An expansion named
Migration Period.
Introduces a new era, Early Medieval (roughly fitting 250 - 950 AD IRL).
I have written a lot about the numerous reasons, benefits and cool opportunities of adding such era in a separate thread. Basically
1) Historians clearly separate Late Antiquity (and late Rome) from Classical Anitquity, as well as Early Medieval from High & Late Medieval, so we do have powerful historical reasons for a new era.
2) A jump from iron age warriors to knights has always been bad. Better would be like: hoplites, slingers and horsemen -> late Roman legions, archers and cataphracts -> men at arms, crossbowmen and knights
3) That era would be an excellent reason to introduce mechanics mentioned below.
4) That era is cool.
5) There is an enormous amount of possible medieval cultures when compared with any other era. It would be quite beneficial to split these between two eras. Current medieval era feels as if it was missing half of crucial cultures - due to cramming too much global diversity over too many centuries in one era.
Besides the new era, the game introduces
- Mechanisms and events for mass migrations of peoples.
- Climate events and random periodic climate fluctuations (-1 to yield X on terrain Y in Z era), turning into global warming in the modern era.
- Nomads: new and special minor faction type, no dwelling in one place but migrating and causing problems, and very hard to completely destroy before gunpowder era.
- A Horde global events which spawn great nomadic conquerors from the steppes. They have unique abilities and powerful armies.
- Similarly, an option for some major factions to be nomadic peoples. Lives from land, buildings and pops are "attached" to armies, relies on horses or camels, may only really function on large open areas, and may not research many technologies, including all above medieval era. Still a fun if niche alternative for early eras.
- Cultures can now go through "dark ages" which incur certain severe consequences BUT their upside is... No not in some stupid bonus out of nowhere: the benefit is the possibility to 'respec' policies (or however this cultural progress is caused), which represents a culture which survives but changes profoundly.
- New abilities and challenges for religion system. New religions: Manichaeism, Arianism, Gnosticism.
The expansion includes three scenarios: Fall of Rome, Rise of Islam, Age of Charlemagne.
The expansion changes existing cultures:
- Rome, Greece, Persia, Celts, Carthage, Maya, Maurya go to Classical. Persia renamed to Achaemenids.
- Byzantium, Huns, Axum, Goths, Franks, Norse, Umayyads go to Early Medieval. Byz changed to Aestethe. Umayyads changed to Expansionist.
- England, Aztec, Mongols, Ghana, Khmer, Teutons do remain in the medieval, however.
- New civilizations for the Classical Age:
Nok (Aestethe),
Han (Scientist),
Scythians (Militarist)
- New cultures for the Early Medieval Age:
Srivijaya (Builder),
Silla (Agrarian),
Sasanians (Merchant).
- New cultures for the Medieval Age:
Abbasids (Scientist),
Seljuks (Expansionist)
, Kievan Rus (Builder)
, Song (Scientist)
.
So you even have a 10 new cultures, a perfect rule per an expansion, and a balanced set od affinities
@Catoninetales_Amplitude you know, for an inspiration, if you somehow got more money than ideas (its impossible in gamedev industry, I know)
By the way, I have accidentally realized that it will be interesting how Amplitude gives themes to expansions. The traditional Civ approach was a vague theme and then cramming a lot of different things under it. One more way to make HK unique and not top direct competitor would be cycling through different eras instead. One enriches medieval, another industrial etc. Although I don't think any more eras are needed besides Early Medieval, only one expansion would do a delicate maneuver like that.
