For the past several months, the developers at Paradox Tinto have been posting weekly developer diaries and screenshots of the Europa Universalis 5 map in progress that everyone knows and loves.

This week's Tinto Maps post was the grand center of early modern Europe: the Holy Roman Empire. History Strategy fans have known for a long time that this would be a huge undertaking at the level of fidelity intended by EU5: ...... But I don't think anyone really saw this coming.

Shockingly detailed and detailed maps show how incredibly complex the Holy Roman Empire was, a patchwork patchwork of principalities, electorates, free cities, archbishops' electorates, archbishops' electorates, and imperial peasant republics. It was a pre-modern political structure that could hardly be called a nation, and it would take dozens of books to barely begin to understand what it was.

It is staggering to even consider how this would work in a video game that attempts to simulate a society beginning in 1337. According to Paradox, there are a total of 357 countries in the current draft. By contrast, the Holy Roman Empire in Europa Universalis 4 has fewer than 100 countries as models; even the EU4 mod “Voltaire's Nightmare” reduces the entire EU4 to such a map.

In EU5, this beastly map appears to be casually placed alongside the entire rest of the world as a giant sandbox in a historical grand strategy game.

The more the developers of Paradox Tinto comment on the game's ability to model the tremendously complex systems of the Holy Roman Empire, at least at this point in its development, the more ridiculous it becomes. For example, one commenter noted that when land is divided among several children by inheritance, rules exist to further subdivide even some of these small countries.

For more maps of the region, including detailed maps of population, production, and imperial politics, please visit the Paradox forum: Paradox Tinto Maps #12.