can you give us an overview of how the Not!Mediterannean world developed here over the lightning-years? I think we need some more background info for this vote. How the Saffron civilization rose and fell, did the Migration Period happen, was there an Alt!Islam, what happened to the Khemetri, etc.
Basically the Saffron Islanders genocided their way west for a few centuries, wiping out indigenous Bronze Age civilizations with technology and social concepts obtained from the Ymaryn, replacing them with their own colonies. Their culture fragmented multiple times (in the last update you were actually starting to deal with the Eastern Saffron Islanders, who had become distinct from the Western SI), but generally the Not!Med was controlled by their cultures and successor cultures for millennia. You had a Not!Rome for a time, and they fought and squabbled with you for a bit, but since you both had a policy of "expansion through 'defense'" for the most part you never decided to take a swing at each other all that hard, but they eventually fell apart to internal issues and a Migration Period nomad horde that bounced off you into them at a particularly bad time.
In historical retrospect, the scholars massively cringed when they realized that both empires had been able to bounce active nomads before, but if that particular group had arrived at a bad time for the People but not the Ueman then the situation would have been reversed.
There was a period of post-imperial chaos with the collapse of Not!Mediterranean (Saffron Sea) urban civilization and a reversion to agrarian communities, and you fueled turmoil by remaining a primary industrial center, providing weapons for cheap to petty kingdoms that focused on extractive measures to short term out compete their neighbours to be able to buy from you, impoverishing them, especially in the Eastern Saffron Sea. There was the rise of Not!Christianity and Not!Islam, but you sat on the fiercest focal point and refused to get involved in religious affairs one way or another, demanding that people pay their taxes and administer the fields and forests correctly. Since the two religious groups viewed you as being vaguely heretical rather than outright a different religious group (essentially both saw you as People of the Book) and you generally didn't pick fights with them, they mostly left you alone militarily. While you let both their missionaries through into your borders and out beyond, the two groups primarily interact through sea trade and in Not!Iberia, which lessened secular reasons to fight. Because you were sitting on Not!Anatolia and Not!Mesopotamia, Not!Islam had its cultural center sit in Khemetri, even if its holy sites are in Not!Arabia, and the cultural flavour of Not!Islam was more influenced by Ancient Egypt than Ancient Persia, especially since Khemetri went through a number of soft collapses (they probably have about the same degree of claim to cultural continuity from antiquity as you) instead of hard conquests like IRL Ancient Egypt. While the age of polytheism and god kings has passed, they are more like China in that they absorb invaders rather than have their culture replaced.
A number of outside forces took advantage of your weakness in the collapse, but there were no great empires able to immediately sweep in and take advantage, and you had left many of your nearest neighbours fragmented or partially dependent upon you so there were no ambitious conquerors who could immediately sweep things up, especially since you chose the hard urban core to survive and thus were able to maintain some degree of lording industrial supremacy over your neighbours. The power vacuum did mean that the furthest afield Syffrynites were forced to undergo further development of their own native industries when the supplies of quality manufactured goods out of your empire were sharply curtailed, and the death of the Ymaryn empire did release plague along the trade lines as the besieged, famine wracked cities became breeding grounds for disease that were carried along trade routes by refugees, so there was call for increased mechanization to replace plague losses.
So in the far west you have access to an actual ocean rather than an enclosed sea like the Yllthon or Saffron Sea, a taste for but no direct access to eastern luxuries like spices, silk, glass, and porcelain, and a sudden spike in local manufacturing. They thus had the tools all put together to develop long distance trade ships, and have begun making Not!Africa rounding journeys and forays across the Not!Atlantic. From long distance diplomacy, you have the Vortuga (a larger Not!Portugal) and the Hespranxer (Not!Spain + part of Not!France) being the most exploratory right now. You also have a bunch of Not!HRE and Not!Italian city state as the rest of the "pure" Syffrynites, while the Not!Balkans and Not!Hungarians are more closely related to the Storm Ymaryn, while Not!Scandinavia and Not!Russia come more from your interactions with northern tribes out of Amber Road.
Is the Stone Age Cannal still a known thing? Or do people think the unnaturally straight and uniform and convenient waterway is natural?
It's not known that it is a particular special canal among the rest of the network.
Imagine when they find preserved dinosaurs bones under the second holiest temple of the Ymaryn, the Dragon Graveyard.
They will have to dig it up first, because that city got sacked super hard core.
how much land did we reunify last update? It almost sounds like some of the southern territories joined us as well for some reason.
You largest chunks of territorial loss was in the east and south, but controlling the Yllthon has gone a long way to reunifying the directly Ymaryn parts, if not the most agriculturally productive (lowlands) or minerally rich (Horse Mountains).
Shame we didn't really met not!Rome, but not really at the same time.