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thanks.

Well, looking at what I have been reading recently and what I can do in the nearest time hirizon I think the next part to come will be somehow connected to trade routes across the Sahara. Events, event chains and possible ways how (inland) merchants and merchant families could be dealt with. That said, if anyone has any ideas... any imputs on how merchant families worked elswhere (Europe in particular), I'd be very glad to learn something more so the mechanics could be done as universal (with necessary localization) as possible.

For instance one of the event chains to be promoted will be Organize (camel) Caravan or Take part in (camel) Caravan. - each with something between half a dozen and dozen events tied to it.
 
I still find it weird merchant republics have to be on the sea, why couldn't they also be on rivers? Rivers were just as important as sea trade during the CK2 era.
I guess hat is because they modelled Merchant republics around Italian merchant republics, which were centered around the sea and not rivers. Which IMHO makes perfect sense, even though I think that the Sahara for instance served as one such sea aswell... and rivers were obviously important too, but for a different type of trade and government.
 
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so, let the ideas keep flowing, this time perhaps one event-oriented part.

Chapter 9 - The Trans-Saharan trade and its merchants.

First of all, the Trans-Saharan trade route should have at least 2 main branches. One of them from West Africa propper - the gold-bearing regions to Sijilmasa and the Mediterrean ports, and the other in the central part of the continent from Kanem-Bornu region through Kawar and Fezzan to the coast - this one's main trade article should be slaves.
ilUeY0o.png


As you can see the western route would have 2 main branches. One, the original and less dangerous from Bambuk via Adrad and Draa valley,
the other comes from the north through Taghaza salt mines and then forks into western part which goes all the way to Bambuk, Malian gold fields, and the eastern going through Timbuktu to Jenne.
- As you can see the trade routes will make the region very rich, so perhaps adding more provinces would serve the refion a favour in having higher percentage of provinces which don't have trade route in them.

The trade could be carried out by merchant class from both Maghreb and West Africa, who could operate as Inland merchant republics, but even if there are not these Inland merchant republics, these trade routes would bring some events and special mechanics. (If Inland republics would be to emerge, they'd probably need more interesting stuff, which I will suggest later).

Here are some events and event chains which could be connected to Trans-Saharan trade routes
1) Muslim merchants in pagan lands
- event chain tied to the fact that there were muslim communities in the countries not belonging under the power of muslim rulers and therefore with lesser chance to execute rule islamic law.
Can be viewn from perspective of the pagan ruler, muslim ruler on the other side of the route or the merchant (Inland republic).
here are few instances of what could happen:
- wealthy muslim merchant died - what to do with his body - bury him according to islamic law soon, but on pagan land (perhaps even without an imam). What to do with his property (his rightfull heir is /if there's any/ on the other side of desert) - the pagan ruler can confiscate it, possibly triggering anger among muslim merchants, some merchant may offer to protect it and take it to his rightfull heir and either take it for himself or do his religious duty. The muslim ruler on the other side of the desert may be asked to send his emissaries to protect the muslims on the other side of desrt - a costy adventure with high risk of failiure... but providing him piety and potentialy a base for military expansion southwards
- the merchant community may ask the pagan ruler to establish their own religious court with their own judge-qadi - may risk establishment of more independent community and potentialy more interested being asserted by muslim rulers on the other side of Sahara... or the demand to establish the court could be made to the muslim ruler and he could accept or refuse... both with relevant consequences on his power and piety, relations with pagans and other muslims.

2) The Caravan event chain
- also this could have few perspectives - of a ruler in the route's terminus, the merchant who is organizing it, or a merchant who can eventually join it.
- it should be to some aspect similar to setting up adventurer's army for conquest (if you are the organizer) - the merchants are collected and at a certain point the caravan's journey starts and comes to cross the desert with vatious events:
- fata morgana - you have seen something in the desert and may follow it, you may get lost... and then be found by somebody who could become your friend, or you can owe him a favour... or you can find out that one member of the caravana has disappeared and search for him, gaining a friend and/or a favour.
- the guide/s get/s lost/ill and somebody has to take the lead instead - will you do it, or nominate somebody else, whom? An experienced merchant? Go back to the previous destination risking the failiure of the whole business?
- A crucial well en-route has dried out or has been buried under sand. Will you dig deep into it? (to find out there's no water? Dig elswhere? Or try to sacrifice somebody and continue on trip risking deaths of mates and camels?
- Attack by desert tribes - the guides may get killed, some (your) property has been lost... the caravana now have to follow their leadership, but pay heavy price.
- You've met an interesting stranger. You can make a new/good trade deal (get some trade goods, see below), or you can learn technology, or just find a friend and learn some skill.
- Explore salt mine - on the way across the desert there are salt mines where the caravana stops. You can search around and find an unknown salt mine, get the trade good, make a new trade contract, sell the mine for money, you can settle there to found a new life).
- Alone in the desert - you can experience a mystic moment, giving you additional learing skills. If you have good traits, you can even become holy man or even end up establishing a religious order.
- A merchants' argument - they argue that one has taken goods from another (you can be one of them, or by-stander, or as the organizer of the caravana bring them to a judge or judge them yourself)
- Strange illness among camels - with adequately terrible consequences
- End of journey - you have reached the destination, so you can do various things: - set up a trade outpost if there isn't any /as the organizer of the caravan/, you can prepare a journey back, again either as the organizer, or as just a normal merchant. Or you can stay in the target province and create a town there.

3) the gold diggers of the Wangara
- based on famous stories of gold diggers in the secret gold fields in Bambuk and Bure which location was unknown to everybody except the diggers and Wangara merchants. There were legends about diggers being kidnapped and then bribed or even tortured to reveal the secret locations, but they rather died than to unveil the secret.
- the event would have 3 types depending on who you play as: a) Wangara version, b) local ruler version, c) Trade route merchant's version (other than Wangara)

a) First part would be "There are rumours that somebody is trying to kidnap some of your gold diggers and find out the location of the gold mines. We should prevent this."
and options could be :
- set up a secret spy/guard around the gold diggers' villages
- lock all the gold-diggers and keep them on secret place (might trigger one of them running away and eventually revealing the secret as another triggered event)
- take the diggers' families as hostages so they won't tell anyone, or you'd kill them (possible another triggered event when eventualy some of the diggers reveals the secret - so you'd have to kill the family hostages)
- motivate them positively - offer them wealth and good conditions for their families, give their children edication so they could become one of the Wangara merchants when they grow up.
- and another events connected to failiure of preventive measures: the digger revealed the secret - you can kill/torture him ni revenge, do another preventive measures - kill the one who got the information immediately/bribe him...

b) and c) would be very similar, but with different wordings perhaps:
you learned that the Wangara keep the location of their gold fields in secret, but you have found one of their gold-diggers so you might try to get the information from him:
- offer him fortune of gold for him and his family
- if he refuses (or directly) - torture him to reveal this information -> can eventually lead to his death.
- if you manage to be successfull (the chance should be relatively low), you could then either send there soldiers (if you're a ruler) and try to occupy the place (risk of false position being revealed) which triggers negative relations with the Wangara and potentially end of good trading conditions, or could end up in open war and resulting in loss of all gold income. The merchants, but also the rulers may then try to renegotiate the conditions with the Wangara to get gold cheaper -> more income from the trade route.

4) Then there is stuff like calling for a search for new wells in the desert (mainly for those who are on the westernmost branch of the route) etc.

There could of course be some more events and other stuff tied to this trade route. Some sugestions were made by @Damarrocarion in his own thread. Some could follow...

And now, let's move to some basic mechanics about:

Inland republics
- The Inland republics merchants would build trade outposts (like MRs), but only on trade routes, but they could also trade with those Outposts. Unlike feudal rulers, they would not be limited to territories they own, but only to the trade route they're in.
- If they have built a Trade outpost in some province, they should also be able to build there a town and assign there a mayor, but the city would be politicaly subordinated to the province's ruler. The succession, however, would follow the republic's rules
- they could introduce basic trade goods such as gold, slaves, salt (particulary important for Trans-Saharan trade), and then some basic stuff like silk, spices, cloth, silver and others (up to discussion what else would make sense without diverting the game too much into economy-based game, though that might be welcome by many, including me), and these goods would be sought by Inland republics' merchants. Getting access to each trade good would give them special prestige (and of course money) and could unlock them special buildings in their palaces.
 
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Elvain mentioned this already in the HIP subforum but it would also be interesting to see in a future patch if Songhai gain river navigation and if Niger becomes navigable.
 
I think the western trade routes should be connected. If I understand the trade route system correctly then war along one path would then steer traffic into the other, which happened historically.
 
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I think the western trade routes should be connected. If I understand the trade route system correctly then war along one path would then steer traffic into the other, which happened historically.
Agreed.

The way they are designed now is for a minimalistic approach of map changes. The goals there are:
to have Sijilmasa as the main trading post of most/all important gold routes, which it historically was, and to not have too many trade-route provinces there (which isn't possible, obviously, with this few provinces in total). And lastly, the trade routes, at least one of them, should end in Egypt, but that would make it even more rich, which isn't really good. Even now whoever rules Egypt is able to shortly conquer all of Arabia and anything else.
That should be prevented. And I do believe that introducing Qabila mechanics and oases holdings might build this kind of barrier to the Egyptian dynasties since permanent control of desert areas would be disabeled and so they'd be forced to go for Palestine/Syria instead, where they will inevitably clash with Byzantines and Abbasids.. little stronger guys than small desert tribes.

But I do agree that the route from Bure gold fields could perhaps have another branch from Ghana/Wagadu to Awdaghust to have two possible forks. Also ideally there could be one more route running though Gao and Tadmekka, but that would have to end in Tunis... and therefore cross the Sahara. So either there would be very long part crossing the wasteland, or few more provinces would have to be added in central parts of Sahara. Historically okay, but I'm trying to be minimalistic in adding provinces :)
 
I'm back here with some more news about the Qabila tribal confederations.

Let's see some ingame examples of how Qabilas work inside and how they form cadet branches.

I wrote quite a lot about them, but still I feel there was something missing. Something, what would give you the real understanding of how the Confederations and tribes work.
So now let's have a look at two tribal confederations which I have been using as examples throughout the thread: The Banu Sulaym and Banu Hilal.
Here is how I think they should work in CK2 with Qabila/Lords of the Sands DLC:
6zROAXV.png


This is the situation in eastern half of Maghreb in 1066. There are 2 main Qabila states - the Banu Sulaym can be seen as Suleimid and Banu Hilal are named after their leading tribe Riahdid.
If we look little under the surface, we can also see the tribes which are parts of these 2 major confederations:
9g01Ef1.png

Banu Sulaym consists of 4 tribes:
Banu Hebib, called here Suleim/Suleimid, and then Banu Debbab, Banu Zeghb and Banu 'Awf.
As you can see 3 of them are direct part of the Suleimid realm, while Banu 'Awf is a tributary of Fatimids. That is because various tribes of the confederation don't need to be part of the same state. Even if the Fatimids manage to vasalize the Banu 'Awf, it would be no problem and the tribe should still remain as part of the Qabila confederation. It would only lower the Asabiya of both the tribe Banu 'Awf and the entire confederation.

RGeEM6A.png

As it can be seen on its dynasty tree, the Banu Sulaym has long been a single tribe Qabila, but recently has splited into 4 different tribes:
That is because for quite a long time the confederation has occupied relatively small territory with only few oases and thus it couldn't afford to split its forces. But in the first half of 11th century the tribe was first in Egypt and then moved westwards into Libya, where it seized remarkable territory and thus 3 of its clans were able to become tribes of their own.


The situation of Banu Hilal is similar, yet little different
There are 3 tribes in this confederation:
Banu Riyah, Banu Zoghba and Banu Athbej. As can be seen on the dynasty tree, all of them last for generations as they all held enough land to be separate tribes. On the dynasty tree we can also see that some of the tribes are further divided into clans and when a branch splits and receives a land, it can form a new clan, which can compete for the leading position inside the tribe.

Then if we look at the map again, we can se that 2 of the tribes (Riyah and Zoghba) are part of the same realm led by Banu Riyah, while Banu Athbej is a tributary of Hamadids in the west. We can see that even the 'Adí clan of Banu Athbej tribe is independent and is also tributary of Hammadids. That is because of lower tribal Asabiya of Banu Athbej


WTtqFlQ.png


That means each tribal confederation is divided into tribes. Both of the displayed tribal confederations have their Asabiya high enough to have their own states, where the leading clan ascended to royal title. But if the confederation's Asabiya drops below certain level, the king title disappears and each tribe is an independent duchy/emirate.

Clans and cadet branches
We can also see that the tribes are further divided into clans, who hold land. These clans can emerge as cadet branches of the original tribe. They became separate once they receive a county tier title.
In the Banu Hilal screen you can see 2 examples:
'Adi ibn Muhammad of the Athbej tribe has received a county title and thus could create his own clan.
On the contrary we can see two lines of Banu Riyah - Akilid and Du'adid, but they still remain one clan/dynasty. That is because the Du'adid line has never managed to get a county tier title. But if Rodeini or Zemam Du'adids manage to seize a county level, they could form their own clan and become a separate dynasty. As long as they remain landless or only hold oases as baron-tier, they still are part of the Riyah clan.

Historical note:
In reality the Banu Athbej have allied with Berber confederations of Sanhaja (Hamadids and Zirids and other tribes) and Zenata against their own Qabila confederation (Banu Hilal) which was allied to Banu Sulaym confederation. They got defeated, but since it was a regular war, they still remained part of their confederation. The war (and obviously their own loss) led to drop of their tribal Asabiya and the internal conflict also decreased the Asabiya of Banu Hilal confederation. On the other hand the alliance of Riyahdids and Zoghbadids and their final victory meant that Asabiya of these 2 tribes increased.
That deepened the difference of tribal Asabiya between the confederation itself and its leading tribe and Banu Athbej. If that would continue and the difference would be even larger, the leading Banu Riyah would declare tribal war against Banu Athbej to absorb it into its own ranks. If Banu Riyah would be victorious, the status of Banu Athbej would then drop from full tribe to a clan, which is part of Banu Riyah tribe.
 
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This is so well thought off that I wished it became a real DLC.

If berber and bedouin got separated into their different tribal sub-cultures would it create tension between qabilas and even between tribes and make the diplomacy and holding it together more interesting?
 
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god is great
 
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Without commenting on all the propositions, I wouldn't mind making Africa are little more interesting to playing.

I tried a few times to play as a pagan African, but nothing much to do there.
 
Paradox seems more and more interested in "popy" stuff...this is killing me. There is great material here all well thought out to make a great game within this genre and they are busy with fantasy elements :(
 
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I would love to see any DLC which stopped Muslims from being confined to open succession, because in my view that's the most irritating aspect of playing muslim characters (and not really historical either imo).
 
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This is so well thought off that I wished it became a real DLC.

If berber and bedouin got separated into their different tribal sub-cultures would it create tension between qabilas and even between tribes and make the diplomacy and holding it together more interesting?
Thanks.

And yes. The good thing about Qabilas is that it allows us much more variability especially in the case of Berbers.
As suggested and hopefully also shown, they could be quite dynamic, clans appearing "out of nowhere", tribes being swallowed and degraded into clans, Qabilas spliting and merging depending on their Asabiya and military power. With this mechanic we probably wouldn't even need to do deep split between Berber (having Zanata, Sanhaja, Veiled Sanhaja, Touareg and Masmuda) and the Qabilas can do the job with only 2 Berber cultures - nomadic Berbers and sedentary Berbers (Zanata vs Sanhaja, or possibly also Masmuda). The Qabilas could do the job about ties and hostilities instead.

Without commenting on all the propositions, I wouldn't mind making Africa are little more interesting to playing.

I tried a few times to play as a pagan African, but nothing much to do there.
I agree that Africa is very sad place to play currently, especially West Africa. No flavour, ahistoricaly poor and very few provinces, only a single culture and in fact only a single state with almost zero posibility of interaction with other world. The relative isolation would be ok, but if there is something to play with (more provinces and cultures, more flavour etc.) one could have fun even while waiting for the muslims on the north to collapse and allow him to expand.

I still plan to give some ideas also about this region, but I want it to be more thought off than it is now. It is rather a random set of ideas and still lack of unique flavour, like the one @cybrxkhan once made for his mod.
I can imagine introducing the Wangara caste of traders (as partly mentioned above), the unique position of blacksmiths in their societies, some more stuff about local deities (now I can only speak about the Soninke cult of Bida - the gold-bearing-snake).
But generally I think that even a very few moreprovinces (3-5), little richer than now, with borders which make them look less like random shapes, with few more historical states and cultures, more interaction with the bedouins of the desert would make the region. If there is furthemore a corridor to central or even Eastern Africa and one more route across the Sahara, you get very interesting place to play.

Paradox seems more and more interested in "popy" stuff...this is killing me. There is great material here all well thought out to make a great game within this genre and they are busy with fantasy elements :(
Let's wait what will show up as the new DLC. I wouldn't be that sceptical. I haven't watched all the recent DDs very deeply, but they can add some interesting stuff if taken into good direction.

I would love to see any DLC which stopped Muslims from being confined to open succession, because in my view that's the most irritating aspect of playing muslim characters (and not really historical either imo).
I think the problem isn't open succession itself, which IMHO isn't all that unrealistic. The main problem I see is that there are very few, if any, succession crisies. Throughout muslim history there were so many succsession disputes, when younger or more skilled son became a pretender and fought against the chosen one, often with support of some ministers, provincial emirs, generals or his mother.
The absence of diversity inside the realms and lack of the competing centres of power (in the court, provinces, the military and religious authorities) makes muslim realms way too stable and decadence simply can't make it all if there's nothing else.
Curently all you need to care is decadence, which is rather easy to avoid. If there are more possible threats, each competing with each other, each providing different kind of threat and each requiring different treatment, you can get lot of diversity and replayability for very little cost. Just use at least some of the tools outlined here.
 
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The main problem I see is that there are very few, if any, succession crisies.

This.

What's weird is that the decadence system should be set up so that you have to land sons, and in turn every ruler assumes the throne with 5-10 ready made rivals who hate his guts and have enough support to fight their brother(s).

What happens right now is that I land nobody or just one son. Then I burn some tyranny imprisoning sons that become decadent (only -10) and then let them rot in prison. Viola! No succession problems.

My Maurentianian Empire, based in Marrekech, is more stable than any empire in history, even with the Black Death showing up every few decades. What, me worry?
 
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There are plenty of nice ideas here, I like the tribe stuff and the map/trade route changes especially, but as you know CK is nearing the end of its lifespan and there's simply no time to implement this kind of thing.
 
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There are plenty of nice ideas here, I like the tribe stuff and the map/trade route changes especially, but as you know CK is nearing the end of its lifespan and there's simply no time to implement this kind of thing.
It could go out with a bang
 
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