Fleshing out the minors

[Gurkhal]

This is a thread for ideas about additions to minor nations, at start, so that they can get some flavor and make them interesting to play.

I hope to be able to throw in some interesting stuff in regards to Thebes, Athens, Sparta, Messenia, Troizon, Corinth, Megara and Argos, at least. But I don't promise anything and if anyone has ideas, please feel free to post them as well.

Anyway, first out is Thebes.

Thebes

House of Kadmos - An event where a person shows up and its rumored this person is a direct descendent of Kadmos, the founder of Thebes. The player can let the ruler marry this character and so change the ruling family name to "Kadmidae" (or what it should be in proper ancient Greek at this time) and gain the personality trait "Bloodline of Kadmos" with bonuses to Oratory and Finess, and if the ruler is of this bloodline then gain Casus Belli on all Boiotia and a bonus to the family's prestige.

If possible this could only be fired one time during the game and so not milked by every new family that gets to rule Thebes.

Distant friends - An event with visitors from far away and the player's ruler can get friends and positive relations with Levantine or Persian character or state. The fluff itself may be a minor member of such a state's elite, a merchant or something else.

Curse of blindness – An event where interaction between characters are affected by a blindness, in one way or another, of the participants leading to unforeseen results. Not seldom of a tragic nature but some times also to joy and prosperity. The common thread should however be that just like Pentheus, Oedipus and Creon are all blind to what they are doing, and stumbles into disaster when the truth is finally revealed to them so the characters come into situations where unforseen consequences lies behind seemingly obvious solutions to the situations.

Just like with the "House of Kadmos" it would be nice if there are several different situations, and none can be brought up more than once in a single game, and all of them will not show up in a single game either.

Melting pot: Kadmean culture: Mix between Greek and Levantine in a state with both Boiotian and Levantine cultures, and ruled by Thebes or where a ruler of Thebes is married to a spouse of the Levantine culture. Possibly allowing the player to decide if the Kadmean culture should lean towards the Greek or Levantine part of its composition.

 

[Gurkhal]

Time for a new post to this thread and a new suggestion.

The purpose here is a suggestion for how the mechanic of legitimacy could be used to encourage different playstyles with different governments. So that a Stratocratic Monarchy will, pretty much, need to wage successful wars to remain stable while a Theocratic Monarchy needs a different playstyle for stability. Something similar should be possible for Republics to encourage a playstyle which would be different depending on what kind of government you have.

Some things to mention first though.

Magnate Monarchy and Oligarchic Monarchy - They could reasonable replace Aristocratic Monarchy. The idea is that Magnate Monarchy would represent a monarchy that relies on land owners and a rural elite for support, while Oligarchic Monarchy relies on the support of an elite drawing their power from wealth in trade and commerce.

Corsair Monarchy and Citadel Monarchy have been mentioned earlier in the thread. I did consider a Homeric Monarchy and a Successor Monarchy but since these would in the end roughly be the same and Corsair and Stratocratic I decided against a suggestion with them being separate types of monarchy.

Sources of legitimacy

Official and in the game

Autocratic Monarchy - As standard, everything is focused on the actions and skills of the ruler, but potentially more punishing then now so that a bad ruler will struggle with legitimacy

Aristocratic Monarchy - Primary and integrated Noble POP happiness + Character loyalty. Loss from primary and integrated Noble POP unhappiness and disloyal characters.

Stratocratic Monarchy - Success in wars. Loss from lack of success in wars, both from being at peace and from failures in wars.

Theocratic Monarchy - Omens and number of temples and holy places in the state. Loss from lack of these things.

Empire and Dictatorship - I will be honest I'm not sure what these should draw legitimacy from

Imperial Cult - Deitifying rulers and number of deitified rulers in the pantheon. Loss from lack of these things.

Custom suggestions

Corsair - Slave raids, looting and sackings. Loss from lack of slave raids, looting sackings.

Citadel - Provincial loyalty. Loss from provincial disloyalty

Magnate - Output bonus in settlements, extra for settlements with character holdings in them. Loss from bad output in settlements or lack of characters with holdings in settlements.

Oligarchic - Commerce output and trade routes and character holdings in cities. Loss from lack of that mentioned before.

 

[Gurkhal]

This isn't a suggestion but rather me mentioning that I've been eyeing Vicky3 for a bit have now decided against it so I'm back here in Imperator again. Still, it was a nice change even if wasn't for me.

 

[Gurkhal]

I've started working on something. I can't say if I'll be able to carry through but here's my hopes that I will but it will probably take a while.

A hint below.

 

[Gurkhal]

This isn't a suggestion connected with the post above but an idea that struck me. Given the lack of land-based raiding, for now, I decided to make a suggestion for a new kind of Casus Belli, possibly only accessable by tribes and perhaps also only usable against non-tribal tags.

Great Raid Wars

The basic idea here is that the warscore is determined by the amount of cities sacked, territories plundered and POPs killed or enslaved by the attacker, and ticking down in favor of the defender if the defender can hold on without such occuring at the hands of the attacker. This would simulate conflicts that are not about pure territorial expansion but getting money and slaves from a target through raids.

If the attacker would force the defender to peace the defender would have to pay a large single sum depending on the defender's state rank, thus you can get more money by this kind of war against a larger opponent than from a smaller one and fighting battles is not a necessity, causing havoc is what you'll win the war through, for the attacker.

I figure that this could help to make tribals more fun and different to play as in getting money from monarchy or republic neighbors, allow for a different playstyle as well as be able to wage wars against larger tags caught up in great power wars or civil wars and get away with it.

Historical examples: An example of this would be many of the earlier campaigns of Attila. In several of the early campaigns Attila did, to my knowledge, not seek to wrest territories to administer from the Eastern Roman Empire but to make them cough up a ton of gold and silver. And other leaders and groups have to my knowledge also used similar ways in ancient and medieval history. Nations such as the Norse, Avars, various Germanic and possibly (but I'm not totally sure here) Celtic tribes along with others also were not strangers to raid and pillage a target until a sufficiently heafty sum of precious metal was offered to make them stay home.

 

[Gurkhal]

Patronage of the Arts

This is a suggestion beyond the normal direct politics and wars that normally dominate Imperator. The basic idea here is to allow tags, specifically the player's tag, to act as patrons of the arts. The period of the game saw many pieces of art being created and I think that this could and should be included in the game. This can be taken down several routes such as being able to sponsor the creation of historical items of art to be added as a local boon or a treasure, creation of plausible non-historical works of art for an extended timeline or in "what if" scenarios and so on.

There are several historical pieces of art that could be added, statues, altars, temples and so on. But I also think that "what if" constructions could be possible. We have the wonders, which is great and a major step in the right direction, but while this would be somewhat similar it isn't exactly the same.

"What-if" scenarios could be scenes from mythology and history, all the better if the game could keep track of events that have happened and so allow sponsorship of arts and such to be done for things that happened in the game, which would also make it popular by appealing to the ego of the player. As well as allow us to keep sponsoring stuff even when playing with tags that does better in the player's hands than what it did historically.

For example if Greek Thebes would rise anew and become more successful than they were historically, then they might get an offer to sponsor a statue of Epaminondas or Pelopidas or build a temple where the frontal frieze depicts the Sacred Band's brave stand at the Battle of Chaeronea, and perhaps the temple is even dedicated to a hero cult to the fallen of the Sacred Band?

From a "what if" scenario maybe you play with Makedonia and defeat the Lysimakhid kingdom. Then 5-10 years later you get an offer to construct a temple or a large altar with a relief detailing your victory in this war. Could come with a description in the text to "Altar of the Makedonian Victory over the Lysimakhid kingdom in XXX" which gives some small bonus to integreated cultures happiness in this territory and also have XXX stand for the time of the war. Or sponsor a statue group Hades' abduction of Persephone, and so on.

 

[Gurkhal]

Heads to drinking cups

Here's a small immersive suggestion from me.

That is that Scythian culture tags could have an option to turn the heads of killed or captured enemy commanders into drinking cups for some kind of minor boon. As well as a way to view your own, and other's, collection of such cups. It would not affect gameplay much but might make for a fun little addition when playing as a Scythian tag.

Source for this is Herodotus.

EDITED: It seems I did a mistake here. Queen Tomyris did not turn king Cyrus' head into a drinking cup as I initially wrote. My bad and that part has been removed.

 

[Gurkhal]

It’s been a long time since my last post. So here we go with two new suggestions.

The proposed project I hinted at before has kind of gone to hell and nothing seems to come from it, but that's life sometimes. The original idea was to write up a detail suggestions for stuff for the Boiotian and Thessalian tags as well as for Boiotian and Thessalian cultures. Maybe I'll make a new attempt in the future but we'll see.

I feel a bit lazy today so no nice pictures with this post.

Hereditary Power

This was discussed in another thread but I thought that I should bring it here and expand a little on it. That is the concept of governorships and armies becoming hereditary in the form of the position of a governorship or general being past from character to closely related character or cohorts transfering their loyalty in the same way. This kind of stuff is perhaps most closely associated with the Middle Ages but it was something could also happen in Antiquity even if it never become close to as widespread.

What I propose is the following for governorships. The office can be passed hereditary if a disloyal governor has a disloyal close relative and that they have a sufficient powerbase and perhaps holdings in a province. If these conditions are met and province loyalty is sufficiently low, then at the death of one disloyal governor the office passes to a close relative. One can tinker around with the details in order to provide a way to counter this development but I would think that this gives the general idea.

Historical examples: The Hecatomniods of Caria, the many independent minded satraps of the Argead empire after the death of Alexander the Great (its kind of an example of this) as well as the, kind of, similar problem with haunted parts of the Seleukid empire and more precisely the Egyptian nomarchs during the First Intermediate Period of Egypt. Not to mention the Barca domain in Spain between the First and Second Punic Wars and during the Second Punic War.

Hecatomnids - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

What I propose for armies is that if a general has cohorts loyal to them then upon the general's death these cohorts have a chance to transfer their loyalty to a close male relative, who may also automatically take command of said cohorts/army's loyalty, if the close relative in question has suffiicient popularity, renown or some other factor(s) that would make sense.

Historical examples: I have fewer examples as control over land seemed more often to be a prerequisite for having your own army than the other way around. But there are a few examples from Roman history. One example is how how Caesar's legions didn't go back to the senate after Caesar was murdered but, to my knowledge, transferred their loyalty to Marcus Anthonius and Octavianus.

Another example is, but I am a bit less sure how well this example worked in reality, was that the sons of Pompey were able to raise forces in order to seek to avenge their father and continue his struggle, while Pompey himself raised a legion from the clients and veterans of his father during the Social War before that. Something which I would think could hint at some dynastic loyalty from Pompey's supporters. But someone more versed in Roman history should feel free to set the record straight on this one if I'm wrong.

Exiles

Something which to my knowledge wasn’t all that uncommon in the ancient world was for losers in various struggles to go into exile. Now there are events with exiled characters coming to your country but I personally think that it could be expanded more into a system including both Noble POPs and characters, as well as claimants which can be installed as puppet rulers through a casus belli that they would provide. As I would imagine it, when a tag is annexed, or after a civil war or some other struggle involving a tag, there’s a chance that a member of the ruling family, characters or even Noble POPs could go into exile to a tag with which they have a good relation, and keep plotting for a returning, at least, for a generation or so if the victorious side decides to go hard on the losers, while leniency would prevent, or drastically reduce, the number of exiles.

As such I propose that POPs can go into exile and then seek to return in order to establish a political order in their homeland in accordance with their wishes. This could be done either as an army acting on their own or they could provide a free levy of troops to bolster a war with their former homeland. As I imagine it this would be possible if the casus belli for a war for which either the liberation of the tag or the creation of a puppet government is chosen.

Historical Examples: For characters that would go into exile and then return are the infant Pyrrhos of Epiros and Kleomenes III of Sparta as well as Hippias of Athens who went to Persia after he was deposed from his tyranny and tried to return with a Persian army. For Noble POPs I would mention that during the Classical Period in Greece, when the Athenians controlled Boiotia through allied democracies between the Battle of Oenophyta in 457 BC and the First Battle of Koronea in 447 BC the later battle was provoked when exiles from Boiotia returned and started to retake Boiotian cities which resulted in a defeat of the Athenian reaction to this, and thus to Boiotia throwing off the Athenian control. Hence Boiotians who had gone into exile at Athens’ earlier victory were able to come back and drive out the Athenian influence from the region.

Battle of Coronea (447 BC) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

EDITED: Added the Barca domain in Spain to historical examples fo hereditary power

 

[Gurkhal]

Introduce the Nomad POP

While I generally think that we should avoid bloating the game with types of different things that might be redundant I think there's a cause for introducing a Nomad POP.

The main goal of this would be to simulate nomads better and simulate how difficult it is for armies drawn from settled communities to control nomadic populations, at least during Antiquity. The Nomad POPs would have a much short timespan to migrate and perhaps be more prone, owing to their greater mobility, to migrate away from tags where they are unhappy. Preferably this would be combined with the suggestion for Nomad tags that I've suggested before in this thread.

This would make it so that nomads are, well, moving around more than other POPs and also mean that if they dislike the tag that controls the territory they are in, they'll just pack up and leave, leaving a province or territory with a potentially severe population problem.

At present it is, in my experience, not much more difficult to conduct conquests on the steppes or in the inland of Norther Africa with infantry armies than anywhere else. And that is something which I think could be changed of additional flavor, challenge and variaton to the game.

Historical Examples: The Euroasian steppes, of course, as well as North Africa and parts of the Near East which to my knowledge were never, with the exception of a short time under Alexander the Great, subjugated by settled empires even though they were bordered by powerful empires of that kind from a very long time.

 

[Gurkhal]

A very small suggestion

Navies and crossing rivers and straits

This is a very small suggestion but something I came to think about. That is that if you are crossing a river, or a strait, where there is an enemy navy I propose that the river crossing is either made impossible while that enemy navy is there or that it comes with some attrition. This could hopefully be a tactical addition to warfare that might make navies more useful and make control over rivers and straits more strategic.

 

[Gurkhal]

An idea for a possible inclusion of Christianity

That is that the Christian religion starts off as single religion but with a tendency to convert into various strands if they either become the state religion or if they reach some other milestone like majority religion or something like that.

These various Christian groups would work as separate religions in terms of relations with each other and have lots of lots of unhappiness and unrest if they are not living in a tag with their prefered form of Christianity as a state religion. And that's not talking about how it would affect characters.

I further propose in addition to the above a mechanic for the unity of the church with the possibility to get some significent extra boon if you can keep Christanity, if one form or another, as a state religion united within a major power or higher rank but with a wack-a-mole tendency for new contraversies, doctrinal disputes and sects to constantly pop up which makes church unity an endless project rather than something which you do and then reap the rewards for the rest of the game.

 

[Gurkhal]

This is a suggestion that is mostly concerned with an Imperator 2 game. When I look how much possibility there is for culture in other games like Crusader Kings 3 I wonder what might have been done in the same area for Imperator as cultures could change alot during Antiquity. Taking the Romans as an example regarding this which as a culture changed alot from before the war with Pyrrhos to the death of Augustus. Perhaps most importantly being the influx of Greek culture.

I should disclose that I am enjoy the cultural mosaic of pre-Roman Antiquity far more than the cultural uniformity in the Roman Empire so this bias has probably worked on making me think this would be a good idea.

Compound Cultures

My suggestion is to let cultures go through a two-stage process when culturally converting rather than straight move between two cultures.

The basic idea here is that a culture goes from the original culture to a compound culture with the target's cultural group before they convert to the target culture proper. If added with other extensions to the culture aspect I think much could be added to this aspect especially since culture would most often be more important than religion in the period compared to the Middle Ages, as I've understood it but I am no scholar of the Middle Ages.

The reason for the use of cultural groups is to limit the possibilities somewhat as to not force a special one for every possible combination of cultures.

The process would look something like this with an example where a Odryssian culture POP will culturally convert to Macedonian culture: The Odryssian POP will first convert to Greco-Odryssian culture, with the "Greco" coming from the Hellenistic culture group, and then from this to proper Macedonian culture.

If the Odryssian POP would have been converting to a Gallic culture instead then it would have gone through a Gallo-Odryssian phase. If the Greco-Odryssian POP would for one reason or another start to convert towards a Gallic culture then would go into a Gallo-Odryssian POP as only a single "prefix" culture part can be had by a POP. There would thus not be a Gallo-Greco-Odryssian POP.

For the culture that has become a compound culture I would think it would have alot less friction with both its previous full culture and the new culture group but at the same time not being as happy as either as they would be with one foot on each side.

The main gain here would be that cultural conversion becomes a bit slower and thus the cultural blobs which to my knowledge only really makes sense for Rome, which had centuries to work on creating this cultural blob, would be slower and probably grow more historically. And it could open possibilities to help make cultures a bit deeper to work with for other features given how they wouldn't go away too quickly. Cult practices tend, to to my understanding, change faster than cultural identities.

EDITED: I hope this makes some kind of sense

 

[Gurkhal]

It was some time since I wrote something but here's a small one.

New Military Law: Auxiliaries

This law is not available for Tribal tags and perhaps should have some other requirements like Civilization level in capital or something like that and that there are legions in the military and thus not available for those with a Military Reform that only allows for levies. I suppose that one could also run it as an Military Idea for roughly the same effects.

The historical examples for this are the Late Roman Empire and some Successor states that used barbarian/"barbarian" recruits as the major source of manpower for their armies.

Its a law which significantly decreased the manpower given by Freemen POPs but instead boosts that of Tribesmen, regardless of culture, as well as generate manpower from Tribal subjects as well as from Tribal tags that the tag with this law has a border and friendly relation with.

Events associated with this law

Settling Veterans - Get one, or more, free Freemen POP(s) somewhere from veterans given land after their service and settling down with their families or forming families

Foreign Military Aesthetics - Military points for traditions (I don't recall what they are called at the top of my head) but loss of Accepted Culture happiness

Maintained Contacts - Boost to local economy in a border province and increased relations with a neighboring Tribal tag or Tribal subject

Conflict with Civilians - Loss or morale in a legion or local loss of happiness in a province

 

[Gurkhal]

Some more idea and this time about laws of a more social kind for our empires.

Inheritence Laws - POP growth and promotion as well as increase or hamper the intergenerational wealth and influence built up among the Great Families. This would affect how wealth, in different forms, are inherited between generations that would affect both characters and POPs. It affects characters in how fast they can build up power base and such but also how fast, or slow, POPs can convert upwards. Say for example that you have a law that is strict in that wealth is divided equally among the legal offspring of a person then characters don't build up a powerbase as swiftly but also that, say, a the promotion of POPs goes slower because the wealth is dispersed rather than concentrated.

Practice of Trade - Connected with urban output. How trade in various sorts, be it trade between merchants or the practice of a profession is legally allowed. Can go with both a semi-free market or an attempt at a controlled market with different results for how the urban output, and perhaps some other stuff, is affected.

Education Laws - Affects POP promotion and conversions. How the education of children and youths are conducted or perhaps even more importantly who pays for it. Is it the parents responsibility to teach their children? That don't cost the state anything but at the same time it makes children go in their parents' foot steeps and so POP promotion suffers. Or maybe the state takes charge in which case the question is what children should be educated for and which children. All children should learn some basics? That would be very expensive but potentially give a huge boost in the long term. And so on.

Land Laws - Rural output. How land is owned, leased and worked and who is responsible to do what and so on.

Judicial Laws (or perhaps Court Proceedings) - Public happiness and how trials are conducted. If for example you have the Athenian system with a big jury of ordinary citizens then there might not be an option to bribe them while popularity will be very important to decide how the trial goes. If on the other hand you have a system with a public official acting as a judge then bribery may be more of an issue that could swing the verdict either way while prominence might be very important in the outcome.

Slave Laws - Happiness, promotion and output of Slave POPs. We all know slavery is despicable and people as property is never a good idea but slavery wasn't a static institution in the ancient world and so thus would govern things like how people can treat their slaves, what few rights a slave may have and how slaves can be bartered between owner and buyers. And what about manumission and how that would be dealt with legally.

Family Laws - Growth and output as well as some character interactions. This would deal with how family are organized and seen by the legal system. On one extreme you have the classic with a pater familias who has official legal authority over his children as long as he lives, which would probably lead to decreased output but a higher POP growth while on the other extreme you have a more individual centric view with each person being pretty free to run their lives which would lead to an increased output but a decreased POP growth. And related issues regarding familes such as orphans and widows and their support and so on.

Marriage Laws - Growth and promotion as well as some character interactions. How marriage is structure with divoce, rights and obligations, are there restrictions in who can marry who and so on.