Germans and Illyrians need more love

[Husein]

Out of all the people groups in the game they seem the least fleshed out and taken care of. Illyrians don't even have separate Gods for themselves, using instead Greek gods like Hades, Ares, Zeus and others. Which, while it would fit Illyrians under Epirote or Macedonian control does not fit the wild tribes inhabiting the western Balkans outside of foreign control.

Germans as well are using minor tribal gods attested by Tacitus, which while it would fit a small tribe here and there as extra gods, don't fit the entirety of Germanics. Major gods like Teiwaz, Wodanaz, Thuranaz or Frijjo are absent, the names used for Gods are Latin based, making recognition and immersion of playing as a Germanic even more difficult.

The recent update also removed the "Barbarian" military traditions naming them Celtic and Brittanic, which again, excludes Germans.

Germans are unable to raid, both overland and overseas. They can "Pillage" but requires civilization to be over 20, which for most of their neighbors is not the case. Not only that, but historically German tribes raided each other, the celts and everyone else, civilized or not. The closest pillagable settlement is Gergovia by Arverni. Entirety of Gaul otherwise is unpilagable until Mediterannean coast. The Illyrians, world famous pirates are unable to be - pirates and raid the coasts.

There are no formable nations for Anglians, Cimbrians, Teutonians, Rugian, Raumarician, Herulian, Gutones, Suioni, Gothonic and Vandal culture nations. There is also no unified Germania to strive for as a succesful German tribe. Bastarnae are included as Germanics despite being Celtic or Scytho-Sarmatian in culture acording to most historians.

Aside from Frisia and Anglia the flags are just plain ugly and unmemorable. It fits a tribe, but when you are going to play it for centuries ingame changes are bound to happen, and under player control usually for the better of said tribe.


I would like to see the following changes.

- Addition of Illyrian deities, under Illyrian naming conventions.
- Addition of major Germanic deities under German naming conventions.
- Regional, rather than cultural unification tags - The germans are migratory tribes, if Teutones move to modern-day Netherlands let them have a unification tag for the region, or be able to change their heritage at the very least from forest to coastal or seafaring, or if Lombards move south into Switzerland let them embrace the montane heritage etc. Migratory tribes are mouldable, changeable and should be represented as such.
- Either return the barbarian traditions or give Germans their own military traditions focused on raiding, infantry and cavalry and a separate sea-based tradition in case Dania wants to go "viking" a milenia early. Ideally give barbarians outside of mediteranean different ship designs from liburnia and triremes.
- Enable raiding as it is in CK2 or 3 - raise levies as raiders and send them into neighbors land. Give gold, population, relics or civilization as reward for it. Enable overseas raiding or raiding by ships trough some traditions.
- Allow regional unification tags if your tribe migrates to and conquers Germania, Iberia, Gaul, Britain, Italia, Dacia, West Balkans, Greece, Anatolia and North Africa. Players are highly unlikely to just sit there in starting region for a few centuries, fight romans a few times and then wait for the game to end.
- Add some better flags, more unique and memorable than a checkered blanket that ideally represent the tribe in popular imagination. Saxons with Seax on the flags such as the case with Frisia - amazing. Angles with Valknut, great, unique, nice. We need more of that. Something like this would be great.

Sorry if my writing is dry and bad, I'm not that good with writing in English. Cheers.

 

[Stuffinacan]

You make great points, especially about the Germanic tribes.

As it stands, Germany (or the entire northern region in general) is way too easy to conquer, civilize, and blob with little effort or concern for the survival of your people. Make a few alliances, conquer a few tribes and you can sit easy for a long long time with few threats or even conflict in the region. Once you reach a certain size in Germany, there aren't any serious internal or external conflicts to make reaching a civilized empire a remotely difficult process. Should you choose to stay in the region its pretty much easy mode and that's a serious issue considering how unstable and hostile this region historically was. Additionally it also has the effect of playing a Germanic tribe rather repetitive if you civilize.

Playing in this region should be DIFFICULT and "fluid" or dynamic. migration should be seen as a bid for the survival of your people or a chance at prosperity, not something to do when you run out of things to try. Civilizing and settling down should be an arduous fight against nature, rival tribes, and your own people who strongly value freedom, kinship, and despise kingship. Only through difficult decisions and fighting against strong odds should the player be able to consider bringing civilization to this frigid part of the world. Even should he civilize this region, the general attitudes and cultural norms of the German people should make political stability a rare occurrence. But even in the face of almost constant turmoil the fighting spirit of his people still makes his unstable kingdom a force to be reckoned with.

Should you be an intrepid empire, be it Rome or some other foreign people, civilizing and bring the land beyond the Rhine under full control should be an absolute nightmare, or at least a little difficult. Not only should unintegrated and integrated Germanic cultures always have a unhappiness modifier, they also ought to have a increased resistance to integration, and there should be events which might trigger Germanic rebellions under certain circumstances.

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I suggest the following changes as well in regards to playing a Germanic tribe, or interacting with Germanic nations/pops
in order to create a more difficult, dynamic, interesting, and unique experience

-In the northern regions, regional food supply should be lowered to create more pressure for migratory behavior and population growth increased. As the population in Germania/The Baltic increases over time, desperation and migrations should increase.

-Migration Events/Wars. Germanic tribes under certain conditions (Past a certain date, low food supply, centralization, lost wars, political turmoil) should be given the option to mass migrate the entire tribe. Upon a mass migration triggering said nation will select a region/nation to migrate towards. While any migratory horde my pass through any nation at their leisure, a mass migration triggers events while travelling through foreign nations. Should you choose to pillage or seize food from the countryside during your migration, or if some nations tire of your peoples existence, a war will be triggered. You have a choice to be diplomatic, but your people need food to survive, and many nations aren't so generous or capable of helping you. These type of migratory hordes should be much more rare, but also insanely dangerous, destructive, and game changing (and unique to the Germans). Definitely not an early game event and could even serve as a serious late game threat. However, as dangerous as these types of hordes are, the sheer size of the population they represent and unique events should also spur both the AI and player to settle within a respectable time (or return home) as to prevent permanent Germanic death hordes from ruining the game.

-Tribal Looting/Raiding should act as a positive feedback loop which makes raiding/wars occur more often, leading to more wars and raiding in order to facilitate more upheaval over the course of the game. Looting/Raiding should also impact food supply in the long run. Additionally each time a territory is looted should cause a slight dip in civilization, no more than 1 percent.

-Fix Germanic Culture Grouping. Currently Germanic cultures are in a sad state of affairs in terms of categorization. For example, the Germanic cultures Irminionic, Istvaonic and Ingaevonic are typically used broad terms used to describe ancient Germanic culture groups. For example, both Saxonian and Anglians are commonly classifed as being Ingaevonic, yet Ingaevonic is considered by the game to be an entirely unique culture and people. Same goes for the Suebians who are sometimes classified as an Irminionic people. Only the Istvaonic culture doesn't follow this issue. The Irminionic and Ingaevonic cultures ought to be removed/broken up.

-Emergent Germanic Tribes. To reflect the rise of new Germanic groups over time, civil wars, rebellions, events and uncolonized areas should have a chance to create a new Germanic nation. The list of known and potential Germanic tribes throughout history is rather large and it'd be an interesting challenge to have to contend with the emergence of new (powerful) tribes, especially if you aggressively conquer Germania too early. And see new germanic tribes form as the germanic peoples migrate away from the northern coasts. Emergent Tribes can form anywhere were there is a significant German majority within a region, even within another non-germanic nation.

-Germanic Confederation. Germanic Tribes should be capable of coalescing into confederations. A Tribal Confederation will be a diplomatic state between one or more Germanic nations. A Germanic tribe can form a new confederation through three possible routes. One being events, two being diplomacy (same culture bonus, good relations, geographic proximity) and three being war. Under a confederation, unlike a defensive league, members will be visually represented as a single nation on map (or share the same name as in CK2 with the same color as well). Members are technically equal and there is no senior member by any specific rule or code. Member nations still have their own diplomacy. They may wage war freely with non-confederates. Within the confederation itself, raiding is still permitted between members. Members may wasadsdasdge war but cannot fully annex other members and cannot make them pay tribute, cannot declare unjustified wars, additionally treaties last longer and any internal war causes a drop in relationships with all members of a confederation. If relations with a certain numbers of other members fall below a certain value, the offending nation may be removed from the confederation through war. Attacking a confederation means going to war with its members. Members may refuse to help defend the confederation if the particular nation being attacked has poor relations. If a confederation becomes too unstable and relations between its members drop to a certain point, the confederation may disband. Leaving the confederation risks war with its members, though good relations mitigates this. The larger a confederation gets the more difficult it is to maintain. Joining an already existing confederation requires assent of most of its members. Finally, if any member of a confederation reaches a certain centralization/civilization value they may go to war with all members of the confederation in order to centralize the member nations under a single state known as a Federation

- Germanic Federation. A Germanic Federation is a new government type achieved when any member of a Germanic confederation reaches a certain centralization/civilization threshold, makes the decision to federate the member states, and successfully wins the war. A federation a centralized state with unique laws and positions. While forming a federation is somewhat more difficult and more complicated than forming a monarchy or republic, the result is one of the few stable government types available to the civilized Germanic nation and will greatly reduce the resistance and opposition the population has towards a monarchy, while providing a boost to the upper classes that a republic does. Additionally all integrated populations receive a bonus to happiness, integration is faster. Additionally the federation has a slight stability buff. Federations are ultimately are ruled by a elected aristocratic council. Federations can devolve into a monarchy or republic due to civil war.

-Germanic Pops receive an unhappiness modifier if ruled by a monarchy and/or foreign power, are resistant to integration and assimilation and germanic pops will slowly migrate into non-Germanic regions as the game advances.

-Any occupied regions east of the Rhine or the Germanic heartland should have a slight chance of triggering a massive Germanic revolt. The more occupied land the higher the chance. Should the revolt be crushed the chance for the event decreases but is never gone. Integration does not decrease the chance for the event, but does obviously still reduce unrest.

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Generally playing in this region of the world should be more fleshed out, but also difficult and unpredictable. It shouldnt be so boring and easy to just sit in Germania and bring civilization to such a fragmented place during this time in history

 

[DukeLeto42]

- Either return the barbarian traditions or give Germans their own military traditions focused on raiding, infantry and cavalry and a separate sea-based tradition in case Dania wants to go "viking" a milenia early. Ideally give barbarians outside of mediteranean different ship designs from liburnia and triremes.

We could really use an "Atlantic / North Sea / Baltic coast" ship set (probably one for the Red Sea / Persian Gulf / Indian Ocean as well) to reflect how construction techniques differed in the various areas and were specialized for different environments.

- Enable raiding as it is in CK2 or 3 - raise levies as raiders and send them into neighbors land. Give gold, population, relics or civilization as reward for it. Enable overseas raiding or raiding by ships trough some traditions.

One of the problems I remember the CK2 devs discussing was that raiding, while fun for raiders and reflecting the reality of Viking raids, was not very much fun for those on the receiving end as you had to play a constant game of whack-a-mole with the raiders. I can see a similar problem developing in I:R, as given how few forts northern areas have, I'm concerned that near-constant raiding would lead to massive depopulation if killing / taking pops were an option.

However, I don't think this is insurmountable. I can absolutely see raiding, operating much like barbarians sieging down territories, convert civilization value into gold, with a fraction of the civilization value "looted" going to boost your capitol's civilization value. Since tribes aren't dependent upon civilization value to survive, a tribe doesn't need to constantly drive off neighboring raids, but civilized neighbors (much more dependent on civilization values for their pops) would want to fortify borders and keep troops on standby.

You could even design it so that once the capitol's civilization hits maximum, it feeds the civilization gain to provincial capitols, and then other territories. That would still make raiding an enemy's capitol incredibly valuable, and would feed into tribal reform mechanics (become the most powerful local tribe -> raid all neighbors -> use accumulated civilization to reform).

 

[Husein]

We could really use an "Atlantic / North Sea / Baltic coast" ship set (probably one for the Red Sea / Persian Gulf / Indian Ocean as well) to reflect how construction techniques differed in the various areas and were specialized for different environments.


One of the problems I remember the CK2 devs discussing was that raiding, while fun for raiders and reflecting the reality of Viking raids, was not very much fun for those on the receiving end as you had to play a constant game of whack-a-mole with the raiders. I can see a similar problem developing in I:R, as given how few forts northern areas have, I'm concerned that near-constant raiding would lead to massive depopulation if killing / taking pops were an option.

However, I don't think this is insurmountable. I can absolutely see raiding, operating much like barbarians sieging down territories, convert civilization value into gold, with a fraction of the civilization value "looted" going to boost your capitol's civilization value. Since tribes aren't dependent upon civilization value to survive, a tribe doesn't need to constantly drive off neighboring raids, but civilized neighbors (much more dependent on civilization values for their pops) would want to fortify borders and keep troops on standby.

You could even design it so that once the capitol's civilization hits maximum, it feeds the civilization gain to provincial capitols, and then other territories. That would still make raiding an enemy's capitol incredibly valuable, and would feed into tribal reform mechanics (become the most powerful local tribe -> raid all neighbors -> use accumulated civilization to reform).

How much fun are the current "barbarians"? They randomly spawn, disobey zones of fort control, get massive stacks, assault and don't care about being destroyed. All it does is lose you civilization and force you to shift troops around constantly. I'd rather deal with barbarians that actually spawn in a tribe. You can of course, conquer them. You can use barbarians as buffer between you and raiders by vasalizing them.

I don't think killing pops should be an option, they should be taken into slavery. And they can be recaptured if you raid the enemy back - provided you are barbarian yourself. I do think it should be limited to certain tribes so not every barbarian is into it or capable of doing it. Gauls used to do it and were a large threat a century or so earlier but their raiding days are long gone. They're sedentary, settled and trading with greeks, romans and others. Germans on the other hand are barbarians fully.

But they are also capable of moving. If you can't defend yourself, subdue your neighbors or occupy them, raise tents and move away. It would incentivize it.

 

[DukeLeto42]

How much fun are the current "barbarians"? They randomly spawn, disobey zones of fort control, get massive stacks, assault and don't care about being destroyed. All it does is lose you civilization and force you to shift troops around constantly. I'd rather deal with barbarians that actually spawn in a tribe. You can of course, conquer them. You can use barbarians as buffer between you and raiders by vasalizing them.

I'm not suggesting the current barbarian mechanics are fun, and I absolutely agree that ignoring fort ZOC is a bad system as well. My point was that the damage to civilization impact barbarians have is good from a "I really don't want to deal with this right now" perspective - a player can effectively choose to accept periodic cattle raids as a fact of life in border provinces, only fortifying along the border as the provinces become more valuable and thus the damage raiders do a real problem.

I don't think killing pops should be an option, they should be taken into slavery. And they can be recaptured if you raid the enemy back - provided you are barbarian yourself. I do think it should be limited to certain tribes so not every barbarian is into it or capable of doing it. Gauls used to do it and were a large threat a century or so earlier but their raiding days are long gone. They're sedentary, settled and trading with greeks, romans and others. Germans on the other hand are barbarians fully.

To prevent depopulation, perhaps slave-taking should only occur above a certain threshold? This would further the situation where a low-value province can be left alone and raiding ignored, but eventually players should fortify to defend growing population centers that are increasingly tempting targets for raiding.

I absolutely agree that raiding should be limited - seeing as there is already a settled vs. migratory tribe difference, perhaps it should just take advantage of that? Gauls, as predominantly settled tribes, would not be able to raid, but could shift back to a raiding lifestyle under player control if they wanted, while the migratory Germanic tribes would have free rein.