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Porta Atlanticum, Portus Classis / An England MMU AAR

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Arakhor said:
The redhead is actually quite hot. Here's hoping we get some attractive pictures of Elizabeth in due course!
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She won't be the Elizabeth we're used to, but she won't be bad-looking. My house rule is that there are no ugly young queens. :D

gabor said:
Love the banner. But does it mean there's a new dynasty coming?
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NACBEAST said:
I must wonder though: did you make these new graphics because they look nice... or do you just want to have something nice up to mark the soon-to-be end of the Lancastrian Dynasty?
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Always reading between the lines and sifting the clues, you two. :ninja: I'm not telling! :D

I will say that I have a contingency if a dynasty requires more than one banner—just add a year signifier to banners (i.e. House of Lancaster, 1399-1501; then House of Lancaster, 1501-1601, and so on).

I originally planned to have headers/banners separating each century, but the monarch portraits tended to crowd out the background imagery. Then I couldn't decide on what to name the eras (Late Medieval Era vs. Early Renaissance, Reformation vs. Age of Discovery, Age of Enlightenment vs. Age of Reason, etc). And if I only created them for each century, then I'd be limited to just four.

Whereas if I create banners for each dynasty I might have more than four. (Does anybody actually go through the whole 400 years with less than four dynasties?)
 
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Well, I don't know if MMU produces more monarchs without heirs, but I don't think I've ever had as many as four dynasties!
 
eagerly awaiting the update :)
 
Chris Taylor said:
Whereas if I create banners for each dynasty I might have more than four. (Does anybody actually go through the whole 400 years with less than four dynasties?)
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Yamato is one dynasty for the whole period.
 
Chris Taylor said:
Does anybody actually go through the whole 400 years with less than four dynasties?
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I try to make a habit of it, which would probably drive later historians crazy, especially with a country like Burgundy that only has something like three regnal names in their country file. Nothing says confusing like Philippe XXI, son of Philippe XX, son of a long line of Philippes, some of whom reign for less than a year...

Though come to think of it, even the Rurikids didn't rule in one place for four hundred years.
 
I usually only have two dynasties, as the dynasty is almost always saved by an heir-granting event.

Wait, a new dynasty does not mean the counter starts over, does it? That would be contrary to all precedent (that I am aware of). Louis XIV was the fourteenth of that name. The first was Chlodovechus of the Merovingian dynasty.
 
No, the numbers don't restart, but the only reason it ever seemed Burgundy wound up with variation in names was because it quit being Burgundy and became something else, say, Lotharingia or the Holy Roman Empire. I suspect what I'm angling for here is that certain dynasties seemed to have a predilection for certain names - the Plantagenet string of Edwards, for instance, or a minimum of four Frenchmen named Louis from 1600 to 1793. At some point someone's going to go "which one is which?"
 
Banner looks pretty sweet. Nice blend of the rough and gritty medieval portraits/background and the crisp font/.svg Lancastrian rose.
 
Banner cool!
Update of crushing Frenchies and making their wine cart overturn into the Seine...better
Portugal in my last game had two dynasties, the original one whatever that is and then the Talbots who stayed in power 200 years after their brethern in England got...replaced by the republic:D
 
Man I cant wait for the next update... Keep checking back here twice a day hoping to see it...

Um can I just make one small suggestion... At the start of each update could you do a mini section (need not be more than a few sentences, or hell even in bullet point form) that briefly covers the previous update...

The AAR is so gloriously detailed that I find myself checking back to previous updates to refresh my memory... A little section at the beginning would be awesome...

Like "Previously on Porta Atlanticum, Portus Classis...."

Lol
 
I dunno, that'd really take me out of the History Book feel of the AAR. I mean, there's convenience and then there's ruining the tone of the AAR. Chris has been doing a fine job with his current format and, really, if we need a refresher on something, I think checking back to previous updates isn't so inconvenient that we need to go on changing the format like that.
 
Arakhor said:
Well, I don't know if MMU produces more monarchs without heirs, but I don't think I've ever had as many as four dynasties!
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Dewirix said:
Yamato is one dynasty for the whole period.
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c0d5579 said:
I try to make a habit of it, which would probably drive later historians crazy, especially with a country like Burgundy that only has something like three regnal names in their country file. Nothing says confusing like Philippe XXI, son of Philippe XX, son of a long line of Philippes, some of whom reign for less than a year...

Though come to think of it, even the Rurikids didn't rule in one place for four hundred years.
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Willum said:
I usually only have two dynasties, as the dynasty is almost always saved by an heir-granting event.
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blsteen said:
Portugal in my last game had two dynasties, the original one whatever that is and then the Talbots who stayed in power 200 years after their brethern in England got...replaced by the republic:D
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I guess I'm the odd man out. I usually see a few dynasty changes; inevitably some rulers croak without heirs and I end up with strange foreign families. Dynasties I didn't even have an RM with, sometimes. :rolleyes:

I don't mind dynasties changing but sometimes the families the AI picks for you make you *facepalm*. Like when a Protestant country ends up with stridently Catholic Italians in charge (or vice-versa).

Milites said:
Banner looks pretty sweet. Nice blend of the rough and gritty medieval portraits/background and the crisp font/.svg Lancastrian rose.
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loki100 said:
there is more care and attention in that banner alone than most AARs contain in their entire span ... awesome is perhaps the best description
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Thank you, Milites! You and axzhang are my Photoshop heroes, so I am delighted to hear your kind words.

And loki100, thank you for the fulsome praise! I will try to keep that the same focus and attention to detail in later efforts/installments.

Director said:
I hereby declare this the recipient of the Weekly AAR Showcase.
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Thank you, Director! Let me say in return that I was pleased to discover your AAR, A Special Providence. The scene with the teetotallers, Teddy Roosevelt and Winston Churchill was a personal favourite.

Stildawn said:
Um can I just make one small suggestion... At the start of each update could you do a mini section (need not be more than a few sentences, or hell even in bullet point form) that briefly covers the previous update...

The AAR is so gloriously detailed that I find myself checking back to previous updates to refresh my memory... A little section at the beginning would be awesome...

Like "Previously on Porta Atlanticum, Portus Classis...."
Click to expand...

NACBEAST said:
I dunno, that'd really take me out of the History Book feel of the AAR. I mean, there's convenience and then there's ruining the tone of the AAR. Chris has been doing a fine job with his current format and, really, if we need a refresher on something, I think checking back to previous updates isn't so inconvenient that we need to go on changing the format like that.
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In my patrolling of the Vicky2 forums I found an AAR—Last Tango in 1.3 - An Argentine AAR—that does exactly what you suggest. As a reader, I did find this device very useful, but as NACBEAST says it could be difficult to integrate something like that into the tone of this AAR.

I'm not saying it can't be done, I'm just saying that I am having trouble coming up with a concept and style that would fit the tenor of the story. But in the abstract, I like the idea because it does make it easier on the reader.
 
Chris Taylor said:
Thank you, Director! Let me say in return that I was pleased to discover your AAR, A Special Providence. The scene with the teetotallers, Teddy Roosevelt and Winston Churchill was a personal favourite.
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Hey, spoilers! Some of us have only just met Teddy (and have had to put up with reading a very well-imagined account of the destruction of the Channel Fleet).

Chris Taylor said:
In my patrolling of the Vicky2 forums I found an AAR—Last Tango in 1.3 - An Argentine AAR—that does exactly what you suggest. As a reader, I did find this device very useful, but as NACBEAST says it could be difficult to integrate something like that into the tone of this AAR.

I'm not saying it can't be done, I'm just saying that I am having trouble coming up with a concept and style that would fit the tenor of the story. But in the abstract, I like the idea because it does make it easier on the reader.
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I think it works in InnocentIII's AAR because it's gameplay style; as a player you know your own mind and can reflect on the decisions that led you to a point. It's harder with a history book format because the whole text is meant to be the reflection, and there's no one character who spans the period of the narrative and can look back on their progress towards a goal (unless you do what Director, Ashantai or Boris ze Spider did and involve long-lived time travellers).
 
To fix that you could just do it as a complete separate post before the actual post and keep it real informal and not part of the actual AAR?

Like I said bullet points would work lol.
 
Alternately, put an Edward Gibbon-like blurb with each chapter link at the beginning. "Queen Elizabeth challenges Spain - Drake at Cadiz - The execution of Mary, Queen of Scots," et cetera. Don't even really need dates. That keeps the history-book feel and the "previously on..." wish more or less intact.
 
keep it the same

I find this the best currently active Magna Mundi AAR; while I enjoy quite a few of the other AAR's, this is really the pinnacle. Hence, I would recommend that whatever he is doing, he keeps doing, and not worry about putting in blurbs at the front to remind people.
 
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