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PDS game set in the dark ages

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panther29

panther29

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Jan 7, 2014
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After the release of Charlemagne some people have been complaining about that era not fitting the feudal mechanics and so on. I´ve been reading up a little about that time and I´ve realized that from the time of the fall of the Roman Empire to the Charlemagne start (and further on), a very interesting time in history took place.
I know this wouldn´t happen anytime soon or at all, but if there was a game starting from the fall of the roman Empire to the Battle of Hasting would anybody be interested in playing it? CK3 could be shortened to focus it more on Feudal mechanics and it would fit nicely with a Rome 2 (lets hope it comes out) with an extended timeline. So basically from 476 to 1066.

Imagine being able to play as abandoned sub-roman kingdoms, a united Celtic Britain defending agaisnt the saxons, a nomadic barbarian tribe settling down, a pre-islamic medditarean country, the Byzantine Empire at its greatest extent, the Vandals, Visigoths etc. The possibilities are endless. The mechanics would focused around cultural migrations and the formations of new kingdoms, with something like vic mechanics. Raiding could be improved. The various religious changes that happened in that time peroid: arianism, the rise of islam, could be represented. The change from a nomadic tribe to a settled civilized Kingdom could be simulated. This could work with a Rome 2(if it comes out) and CK2 converter. So basically you could take your Hellenic empire from a few centuries BC and keep it all the way thru the dark ages, middle ages and the renaissance.

Thoughts?
 
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I'd rather have a game based on Roman and Hellenistic eras, than the dark ages. Much more interesting and viable.

Besides there will be a huge amount of fictional and ahistorical rulers for more than half the game area (supposing the entire map is similar to CK2, stretching from India to Portugal) since there is not much info available about lots of rulers.

Personally, for myself I'd only want to play a dark-ages game as long as it allows me to play as the Gupta Empire, Harshavardhana's Empire or the Sui Dynasty. The internal mechanics of these empires would fit the antiquity era more than the dark ages.
 
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Yes, I would love this! WtWSMS tries to model this era as a mod for CK2, but a standalone game would be more fitting and a lot better!
 
As always, I agree. Those were... extremely interesting times, both in a literal and a Chinese sense; and the future of Europe was so chaotic, then, that anything could have happened. Lombards in Hiberia? Burgundian Italy? Frankish England? Gotic Greece? Anything.
 
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panther29 said:
But CK2 mechanics simply dont fit that time. The dark ages were not feudal. Also Germanic migrations have to be represented and a new cultural system has to be made.
Click to expand...
it was meant to be a tongue-in-cheek reference to Paradox pushing CK2 start date back in two expansions already
 
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Players have been asking for a Dark Ages game for ages. Used to be that every time a new PI project was announced, a generic 'Dark Ages period' category would inevitably be set up and voted for. And for a variety of reasons, all of which would just as inevitably be offered up as counter arguments on these threads, it would probably be considerably more difficult to pull off a well-done DA game.

For now, you can check out Great Invasions, a super old, super hard-to-play game, also published by Paradox.
 
BRK said:
For now, you can check out Great Invasions, a super old, super hard-to-play game, also published by Paradox.
Click to expand...

Isn't that very dubious? As far as I know the developer of Great Invasions designed the original Europa Universalis board game, and his company later merged with Paradox.
 
Perhaps if they make a Rome/ancient game, they can base a dark ages game off of that.

That's what the Creative Assembly did with Attila, and it might help PDX justify such a game with greater ease.
 
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panther29 said:
As in an expansion or a separate game?
Click to expand...

Standalone expansion perhaps?

I suppose it would be a case of whatever works best really, but I don't think that we'll get a new dark age game with entirely new everything. It might be better if we can keep character-based gameplay as a base in case the migrations don't even occur (Rome conquers all of Europe in the classical era and does not fall).
 
panther29 said:
As in an expansion or a separate game?
Click to expand...
Definitely separate.

spartanlemur said:
Standalone expansion perhaps?
Click to expand...
What do you mean with this? Something Total War do? Paradox does not do any "standalone" expansions as far as I know, so it would be weird to introduce that for a such important period.
 
I never understood standalone expansions. If they're standalone, how aren't they a separate game? What's the difference between a standalone expansion and a new game?
 
Basically a standalone expansion is an expansion that is already so full of content that it can work as a kind of game by itself.

Consider Fall of the Samurai for Shogun II Total War. Shogun II, an amazing game really, focused on 16th century Japan and the Samurai and the enormous civil war raging there, and thus has content related to that era. Then comes out Fall of the Samurai expansion, as a standalone. FotS focuses on the mid-19th century Japan, the modernization of Japan, the 'age of change', and the downfall of the old Japanese ways (especially Samurai, as the name indicates). The expansion is very large, contains entirely new content that works only in that expansion, and doesn't change the original's gameplay. While it is technically an 'expansion', it has almost all of the features of the main game that it can work without it, but can also be attached to the main game since it is an expansion.

In other words, standalones are usually so large and differ so much from the main game in content, while using the same engine and game as a base, that they can be detached and sold independently and still work fine. They are completely playable.

I myself bought FoTS first and the main game Shogun II later on, for example. And still found the it playable to the fullest. :)

Standalone model works greatly if the game can support it, like Shogun II. But Paradox will have to think of another strategy if they ever create standalones, since standalones don't fit with the current development system AND the engine.
 
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