The Andal Invasion

[SBerger]

To be honest, I'm torn between the mod being awesome and being slightly boring. I love it since you can play this lore and these events, yet I eventually find that beginning as an empire sized economy and strength straight away can make it sort of lackluster. I mean, you don't really need to expand since you have pretty much everything you need and everything turns into "who has the bigger blob."

Don't get me wrong, this mod is amazing and a tremendous amount of effort went into making this, but sometimes I like to work for my empire. For most times in this game, you either have to start by rebelling against your much superior liege, or face the dragons, which never ends well for anyone. The only resort I find to this is to go far East where not much is built upon (economically, culturally, and religiously) and it's painfully difficult to start.

I find it really a shame that R.R. Martin had only mentioned these places in name, because even if he published notes or side posts about the cultures or rituals of far East civilizations to the extent that The Seven and the Old Gods are, then playing as an Eastern culture could be more awesome than it is now. In my opinion, having start dates where there aren't blobs but petty kingdoms like the late Andal invasion (Even if it's published for the Westeros Only submod), then the variety that we can worth with would be quite epic. Starting with these blobs is kind of like starting a vanilla game where all the de jure empires are created and it's really just a large vying for this province, or this province while being too scared to fight the Byzantines because they have dragons and you don't.

 

[Arcvalons]

In my opinion, the devs shouldn't be afraid to fill in where there's no lore to make the game more interesting, that's kinda what Elder Kings does and it works great.

 

[P5166661]

It's not a question of lore, it's a question of glitches and the massive amount of work involved, as they've said.

I am all for a bookmark immediately after the doom, though. That should be doable, since no maps would need to be changed or anything.

 

[SBerger]

Well going back to what the devs said, it's doable, but it's a hell of a lot of work. If making new bookmarks was as simple as adding a few dates, then we'd have bookmarks starting the day after the Doom. The problem is the history going into that event. They need to make titles, families, people, etc...

Although, theoretically speaking that IF such a bookmark were to exist, we'd have new dragon riders. I remember reading in A World of Ice and Fire, there was a Valyrian Dragonlord in Norvoros (?) who assembled an army to retake the peninsula. But being realistic, I don't see the devs making such a bookmark because 1) the reasons they already explained in excruciating details and 2) GRRM has not given a hint of lore about pre-conquest in detail. We know there were other dragons that came to Dragonstone, we don't have names, we don't know for sure the lineage of the noble houses in Westeros for the time.

 

[yourworstnightm]

People say Bleeding Years is boring? I find it to be the most interesting start since everything can happen. I hope you guys eventually expand on that and allows us to start just AFTER the Doom before the Dothraki wasted Sarnor and the Free Cities established themselves.

This. It wouldn't be that boring. We would have Stormlands- Ironborn war over the Riverlands and the birth of the Dothraki Culture, as well as the beginning of Volantis attempt to become the New Valyria.

 

[TMSaxon]

This. It wouldn't be that boring. We would have Stormlands- Ironborn war over the Riverlands and the birth of the Dothraki Culture, as well as the beginning of Volantis attempt to become the New Valyria.

Not to mention the Wars between the Reach and Stormlands, and the Westerlands and the Reach. In one of the former Argillac the Arrogant slew the then King of the Reach. Apparently the Northerners were also habitually raiding the south, and of course the problem that was the Hoare line and their control of the Riverlands. In Essos, there are several wars documented between the Free Cities, and I would dearly love to prevent the Dothraki extermination of the Sarnori.