A Different Thirty Years

This mod is an alternate history mod where the Thirty Year War went radically different, making all of history change. This includes a Franco-Spanish Union, a massive United States, a united Central America, a mighty Poland, a reborn Eastern Roman Empire, and more!

The mod is not near done, but I’m just uploading it so people can play with the map as it is. A lot of flavor is missing, currently.

Countries that will be experiencing the most changes in the upcoming patches will be France, Poland, and the United States.

The United States will have to struggle through the growing pains of consolidating their massive empire, forced to adopt either federalization or centralization. If they fail to account for their widespread nation, they may end up collapsing as a result.

France is a massive power within Western Europe, but they remain incredibly divided due to never centralizing. The several duchies within it will be given their own unique identities. France will have to navigate consolidating their borders and uniting all duchies under the crown, but this will come with massive strife.

Poland is the dominant power within Eastern Europe, but they also are just as divided as France and the US are. With many different cultures under their thumb, it is no wonder that the many people under them do not want to be lead by the central crown. Poland will have to either centralize or federalize their nation, lest they crumble to ethnic strife.

There are plans in the works for a federalization system. I have some ideas as to how to implement it. There are also plans for a more in-depth Papal Authority system, reflecting the historic temporal powers of the Pope over Catholic realms.

The Thirty Year War went radically different. Louis XIV dies as a child, shifting France’s history massively. France did not undergo much of the centralization under Louis XIV as a result and regressed, becoming more decentralized. At the same time, the HRE faired far worse in the war, collapsing as a result. The Papacy gained much temporal matters in the aftermath.

In France, Philippe I, Duke of Orléans ascends to the throne and rules France in a fairly lax manner. Eventually, his child, Marie Louise d’Orléans, marries Charles II of Spain. They succesfully have a child. Philippe dies without a male heir and Marie ascends to the French throne. The child of Charles II and Marie Louise goes on to be King of France and Spain, the two kingdoms merging.

Before Marie could marry Charles II of Spain, the Pope needed to confirm the marriage. As the Pope had gotten much temporal power in the aftermath of the Thirty Year War, he managed to negotiate with Spain to release Naples. Naples fell under the Pope’s thumb.

In the coming decades, the Austrians kept fighting border wars with the Ottomans. After talks with the Pope, a ninth major crusade was called to rid Anatolia, the Balkans, and the Levant from Muslim rule. The Protestant League, worried that the Catholics would gain full control of the region, gave their support to the Catholics with the understanding that the region would be left under Orthodox control.

The Crusade ended up being a success due to better coordination than the past ones. The Catholic League mostly keeps their promise, but the Kingdom of Jerusalem ends up becoming Catholic instead of Orthodox due to French influence in the region.

Due to the control the Catholics gained over Egypt and the Levant after the ninth crusade, the Kingdom of Jerusalem was able to build the Suez Canal far earlier than in our timeline. This gave many benefits to the Catholic kingdoms as they could ferry their ships through the canal to India, making their colonization efforts in the region much faster than the British’s. Britain failed to gain a hold in India; instead, France, Venice, and Byzantium all took a slice out of the Mughals.

Britain and Portugal were both worried about the Catholics dominating due to their control over India and trade in the east. In a war against Spain and France, Britain won France and Spain’s North American lands. Britain and Portugal put heavy funding into a canal to connect the Atlantic and the Pacific. They could not build one in Central America due to the sheer elevation differences and a lack of pumps in the 1700s, so they ended up building a canal from the Coatzacoalcos River to the Río Espíritu Santo, going through the relatively flat midsection of Oaxaca. While there is an elevation difference between the rivers, it was not that large. A gradual decline, like an aquaduct, connected the two rivers. The direction of the wind is opposite to the decline of the river, allowing for two way navigation.

After the canal was finished, England and Portugal began to colonize China—during the several decades before the canal was built, they had been Christianizing south China. The Min, Yue, Zhuang, Yi and other minority groups in Southern China were Christianized and eventually rebelled with western help. Over several decades, the Qing slowly began to crumble while the west exploited them. Russian invasions from the north-west, Western colonizers at their shores, and rebelling minorities/Christians ruined them.