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Hello citizens, and above all: Happy New Year to all of you! May the year 2021 be as epic as you want it to be!
It is my pleasure to come back to you with a new ranking of the suggestions made on the SPQR over the past week.
First place goes to IsaacCAT and his thread "commerce by trade merchants" which received 13 votes.
This suggestion is the result of the thoughts of several players who took the time to fine-tune it during the end of the year on the forum, and suggests the creation of trade merchants guilds that buy/sell and commerce with goods from nations.
The second place in this ranking goes to Marcus Pica who posted a suggestion he had already made last year: "Rename territories in Germania according to decoded coordinates from Ptolemy's Geography". He got 12 votes.
Finally, the third place in this ranking goes to EricMN93 and his thread "1st century AD", in which he takes up several ideas commented on the forum to enhance late game.
You can read it here.
Thank you for your participation, citizens! Feel free to continue feeding these threads if you have anything to add. We'll keep an eye on it as always.
See you next Monday.
It is my pleasure to come back to you with a new ranking of the suggestions made on the SPQR over the past week.
First place goes to IsaacCAT and his thread "commerce by trade merchants" which received 13 votes.
This suggestion is the result of the thoughts of several players who took the time to fine-tune it during the end of the year on the forum, and suggests the creation of trade merchants guilds that buy/sell and commerce with goods from nations.
Preface: After the Ports as Trade Hubs suggestion some players (@Mr. Wiggles @Vohen @cristofolmc ) requested a bolder and more comprehensive proposal for trade. We discussed the idea of trade merchants as agents for commerce in this thread.
Observation: commerce is almost no existing in game and it seems the nation is the only actor involved. But we know that there were trade merchants that did most of this commerce. This is an opportunity to route trade and introduce a new fun and interesting mechanic for the player.
Suggestion: create trade merchants guilds that buy/sell and commerce with goods from nations.
How:
Strategies:
- The player will be able to set for each province goods priorities and desired quantities, but export/import will be automated by others (trade merchants)
- Goods will be automatically captured by the nearest trade merchants that will exist in any city with a port or marketplace above level 2.
- Trade merchants located in cities within your nation will generate a new tax for all trades captured, national or foreign. Each time a city upgrades its port or marketplace above level 2, a new family will create a trade merchant. Only one trade merchant per city. If a city loses its port or marketplace level, then the trade merchant disappears and its trades are captured by other trade merchants.
- Each trade merchant is a job for one character that will be automatically assigned from the nation families and inherited. When a trade merchant city changes nation, the family does not loose its job or ownership of the trade merchant post.
- Nations gain influence in trade merchants function of the percentage of trades from that nation of the total trades captured by that trade merchant. Also influence is affected by how the nation tax the trade merchant and the loyalty of the trade merchant if he is from our nation. Some actions can lower our influence temporary with the trade merchant.
- Trade merchants can buy and sell their trade posts to other trade merchants. This is a transaction of wealth from the buying family to the selling family and the trade merchant job is for one member of the buying family. Trade merchants could be a target for hostile takeovers while weak financially. If the player has influence in one trade merchant and wants to avoid loosing it, there is an option to ask another more powerful allied trade merchant to take over them before your rivals do.
- Nations can interact with trade merchants in a redesigned trade window being able to:
- Increase taxes or lower taxes for all trades if the trade merchant is in one city of our nation. Increasing taxes lowers our influence and the opposite for lowering taxes occurs.
- Embargo another nation trades captured by that trade merchant. We must have high influence and this will temporary lower our influence with the trade merchant, while giving the other nation a commercial CB.
- Preferent trades: gives us always preference for our import trades before other nations when the goods traded are scarce.
- Promote take over of other merchant trade posts. This will start an event that may require that we pay some money to help the trade merchant buy another trade merchant hub.
- Sell assets to another merchant trader, the same as above but selling one trade hub to another trade merchant.
The player will want to gain influence in trade merchants and achieve economic results (taxes or economic warfare).
Taxes can be maxed by having trade merchants based in the player nation.
If foreign nations trade merchants are capturing the player trades, the player can do the following:
If the player wants to increase its influence in a trade merchant it has to increase the percentage of national routes of that trade merchant. To do so, the player can play with the trade merchants ownership by:
- Invade the city with the trade merchant: it will give the taxes to the nation but it will not change the family that owns the trade merchant guild. That family will become part of your nation with their own culture and religion and with a big base and low loyalty.
- Capture some of the trades by improving your provincial capital cities to become trade merchants hubs.
Example:
- Promoting one of your loyal families controlled trade merchants to buy out the other trade merchant. But the other family may have a price too high to buy out them. That depends on how much profitable and wealthy is that family.
- Asking a trade merchant to sell some of their hubs to another merchant family may be used to lower the power base of that head of family as well as to get more influence with another trade merchant.
First, on the provincial window the player will see the trade routes available and the goods available and produced on the province. But it will have a new button for trade:
This Trade button will open a window with all the goods that can be imported on that province that the player will have to rank with two numbers. This will inform the merchant traders about the priorities for imported goods for that province. The player will also be able to block goods from exporting at the provincial level:
The merchants traders will try to import as many goods as the province total trade routes. In the above example, their first priority is Iron and they will try to have 2 iron goods. The other trades are indifferent (blank), except for the eleventh trade, that the player has requested to be 1 elephant. The merchant traders will sell requests for goods except for the denied requests shown in the window. The player can select manually the trades on each province or allow the Governors to set the trades for their region provinces automatically.
The player will get the tax and goods benefits for all trade routes as now. The difference is that trade routes will go from the provincial capital to the nearest trade merchant hub and you will not be ever bothered if one trade is discontinued, the trade merchants will handle all the hassle.
Every port and marketplace above level 2 (cities and metropolis) will have a trade merchant hub. For example in this Carthage area there are four trade merchants, in Carthage city of Carthage, Atic city of Utica, Kerkouane city of Kerkouane and Lapki city of Leptis Minor:
Each trade merchant captures the provincial trades we have seen in the previous windows from all nations in the following way:
For example, the trade merchant in Carthaghe captures the 10 trade imports and 8 exports of the nation of Carthage for the province of Carthago but not the 8 trade imports of the nation of Utica for the province of Carthago as Atiq city has another trade merchant closer to the provincial capital of Utica in Atiq city. In addition, the trade merchant in Atiq city also captures the 8 exports and 1 import from the nation of Carthage for the province of Thabracania, because the provincial capital of Vaga is nearer Atiq city than Carthage.
- Outgoing trade function of distance between provincial capital where the goods are produced and the trade merchant city (marketplace or port above level 2).
- Incoming trade function of distance between trade merchant city hub (marketplace or port above level 2) and the province capital where the goods are destined.
Another example, the 10 exports and 2 imports of the nation of Carthage from the province of Zeugitana instead of going to Carthaghe trade merchant, they go to the trade merchant in Kerkoune city of the nation of Kerkoune because they are closer to the provincial capital Curubis City. That trade merchant also manages the 10 imports of the nation of Kerkoune for the province of Zeugitana.
Summarizing:
- Cartaghe city trade merchant has 10 trade imports and 8 exports
- Atiq city trade merchant has 9 trade imports and 8 exports
- Kerkouane city trade merchant has 12 imports and 10 exports
Having a trade merchant inside the nation will give a new tax to the nation, extracted from all trades that go through that city, including foreign trades. For all trades, if a nation does not have a trade merchant or there are nearer foreign trade merchant, trade routes will be captured by these foreign trade merchants.
Having your trades captured by a foreign trade merchant not only represents lost revenue for you and a gain for a foreign nation but it could give the other nation an edge because you can influence the trade merchant with the trade merchant window. Below we can see an example of the trade merchant in Atiq City:
In this window we can see the following information:
We can do the following actions with each trade merchant:
- All trade merchants that capture our trade routes
- How many routes from our nation they capture from their total routes. This gives us more influence as more routes we have from the total routes.
- The total influence we have with that trade merchant. Is function of the trade routes our nation contributes, but also how we tax them and the loyalty of the trade merchant if he is from our nation. Some actions can lower our influence temporary with the trade merchant.
- Increase taxes or lower taxes for all trades if the trade merchant is in one city of our nation. Increasing taxes lowers our influence and the opposite for lowering taxes occurs.
- Embargo another nation trades captured by that trade merchant. We must have high influence and this will temporary lower our influence with the trade merchant, while giving the other nation a commercial CB.
- Preferent trades: gives us always preference for our import trades before other nations when the goods traded are scarce.
- Promote take over of other merchant traders. This will start an event that may require that we pay some money to help the trade merchant buy another trade merchant hub.
- Sell assets to another merchant trader, the same as above but selling one trade hub to another trade merchant.
The second place in this ranking goes to Marcus Pica who posted a suggestion he had already made last year: "Rename territories in Germania according to decoded coordinates from Ptolemy's Geography". He got 12 votes.
I decided to finally post a suggestion that I made last year and that I pointed out again recently to SPQR. Though it is not a game changing suggestion, if implemented, it would enhance the historically authentic context of the game. I believe stuff like this makes Imperator: Rome much more than just a game, it allows the game to become an educational and interactive historical sandbox incorporating the most up-to-date knowledge from historical sciences in an abstract game form.
So here it is, unchanged since my original post last year...
One of the DD's before the release stated that the Digital Atlas of the Roman Empire was used to name the territories, which is great as this is the most complete source of ancient roman place names easily accessible. However, it doesn't cover the areas beyond the Roman frontier and it seems that territory names e.g. in Germania were made in some random fashion, thou I noticed some references to tribal names and ancient toponyms.
GERMANIA
I want to point out this german research published in a monograph and reported by Spiegel:
"A group of classical philologists, mathematical historians and surveying experts at Berlin Technical University's Department for Geodesy and Geoinformation Science has produced an astonishing map of central Europe as it was 2,000 years ago /.../ This unusual map draws on information from the mathematician and astronomer Ptolemy /.../ One of these drawings depicts "Germania Magna," /.../ Ptolemy demonstrated extensive knowledge of this remote area, indicating the locations of mountains, rivers and islands. An index lists 94 "poleis," or cities, noting their latitude and longitude accurately to within a few minutes. /.../ Yet the data the ancient geographer used is distorted. Errors of scale crept in as he transcribed the Earth's sphere to the flat plane of a map. Ptolemy believed the northern lands to be narrower and more elongated than they are and bent Jutland in Denmark and Schleswig-Holstein in Germany too far to the east. /.../ The Berlin-based team pored over the recalcitrant data for six years, working together to develop a so-called "geodetic deformation analysis" that would help to correct the map's mistakes. /.../ It was primarily surveyors with the Roman army, which appears to have advanced as far as the Vistula River, who collected information on the barbarians' lands. Dieter Lelgemann, a geodesist in Berlin, is firmly convinced that "Ptolemy was drawing on work done by military engineers. /.../ The ancient astronomer indicated cities' exact locations down to minutes of degrees. These coordinates, once decoded, indeed often turn out to line up precisely with sites where archaeologists have previously found Gothic or Teutonic houses and grand burial tombs erected for tribal princes. /.../ "
The article also provides a google maps link with all the "decoded locations" including some description of sites, which can be used to change individual territory names according to this research.
I present just a few examples of some changes that would be made (I compared the I:R map with the google map link):
Contemporary city (country) - current I:R territory name - suggested Magna Germania name:
Brno (CZ) - Phargisatus? - Eburodunum
Kostrzyn (PL) - Iadua - Colancorum
Dresden (DE) - Thuringiana? - Lupfurdum
Actually, by doing the comparison, I noticed that some I:R territories in northern Germany already have some "correct" names, perhaps using a different source related to Ptolemy? Nevertheless, the other located places in interior and East Germany, Austria, Poland, Czechia and Slovakia should be included as well.
SCYTHIA
While I am at it, I also suggest looking at other sources. I want to point out the famous place of Gelonus from Herodotus's Tales on Scythia: "The Budini for their part, being a large and numerous nation, are all mightily blue-eyed and ruddy. And a city among them has been built, a wooden city, and the name of the city is Gelonus. Of its wall then in size each side is of thirty stades and high and all wooden. And their homes are wooden and their shrines. For indeed there is in the very place Greek gods’ shrines adorned in the Greek way with statues, altars and wooden shrines and for triennial Dionysus festivals in honour of Dionysus."
"Excavations at Bilske Horodyshche (uk:Більське городище) near the village of Bilsk near Poltava in Ukraine (Coordinates 50°5′34″N 34°38′46″E ) have led to suggestions by archaeologist Boris Shramko and others identifying it as the Scythian capital Gelonus.[2] It is strategically situated on the exact boundary between the steppe and forest-steppe. /.../ According to Herodotus each side of Gelonus is 30 stades long, the area in today's units would be about 30 square kilometres. The archeological site around Belsk, including necropolis, comprises about 80 km², and the fortifications enclose some 40 km². The north-south axis, along the Vorskla River is 17 km long. The remains of walls up to 12 metres are visible today and stretch over the horizon. The total length of the ramparts is 33 km. Inside the fortification, lay three "keeps", 150,000 m², 650,000 m², and 720,000 m² in area, surrounded by eroded earth walls still up to 16 metres high. Several kurgans reminded the inhabitants of the ancient Scythian burial tradition."
Contemporary city (country) - current I:R territory name - suggested Herodotus name:
Bilsk (UA) - Volg - Gelonus
Bilsk is actually just beyond the edge of the map, Volg is the closest match.
Please vote!
Finally, the third place in this ranking goes to EricMN93 and his thread "1st century AD", in which he takes up several ideas commented on the forum to enhance late game.
You can read it here.
Thank you for your participation, citizens! Feel free to continue feeding these threads if you have anything to add. We'll keep an eye on it as always.
See you next Monday.
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