Dev Diary 17: India Rework + Tamil Kings
Salvete! Today we’ll be talking about one of the most lacking regions in vanilla, India. We have designed for you a culture rework nerfing Maurya and Indian blobs, new heritages, bloodlines and a new set of mission trees for the legendary Tamil Kings.
But first i’ll quickly repeat our announcement from Wednesday and the contest we’re holding.
2 months after the mod released, we have hit the milestone of 10k subs and the second most popular mod on the Imperator workshop, what an achievement.
On behalf of the whole Dev team, we thank you for the great support we have received ever since that auspicious day when Paradox suspended development of Imperator, and the day that our Project began. We have striven to continue the development of Imperator through the power of the community and we can now honestly say that we have succeeded in improving this game.
As most of you will be aware we are working on a very large update more than doubling the content in the mod, but sadly this is still under development for most likely more than a month. Instead we have something else to celebrate this occasion, a Contest of Stories.
We want you to submit the stories/after-action-reports of your campaigns with Invictus here:
https://forms.gle/6S4iXJ8SjPyXmBjV7
We will be reading all the submissions and selecting the 3 top contestants who will each get access to our dev-chats after which, the community will vote for who is the winner, the winner will as reward be allowed to ask us to add any (reasonable) suggestion in the Invictus mod and we'll see that it gets added most likely by next update.
We'll be looking forward to reading all the stories and campaigns you have played, whether it is with Rome or a minor Tribe in Germania, all stories are unique with this great game. Ave Imperator: Rome!
Now, onto India!
Dementive here, once again, today we’re going to be looking at the many changes that have been made to the Indian subcontinent.
By far the most impactful change is the rework of Indian cultures. Here we can see the Vanilla Indian cultures:
With the vanilla setup Maurya and other large Indian states had abnormally large levy sizes. Some cultures like Magadhi and Avanti had around 1000 pops this was awful for balance as most cultures in game have around 100-500 pops. To fix this 21 new cultures have been added to India.
Another important thing that has been changed is the levy composition of Indian countries. In vanilla, chariots are vastly overrepresented in some Indian cultures with certain cultures having as high as 20% of their army made of chariots. During this time period chariot warfare was heavily in decline across all of India. Although they were still sparsely in use, to better reflect this Indian levy compositions now have a max of 5% chariots.
Additionally, changes have been made to more accurately reflect the “four-fold division” of ancient Indian armies; these four divisions were the chariots, elephant corps, cavalry and infantry.
One final change, which we will delve into in a future dev diary, is that India will now have two character backgrounds, one for northern Indian cultures, and one for southern Indian cultures. As I said, this is something which will be expanded on in a future dev diary when we eventually discuss the new character backgrounds that will be added to the upcoming update.
Tamil Kings:
The three ruling houses of Tamil India, the Pandyas, Cheras, and Cholas, known collectively as the “Muvendar”, fought for supremacy of southern India and Sri Lanka. These dynasties promoted “Sangam literature” in Tamilakam and built important Hindu temples. Additionally, the Tamil Kings were among the only kingdoms on the entire Indian subcontinent to not be conquered by the expanding Mauryan Empire.
A considerable amount of content has been added for the 3 Tamil kings and their neighbors.
To start off all Lankan cultured countries, Chola, Chera, and Pandya now have unique heritages.
Additionally 4 new bloodlines have been added to India. These include Kalinga, Chola, Chera, and Pandya.
New Coat of Arms have also been made for the 3 Tamil Kings.
Chola:
Chera:
Pandya:
The 3 Tamil Kings now share a group mission tree.
At the Beginning of the tree you will have a very important decision to make. You can embrace the Hindu deity of Shiva or Vishnu. Shiva will guide your nation to the destruction of your enemies, giving claims on many neighboring areas, and other boons to aid your conquest. However, if you choose to embrace Vishnu you will seek to forge a more peaceful and harmonious relationship with your neighbors...by vassalizing or subjugating them all. Embracing Vishnu will give powerful modifiers for playing tall and encourage the establishment of subject states.
Each path offers unique permanent modifiers upon their completion.
Shiva:
Vishnu:
Additionally, Chola, Chera, and Pandya all have a unique branch of several missions on the right side of the tree. Chola is focused on developing their lands and overpowering their rival Tamil kings. Chera is primarily focused on trade. Pandya is focused on embellishing Sangam literature and developing Madurai.
Upon completion of the tree your country will change to Tamilakam, your primary culture will become Tamil, a lot of your pops will become Tamil, and you will now be able to start the second mission tree: Tamilakam Unity.
Upon forming Tamilakam you will be blessed with the greatest coat of arms ever created:
And a new map color:
At this time Tamilakam was one of the wealthiest places on earth with thriving trade networks stretching from Rome to China. The left side of the tree is the development branch and will ensure the prosperity of Tamilakam for many centuries to come.
At the end of the development branch a character will appear in your country with the newly added Great Builder trait.
The missions will guide you through consolidation of the Dravidian Cultures and eventually the destruction of Maurya on your way to becoming the Masters of India!
Here are some interesting events as well:
There are a multitude of other interesting flavor events as well to keep you going on your way to Uniting India under one Tamil Kings.
.png){kind=avatar}
