Can I assume new game will be about early "Dark Ages"

[Hawkslime]

I'm sorry that I failed to be clear enough so you could understand it. I indeed am trying to say that the world of 4th-9th century wasn't limited to developments of the post-Roman world, and other parts of the world have indeed seen a lot of development. I know most of us haven't learned it at school, but it doesn't mean that the world outside did not exist and evolve on its own.

Oh my bad. A word has fallen out. I meant to say the opposite. It is edited now.

It makes no sense to have a CK2 or EU4 or Imperator set in this time period.

Good point.

The devs may face ignorance of people who aren't able to leave their personal mindset, so all they need is to promote their game as something challenging and interesting. For some this may seem impossible, but I think this era can offer very interesting and challenging gameplay.

You make it sound like I am against such a game. In fact, I would really love it.

That's the basic setup you should be able to understand even if your knowledge is limited to your own perspectives only. But then there is also the world outside Europe:
The Sassanid Persia heading to a new civilization peak in the 5th-7th centuries, building new civilization based on Mazdai religion and Persian culture, facing the Romans in the West and Turkic people in the East, creating a completely new concept of army based on heavy infantry (which translated to the west as the cataphracts)
Early Christian Armenia, Just Christianized Nubia or Axum, who were at peak of their civilizations in the 4th-8th centuries, Himyarite Yemen, Central Asian civilization with its great irrigations supporting unprecedently rising populations making Soghdians the traders connecting Persian world with China and India...or you can lead the Garamantes of the Sahara with their chariot based empire, the Soninke people of West Africa, who have just started building their own cities, connected the sub-Saharan savanna into interconnected trade network to create a kingdom... to meet the Berbers of the Sahara with the new animals capable of crossing the desert in large caravans... and use these camels to sell your abundant gold to the peoples across the big desert - be it the Romans or the zealous Arabs with their new religion. Or you can saddle the horse and ride the energy of rising Islam.

I don´t think we are debate the same thing. Again, I don´t say I wouldn´t want such a game, nor am I saying the "Dark Ages" were dark globally (and again, sorry for the confusion caused by my mistake). i am limiting my points to Western Europe, since that would be the region affected by Rome collapsing

Basically all I am saying is there was a great loss of prosperity in Western Europe in the 5th century.

 

[elvain]

You make it sound like I am against such a game. In fact, I would really love it.

I'm sorry. I got a little confused by your last posts, which looked like you are searching for arguments why this era doesn't have a potential for being fun, because (we don't need to say that loud) probably nobody finds it fun to face constant decline. I only tried to show that it can be fun, if we leave the mindset of growth/decline as seen from our perspective.

I don´t think we are debate the same thing. Again, I don´t say I wouldn´t want such a game, nor am I saying the "Dark Ages" were dark globally (and again, sorry for the confusion caused by my mistake). i am limiting my points to Western Europe, since that would be the region affected by Rome collapsing

For the reason stated above, I simply tried to change the debate to something else. I tried to force changing of perspective and that's why I deliberately refused to answer inside the perspective I wanted changed and used another. I am sorry for that. But I think it was somehow necessary to move forward.

Basically all I am saying is there was a great loss of prosperity in Western Europe in the 5th century.

I believe there is no dispute about this. Prosperity has been in decline already decades or even centuries before 400 A.D. but we tend to draw the line to times when the "Barbarians" took the power not only effectively, but also nominatively.

The differences were mainly about how we view development of technologies in this time period.
Since this era was a time of political instability, usurpations and civil wars, the resources were only rarely used on monumental buildings. OTOH, in the western parts of the empire we don't see such structures neither before 400 A.D., do we? And in the East they still were being built, as @loup99 pointed out.
Our perception of decline is based on written sources. But if we look propperly at them, we can see that there were constant usurpations, corruption and unlawfull behaviour of the leaders decades before 400 A.D., in fact more than a century back. The biggest difference is that roughly after Theodosius, the usurpers were mostly of Germanic origin, rather than Romans, but they all were military leaders, all the way back into the 3rd century.
As far as I know archaeology doesn't show any steep technological decline - material culture of the 4th century in the western parts of the empire was not very different from material culture of the 5th and 7th centuries. The difference is, however, the gradual deurbanisation. We can account it to political instability, but there were also climatic and other reasons behind that.

To connect it with answer to your previous question.... and to speculate how the Late Antiquity/Migration era/Early medieval game could look like:
The technologies of economy and crafts have clearly stagnated or became less effective, but mostly were not completely lost. Some or even many ceased to be used, but it had its - often good - reasons.
Military technologies and tactics of previous time of High Imperial Rome were no longer effective, which resulted in new methods of warfare. In game-terms these would be new military technologies. Were they less advanced in their craftmanship or looks? Sure. They were no longer as impressive and monumental as Legions-like armies. But again, this was a gradual process which didn't start in around 400 A.D., but rather a century or 150 years earlier, when the cavalry started to be gradually more important than heavy infantry.
The question is, why the Romans themselves changed their military tactics and structure of armies? Wasn't it a reaction to series of defeats and their inability to recover from them, rebuild and re-train their armies? That means - in game terms - they were replacing a less-effective or unsustainable system with a new one which was giving them at least temporary victories. Did that lead to even more gradual erosion of their political and cultural institutions (in game terms technologies)? Of course. But again. Ineffective or unsustainable system was gradually replaced with something, what worked. From our perspective of linear history it was a decline of civilization. From their perspective it was a necessary reform leading to something better/more effective in the conditions they had. And that is how I believe the game should represent it and how a player should play it.

The question is how to incorporate this into a game mechanisms and technology tree.
I can imagine a set of cultural, economic and military technologies as we have them in other PDX games, but the difference would be that they would cost something to be sustained. Or a system in which a technology which is no longer used (we need to define what it means to use a tech), ceased to be available.
Economic technologies could for instance require certain level of urbanism (which could be a tool/mechanic/parameter in this game), certain level of manpower/workforce and if that is not sufficent, they become inefficient => don't produce anything. Or the requirements could be certain goods which can either be grown in the province, or imported by trade.

But finally to answer your original question to me. Were there new technologies which emerged in this time period?
From cultural techs I can imagine Carolingian script, Romanesque architecture. In military I can imagine "foederati" armies (though not invented in this time, it clearly became prevalent), personal or tribal armies as opposed to standing (state) armies, stirrups, horse archers, camel cavalry... in civic techs I can imagine some sort of dual administration, pre-feudal vassalage based on clientelism or personal contract of protection...

And now provinces with combined Roman and Barbarian population could chose from technologies known to each of those populations... the tech-tree could reflect the institutions/technologies known all around early medieval world and the only question would be how to obtain and sustain them, how to allow potential adaptations to local conditions (and potentionaly create new technologies).

As I see it, this kind of game would need to be much more about economy and other things, and much less like CK2, but I do believe it could work.

Oh my bad. A word has fallen out. I meant to say the opposite. It is edited now.

Oh, no problem. I thought this must had been some kind of an error, rather than ignorance. I'm glad it turned out this way

One of the best posts I've read in a while on any forum, thank you.

I think you are unnecessarily kind. Thank you.