Something that excited me about the latest dev diary is seeing how these interesting and regionally appropriate forms of government are being created out of building blocks, so to speak, from existing forms of government. Japan is using administrative and feudal mechanics both with regionally specific domicile upgrades, China seems to be an elaboration on the Byzantine admin mechanics, and Mandala governments are drawing on tributary mechanics. What interests me about this is that it seems like a way that regional government variations can be created by mixing and matching pieces of existing systems rather than creating entirely new ones. Mechanical changes that seem relatively small and easier to implement could be used to produce tons of interesting variations of existing government types all over the map. A lot of the optional admin and nomadic realms you can turn on in game rules could be fully implemented with this approach, changing the weights for admin succession to be more appropriate for a caliphate or changing the steppe conditions and buildings available to make nomadism work in the sahel or Arabian peninsula. The way thst Japan has mechanics designed with the idea of mixing admin and feudal vassals is also really interesting— right now having vassals of a different government type than the realms is pretty much always a negative and not very interesting but a handful of mechanics designed with those kinds of interactions in mind could make the "border regions" between government types much more interesting to play.
In general I think using the bones of existing government types to create more regional variations would be a great way to go back over the existing map post AUH to add additional flavor and depth to various regions.
In general I think using the bones of existing government types to create more regional variations would be a great way to go back over the existing map post AUH to add additional flavor and depth to various regions.
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