Europa Universalis IV

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Continued to fine tune the map today and finished the Anglo-Saxon namefile for the English. Anyone mind checking what the Norse name for England was in CK2? If you're a real bro, convert the Norse flag for England as well (this requires the new customizer DLC to rename England to something else so the game directly converts the flag and name instead of translating both to just EU4 England).

Currently the main things left to do is break up various vassal relations, set up "historical" rival and alliance behaviours, and maybe make Bohemia or Potatoland Slavic pagan and turn Transylvania Orthodox.

EDIT: Also whipped up a starting bookmark to make things less odd.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

I think I got the map in a state that I find satisfactory:

Spoiler

I included screenshots of some of the new flags used.

 

[Grinolf]

I think it is very strange for country named Georgia not to include actual Georgia in it. Swapping Abkhazia with south coastal Georgian province (Imereti?) would make much more sence.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

I think it is very strange for country named Georgia not to include actual Georgia in it. Swapping Abkhazia with south coastal Georgian province (Imereti?) would make much more sence.

It was supposed to just include some initial war impetus, since Georgia has cores on the Tartaria areas there.

 

[Kaldurenik]

So when will you upload it ?

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

I'll wrap up the final changes tomorrow and then upload the mod. I changed Lusitania to Andalusia (in the CK2 campaign, Muslims demolished everyone except the Basque and Karling-owned Catalonia, so now the majority cultures in Spain are Andalusian and Basque), tweaked some flags in the Middle-East, Hesse is now East Francia, Transylvania is now Orthodox, and restored Georgia to full territory.

 

[Corporate_Jew_Master]

Been doing this muslim apocalypse LP
http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...n-or-how-i-learned-to-love-the-machete.86385/

And I was thinking of giving the two ITZlamic superfactions some insane missions, such as european and indian invasions for Almoravids and Rum respectively.

A few testing years after some more buffs yielded pretty good results far as I'm concerned. I got only three issues:

1. The missions. Should I give them claims/cores on the entire regions (aka france, germany/india respectively) to turn them into real rapetrains that only superior tech might just check them very much later on?
2. Colonisation. Should I give Almoravids the Exploration and Rum the Expansion ideas as historical ideas?
3. The strong pagan factions, aka Rus and Scandinavia. Should I unite Scandinavia to give Saxony a bigger challenge and give the Rus the baltic and Mordvin from the start on for extra pressure on Hungary and Slavic Poland?

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Final test imminent.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Alright, I think the current set-up is pretty good, and I couldn't find any flagrant issues (I found out that if the reformed pagans aren't a separate religious group from regular pagans, Anglians develop psychic powers and learn stuff about the world map; personally I think it's best to make them a separate group anyway, to give a little more structure to things). The only thing I couldn't figure out was how localisation for bookmarks works, I just can't get the text to appear.

Political map. New Horde nations are Cumania and Mali.

Religion map.

Ethnic map.

Europa Uralica: Negro Apocalypse Edition alternate history scenario can be downloaded here:

http://www.mediafire.com/?jxf82e1vfoi6to4

 

[oscar]

Have you given the national ideas to their rough equivalents in this time?

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Yep. The list goes as follows (outside of pre-existing ones like Poland, Persia and France):

Egypt and Africa have Mamluk ideas (you can swap the one for Africa, Z34, with Berber ideas, that was an oversight on my part)
Livonia has Danish ideas
Karelia has Russian ideas
Rheinland has Prussian ideas
Mordvinia has Timurid ideas
Tavastia has Hanseatic ideas
Anglia has Norwegian ideas
Albion has English ideas
Saxony has Palatinate ideas
Kievan Rus has Novgorod ideas
Anatolia has Byzantine ideas
Georgia has Ottoman ideas
Transylvania has Hungarian ideas
Andalusia has Portugue ideas
Barcelona has Aragonese ideas
Iberia has Spanish ideas
Burgundy-Italy has Burgundian ideas
Fatimids have Hashashin ideas
Greater Bavaria has Bavarian ideas
Carinthia has Austrian ideas (this is where the Habsburgs hang out anyway, had to stick them somewhere you know)
Lotharingia has Saxony ideas
Frisia has Dutch ideas

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Wait, it seems I did overlook something! Here's an updated file for religious decisions (I totally forgot about the other things changing the pagan religion group would do), just drop it in the mod's decisions folder:

http://www.mediafire.com/download/oe2589oirvebz5p/Religion.txt

Old world pagans (other than West Africans) have the ability to use the Anti-Christian Edict and Anti-Muslim Edict decisions. Norse, Slavic and West African pagans can also use the Human Sacrifices decision.

You may add the following line to the .mod file too:

replace_path = "decisions/Religion.txt"

 

[Grinolf]

Slavic pagans can also use the Human Sacrifices decision.

There are serious lack of any credible information about Slavic paganism, including the matter of human sacrifices. There is only one case, when sacrifices were mentioned, which was connected to attempt of reforming slavic faith by Vladimir the Great. Other mentioning look more as Norse traditions, than Slavic ones.
So better to remove that, as it is impossible now to tell how it really was.

 

[Corporate_Jew_Master]

I'd say keep it for some extra flavor.

 

[Hellraiser]

Yes, you can justify it that chernobog was a real actually worshipped diety in the timeline rather than made up by butthurt christian zealots

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

I've received a completely different impression. As far as I know, mass graves of people killed in ritual manner have been found in ancient Slavic digs, and there's numerous accounts about the subject (though more on the usual subject of burying young women with old powerful men).

EDIT: Besides, it's a big boost for Norse and the Slavic state, as it provides +3 Prestige gain and -20% stability cost.

EDIT2: On the subject of Chernobog, I consider it quite likely that the Slavic pagans had a deity or mystical creature of the same name, which was then misreported and twisted by Christian monks for future generations. Whether or not this was an actually evil figure in Slavic paganism will probably never be found out for sure.

The horned demon thing is almost certainly bullshit though, black as the dominant color of the figure is on the other hand quite in line with how people's brains tend to work with myth.

 

[Grinolf]

there's numerous accounts about the subject (though more on the usual subject of burying young women with old powerful men).

That account most likely describe Norse ritual with Scandinavian people, who either lived in the Rus state or traveled across it. Scandinavians weren't uncommon in that time in Kievan Rus, since there was major trade route to Byzantium, and many Rus nobles were also Scandinavians until they fully assimilated with local population.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

there's numerous accounts about the subject (though more on the usual subject of burying young women with old powerful men).

That account most likely describe Norse ritual with Scandinavian people, who either lived in the Rus state or traveled across it. Scandinavians weren't uncommon in that time in Kievan Rus, since there was major trade route to Byzantium, and many Rus nobles were also Scandinavians until they fully assimilated with local population.

Yes, that's certainly a possibility. Still, I figured given the general consensus being that Slavs practised human sacrifice that I could give them the decision so they have more decisions.

EDIT: And yea I know about the whole Rus thing beyond just Rurik and his brothers. The whole area was rather dramatically different just a thousand years ago than today, since it wasn't really that long ago that you had Norse trading posts amidst a ragtag patchwork of Slavic tribes migrating in from the South and the various local Finnic tribes. Heck, a good example of the radical demographic shifts in the time is Latvia, where Latvians became the majority ethnicity only after the Livonian crusades where the coastal Livonian tribes were almost entirely wiped out and the area largely depopulated.

 

[Grinolf]

Yes, that's certainly a possibility. Still, I figured given the general consensus being that Slavs practised human sacrifice that I could give them the decision so they have more decisions.

I don't know about that general consensus thing, since with amount of current information it is impossible to speak about anything but theory.
But the main arguments, that that account describe Scandinavian people are
1. Scandinavians practiced such rituals, while there is no indication that Slavs also have ones.
2. Describtion of Rus people in that time also points towards Scandinavians, not Slavic.
There are also problems with establishing where described events happened, that only fuel dispute between advocates of different theores.

And of course, Kievan Rus in the first century of it existence was such mix of Norse and Slavic, that it is futher complicate matter of describing slavic faith. And when process of Norse assimilation more or less ended, paganism was abadoned also.

 

[RedScum]

Well since it's an alternate history i guess everything goes.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Anyway, next time I'm updating this (unless issues crop up, do tell as you play it) I'll work on colonial states (ie, Canada or USA is going to become Vinland).

 

[suejak]

Yeah, you should work on separating religions from states. At the moment, the religion map and the political map are nearly identical. You'll have a weird shape for a religion on the religion map, look up, and sure enough there's a political state perfectly corresponding to it. It's way too neat. You should make the religion map much more blurred and patchy, maybe even go for some somewhat diverse states.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Yeah, you should work on separating religions from states. At the moment, the religion map and the political map are nearly identical. You'll have a weird shape for a religion on the religion map, look up, and sure enough there's a political state perfectly corresponding to it. It's way too neat. You should make the religion map much more blurred and patchy, maybe even go for some somewhat diverse states.

This is a mechanical issue that would cause huge problems. If you look at the standard map in EU4, you'll notice that it too follows very neat political lines at the start-up. The reason is because EU4 imposes notable penalties for not having 100% religious unity. The AI would very rapidly be crippled by rebels. The part where this becomes a problem is 1) Islam has an inherent penalty to anyone trying to convert them, 2) pagans are much more limited in terms of options for converting provinces.

Simply put, given the mechanics differing religions in provinces should be a rarity (at start-up), as religion is first and foremost another element to hinder going apeshit conquering everything. Out of the Paradox games which include religion as an element, only Victoria allows for a diverse religious make-up in a country without imminent nationwide ITZ all day erry day.

 

[suejak]

I don't know the specifics of EU4. That's too bad.

CK2 has a pretty patchy religious start-up. Things work ok.

 

[Average Manatee]

Yeah, it's pretty stupid. There's basically two mechanics now to penalize you for having a different religion. You take hits in the province for not having tolerance of the religion, and your entire empire suffers additional penalties, because apparently the christians living happily in rome start riots because the muslims in Egypt haven't been converted yet. It's so god damned stupid.

You could just hack in a +100% religious unity to all nations, which would leave the tolerance maluses in.