Paradox Games

You mean the Anglo-Saxons?

I've been keeping an eye on western Europe to see if any of the scattered tribes would eventually conglomerate into more familiar names. So far only got Anglo-Saxons. Everyone else is still very muched scattered. Maybe I'll play around there in a future run and try to form Germany a millennium ahead of schedule or something.

Belgia can form, which is awesome.

Yes, I mean the Anglo-Saxons, although for some reason the Angles and Saxons are also a SEPARATE group. The one I mentioned is the catch-all term for the Angles, Saxons, Frisians, and Jutes that actually colonized England.

Is there any way for Rome to inherit Egypt? That ought to be in the game someday.

I also noticed Rome is not too keen on attacking Carthage, and generally tends to stay out of Spain and Africa, never mind reaching into Anatolia.

Edited by Redmess on Apr 29th 2019 at 1:06:31 PM

I'm working on forming Ireland in my campaign, first, then conquering the rest of the isles. I haven't played at all since turning my tribe into a monarchy, so who knows how that will go.

ETA: Oh, and to the person playing Crete, I saw a total 180 turn in my disloyal pops when I won the Civil War, so it's possible that once you beat those guys down enough, the disloyal ones were dead, only leaving loyal ones behind.

Edited by Journeyman on Apr 29th 2019 at 10:26:21 AM

Planning to take the Caesarion route instead of the Octavian one?

Now that would be something else.

This is why we need a date selector.

You know, I think I just figured out what's been bothering me about tribes somewhat:

Why are they getting screwed way more by wrong culture penalties than "civilised" factions?

The whole thing about tribal cultures in the classical age was that usually, they weren't actually as homogenous as people liked to think.

Best example for that would be how the Romans just decided to call everyone either Gauls or Germans depending on which side of the Rhine they lived on. There were multiple tribes that the Romans deemed to be Germans who were actually Celtic, not to mention how often different tribes banded together in confederations.

The Cimbri and Teutons are a good example of that.

So shouldn't wrong culture happiness actually be less of a problem for barbarians than it is for, say, Rome?

How come I can take over large swathes of Italic lands as a Greek without much of a peep from these guys, but when a Goth integrates some Vandalic tribes, everyone loses their shit all of a sudden?

I spent the last couple hours playing, mostly focused on colonizing. Almost all of Ireland is mine now, and my economy's really improved from a periodic deficit to a steady increase of at least 2 or 3 denarii a month. Right now it's around five thanks to trading. We're steady, we're stable, and we're a regional power with close to forty cities.

I have northern England, a third of south and a few cities in Ireland, just powered up by uniting the tribes into the Caldeonian Confederancy and I'm raking in like 8 coins of my own minting a month. My solution to money problems was pretty straightforward: Sack all of my armies and never hire any more.

I have five clans with retinues running around, paying for those from their own pocket that I let run around winning all my fights for me while I use the coin for infrastructure. Encourage Infrastructure + Standardized Construction and those forts and marketplaces cost 35 a pop, so I'm just in a year or two I should have all my cities built up. It all works perfectly as long as none of those nice, kind clan leaders never turn on me.

But yeah, I do feel the whole situation is a bit silly. The combined upkeep of my troops should be like 25+ a month. Where are those clan leaders pulling all those resources from without bankrupting themselves and why can't I do the same? At the same time all those small lesser powers swarming around me are fielding numbers that can almost rival my own when they ally up and I'm not sure how they're paying for it either.

Another thing that feels a bit silly is colonizing empty cities. The best way to do it, I've found, is to check how many people are in the city already, then move enough slaves into a bordering city that they hit 10 pops. Now you can colonize it by moving a pop into it. The whole thing costs you about 40-50 civic power. Then you move those same slaves into the new city so you can colonize the next city from there. Rinse and repeat. Basically you're rolling a small group of pops through every empty city with no one staying behind, but now those cities are yours.

In general on the game: It's base entertaining but yeah, I wouldn't recommend getting it. It feels exactly the same to play as CK II, but with a lot fewer options. Also, I'm not exactly in love with the UI. There's just so much I want to affect but can't. One of those clan leaders is getting uppity, so I'd rather get rid of him but I can't really plot against him outside of random events that have very few options in them too. I have an heir but no way to really influence who gets that designation or meddle with the problem. No way to move the capital. There's a ton of such glaring omissions.

Edited by GabrieltheThird on Apr 30th 2019 at 7:22:18 PM

It's too early in the dev cycle, is all. It'll get fixed sure enough.

And no, you're not colonizing empty cities, they're just unaffiliated tribes that aren't bothering with diplomacy. They still gain population, even if you drain them and leave them behind.

Yeah I get that there are people in unclaimed cities. I used the word empty only to mean that there's no one ruling them.

My point was that the whole process of colonizing those places seems a bit silly. Basically what the inhabitants of the city being colonized see is this one group of tribesmen turning up, telling them that they're part of a Confederacy now and need to pay taxes to this random governor. Those tribesmen are then followed by six times as many slaves who mill around for a bit while the tribesmen move on to colonize the next city over. After a bit the slaves follow the tribesmen and now there's nothing left of the newcomers except the obligation to pay taxes to some important sounding dude living on the next isle over.

It's a your standard gameplay abstraction, sure, but since it feels a bit strange and gimmicky to use too it stands out.

Well, that is basically what happened in real life. I think the best way to see it is that changing the flag of the city also comes with replacing or absorbing their ruling class. Even when the slaves and such aren't there, the governor and his tax collector always are, as are their enforcers. You just don't see them as a statistic.

Exactly. Plus we're not sure exactly what the barbarians are, so it's entirely possible they're invading those "empty" provinces too, off-screen. You might just be protecting them from those guys as well. Plus you're giving them a chance to influence a much larger country since they're producing goods and populations which might also get sent to colonize other places.

Indeed, this is pretty much how ancient empires exerted control at the peripherie. They usually left the ruling to the local elites, and only expecged them to swear fealty to the ruler and pay their tributes. Anything else would have been unfeasible due to the constrains of the time.

It is also worth noting how fragile this controle often was, especially in newly formed entities. The controle of the diadoch over their kingdoms was far more shaky than even the game suggests, and often depended on the personal prestige and charisma of the various person. Which is why they are usually refered to as Seleucids, Ptolemaic Egypt and Antigonids (Macedonia is the exception because it was ruled by different dynasties) and which is why e.g. the Antigonids collapsed after the death of "One-Eye" and why e.g. Seleucus could take control over Babylon with a few hundred men.

Vestigial Empire has several historical examples of empires that crumbled as soon as their original conquerors died, sometimes mere decades after being formed.

Yeah, the Timurids, the Mongols, stuff like that.

So, they released a hotfix for Imperator. It broke stuff. There is this really annoying bug that makes it impossible to demand provinces that do not directly border yours in a peacedeal, even if you also demand a province that does.

On the bright side, it gave me an excuse to play more with client nations and the like. On the less bright side, clients make pretty crappy allies in war, don't give all that much in tribute, do not count towards the range within which you can fabricate claims, and take for friggin ever to integrate.

Good Lord, it's Paradox, alright.

Okay then, was gonna buy this next time I got paid, now I'm gonna wait.

Been playing some Imperator coop yesterday.◊

I'm Magna Graecia◊, the other players are Rome, Sparta and Egypt. Rome and I agreed to split Italy between the two regions (Magna Graecia/Italia) and afterwards the Rome player would go north while I would expand into Africa.

Sparta's currently expanding into Macedonia, while the Egypt player took over the lands south of him - then a civil war robbed him of most of his good characters and he now has to give a bunch of non-Macedonians citizenship.

One thing I learned yesterday is how bloody profitable being part of other people's war can actually be. When Sparta started a war against Macedon (and Thrace), they called me and Rome in for assistance. I was the only one who actually bothered building a fleet, so I just sunk whatever small naval forces the enemy had, while my armies helped pushing forwards.

I got around 20 or so slave pops out of this war. Right now Rome and I are invading Carthage◊, so I'm bound to get even more slaves for my capital.

Not to mention that I'll finally get access to elephants. Egypt originally wanted to trade some with me, but somehow they never showed up as an option for elephant trade. So I'm just getting my own now.

Bonus screenshot: Macedon in decline◊. I kept assassinating their rulers during the Spartan-Macedonian war, leading to the Antipatrid dynasty simply going extinct.

Edited by DrunkenNordmann on May 4th 2019 at 2:30:25 PM

"Paradox Interactive: We'll have a good game once we work the bugs out."

That's normal these days. At least they DO work the bugs out.

Not only that but they often throw in new content to the bargain, free or otherwise.

Apparently Paradox' now adding fictional places to their historical games. They're adding Bielefeld to EU4

I don't get the joke.

its location thats commonly said to not exist in germany