North Atlantic Flavor Pack Dev Diary 1:
Introducing Greenland and Vinland!
Finally, I've scraped together enough content to make a dev diary!
This is the first of three dev diaries about RICE’s next flagship flavor pack - the
North Atlantic: From Iceland to Vinland, which I announced in
this trailer a couple weeks ago. Today, we’ll cover how to discover Greenland and Vinland and the basics of the Greenland "struggle." I'd also like to mention that RICE and the North Atlantic Flavor Pack will also be featured at this year's ModCon, a fan-made online event running from Sept. 31 to Oct. 1 that promotes and showcases mods for Paradox Games - for more info, check out the ModCon
website and
extended trailer!
Lastly, before we begin, it should be emphasized that Greenland and the Americas are
off-map. You will only interact with them through decisions, events, and the new struggle.
The Greenland "Struggle"
The centerpiece of the North Atlantic flavor pack is the
Colonization of Greenland, a struggle encompassing Norway, Iceland, and Northern Scotland.
This struggle has four phases:
- Settlement: The initial Greenland settlements are established
- Integration: Greenland’s networks with Europe (and the Americas) grow and thrive
- Subsistence: Growing but manageable challenges in maintaining the Greenland settlements
- Marginalization: Greenland's settlements face decline as links to Europe (and the Americas) disintegrate
The way the struggle works, Greenland comes out of the initial, one-time Settlement phase to cycle through the other phases, but if the rulers involved don't play their cards right, Greenland could get stuck in an endless spiral of Marginalization.
In 1066, the struggle is underway in the Settlement Phase, while in 867, it hasn't started yet. In order to start the struggle in 867, you or another ruler in the region needs to take the decision to
Explore the Seas West of Iceland.
You’ll choose someone to lead an expedition west; if the expedition is successful, the struggle begins, and as the ruler who sponsored such an expedition, you’ll gain some perks too.
Resources and Pressures
There are four global values that are an abstraction of how the Greenland colony is doing:
- Resilience: The ability of the Greenland colony to survive both materially (food and resources), and internal stability
- Networks: The Greenland colony's connections to the outside world, such as trade routes and religious institutions
- Environmental Pressures: Climate change that forces Greenland’s settlers to adapt
- Socio-Economic Pressures: Changes to the global trade networks and institutions that make life in Greenland unpredictable
These four values go from 0 to 1000, and go up and down by small, random amounts every year depending on the phase of the Greenland struggle and various decisions and mechanics. For example, Pressures increase much more in Marginalization, but barely so in Integration. You’ll be notified of the amounts in a yearly message if you’re in the struggle.
Why care about these four values? The reason is, they impact the cost, success rate, and overall benefits of various mechanics, many of which revolve around walrus ivory trade that is the backbone of Greenland’s economy (I’ll elaborate on that in the next dev diary). In other words, you profit more from Greenland when Resilience and Networks are high and Pressures are low, while you might hemorrhage money with the opposite. The way this is planned, the effects of Resilience are countered by that of Environmental Pressures, while Networks is countered by Socio-Economic Pressures.
The decline of the Greenland colony in 1300s and 1400s used to be attributed to simple environmental reasons, which you still hear about in pop history. Another theory posits the cause to a purported decline in the walrus ivory trade. Many modern academics, however, understand the real reasons more as a complex web of long-term circumstances and challenges, both natural and human, the details of which are still debated. To represent this, albeit in a gamey and very simplified form, events will trigger in the 1200s or 1300s that make it so the Pressures increase at an alarmingly fast pace.
In the end, as these global values apply to everyone, the Greenland "struggle" is not about struggling against others in the region. Instead, you all struggle together to support Greenland.
Ending the Struggle
The Greenland Struggle can end in four ways, three of which are through decisions.
In two of these decisions, which are “success” endings, Pressures are much less of a problem, and you can do business with Greenland (or Vinland!) without worrying about Greenland's settlements going kaput.
The first success decision is
Regional Integration, where Greenland develops high enough Resilience and Networks to establish itself as a critical link between Eurasia and the Americas in the North Atlantic.
The second success decision is
Native Sovereignty, aka bootleg Sunset Invasion. It is only possible if (somehow) a Native American culture asserts a permanent presence across the North Atlantic. (The AI is obviously highly unlikely to achieve this, and it is only doable by the player if they convert to a Native American culture or use ruler designer).
The third decision, a “failure” ending, is to
Abandon Greenland. If Greenland’s pressures are high and it is in the Marginalization phase, it can be costly to continue supporting Greenland. Thus, the best option might be to pull out while you still can and get a little something out of what’s left.
In the fourth “hidden” ending, the Greenland colony
automatically fails. Once the Pressures reach a sufficiently high number, there is a chance every year the struggle will end on its own, as the settlements can no longer sustain themselves.
Basically, you're racing against time to avoid the Subsistence and the Marginalization phase, lest the Struggle reach a point after c. 1200 where it is hard if not impossible to overcome Greenland’s pressures and achieve a “good” ending.
Discovering Vinland
Vinland mechanics will be elaborated upon in later dev diaries, but I figure some of you might be curious about it. Just know that settling Vinland will be difficult and likely detrimental. Though often not discussed in pop history, the Norse did not bother with Vinland in the long run because there was no point in staying there. To them, it would’ve been a waste of time to try to settle land that was not only very far away, but risky and unprofitable - Vinland had grapes and lumber, sure, but so did Europe, and Greenland was more valuable and closer anyhow.
Anyways, you’ll be able to follow in Leif Erikson's footsteps to discover Vinland through the decision to
Explore the Seas West of Greenland. If successful, this will enable various decisions related to Helluland (Baffin Island), Markland (Labrador), and Vinland (Canada south of Labrador).
In the context of the Greenland struggle, interactions with Vinland are costly, often push the Struggle to unfavorable phases, and reduce Greenland’s Resilience and Networks, to represent how it drains Greenland's resources.
Some of the Vinland-related decisions will influence Vinland’s
Viability, the single global value related to Vinland which determines the chances of long-term success in settling Vinland. Focusing too much on improving it will cripple the chances of Greenland’s long-term success, as you may've guessed.
While it will be costly if not wasteful to fulfill your Vinland fantasies, this isn’t difficulty for the sake of difficulty - this is reality. The best strategy might be to hold off on Vinland until the Greenland struggle ends successfully. That said, launching expeditions into and interacting with Helluland and Markland may still prove useful to the Greenland settlements than Vinland, but I’ll talk more about that in the next dev diary.
Why a “Struggle” for Greenland?
In this last section, let’s dive a bit into why there will be a struggle focusing on Greenland, and the North Atlantic, more broadly. (This section is extra blabber without much discussion of mechanics, so feel free to skip it!)
Many Paradox players love playing as the Norse, so the new content hopefully provides more to do while playing them besides pillaging. Pop history often neglects North European medieval history that doesn’t fit the enduring but often inaccurate idealization of the so-called “Vikings” in pop culture. Alas, little light is ever shed on Greenland, which often takes a backseat to Vinland in non-academic sources, despite Greenland being immensely more important and long-lasting in this time period.
The medieval North Atlantic was home to many peoples, from pagan and later Christian Norse, to Gaelics, to various Native American cultures. Although they did not always interact with each other, this was nonetheless a rich blend of distinct cultures, histories, and economies that were linked - even if briefly, even if sporadically - for a few centuries.
To conclude, this Struggle - and the North Atlantic Flavor Pack - tries to depict these peoples’ varied attempts to prosper in, and adapt to, the ever changing world of the medieval North Atlantic. In the next dev diary later this month, where we’ll delve deeper into how to profit from Greenland (especially through walrus ivory), and the new, simple expeditions system. In the meanwhile, I'll continue to share more previews and teasers on here, discord, and twitter. Until then!
Suggested Sources for Further Reading
- Cows, Harp Seals, and Churchbells: Adaptation and Extinction in Norse Greenland, Thomas H. McGovern
- Disequilibrium, Adaptation, and the Norse Settlement of Greenland, Various Authors
- Gunhild's Cross and the North Atlantic Trade Sphere, Robyn Barrow
- Norse Greenland - Research into Abandonment, Jette Arneborg
- Norse Greenland Settlement: Reflections on Climate Change, Trade, and The Contrasting Fates of Human Settlements in the North Atlantic Islands, Andrew J. Dugmore, Christian Keller, and Thomas H. McGovern
- “Viking” North America: The North American Public’s Understanding of Its Norse Heritage, Megan Arnott
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