It was a vassal, but only at very short intervals (e.g. 1554, 1576-1578). I kinda get why these periods of vassalisation were excluded though. Even then, Casablanca was a Portuguese outpost (Casa Branca) and not part of Morocco at the time.
I was slightly confused by that as well, but a quick google search reveals the answer. Although you'd think the capital is generally the largest city, in this case it certainly isn't. According to one site, Tel Aviv has 42% of Israel's population!
@Muromets, don't see what grounds there are to oppose the designation Israel itself proclaims. They call it the capital... PM's residence is there... Knesset is there... Maybe admin and many embassies are in Tel Aviv but that hardly outweighs those points, not even close.
@woshiwaiguoren One could argue that in matter of existence of a country or, in the present case, a capital, international recognition is the main criterium. Since most of the countries recognize Tel-Aviv as Israel's capital it could make more sense to do the same in Jetpunk. The fact that the country proclaims itself its existence would be enough to make Palestine or Northern cyprus a country in Jetpunk if we follow this logic (even though I agree there are differences between all these examples).
@Emric, no country consider Tel Aviv as the national capital of Israel. It's just because of the political situation concerning Jerusalem, foreign EMBASSIES are located in Tel Aviv.
@Emric Generally speaking, a country's capital is whatever that country says its capital is. For reasons of political sensitivity a lot of world leaders prefer not to talk about Jerusalem, but it is the official capital of both Israel and Palestine, even if their respective centres of government are Tel Aviv and Ramallah.
An Israeli professor in college once mentioned that Tel Aviv and Jerusalem are only about 45 minutes away and 50 miles apart. Israel isn't a large country to begin with, and even then if you look at a map of it, Tel Aviv and Jerusalem practically next to each other. I don't know much about Israeli geography or how they determine metro areas there, but the area between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem is much smaller than the New York or Guangzhou or Tokyo metro areas--so I don't see why they can't be considered the same metro area.
@JWatson24 Because they are not. There are miles of fields and forests in between and an altitude difference of more than 2000 feet. Israel is tiny compared to the US and the term metropolitan area is not so easy to apply, not even to Europe, because it is defined primarily by social, infrastructural and cultural criteria and not just by distance. Tel Aviv and Jerusalem are separate cities and urban areas. If you wanted to define them as a metropolitan area purely on the basis of their distance, you would also have to include the Jordanian capital Amman (40 miles from Jerusalem!) and the Palestinian city of Jericho in between. Not a good idea... ;-)
I find it interesting that only 1.5 of these cities are in Europe. I would have expected more given they controlled all of the Balkan Peninsula, but I guess there aren't many megacities there (at least when compared to West Asia or North Africa).
Istanbul (Not Constantinople)
- They Might Be Giants