Recent content by Princeps Senatus

“

• Crowns were added to the starting rulers.”

Finally! It’s a little thing and easily fixed with mods, but I’ve been waiting for the main game to do this since they first added crowns.

Apocal said:

Those settlement entries have been around for a long, long time. Possibly the start of EA, maybe. You can tell because a number of them -- due to rebalancing village resources -- are now wrong as ****.

Click to expand...

No, they weren't around at the start of EA. They were added in subsequent patches. First they added settlement entries, then they later added town entries. They also rewrote some of the faction encyclopedia entries (the Northen Empire's was rewritten, and the Western and Southern Empire didn't originally have any encyclopedia entries). A few of the new added characters (extra spouses) also got new encyclopedia entries over time.

It wouldn't surprise me that the resource descriptions are out of date, though.

Csatádi said:

I didn't get any of these when becoming the ruler of the northern empire. Would have been cool.

Just a little detail: the Hungarian crown is a mixture of a Byzantine open crown and a western style top that closes it.

Click to expand...

Sadly, you don't get the crowns when you become a ruler. The starting faction rulers don't even have them -- though there's a mod on the nexus that gives all the starting faction rulers the crowns that SHOULD belong to them. I think it's because TW took the time to make unique faction battle and civilian crowns for each faction (and three sets for the Empire factions!), but didn't include them in the lord equipment sets. It's one of those things where there's a disconnect between the lore that went into designing the faction gear and how it's actually seen in-game.

The only way I've been able to get the crowns is just through the cheat mode inventory thing -- so I cheat them to myself whenever I get in charge of a faction. I figure fair is fair at that point.

Someone mentioned earlier all the lore that's buried in settlement entries. I'm glad they added those along the patch process because they fleshed out a lot of the history of the map. But that history isn't reflected in the town scenes very well. For example, Charas and Pravend are the first and second capitals of the Empire but they're Vlandian now. Yet if you visit them, you don't see Vlandian buildings built over Imperial ruins -- they're just generic Vlandian towns.

There just seems to be this weird disconnect between the background lore they have in mind and what actually gets portrayed in the game.

Ah, then I’m afraid you’ve misunderstood me. I don’t care about the historical debate, but about the lore. I pointed out places where TW has *tried* to make the Empire factions feel different, mostly in the armor. I point out the historical connections only to show how they’re consistent with the lore that is supposed to show them as different.

What I WANT is for those differences to be more than just what crowns people are wearing, by actually carry over to gameplay. I want this topic to be about the game.

I’m confused, didn’t you say you rather they didn’t touch the game after release and should leave it to modders? Now you want TW to listen? Can you make up your mind?

The reason the historical inspiration matters is because it’s the historical inspiration TW used in their dev blogs and built the game on, but it barely goes skin-deep. We’re obviously asking it to mean something more in-game, in the hope it’ll make the game even slightly immersive.

It’s a fake fantasy Byzantine empire that has a lot of classical elements still. For example, up until Arenicos the Empire still used legions but switched over to lordly levies. Emperors traditionally wore laurel crowns, including Arenicos (and the northern empire still uses a laurel crown). And the fact that the Senate still consists of members of the ancient aristocracy (again, especially in the North) is more like the 1st to 6th century Roman Empire than the 11th century Byzantine Empire.

The Byzantine Empire has a Senate too, except the aristocracy was newer in the eastern empire and formed out of the bureaucracy and was largely disempowered by Justinian.

This transition would be fun to explore. While the Calradic Empire is currently Byzantine, it looks like many of the changes happened under Arenicos rather than gradually. It would be fun if the northern empire tried to maintain the republican roots (sort of like the Western Senate did after the fall of the Western Empire) while the southern empire emphasized the monarchic aspects (which started in late antiquity and continued until the end of the Byzantine period).

We get the barest hints of it in the crowns each empire uses. The northern empire uses a laurel wreath as the civil crown and a jeweled late Roman helmet as the battle crown. The western and southern empires use more overtly monarchic Byzantine crowns, and the sourthern battle crown is straight up modeled on St Stephen’s crown of Hungary, which is Byzantine in origin.

It’s a good start, but we need more than just different hats. I wish we saw the differences between the empires in character interactions (more than just a couple scattered lines) and how each empire played and what their goals are.

Brilliant mod effort. It's the kind of thing I was expecting/hoping out of the base game, to be honest.

Could someone with the patch installed post photos of the new capes pretty please? Thank you!

The late antique time period is a great period. It’s dynamic, interesting, and a time of both great continuity and huge change.

What’s boring is the depiction of this time period as dull, grey, and muddy. Attila’s faded color pallet added to that feeling.

It doesn’t have to be boring and bland. Both Late Antique Rome and the Byzantine periods were very colorful. The late Middle Ages doesn’t have the monopoly on color — far from it! Late antiquity and the early Middle Ages had it too.

Beast of Rome said:

Not gonna try and burst your bubbles, but instead of adding some stupid Aserai Crown, that literally nobody asked for, how about u fix the massive lag and ping issues like half ur community is getting for 2 weeks now. NIN3 told me "I will forward it to the people that HOPEFULLY know how to fix it".. Yeah, looks like they can't fix it.

Kind of a punch to the face for the people that have been here for over a year, keeping ur ****ty Multiplayer alive, even tho it barely gets 30 active players on skirm.

Click to expand...

1. Actually I asked for crowns, gear for faction leaders is my most-requested thing, sorry. Some of us do like single player.

2. The art team doesn't work on fixing lag and crashes. You don't ask your dentist to fix your car.

nereid said:

The differences between the empire factions should be subtle. But for example as the Northern Empire is mostly located in the colder parts of the climate I would hope to see some fur elements used in their outfits (Sturgian touches). The same could be applied to the Western Empire (some Roman touches) and the Southern Empire (some Khuzait and Aserai touches).

Click to expand...

I like where you're going with this but I don't think the Northern Empire -- the faction lead by traditionalist oligarchs who think that things should go back to the good old days of the republic -- would be too keen on adopting barbarian flourishes in their armor. They're in the northern part of the Empire but it's hardly frigid there. The Northern Empire is likeliest to be most traditionally Calradian (but this should probably look late Roman, not republican Roman -- something that looks like a dated but immediate predecessor of the current Byzantine flavor Calradic Empire and looks very ornate with stylized echoes of more classical stuff). Late Antiquity gets rarely used in games, whereas classical Roman and Byzantine both get used all the time. I think the Northern Empire, based on the lore, would fit a Late Antique Western Empire vibe pretty well.

Wee can see existing imerial regional variation in how the imperial crowns are set up, which are currently the only regional Empire equipment.

The Northern Empire battle crown is a late antique jeweled Roman ridge helmet -- from the late Empire, but covered in jewels and likely based on crowns worn by Roman emperors or high imperial officers. The Northern Empire civilian crown is a laurel wreath, which is the traditional Calradic crown-that-is-not-a-crown worn by Calradian emperors from Arenicos back to the beginning (see the Empire's original faction blog entry). Northern Empire troops are likely closest to traditional Imperial professional legions in style, though I think they should again have a Late Antique appearance so that they look like the immediate predecessor of the current Byzantine vibe that Arenicos brought in instead of something from centuries long ago.

The Western Empire battle crown is ALSO a late antique Roman ridge helmet, but it's more simplified and lacks the jewels. The Western Empire civilian crown on the other hand, is nearly identical to the Southern Empire's civilian crown with some minor differences in the jewels. In other words, the Western Empire takes elements of both imperial tradition (Northern) and dynastic innovation (southern) but uses them in a more military fashion. Since Garios's name is based on Arenicos that makes sense. I also expect that since Garios is next to the Vlandian frontier, this is a place where geographic adoption makes sense -- the Vlandian guard being the former bodyguards of the emperor (this is an innovation of Arenicos, but Garios would likely try to imitate his military glory and proclaim he's a better heir to Arenicos than Ira is). They probably adjusted their tactics and equipment to deal with the Vlandians.

Finally, the Southern Empire's battle crown is a crowned helmet based on a Byzantine model (technically based on St. Stephen's crown from Hungary, but that is a modified Byzantine imperial princess's crown) and their civilian crown is the bottom band of the same crown (which is the most Byzantine part of it). So while the entire Calradic Empire is "Byzantine," the Southern Empire is probably the core of the Empire of Arenicos and would use the most Byzantine-style troops that he brought into play.

tl;dr: we already see regional variation in the three empires based on the design of imperial battle and civilian crowns, and based on the lore, and Imperial equipment variation should follow the same pattern of Northern Empire == Calradian republican tradition with Late Western Imperial Roman appearance, Western Empire == military innovation and adaptation, Southern Empire == the most ornate and courtly Byzantine elements. There should be some military adaptation based on the foes each empire is facing, but primarily the differences in the three Empires should be based on the personality of THOSE parts of the 3-way civil war and not just on their barbarian opponents.

Antaeus said:

I'm always skeptical of modern ideas around culture being applied to medieval style scenarios.

The game's time span barely covers a generation. In order for noticeable cultural change in the population to be affected, you'd need to have some sort of set of mechanics that touch on governance of exclusion based on culture.

Laws preventing militias and soldiers from being trained as per their traditions, laws ensuring new town notables being the governing culture and that the local culture are excluded. These kinds of situations would likely be ineffectual at instigating cultural change without the application of force, and for them to be believable, we'd also need an expansion of the rebellion mechanic - as nobody wants to see their culture subsumed by a foreign one.

Certainly it is possible for enforced cultural change to stick. For example, Normans largely assumed all governance roles in England for example for several centuries.

But as often as not the outcome of these kinds of situation is a hybridisation - where the new elites were themselves absorbed by the populace they governed (such as the Normans in England) to form a new cultural dynamic, or the new elites were absorbed entirely (such as the Franks in France, Lombards in Italy or Goths in Spain). This is why up until the emergence of nationalism in Eurasia... conquest of populations didn't often result in conquest of culture in the way we see it described today. There were still Greeks in Anatolia, Still Christians in Egypt, still Latins in Andalusia, still Welsh in Wales... many centuries after their conquest and exclusion by outsiders.

That, and of course, in feudal societies, culture itself often took on a secondary role. The Scottish nobility owned lands and titles in England, the English nobility owned lands and titles in France. German, Dutch, Scandinavian, French, Spanish nobles and royals often owned lands in each other's 'technical' realms. A serf doesn't always know, let alone understand the language of the person who owns them.

More likely in a feudal system like Calradia, it is more effective as the owner of a fief, to utilise the local feudal bonds to call local militias, local petty nobles to govern through oaths of allegiance.

I think the suggested modifier would logically result in a reduction of loyalty, because the locals are being excluded from their own governance. I think the loyalty penalty should be tied to prosperity, not culture. People are usually happy when they're wealthy, no matter who owns them.

Click to expand...

This is a flaw of the original starting set up and the entire of town cultures in the first place. For example, the western parts of the Empire -- including the first two original capitals of Charasea and Paravenos -- were taken only about a century before the game starts. Yet they're definitively "Vlandian" in every respect, including (most absurdly) materially and visibly. There's no sign that they were former Imperial metropoleis at all.

ShakenSpeare said:

That makes sense, and I don't think any misogyny was intended, but is there any expansion of the marriage system or courting in the works, to make it feel less... degrading and chancy? Intentionally or unintentionally it just feels incredibly shallow and weird at the moment.

By my beard, welcome back!

Click to expand...

"Let's conquer a castle together! You know, as a date. It's very romantic."

The alpha branch doesn't refer to an alpha version of the game. Rather, at one point TW said that there would be three branches of the game available:

1. The main, up-to-date polished branch (default)
2. A beta branch for testing purposes that would later get pushed to the main branch (currently the beta branch)
3. A much less stable alpha branch with the latest changes that would later get pushed to the beta branch

They never actually set up an alpha branch (or call it development channel, if you want) for public use, though.