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Greetings, readers! In advance of our next big content-focused dev diary, here's a teaser of our work-in-progress new UI skin:
If only Victoria 2 was as beautiful, I might try to play France in it. And while CK3 map is not as horrid as some people claim, Imperator always reminds me that it could be better.
 
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Dev diary 4: The Ottoman Empire in detail
Greetings readers!

It’s about time we brought you a new developer diary. Though we have been relatively quiet in public since our last diary, we have made immense progress in all sorts of fields. We realised while we were compiling this dev diary that there is so much new stuff to say that we will have to spread it out into several diaries! We have far too much to say about this topic alone, so prepare for a few more on different subjects to follow in the near future.

Today time we’re focusing on another region - one that is all part of a single empire. This diary was supposed to come out a couple of days ago but we just had a lot of new relevant information come in from an excellent new volunteer to have joined our team, Prince | ܒܪ ܡܠܟܐ ܕܒܒܠ, so kudos!

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You’ll remember our first dev diary, where we showed an early development version of the Ottoman Empire https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/mod-imperatrix-victoria.1410441/post-26831612.

The political map has changed significantly since its baby form that we showed earlier, with much more detail to the internal borders of the empire and many more provinces added.

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We’ve striven to represent in detail the feudal states that existed within the Empire that posed a threat to its cohesion and, both in history and for the player of Imperatrix: Victoria, must be reckoned with by the emperor or pursue their own goals of autonomous rule. Playing as the Ottomans or as one of their ambitious vassal states will prove to be an interesting challenge, with heavy internal diplomatic wrangling right from the early game.

As part of this detail we have so far implemented the major historical figures ruling these countries. First and foremost is of course Sultan Mahmud II of the Ottoman Empire. You might also notice something different about the UI in this picture...
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We will show more new characters below as we go through the nations that they rule.

In the diplomatic mapmode you can see the core territories ruled from Constantinople in green, and those of its vassals in blue.

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Imperatrix: Victoria includes a number of new vassal types which have been used, among other places, to reflect the complexities of the Ottoman Empire.

Tributaries - these pay taxes to the Empire but are not bound to join their wars.
  • Tunis
  • Algiers

These North African states are technically parts of the Empire but are largely undefended by the central government of Constantinople. Their rulers enjoy relative freedom over their domains.

Mahmud Husainid rules the Beylik of Tunis
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Feudatories - their allegiance is primarily military and they will support the Empire in wars
  • Muntafiq, a tribal state in southern Iraq ruled by its Emir.
Client states - These owe taxes and military support to the Empire.
  • Egypt
  • Tripoli
  • Kuwait
  • Massawa - a Red Sea coastal kingdom


Yusuf Karamanli rules the Elayet of Tripoli.
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Major governorships - regions of the Empire with appointed local rulers that may have their own laws, these are closely bound to the central state and have very restricted diplomacy
  • Wallachia
  • Moldavia
Protectorates - states that are bound to the Ottoman Empire militarily and contribute manpower
  • Zeila - another Red Sea coastal kingdom
Nominal vassals - a major part of the Ottoman Empire’s representation in Imperatrix is its inefficient decentralisation: many of the regional governors rule de-facto independently and have carved out their own feudal dominions within the borders of the Empire. Contending with these, and bringing their territories under central control will be a central struggle of the Empire throughout the early and mid game.

This may be done through diplomatic negotiations, economic strong-arming, or even open military conflicts against the Ottoman’s own territories. The Ottoman player will be offered a variety of missions to tackle these relationships in their own way. They may even wish to embrace the decentralisation and try to reform the Empire into a fully feudal state.

Subsidiary allies - Semi-colonial relationships where the dependency is limited in diplomacy and pays taxes to the Empire.
  • Harar in Ethiopia
  • The Sumatran kingdom of Aceh.

The Ottomans’ most far-flung dependency, Aceh all the way off in Indonesia, had been supported navally by the Ottoman Empire since the 16th century and the kingdom was a base of Ottoman trade in the Far East. This relationship would last until 1873 when the Dutch invasion of Aceh tested the Ottomans’ willingness to support their protectorate; in history, the Empire backed down and did not send its fleet, but this might not always happen in Imperatrix… Perhaps a player could build an Ottoman colonial empire in Indonesia to rival the Europeans.

Pictured: Aceh in the Bottom Right, with a view of the Ottoman Empire
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The demographics of the Empire have also been fully modelled in excruciating detail. Here is a population map of the Mediterranean:

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We will examine the demographics of the mod in more detail in a future dev diary. As an overview for this region though, here are the demographic pie charts of the Ottoman Empire tag:
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The Empire’s pops are mostly Sunni Muslims by a slim majority, but a huge number of other religions exist within its borders and in its vassal states; multicultural metropolises dot the Empire and set it out as a region where rulers will need to contend with the complexities of dozens of interacting cultures.

The Ottoman Empire in 1815 has not gone untouched by the conflicts of the Napoleonic wars, though they mostly occurred in its border territories, including incursions by France and Britain into its vassal state of Egypt, where the previous Mamluk government has been overthrown by its now governor, the Albanian Mehmet Ali Pasha.

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Mehmet Ali (or Muhammad Ali) is recognised as the founding father of the now defunct modern Egyptian monarchy, having established himself by the start date as de-facto ruler for life. Mehmet had risen through the ranks of the Ottoman civil service and military, a career which ultimately landed him in Egypt. During the period of chaos that followed the failed French invasion, he was able to secure the support of Egypt’s pre-eminent civil servants to oust the previous governor, Hurshid Pasha, and effectively anoint himself as Wali of Egypt without needing the assent of the Sublime Porte (ie the Ottoman Empire proper).

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Now Egypt turns its attention to expanding its territory, and in 1815 is in the middle of a successful campaign against the Wahhabi Emirate of Diriyah in Arabia, bolstering its status as a regional power. It would next turn its eyes to Sudan, which also happens to be the last outpost of the recently collapsed Mamluk government.

Far in the south of Egypt there is an isolated cultural group… do I see something in the far north there, too?

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Yes, those are the Magyarabs - Hungarians living in the north of what is today Sudan. Hungarians lived in southern Ottoman Egypt, and their ancestors still today reside in that region. They are thought to have descended from Hungarian soldiers in the Ottoman military settled in Egypt.

Janina
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Janina was already mentioned in our first ever developer diary, but now it returns with revised borders to reflect the true historical extent of Ali Pasha’s power. We have also modelled the ambitious Albanian ruler himself.

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We’ll hear now from Marschall Vorwärts (krushka5), our developer for, among other things, Janina and Athos, two Ottoman-region minors.

As Janina plays an important part in the early game of the Ottoman Empire, a mission tree which allows it to play an antagonistic role within the region and simulates the late rule of Ali Pasha. When I was designing this mission tree, I planned it around a quote by Ali Pasha, which claimed that "You will see that Ali Pasha, the successor to Pyrrhus will surpass him in every enterprise". This quote (in addition to being a great analogy in contrast with the Vanilla game), outlines the bold ambition but also mirrors the struggle the Janina will have to overcome, much as Epirus fought the powerful Rome, Janina may have to fight the powerful Ottomans and victories are likely to be Pyrrhic.

The mission tree is available if Janina decides to oppose Ottoman central authority, which the AI is weighed to do. I will not go into the tree in full (on this occasion) but will highlight some of the important and interesting components of it.

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(Graphics WiP)

One half of the mission tree focuses on preparing Janina for an independence war with the Ottomans.

Two of the central tasks in the early tree involve restoring Venetian and Byzantine era forts. This is to simulate one of the most important historic strategic blunders made by Ali Pasha in advance of his coming conflict with the Ottoman government, when he squandered his superior canonry by diving it among many fortifications, depleting the supply to such a point that antiquated and naval canons had to be repurposed to meet the armies demands. Both missions give a bonus to the garrison in the province, in return for a 5-year debuff which weakens your artillery (the effect stacks).

Following this, the player can confiscate Ottoman grain supply. This action depletes and negatively impacts the food production in some of the Ottoman territory surrounding Janina, whilst adding food supply to Janina. This action will greatly insult the Ottomans, who will get options to dealing with the crisis, ranging from bypassing requirements in one of its mission trees to allow it to declare war on Janina early, place sanctions on them or ignoring the action.
One of the most important missions is ‘Conspire with the Klephts’, which is a diplomatic mission where it approaches the Greek country Mani to negotiates arrangements for a potential joint strike on the Ottomans if war should occur. Mani is the primary Greek country at the mods start, an area that was functionally independent of the Ottomans, who had secured a victory against the Ottomans in 1815 (year mod starts). The results of this mission can vary greatly, with over 10 events that can lead to various outcomes based on failed historical ambitions from various factions at that time. I don’t want to spoil the outcomes but one of my favorites involved hiring a foreign army that Ali Pasha turned down in history.

The second half of the tree focuses on developing Janina’s economy, as well as Ali Pasha’s own property. This part of the mission tree can be used to shift the focus away from completing the tasks on the military side of the mission tree (perhaps while you wait for the debuffs to end). It helps give the player the option to pace how quickly they want to move towards an independence war, do they want it faster or do they want to build up even more strength.

Athos
Athos is an undeniably small and unimportant power within the mod. It is a monastic state and a significant holy site within Orthodox Christianity. We felt it was worth including in the mod due to its autonomy and potential to contribute some unique flair to the gameplay. The main way we aim to do this is through unique mechanics for Athos to contribute (and be contributed from) the broader Orthodox world.

Athos’s government (in the mod) is represented by some of its significant historical monasteries, simplifying them (for gameplay purposes) and having them represent major Orthodox cultures (the groups that mostly practice in them). These monasteries are as follows:
• Hilandar
• Iviron
• St Panteleimon
• Zograf
• Vatopedi

Much like, in history, various monastic communities would grow and decline in prominence, influenced by external factors. As each monastery aligns with a country/culture (e.g. St Panteleimon with Russia), if that monastic community is prominent, the home country can receive small but useful bonuses. These bonuses can influence the happiness of certain pops, ruler popularity or the loyalty of specific offices. Through decisions and events, foreign powers have a limited capacity to influence the prominence of their attached monastery and the internal affairs of Athos, representing patronage. Only the formed cultural union country gains this ability to influence Athonite monastic communities in such a way, for example Mani cannot influence it but a unified Greece can. Athos, in return for this patronage gains its own benefits, ranging from new characters, temporary modifiers and currency injections.

We can see such a country being interesting in theoretical multiplayer campaigns, with an Athos player manipulating diplomacy with other players to their favour.

Below is a teaser of a work in progress mission tree for Athos.
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(Graphics WiP)

As Athos is a minor nation and it would make little sense to promote military conquest for a nation without military history (although there is nothing stopping players from engaging in conflict and there might be a planned formable for Athos if they do plan expansive), it focuses on internal development and nudging international affairs in relation to the former system.

________________________
Greece

Last but not least, we have been sure to include a way to play as a tag that can form Greece from the beginning of the game. As Greece did not exist in 1815, we have opted to represent the de-facto independent Moreot Klephts of Maina, AKA Mani, a small federation on the southern tip of the Peloponnese, as a playable tag. This, alongside the separatism and cultural revival being fostered in Janina, is the birthplace of the Greek independence movement.

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Mani is led by Petrobey Mavromichalis, a Greek general who led the Maniots in this period, and at this time the preeminent Greek politician leading the multifarious independence movement. Six years from the beginning of the game, Petrobey would be the de facto leader of the Greek military forces of the war of independence that would ultimately succeed in creating a Greek state independent of the Ottomans.

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Also among the characters in Mani is Theodoros Kolokotronis, one of the highest ranking generals of the Greek war of independence.

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The Greek player will have to play a diplomatic game early on, securing foreign support for its revolutionary efforts and building up the strength of their rebel armies to take down the Ottoman regional government in the Greek heartlands. Starting as a one province minor with the ambition to build a nation state makes for an exciting, but equally daunting prospect for a playthrough! This will give you the opportunity to shape your nation from scratch, including its government, foreign relations and constitution... but expect foreign powers to have no hesitation to influence every element of your state.

The Greek diaspora is spread widely across the Mediterranean and Ottoman territories in this period, including along the Levant, Anatolia, in Italian ports and in North Africa as merchants and slaves. Near the homeland, Greek populations stretch into Albania and parts of Thrace. This reflects our grander approach to development where we have striven to reflect minority pop cultures all over the world, using primary sources where possible.

Not pictured separately here are the Pontic Greek and Tsakonian cultures, which are within the same group but restricted to more localised areas.

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Thank you for reading! I look forward to posting our next diaries soon, which will show off all the work we’ve been doing on the mod since you last heard from us.

Our next developer diary will contain a series of updates on regions since our last diaries, and a lot of due credit to contributors!

If you are interested in volunteering or just chatting about our mod, we are always happy to welcome new members to our Discord to talk about history, discuss features for the mod and collaborate on research: https://discord.gg/nbxgkwy

As is tradition, here are two flags to guess at:

Flag 1
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Flag 2
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List of references (partial):

 
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Beautiful.
 
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This mod looks more like Victoria III than Victoria 3 :p Great work!
 
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Simply outstanding dev diary! The detail makes it really interesting, and surely will provide many different play-throughs. Thought the Vicky 3 may deter some of the followers, it's an amazing project, and I really hope to see it rolling around here! My congratulations to you, kudos!
 
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I think the second flag is Hyderabad, but no clue about the first one - reminds me of Nepal though, perhaps something in the Himalayas as well? Kingdom of Mustang? :D
Well you got them both right! Hyderabad and yes, that's the old Nepalese flag.

Thanks to everyone for the kind comments! We really appreciate the support!
 
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Dev diary 5: pop gfx
Greetings readers!

Today’s dev diary will be the first to focus on our new UI graphics, and the first look at our new pop types too. We’ll discuss how pop types will work mechanically in a future dev diary, so consider this also a teaser of what’s to come!

For this diary, I’ll leave you in the capable hands of Luk_zloty, our “Executive 2D Artist”. Don’t worry about the title, it’s something to make him feel better about himself.


--------------------------------------​

Hi, I’m Luk, and some of you might have seen my Imperatrix promo maps and and if that’s the case why you are here – I’m extremely happy.

I joined the team to make sure that Congress Poland will be as polished (pun intended) as possible. One thing led to another and now I’m Executive 2D Artist of this mod .


I want to tell you the story behind our new pop icons, but first, let me show you one of the greatest placeholder picture in the history of temporary pictures, which was somehow rejected by our lead – Sobisonator.

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Lascaux cave called, they want their stickmen back

THE PROCESS

First, take a look at the province screen:

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Imperatrix: Victoria uses 7* poptypes instead of vanilla 5. When I joined the team, the pop screen looked very messy.

* - when I started doing this, indentured (serf) poptype was not defined yet, so we had 6 of them. And a passionate discussion about serfdom was still ahead of us

The team was focused on populating the world with new pops, but checking them in-game was horrible because of the UI. So at one point I started tinkering with it and implemented temporary icons that represented our pops slightly better than geometric figures. As you can see, I also added nice background graphics as well.


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Later on, we decided it’s time to move on and replace black icons with something less temporary. Finally we agreed to make human silhouettes in the style of vanilla Imperator, that will also be familiar to Victoria 2 veterans.

POPS ICONS

Here is a brief summary why they look like they look (keep in mind, that at least some of them might get a quality upgrade, I was learning how to make them on the fly):

Upper strata – my first attempt at making a pop icon. A man in a top hat and suit should be clearly recognizable as someone wealthy and important. While this pop would most likely wear black, I’ve chosen the blue color of the suit to make sure that all our icons are both shape-coded and color-coded. The color itself was heavily inspired by the Vicky 2 capitalists pop icon. I thought that the cigar would be a nice touch too. This is the icon most likely to be updated later. Bonus points for people who can identify the background picture.

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Infographic upper strata

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You can have a capitalist in any color you want, so long as it is dark blue



Middle strata – my second icon, made right after the first one. The base point was a bowler hat, different color than blue and glorious moustaches. I’m happier with this one than the upper strata icon, but at some point, I’ll update this icon too. On the background you can see the person responsible for almost half of the background pictures used by me – pioneer of colored photography, Sergey Mikhaylovich Prokudin-Gorsky himself.

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Infographic middle strata

Proletariat – I started getting bold with this one (I guess my skill level increased after the previous two). Besides color-coding, I also wanted icons to be shape-coded, so that players could recognize them even in black and white. That’s why the proletariat icon has two models – one is the most famous bald guy after Johnny Sins, the other one is Lenin.
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Infographic proletariat

Lower strata – to me it always meant „farmer”, so I desperately looked for a role model with a pitchfork. And when I found this wonderful picture, I couldn’t resist. The final result felt a little bit too “american-ish” and “1950’s-ish” so I swapped the colors. In the meantime, background photo presents some Russian peasants if I remember correctly (from a photo by Prokudin-Gorsky)
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Infographic lower strata

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I’m glad I fixed this guy's face. I’m very, very glad I did that, it still gives me creeps.



Indentured – the pop type that was not supposed to be in the game. But the lines between slavery, serfdom and freedom are so vague, depending on the area and culture, we finally decided to separate them out. Because the word “indentured” is too hard to me, I always called them serfs. And what country comes to mind when you think about serfs? Russia! And who is the most popular, serf-ish looking Russian from the XIX/early XX century? That’s right! The Lover of the Russian Queen and Russia's greatest love machine! On the background image, you can see one of Prokudin-Gorsky's photos – one of two prisoners shackled together in modern day Uzbekistan.

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Infographic indentured

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This is the best dance ever

Tribesmen – while finding a background picture was easy (a Sámi family in front of their tent around 1900, a beautiful photo in color), creating an icon was very problematic. It’s not that there are no excellent examples of tribesmen from the era. The problem is there’s too many of them, and all of them feel very local, while we need one icon to represent tribesmen pops all around the world. A strong candidate was Zulu warrior (I made this icon too, see below, I’m pretty proud with the outcome), but we rejected it for two reasons – one, it was too specific and fitting one area only, and two, it made no sense to make black skinned depiction while all the other were beige-ish. We decided to keep all the pops more or less the same skin color, to avoid unnecessary controversy in case someone takes our pictures out of context.

That said, the final result also isn’t perfect – my role model was a glorious modern Mongolian man, and the result looks fine to represent both Canadian or Siberian tribes (and Mongolians as well I guess?), but still doesn’t fit the African desert or Amazonian jungle. I even experimented with having multiple silhouettes in one icon, but this stood out too much from the others. So it is like it is now.

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Infographic tribesmen

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Alternative tribesmen – Zulu warrior

Slave – the issues with slave icon were similar to the previous one. Many members of the dev team (me included) comes from (more or less) “western” part of the world, and thus our view on certain topics may be one sided. When we think about slaves, most of us see black african american slaves, while forgetting completely about European or Asian slaves. We also didn’t want the only dark-skinned pop icon to be the slave, as they should be as generic as possible. Being aware that our pops were already based on Western styles, we went for consistencyThat’s why our slave icon is represented by a white skinned person, that presumably was a victim of Barbary slavers. From a technical point of view, this icon is the most uninspired for me, just a dude in a grey shirt with chains. And one of us even suggested using an Australian convict uniform. I’d definitely like to rework this icon, but have no idea how.

As for the background image I’m contradicting all my previous words, as I decided to include a photo of black American (former) slave, Mr. Henry Brooks in a photo from 1941, beautifully colorized by @jordanjlloydhq. I believe there is an educational value in this – the realization that your parents or grandparents generation may have lived at the same time as Mr. Brooks shows that American slavery is not that far away in the history as many of you might think.. And also this photo (and colorization) has great artistic value.


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Infographic slave


END NOTES

That would be all for now from me. Next DD will tell you more about the pops themselves, their roles in society and what they’ll be able to do. Do następnego!

Well, maybe I’ll leave you with a few random screens from various periods of the development as a bonus. Enjoy!

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Zombie-capitalists are coming both for your money and your brain!

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Population screen WIP

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We all live in the Athos submarine, the Athos submarine, the Athos submarine...

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BTW I’ve found Jesus ;)

--------------------------------------

As is tradition, here are a couple of mystery flags for you to guess!

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Flag 1

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Flag 2​

Don't forget to join us on Discord for discussion, volunteering and notification of new teasers and DDs! https://discord.gg/nbxgkwy
 
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I don't want to sound racist, but white slave especially in this period of time looks kinda odd. Victoria II itself used black man to portray slaves.
In case of flags idk the first one (looks like Persia to me), but second one is Hanoverian horse for certain, tho it's the first time I see this flag :O

Btw. I know Lenin is the simbol of revolution, but he himself wasn't proletarian/worker. He was a lawyer so he would be in a "upper strata" I think :)
 
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I don't want to sound racist, but white slave especially in this period of time looks kinda odd. Victoria II itself used black man to portray slaves.
In case of flags idk the first one (looks like Persia to me), but second one is Hanoverian horse for certain, tho it's the first time I see this flag :O

Btw. I know Lenin is the simbol of revolution, but he himself wasn't proletarian/worker. He was a lawyer so he would be in a "upper strata" I think :)
We're keenly aware of the question around the slave pop icon, and we're open to suggestions. As we outlined in the dev diary, it felt odd to have only white characters except for the slave, although for sure in the time period the most egregious example of slavery was that of the Western enslavement of people of African descent. Ideally, we would have pop icons look different based on the culture of the province (I think Victoria 3 has managed to do this with pop icons unique to every pop! We would love to have that...)

Subject to change if discussions lead us that way.

I think the choice of Lenin was an inside joke for the proletariat icon :D

On the flags - you're close on both accounts! The second is in fact Hanover, a flag used during the union with Britain.
 
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Loving this latest update! I think the first flag is the Erivan Khanate? And the second is British Hannover, though I don't think I've ever seen the horse superimposed on the Union Jack like that.

As for the icons, I don't have much of an opinion on the slave pop, I understand completely why you wouldn't want to have them be the only black pop, maybe a line of several slaves chained together with many different skin tones? Although that maybe wouldn't look good scaled down.

Unfortunately I have to say I don't like the serf icon, while serfs = Russia = Rasputin is certainly a very Monty Pythonesque application of the principles of logic and etymology, if you showed me that picture blind and asked me to guess what pop it represented I'd probably guess clergy long before I thought of serf. I also have a similar problem with the proletariat ones, It's Lenin striking a funny pose, it doesn't scream "working man". If you've never seen a picture of Lenin (which admittedly is unlikely for someone playing a Victoria based GSG) you'll never be able to walk back the abstraction to proletariat.

I hope this doesn't come across as too negative, I think all of the art you've done is amazing and I can't wait to see what comes next!
 
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If you have any good photos on how the serf should look like, I'd be happy to see them, and maybe take some inspiration. Keep in mind that it's very hard to show a serf that would look different from proletariat dude for example.

As for the proletariat icon I disagree - man on the background image is looking very proletariat-y, and the only difference with the icon is the broom and the hat (that would be hard to show on the icon, it may look like hair). I'll take a look at it though.
 
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If you have any good photos on how the serf should look like, I'd be happy to see them, and maybe take some inspiration. Keep in mind that it's very hard to show a serf that would look different from proletariat dude for example.

As for the proletariat icon I disagree - man on the background image is looking very proletariat-y, and the only difference with the icon is the broom and the hat (that would be hard to show on the icon, it may look like hair). I'll take a look at it though.
I know "Sickle" is in the Soviet Union flag, but as a tool it reminds me of the peasants/serfs much more than for example "Scythe". Maybe because it was much simpler tool and it suits the image of hard working almost slave-like "hunched" man.

And I agree with sentiment that your present serf icon could be mistaken with "clergy" (especially orthodox one). That was my first thought after seeing it as well :p You cannot deny that Rasputin was first and foremost orthodox sect leader, even if he was born peasant and had poor peasant-ish look ;)
 
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If you have any good photos on how the serf should look like, I'd be happy to see them, and maybe take some inspiration. Keep in mind that it's very hard to show a serf that would look different from proletariat dude for example.
What about this picture?
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or this:
AKG5794779.jpg

Noone said it has to be a man, right? :p
 
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I can understand some getting upset at the slave pop not being of African descent but I perfectly understand the choice. Here in Canada when slavery was around most slaves were natives. Romania had slavery for a while and it was usually the Roma people. As said above the North Africans had their fair bit of European slavery. Slavery, while in the West, usually makes us think of white oppression of blacks, is not only a white belief against blacks, its a system that anyone can use against anyone, including one's own ethnic group. It would equally be odd for say someone playing Japan and bringing in slavery against Chinese people and the pop was an African man.
 
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