.
Another example of this! I live in a rural area of Norway, and one of the farms nearby is split into Lower (on the coast, by the sea) and Upper (inland, across the road, where the hills start)!
Thank you for the detailed comment! I have heard of Upper and Lower Austria before, I guess I never put two and two together. It also doesn't help that in North America we mostly just say "screw geography!" and name things randomly lol
The Upper and Lower parts of an area could also be understood by the flow direction of the local river. This could be misleading because a river can flow through a higher elevation terrain if the bed of the river is in a lower elevation. In this case, the upper part of x river flows through lower y area and the lower part of x river flows through the upper part of y area.
Mogadishu - A rather peaceful 16 barony coastal duchy. Ajuraan is one of the smallest and easiest to form empires in the game. Keep the Abyssinians friendly and you can basically do what you want all game. Manding - Two gold mines, 23 baronies, and a high-dev floodplain running through the middle. Perfect place to channel your inner Mansa Musa. Achineck - Off in the Canaries, with only 5 baronies which is kinda terrible, but you start with the best religion in the game (Achamanism) and are pretty much unconquerable if you play your cards right. Galicia - Probably designed with larping in mind, but it's still an 18 barony coastal province with three special buildings, one of which gives flat gold. Like all of Iberia it's pretty mountainous, but that can be worked around. Bohemia - 35 baronies! It's also a de jure kingdom, so you can basically become a king immediately. Prague is in mountains, but you can build a new castle in Melnik then move the county capital there to turn it into a farmland county. There's also the mine in Caslav. Upper Bosnia - A sleeper pick for mountain enjoyers. Has the compact Krstjani religion, 15 baronies, a mine and a holy site. Al-Said - The whole Nile is excellent. This is the biggest duchy in it with 19 baronies along a floodplain. Kushite is a uniquely good religion for tall play, as you can potentially get an extra 10 stewardship from it, just what out for the Abbasids next door. Merv - After taking the overpowered Restore Bactria decision in neighbouring Balkh, Merv with it's highly compact 28 baronies snowballs like crazy. Also of note is the starting ruler of the Samanids begins with 19/5 on his domain limit. Dzayul - Another sleeper pick. Only 11 baronies in the mountains is horrible, of course, but this place is special in having its holy sites all packed closely together. Deal with the mountain development penalty and you can do some fun hermit kingdom stuff with it. Just watch out for Pala. Pagan - 23 baronies and three farmland counties, a unique temple, and you're off in the corner. Again watch out for Pala. Silahara & Chera - For the elephant enjoyers out there. 11/14 baronies respectively, but most are coastal jungle. Silahara is quite defensive despite being a line thanks to the unpassable terrain. Surprisingly one of the best spots to play Jewish (Malabarism) in the game. Tamil and Kannada cultures can build wind furnaces from the beginning of the game, which give the same gold as farms&fields, but also buff your military. Pandya - Similar buffs to Silahara & Chera, but swap out the jungle for farmland. Madurai is the best county in the game. Only 14 baronies, though. No special buildings, but the Brihadeeswarar temple and Sri Lankan gold mines are a small jump away. Paramara - 14 baronies, two farmland counties, two special buildings and a holy site. Neighbouring mine, too. Malwa is often overshadowed by the other strong spots in India, but stands on its own merits. Only downside is it straddles the Rajasthan/Deccan boarder, so forming an empire is difficult. Magadha - 14 baronies. You get the Mahabodhi temple, Nalanda university and an 18 dev county from the beginning of the game. Pala is one of the strongest starts in the game for a reason.
Thanks. I'm looking up these duchies due to the Witchcraft mod. Once you gathered all the magical artifacts, you'll explode into dominance. I had unlocked just one artifacts of true magic and all neighboring kingdom requested to buy peace truce with me.
I like the Galicia duchy in northwestern Iberia: it has a - Site of Santiago special building (which both Christians and Muslims can use!) - The Roman walls special building - The lighthouse special building. Not to mention that the number of baronies you can hold there is a lot.
played it as the other bro, no drama like Irucca. bell artifact was great, forming Portugal as first kingdom, to get 2 random innovations, in case of 100% tribal, gives special ones. events might offer landing a sheppardi steward, hybridization makes it easy to invite all others. quite fun.
Ferghana is crazy good because supposedly the best horses were bred there. Virtually every great power in history that was remotely close wanted to control it for access to the horses.
Bohemia is probably the most powerful duchy in the game. But this list is about underrated duchies. Personally I like the duchy of Provence, but that is mostly case you can easily snipe the duchy of Genoa without going over your force limit rather easily, and cause I like forming the kingdom of Burgundy.
Muntenia is also a pretty good duchy, it has 5 counties and 16 baronies, most of the counties are in plains, a couple are in forests and wetlands, also it's quite defendable in the southern part because of the danube river. It's a pretty great place for playing tall and making tons of cash, and you can expand into the north and south if the byzantines are weak or collapse.
I did a Saka start with Ferghana as my main duchy and oh man it was powerful. I could fully support a maxed out Horse Archer army and I conquered everyone around me in a few years. Eventually I recreated Baktria and defeated the Mongols on my own. It was a good time.
Upper Lorraine is named as such due to being closer to the start of the river, thus upper although its position on a map is further south. Not like map position matters in terms of the start of a river being further inland than towards the English Channel.
Upper Bosnia is special in mine Tall Bosnian runs, having a lot of Baronies, an Holy Site with a Grand Catheral and also a Mine really close although available only later after the Banking Innovation.
For the Mother to us all playthrough I quickly made Manding (Mali) my capital duchy. Niani and Bure has gold mines, and several floodplains terrain baronies in the area, ideal for playing for high income and boosting development.
jenne is close, huge dev, only belongs to ghana. sonnike culture better, but sanguine faith. jenne easy to defend and go on the river. you connect with 3 goldmines, 3 holy sites and it's great. might try with norse for elections, I hate succesions in multicultural low dev tribal areas.
i think the best part about ferghana is that its this amazing valley with like 7 farmland provinces surrounded by desert/dryland duchies. you can easily dominate the entire region from ferghana. also, the county of nasaiyan has the most provinces in the game in addition to its farmlands, and the county of ferghana is close, and has a mountain province on which you can (and should) build your capital.
kiev/pereslav/chernigov quite unique farm/wetland combo. for development trickling down is great. kerch/crimea as greek satellite, for hybridization to skip innovations, one of best locations early east europe. also a holy site for Táltosism.
Technically it's 3 duchies but Makuria might be the best start im the entire game, wether your playing as coptic ok kusite its amazingly strong and well positioned.
Although it was already answered, Thought I would mention another example of upper vs lower in europe, and one in africa. The two largest dialect groups of german language are High and Low german. High German is the language of the peoples that live in the more mountainous south, and low german is the language of the germans living in the northern plains and wetlands. In Egypt, lower egypt is the area closer towards the floodplains of the nile delta, whereas upper egypt is the southern section that is characterized by higher elevation
Yea, lower just means lower altitude, downstream. Same with upper and lower Egypt. Ferghana is the shit too! Except when the Mongols get to rolling lol
Ferghana is my absolute favorite, I love to start down near merv as a Norse Muslim and form a hybrid culture with the hepthalites and make ferghana the seat of my empire and conquer south into Persia and Rajputana
Actually, river provinces are based on current direction. Upper/lower Egypt. - Upper Egypt = southern one. ("Up the river" = upstream.) - Lower Egypt = northern. (Because the Nile flows North.) 😉
Lower Lorraine is downstream, or lower than Upper Lorraine. It kinda like "Upper Canada" and "Lower Canada," or Ontario and Quebec."Upper" means upstream.
you supposed to play the hungarian migration for Transylvania, avars are placeholders, they swap onto yedisan and become pecsenegs, the event for going catholic, gives 1 development under 5 for all counties. quite weak, also the religion has cheapest tenets, including naval speed. the holy site locations are good tho but needs full conversion for bonus unlike others. krstjani catholic has good sites for hungary. doesn't have to be orthodox or christian.
The duchies in India can be are far better than what you showed, you'll understand if you just open up the terrain map. There's a reason why this region has been the most densely populated in the entire world
Did you know that what we consider north facing on Earth is actually south facing in the rest of the galaxy. What we consider north, is south ward in the milkyway. It is percieved the north magnetic poll aligns with the north of the The Milky way, but Earth's polls are currently switched so where we consider north is actually south, but we don't notice it because our magnetic field is flipped so it equals out with our magnetic north being at our falsly perceived North but is actually the South Poll OAP. In the past, the ancient world lower was generally above upper because they traveled down in expanse. This is the case for Anciet Egypt as well.
I hate all the duchies with bishopric-barony capitals in Europe. We cant even play theocracies yet they're there... hİsToriCal AcCurAcy... I have around 1500 hours ck3 in steam never played in mainland europe, like france and germany especially. once I wanted to larp as old saxon kingdom and just noticed amount of prince-bishoprics in those duchies in northern germany, that was the fastest alt + f4 in my life. My fav duchy is yedisan, obviously after the hungarians migrate away. I usually conquer that with an east slavic char, adopt orthodoxy and culture mix with pechenegs to form "Cossacks". Then I larp as Cossacks conquering & colonizing all the way up to mongolia.
Sorry man, to be completely honest I chose to put only island nations in the thumbnail because I could just google pictures of them instead of having to manually cut out and recolor ck3 screenshots lol.
Yeah bro you exposed me, I wanted to make sure I had integrity 100% legit gameplay for a useless background video where I played for 20 minutes and never touched it again
