As I remember, after failures of Sengoku and MotE, PDS announced that they won't make games with limited scopes (HoI being an exception, but that's mostly because WW2 is a special case).
The Case for, Eventually, China
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As I remember, after failures of Sengoku and MotE, PDS announced that they won't make games with limited scopes (HoI being an exception, but that's mostly because WW2 is a special case).
It definitely makes more sense to add China in IR than in CK2 for the simple reason that it could actually be fun to play there rather than just adding a few massive, unbreakable blobs.
However, there's still a problem of interactivity. If China simply sits there doing its own thing until someone unifies it and it becomes a massive world-eating blob, then adding it isn't really adding anything save extra lag. Since IR has a pretty cool trading system with bonuses, trade could be a reason with maybe some unique Chinese trade goods requiring contact and trade with China and with quantities dependent on Chinese production (kind of like how I'd imagine the Mauryas will dominate the trade in elephants). except historically that there isn't really a lot of trade between China and the rest of the world until 100 years (maybe 150) through the timeline.
Dirty as it may be, there's also the problem of monetization. Adding China to the map would be a pretty big undertaking so it only really makes sense to do it as paid DLC, and that either means going back to the CK2 system of having tags be on the map but unplayable, or having them be playable but locking some unique the flavour behind a paywall. The former is something Paradox have said they regret doing in CK2 and I can't see it happening again, and the latter has the problem of basically being a flavour pack which would need to charge full DLC prices to make up for the amount of work it took.
In short, I wouldn't expect it, and I certainly wouldn't expect it soon. I'd much rather see more effort made to improving core mechanics and giving flavour to existing tags. But long term if someone can actually think of a way to make it interesting rather than just moar starts for the sake of moar starts, that would be cool.
However, there's still a problem of interactivity. If China simply sits there doing its own thing until someone unifies it and it becomes a massive world-eating blob, then adding it isn't really adding anything save extra lag. Since IR has a pretty cool trading system with bonuses, trade could be a reason with maybe some unique Chinese trade goods requiring contact and trade with China and with quantities dependent on Chinese production (kind of like how I'd imagine the Mauryas will dominate the trade in elephants). except historically that there isn't really a lot of trade between China and the rest of the world until 100 years (maybe 150) through the timeline.
Dirty as it may be, there's also the problem of monetization. Adding China to the map would be a pretty big undertaking so it only really makes sense to do it as paid DLC, and that either means going back to the CK2 system of having tags be on the map but unplayable, or having them be playable but locking some unique the flavour behind a paywall. The former is something Paradox have said they regret doing in CK2 and I can't see it happening again, and the latter has the problem of basically being a flavour pack which would need to charge full DLC prices to make up for the amount of work it took.
In short, I wouldn't expect it, and I certainly wouldn't expect it soon. I'd much rather see more effort made to improving core mechanics and giving flavour to existing tags. But long term if someone can actually think of a way to make it interesting rather than just moar starts for the sake of moar starts, that would be cool.
I'd much rather see China as featured in an East Asian game with its own mechanics.
I'd also hate to see I:R to be ruined for me like CK2 was due to the terrible performance of adding 50% more provinces. It took CK2 years to recover from that performance hit (or so I have been told - I haven't gone back).
I'd also hate to see I:R to be ruined for me like CK2 was due to the terrible performance of adding 50% more provinces. It took CK2 years to recover from that performance hit (or so I have been told - I haven't gone back).
It doesn't toke years for CK2. And it's faster than before. Also it wasn't the provinces, who slowed CK2 down, but the amount of chracters.
Also a seperate East Asian game wouldn't sell to Paradox audience. They will never do this. Also this game would have the same problem: A magic wall in the west,
This was the traditional take on things but has been getting seriously challenged in scholarship over the past 20-30 years; much of the south was basically every bit as advanced as the Central Plain.
That said there is less documentation on it (hence it getting sidelined for so long) so it would be harder to add lots of provinces.
Also personally I think it'd be really dumb to add China and not at least Manchuria, northern Korea and Mongolia. It would definitely be a lot of provinces if they wanted to do the region justice.
It's generally called "the Himalayas," and it's not magical so much as big and cold.
But it does raise the issue that Chinese interaction with the I:R world was almost non-existant during this time (at least in any form that would be represented by anything more than events like "ambassador from Rome shows up in Imperial court" and even then those would be fairly late). Even the Silk Road wasn't a thing until midway through the period.
I'm not strictly opposed to it in I:R like I tend to be in CK (the mechanics fit better, the focus on provinces rather than characters means the performance hit wouldn't be nearly as big, and it's not a giant blob of unstoppable doom due to the general Paradox lack of anti-blob mechanics), but I do worry it will turn into "China sits over there and never interacts with anyone, just being a waste of dev resources."
Japan, on the other hand, should be right out. We know nothing about Japan in that period in terms of the things that would be represented in the game (different states and their names, people, etc.)
Yes, but its still not "small" I want China in but im not gonna say its "Only a small part to add" thats ridiculous and couldnt be further from the truth.
I don't really disagree that Japan is a stretch to include, but how anachronistic do some of the tribal tags in other parts of the map get? We do have names of ~30 early Japanese polities from the 3rd century AD; they would have been dramatically different entities in basically every way 500 years earlier, but is the same true of some of the other tribal tags?
Also just by nature of Japan being rich for way longer and so sponsoring way more archaeology and so on, we actually know significantly more about the people and their culture of that time than we do for regions like Manchuria/Korea/Mongolia that were way more advanced through most of the period. Definitely enough to represent them in a game, if you're willing to add in some slight anachronisms and artistic license--but again, the same's true of half the tribal entities on the map isn't it?
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I do remember hearing from a thread about Scandinavia that Rugia (or something along those lines) in Scandinavia is actually a tribe from 1st Century or so. So if they're willing to include some future nation in Scandinavia then i bet they'd do the same for Japan aswell.
Raumaricia (Romerike) is a Norwegian petty kingdom of the 5th to 9th century AD, and is present in their current iteration.
The maximum we could have in at least a year would be a complete mod on the region of China. Thankfully, Paradox makes your map completely modable, unlike CA.
A lot of the tribes they have in Scandinavia and North Germany are suspect both historically and archaeologically. Most are only attested to centuries later - and sometimes in a different location, with only unproved theories holding they originated in Scandinavia. Which is odd, since they refused to do the same for Ireland and Frisia. Were I a cynical man I might suggest that this might be because most of them are Scandinavian, based in Scandinavia and the games tend to have a high Scandinavian player-base. But I am not a cynical man.
That aside, while having China and even Japan in the game would be cool, it'd shift the centre of attention and developer time and resources away from the Mediterranean basin and its civilisations - an area which should be at the heart of the game and for which the game was built.
Read the Germanische Altertumskunde Online. The Raumarici or Raumar did exist. Yes they were firstly mentioned by Jordanes but most likely existed earlier. Of course based on Ptolemy and Jordanes would mean splitting Scandinavia further into more tribes.
Also Rugia did exist in Scandinavia but the name is most likely only similiar to the ones on the Baltic Sea. The Germanische Altertumskunde has a nice article about this and how the whole Rugii are related or not.
Given Greek influence in the Tarim Basin, Afghanistan and even parts of Northern India I would absolutely suggest that some China-related events would make complete sense. Perhaps the ability to send and receive embassies and technology via the Silk Road would make sense.
Post Two- Trade + Nomads
One of my books has very good population density maps for various points in Chinese history, but unfortunately I'm in the middle of a move and my books are all boxed up. I'll dig around online to see if I can find any good ones in the meantime.
Regarding trade goods, almost all of the goods mentioned in the Trade dev diary are produced somewhere in or near China (exceptions are things like woad, glass, or papyrus). Silk was the major international export, since silk production techniques were virtually unknown outside of China until well after the end of I:R's timeline, but the volume of internal trade was very high and regional trade supported the growth of major cities in China just as it did in the Mediterranean (in the Warring States period, these were mainly state capitals; by the early Han they had the imperial capital Chang'an plus the Five Metropolises). Salt and iron production were staples of the economy and the state finances; stone was less important because construction was mainly in wood, rammed earth, or bricks rather than quarried stone and writing was done on silk, cloth or wooden slats rather than on papyrus. But it's particularly important that horses were only readily available in the band of grassland contested between the Chinese and the nomads. Han's westward expansion during the time of Han Wudi was motivated in large part by the need for horses to supply the Han cavalry in their wars against the Xiongnu.
It's also worth noting that elephants were indigenous to what is now southwestern China, and although I don't know of references to them being used in war during I:R's timeframe they certainly were a few centuries later. They could add a little more variety to warfare in the region.
I probably should have led in with the Xiongnu, since including the eastern steppe would be just as important an addition was China proper and would arguably have more impact on the rest of I:R's map. I decided to leave them out just because we haven't had any dev diaries that deal with nomads yet, so I don't know if they're going to just be "regular tribals with horse archers" or if there are special mechanics planned for them. Either way, the Xiongnu are the prototype for all later steppe empires and were responsible for displacing the Yuezhi into Central Asia during the I:R timeline, leading to the destruction of the Greco-Bactrian and Indo-Greek kingdoms and the rise of the Kushanas in their place. The Han-Xiongnu rivalry was truly epic in its own right and regularly spilled over into the Tarim basin and Ferghana valley, which are already on-map.
From some of the review games last month we know that you can have Nomads who can turn cities into migration armies which they can use to migrate as landless horde to another place on the map. The German Reviewer Steinwallen used this for exemple and tried to attack Rome as Saxons. The system was still bugged a lot, but not surprising for a Alpha version.
I don't think that you properly read my post, as I've never said the Raumarici never existed. I only said that their first mention was by Jordanes in the 6th century, when they were already a petty kingdom of Norway. I did this to point out that there's at least one tribe that's even "younger" than those Japanese polities.
They only mention the etymology of Rugians from rye and that there was no rye in Norway at that time in that lexicon article. Or do you refer to something else?
If such an expansion would seriously slow the game down and there's very little interaction from one side of the map to the other anyway, I could see an alternative map solution instead. As you said, the game mechanics themselves would port over just fine to China. So instead of extending the map, there could simply be a map expansion that has the player in eastern Eurasia and the surrounding areas instead of western Eurasia and the surrounding areas. Some parts of the map overlap, since they're at least somewhat relevant to both regions and would save on development time.
For players who have beefy enough computers to run the whole thing, there can also be an option to play with both maps combined. However this would be largely discouraged and probably would be a much slower experience than just playing with one half.
EDIT: For those that disagree, is your position that it should be implemented as part of the same map or not at all? I'm not sure what the issue would be with having China be an optional addition or an alternative region.
For players who have beefy enough computers to run the whole thing, there can also be an option to play with both maps combined. However this would be largely discouraged and probably would be a much slower experience than just playing with one half.
EDIT: For those that disagree, is your position that it should be implemented as part of the same map or not at all? I'm not sure what the issue would be with having China be an optional addition or an alternative region.
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Personally, while that is a great idea, I'd say no because then the sheer number of provinces and cities would up the system requirements to the point that I would need a significantly better system.
Also I like the idea of this game being like pre-ck2.
Also I like the idea of this game being like pre-ck2.