Salvete readers!
Today we will be talking about the newly developed Black sea missions and an optional change to the Diadochi CB.
To begin, I’ll hand you over to traced_169
Salvete! I'm traced_169 (
@Hannibal_theCannibal) and I'm a developer working on expanding Hellenic Mission content. Today, I'd like to talk about what I've been working on these past few weeks: Greek Republics in the Black Sea region.
Some may wonder why focus on this topic? There already exists a generic Greek mission centered around controlling the Greek ports on the Pontos Euxinos. Shouldn't that be enough? Well, several team members and myself have found that the Inhospitable Mission, while fairly robust, fun, and flavourful, is largely geared towards Medium sized Hellenic nations in the region, ignoring the realities of the many smaller Greek city states that are sorely lacking in flavour. My goal with this mission is to offer another path of growth and possibly a taller style of play for the Greek republics in the region. Additionally, the tree includes several interactions with your nation's senate, so all monarchies (and tribes I suppose) are excluded from accessing the Mission. So without further ado, let's jump in.
As you can see, the mission incorporates one main branch (with some optional tasks and some diverging paths), one optional task, and one entirely optional branch. The main branch focuses on the building up of the capital region, either diplomatic or aggressive expansion of your nation, gaining senate backing, and ultimately, the formation of a new league of cities. There will be three new Nation tags available, depending on where you start and if you can conquer/acquire the necessary territories. While we may not have historical evidence that these proposed leagues ever existed, our scholars are convinced that under the right conditions their creation would have been entirely possible. If these small, disparate colonies were to strike out from under the influence of the successor kingdoms/local barbarian nations, it would have been pertinent for fellow Greeks to band together in common military and economic interest. We feel this is a great way to provide some interesting ahistorical playthrough paths.
Below is the flag for the Istrian League, the league of cities settled in East Thracia on the Black Sea coast.
Next we have the flag for the Bosporan League, centered around the republics of Tyras, Olbia, and Chersonesus.
And lastly, the Pontic League, comprising important cities on the north coast of anatolia, can be seen below.
In addition to the main branch, there are several optional tasks available, focusing on the building up of naval infrastructure and supporting a large fleet, settling recently conquered/acquired territory, diplomatically acquiring more cities to join your cause, as well as slave trade with the Scythians and Sarmatians, which was an extremely important part of the mercantile economic system in the Black Sea region.
The optional mission branch focuses on the legacy of Greek colonists in the region, culminating in the search for the Taurian temple of Artemis located somewhere on the Crimean peninsula. Turning both to mythological sources as well as Euripedes, the temple of Artemis (in Taurica) played a central role in the story of Iphegeneia, the daughter of Agamemnon, and how she was saved from being sacrificed by her father by the goddess Artemis. In the tale, she is whisked away to the Temple of Artemis in Tauris and is made a high priestess there. Sources vary on what happens next, whether she returned to Greece with either an image of Artemis or a copy of the image of Artemis. What's important for our purposes is that this image of Artemis was purportedly made from materials fallen from the heavens.
In our mission task, a traveler comes to court describing rumors of the ruins of a temple in the Crimea region featuring a unique-looking goddess statue. The player will be given the opportunity to launch an expedition to locate and return the statue to their capital, thus earning the respect of the Greek world and winning great prestige for themselves. Upon completion, the players will be able to unlock one of two new deities that are specific to the region: the Artemis Tauropolos and Hecate Iphimede (in some versions of the story, Iphigeneia is transformed by Artemis into the goddess Hecate. As this deity is already in the base game, we have created a regionally specific version of the goddess of magic to better reflect the regional nature of her worship). Please note that the task requirements and rewards are still undergoing playtesting and could change before launch.
One other small addition to this tree focuses on one possible rival, the Bosporan Kingdom. As the heirs to the greek tradition in the region up to and during the time of Roman domination, the Greeks have ostensibly been ‘led’ by the Bosporan Kingdom for centuries. In our alternate history telling, the Bosporan Kingdom serves as a rival to nations participating in this mission, as they are both a formidable military and economic foe in addition to taking the opposite political stance in governance (they are a monarchy while we are a republic). The optional mission task in question concerns their capital Pantakaipon and if it has been razed, leaving a power vacuum in the Cimmerian Bosphorus. Players will have the opportunity to found a new city in its place, named ‘Manitra’ (which is actually based on the relatively recent discovery of a greek colony nearby).
With the addition of these two new deities and the three new formable nations, we hope to have added a little bit more incentive to play as one of these often overlooked smaller nations. Just a quick shout out to the rest of the team for all their help and input, with special thanks to OmegaCorps, who's historical input has been instrumental in developing the Mission narrative and to sealionforever, who has helped me get many of my ideas and concepts out of my head and into reality i.e. working code.
Now back to Snowlet:
We have decided to incorporate one of the scripts made by
@Agamidae, which changes the Diadochi CB (we’re working on adding it to the Imperial CB, but it will be with a workaround). Using a toggle you will be able to choose whether you want the old or the new behaviour.
Now, what is changed in the new behaviour? Well, to begin, whenever you take a territory and there are no hostile units or forts in the entire province, you will take the entire province. You will still get the full AE of the province but this new system vastly stabilizes province borders and prevents bordergore.
We have also changed it so that the Defender will now actually get AE when taking foreign territory (no more free conquests as Antigonids). But to make it balanced for the Diadochi, we have also made it so that when you are reconquering territory you held at the start of the war as a Diadochi, you will not get any War exhaustion as you are after all, just reconquering what is rightfully yours.
Now finally we have an announcement for you, the mod will be translated into French, German and Spanish. This also means we’ll be improving the at times lackluster translations by PDX. This hopefully means the entire Imperator community can enjoy the mod and game.
If you’re interested in translating the mod to a different language, contact me on discord.
As a little teaser for next DD: