Tall playstyle.

[Mauer]

I know the Roman Republic, and later Empire, was all about expanding the light of Rome to the rest of the brutal and cruel and dark world. However, as the game is confirmed having POPs and trade, I wonder if there'd be room for tall playstyles, not necessarily entirely peaceful, but for example having the taking of slaves from other nations, demanding tribute, so growing without actually having to expand owned territory too much, but instead developing what we already have. Maybe an extensive and varied vassalization system?

 

[Belegurt]

well it was also an age of very powerful city states who were either indipendent for a large time or indipendent within the empire, like massalia for istance, but many others comes to mind

but yes, most of the action actually focused on expanding kingdoms, and even powerful city states mostly became client states of rome in less than a 100 years since the starting date of the game (never conquered, always technically independent as "allies" but, well, u know...)

 

[AirikrStrife]

Pergamon!

 

[cardinal7]

I really love tall gameplay and i wish it was even more fleshed out in europa universalis 4.
However i have a basic argument against it in an antiquity game (in fact in any game before the renaissance or late medieval), and IT IS NOT a historical argument... i think it is an argument of economics. It is not chance that all powerful states of the ancient world were states that annexed the world...and keep on annexing everything they can. Land equals power in that time...there is no good shipping technology and navigation to trade extensively and mostly accident/risk free and obviously there are not machines that will allow a small population outproduce a large one if it is developed enough (with factories and trains ). You can argue that enslaving people, winning wars and looting, stealing property and demanding tribute or exerting this kind of influence can make you filthy rich even without trade or machines BUT even then being filthy rich won't let you have a big population base which is what big production (GDP) needs in that time, so being rich this way is only short term.
Long story short...i really think that development in this period is only how much land and natural resources you control that will let you control more population that in turn produces more stuff. So with this in mind i dont see any realistic way to tall play and be competitive with the blobbed empires. If you want tall play for the role play and just having something different to do even though it will result in being massively weaker... then i can say thats great, i'd love alternate gameplay experiences too...but it comes down to will the devs do so much work to flesh out a game experience that is not even intended to compete with the rest of the game?

 

[The Shacks]

Greek city-states spring to mind though a someone points out even all of them become vassals of Roma rather quick.

 

[Mauer]

Yeah, I know. I don't mean make it a powerful play style, just possible.