Many countries in Europe (Germany, Spain, Italy, France etc) are split into autonomous or administrative regions or something of that accord. I was thinking, for some of these bigger nations, we could have a category to discover the capitals of said regions. Not every region's capital is included in ETS2 but a majority of them are. I'd imagine it being similar to the All Capitals runs, potentially smaller in scope as you only need to explore one country instead of much of Europe. I can give one a try tomorrow, but here's the one's I've looked at thus far:

• France (Ajaccio, Bordeaux, Dijon, Lille, Lyon, Marsellie, Nantes, Paris, Rennes, Strasbourg, Toulouse); (Bourges (Centre-Val de Loire), Le Harve (Normandy))
• Spain (Barcelona, Bilbao, Santander, Madrid, Murcia, Pamplona, Seville, Valladolid, Valencia, Zaragoza); (Ciudad Real (Castilla-La Mancha), Vigo (Galicia), Badajoz (Extremadura), Gijon (Asturias))
• Italy (Ancona, Bari, Bologna, Cagliari, Catanzaro, Florence, Genoa, Milan, Naples, Palermo, Rome, Trieste, Turin, Venice); (Terni (Umbria), Pescara (Abruzzo))
• Germany (Kiel, Hamburg, Bremen, Hanover, Magdeburg, Berlin, Dusseldorf, Erfurt, Dresden, Munich, Stuttgart, Frankfurt am Main (works for both Rhineland-Phalz and Hessen, could use Kassel for Hessen)); (Rostock (Mecklenburg-Vorpommern)
• United Kingdom (Edinburgh, London, Cardiff) This might not be the best, if Ireland & North Ireland are added maybe it could be added then
• Greece-% (Athens, Thessaloniki, Ioannina, Larissa, Patras, Herakilion); (Rhodes (Admin. of Aegean))
• Portugal-$ (Porto, Coimbra, Lisbon, Faro, Setubal); (Evora (Alentejo), Cortiçadas de Lavre (Oeste e Vale do Tejo))

With the Northern Scandinavia DLC on its way, its possible Sweden, Norway and Finland could be considered for this category.

Cities in italics are cities which could represent the region in parenthesis, as the region's capital is not in ETS2.

% Greece is divided by the 7 decentralized administrations.

$ Portugal is divided acording to the 7 administrative regions of the country. It can be divided in other ways, but that basically just becomes going to every city in Portugal.

Also, I suggested regional capitals because, in some of these countries, visiting every city there might be very time consuming. That said, an all-cities category for a given country might be okay for the smaller nations.

Countries which could be considered:

• Bulgaria
• Latvia
• Lithuania
• Estonia
• Denmark
• Bosnia and Herzegovina
• Serbia

An issue with this suggestion, to me, is how similar it is to just the All Capitals categories that we already have (and are generally not very popular). The 'texture' of the speedrun is the same (just connect the dots, but closer together).

Also without some knowledge or explanation, to most people it just looks like "drive between these random cities within this country". All cities is more conclusive, but also somewhat less interesting, I believe?

The "Explorsica" category rose out of similar discussions in the past, because it escapes the same 'drive between cities' theme and required more planning to uncover all the road surfaces, so it is less exploitable.

I would be more open to seeing more discovery runs like that, if possible to find some that are not too simple, and not too arduous, and preferably have something special about them.

In that case, the isles of Greece could be something like explorsica but idk. Argostoli, Crete, Rhodes, Chios, Mitilini being the relevant islands. Otherwise theres really not much else that could be considered (other than sicilly or sardinia but eh)

Yes the islands are useful because they are self-contained, rather than having lots of road connections leading in/out.

Not saying that additional city based objectives could not be added, just that they would have to be something more special, much like new city-city routes, rather than just adding them because they're there.

Being an open world and open ended game, anything is possible, but not everything has to have a leaderboard XD

I would like to try the isles of Greece as a run, but upon inspection, Argostoli would be rather out of the way (requires going to Patras then driving to Athens or Kalamata to access the other islands). What would be done in this situation? Exclude Argostoli, or the time from Patras to Athens/Kalamata becomes a part of the run?

What would you be counting as the objectives? Just visiting each island city? Argostoli would have to be included, and therefore whatever time was taken to get there would also have to be counted, part of the strategy would be in how you get there.

I figured it'd be similar to the explorsica but i suppose it could be that too, alright thats fair just wanted to clarify before doing a run try

if it's exploration of the islands, like 100% exploration of each, then you won't need to do complete exploration on the mainland imo. just recall through to get past it as quick as possible to get back to the exploring. include it in the time, but use the fastest generally-legal strategy to get past it

As above the only exploration you would count in that case is that which is done on the islands. Anything on the mainland is timed but not measured. Much like a collectible objective run in another game would not care about what other game progress you have to make in order to get to the amount you need.

The issue with exploration of just the islands is tracking it. They do not have their own individual % so you would have to include a close zoom across each one at the end for verification (that would not be timed).