Hello there!
For those who haven’t seen me around before, I am Joachim, one of the Content Designers on Imperator: Rome.
This week it is my pleasure to introduce the new Seleukid mission trees that I have been working on for the Marius update. The Seleukids have 4 new mission trees, focusing on Babylonia, Syria, Anatolia, and Palestine/Phoenicia respectively.
When I started working on them, I wanted to showcase what happened in the early years of the dynasty, as well as pay particular attention to the regions where they could come into contact and conflict with the other Diadochi (as this is a Diadochi-focused pack).
I’ll try to limit myself slightly, by showing off each mission and talking a bit about them, then showcasing 1 specific mission task inside that mission, before moving on to the next tree. If this DD was to go into every specific task, I worry it might get a tad too long for most people.
Babylonia
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For Babylonia, as a logical starting point when you begin a new game, I wanted to have some sort of interactions with the local priesthood. They played a notable role in the early rule of Seleukos when he was still a Satrap. I also wanted to show that Babylonia was in many ways an important reason why Seleukos rose to prominence, and a large part of the mission focuses on building up Babylonia to become an vital core for your nation.
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One of the advantages of the changes we made in the Menander Update is that we now have access to more tools that we can utilize in our missions, like cultural integration. You’ll probably see several tasks like these, where we either ask you to integrate a specific culture or to have integrated a certain amount of people in an area or a region.
Syria
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For many the Seleukid dynasty is deeply associated with the area around Syria (to the point where the region was occasionally called Seleukis), as Seleukos spent many years and considerable resources funding Antioch and Seleukeia Pieria. Because of our starting date, he does not actually own the area when the game starts, so it makes a natural ‘first goal’ for the player to start moving westwards to take control of the place the Seleukid dynasty was most known for holding.
The first three tasks (up to, but not including ‘Syrian Governance’) is focused around conquering the area if you do not already hold it, but everything afterwards is mostly focused around building up Syria.
On the right hand side, there’s some optional tasks where you can step through the Syrian Gates and start conquering Cilicia on the other side of the Amanus Mountains.
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One of the things I wanted to showcase with this mission was how Seleukos actively built up Syria and had a large group of Greek settlers migrate to the region, so he could bolster his armies with Greek troops. Cut off from the west and the Mediterranean, Seleukos did not have access to the heavier infantry of his peers at our start date. It should be mentioned that the countries losing pops from this event are actually quite well paid to make up for it.
Anatolia
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After beating back Lysimachos’ attempt at taking control of the whole empire, Seleukos himself was overtaken by ambition and eventually died at the hands of Ptolemy Keraunos, and with his death the final living Successor was put to rest. Unlike Lysimachos, who’s little empire quickly crumbled and fell apart, Seleukos’ death was fairly well handled by Antiochos, and the empire would endure for several hundred years.
One major change before and after Lysimachos’ attempt at conquering the other Diadochi was the importance of Anatolia for the Seleukids. Though Seleukos held parts of Cilicia after the Battle of Ipsos, his control was confined to the very south-eastern part of the region.
After the death of Seleukos, Antiochos would shift his focus westwards, spending a lot of his time in Anatolia where he funded several cities and improving the infrastructure all the way to Sardis in the far west, in addition to beating back the Galatian invasion. Later on two scions of the dynasty, Seleukos II Kallinikos and Antiochos Hierax, would fight over Anatolia, as it had become such an integral part of the empire.
As a third mission, it made a lot of sense to me to focus on Anatolia, and I chose to specifically focus on the regions surrounding the Persian Royal Road. The mission has both conquest missions as well as infrastructure, slowly moving you westwards as you go through it. It is not completely like Seleukos’ sudden capture of the whole region, but I figured it made for the best experience.
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The Seleukid dynasty ended up being particularly associated with the Greek deity Apollo, leading to the syncretic deity Apollo-Nabû, as well as their support of the oracle in Didyma. It should be noted that Apollo Didymaios was originally a deity specifically for Syracuse in the Magna Graecia content pack, so you will only be able to unlock the deity for the Seleukid Empire if you already own that pack as well.
Palestine/Phoenicia
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For the final mission, it made a lot of sense to focus on the region that would eventually lead to several Syrian Wars fought over it, Palestine and Phoenicia.
After the Battle of Ipsos, Seleukos was originally given a far larger piece of land, but found Ptolemy had already taken control of it and refused to hand it over to his old friend. Though Seleukos forgave this slight, and would go on to make more out of Syria than most would have expected of him, his descendants would eventually start using it as a reason to engage their southern neighbors in the many Syrian Wars.
For the mission, the first part of the mission focuses on securing a route southwards through the southern part of Syria. The second half focuses on conquering Palestine, and to start building up the infrastructure in the region, with a chance to release the Judean state as a client.
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Similar to the migration to Syria, there was a large group of Greek settlers who ended up moving to Decapolis (leading to its name, as they re-established several of the 10 cities). I wanted a mission task that could replicate that to a certain degree, even though historically speaking the migration to Decapolis happened under both the Ptolemies and the Seleukids rather than in one fell swoop.
Conclusion
Personally I have always been a huge fan of the Seleukids, so it was a pleasure being able to work on them, and I hope people will enjoy the missions when they are finally released.
Until next time.
STOP! COOKIE TIME