Now that I have map, I actually need to do work on an actual scenario. I loved, LOVED Fading Lights, in fact I took a whole lot of Greek History classes because of it. And while I'm not multiculturalist, in fact, I'm very much an ethnonationalist (don't run just yet!) my very comprehensive five-year study of history across many cultures convinced me of one thing, even if war between nation-states is the summation of all human activity, the final pass/fail test at the end of the semester, in practice what most people experience is not a racial morality but an aristocratic morality, those with money and power at the top wanting to justify themselves at all costs as the beautiful people despite everything burning around them.
Fading Lights 1 and Civilization as a series is all about a racial or the sanitized "civilization" struggle, but almost all of history are vain and stupid elites clinging to golden thrones they do not deserve with well-manicured emaciated hands covered with blood and fecal matter. And in this case, I'm not even talking about the House of Paleologi itself but about the entire Geek aristocracy which Basil did not put enough to death after they rebelled against him in the early 11th century.
Fading Lights 2 is going to be about the war against the Byzantine State itself/ The Deep State as it were. The Pronoia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pronoia
The High Church
The Italian Enclaves
The Constantinople Bureaucracy
This is going to be a very Pro-Theme system, seemingly on the surface left wing but actually populist interpretation of the fall of states, and the fall of Byzantium in particular. Only an alliance between the Emperor and the people sidelining the elites can defeat the foreigners!... MAROGA!
As I intended to design this system now, you will have to work harder, not smarter. For instance, in so many games the supermarket represents lutifunda or collective farms, and yeah, that's a reasonable assumption. So you CAN build them, but they will only empower the forces of oppression. If you want to grow the right way you'll have to use trade caravans. If I can figure out lua, there will be rewards for getting rid of the supermarkets, maybe even getting rid of second-tier irrigation, that's never been done!
Also, buildings you build will not represent infrastructure not there in all cases but infrastructure, not UNDER YOUR CONTROL.
Also, courthouses will either be rare or very expensive. Government reform will be the big task and it will be a HARD sell.
Also looking for anyone who wants to either in public or PM talk about possible adventure modules! Cool horsehocky that I could send courtier and adventures on for the glory of the realm. Right now I want to have less military unit diversity so I can reward players with cool sites and rewards like special buildings and such. I would like to do Real-world adventures that almost happened or actually did, or common bard's tales and such but historical fiction or tales from event chains in Medieval Total War or CK2 I'm not opposed to. Time period might be as early as 1205 but probably about 1218, as that's the fall of Attlea (an important port in Anatolia and prime POD)
I want to explore lateral play in building this thing too.
As for general feedback, I like to play without sounds so I can listen to audiobooks, and I also don't mind busywork so much.
But what parts of the general CIv 2 experience do you guys consider busywork and what do you feel can be done to mitigate it in scenario design without crippling an already stupid AI?
What new TOT features do you really like and wish more people took advantage of? Or don't like it? For me I HATE the no rush buy system, I understand why some would like it but for me, it takes away from the game experience in that I when because I'm I work harder than the hardies and smarter than the smarties. I love the naval vessels on rivers, and just wish there was a way to make rivers combine into ocean-looking tiles for big rivers like the Mississippi in most North American maps. Hearing thing like this could help give me mechanical ideas.
I also am trying to get into more Eastern Empire history podcasts to get fall more detail into individual decades of the paleologi decline. For instance, I didn't know until recently Michael VIII could NOT go into the Rum Sultanate to put a claimant on the throne because part of his alliance with the Golden Horde meant he was getting Mongol Mercenaries to fight Epirus as long as he didn't screw with Rum. So to attack Rum, he'd have been a MFers trying to ice skate uphill, against the Mongols. And suddenly everything makes sense.
Fading Lights 1 and Civilization as a series is all about a racial or the sanitized "civilization" struggle, but almost all of history are vain and stupid elites clinging to golden thrones they do not deserve with well-manicured emaciated hands covered with blood and fecal matter. And in this case, I'm not even talking about the House of Paleologi itself but about the entire Geek aristocracy which Basil did not put enough to death after they rebelled against him in the early 11th century.
Fading Lights 2 is going to be about the war against the Byzantine State itself/ The Deep State as it were. The Pronoia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pronoia
The High Church
The Italian Enclaves
The Constantinople Bureaucracy
This is going to be a very Pro-Theme system, seemingly on the surface left wing but actually populist interpretation of the fall of states, and the fall of Byzantium in particular. Only an alliance between the Emperor and the people sidelining the elites can defeat the foreigners!... MAROGA!
As I intended to design this system now, you will have to work harder, not smarter. For instance, in so many games the supermarket represents lutifunda or collective farms, and yeah, that's a reasonable assumption. So you CAN build them, but they will only empower the forces of oppression. If you want to grow the right way you'll have to use trade caravans. If I can figure out lua, there will be rewards for getting rid of the supermarkets, maybe even getting rid of second-tier irrigation, that's never been done!
Also, buildings you build will not represent infrastructure not there in all cases but infrastructure, not UNDER YOUR CONTROL.
Also, courthouses will either be rare or very expensive. Government reform will be the big task and it will be a HARD sell.
Also looking for anyone who wants to either in public or PM talk about possible adventure modules! Cool horsehocky that I could send courtier and adventures on for the glory of the realm. Right now I want to have less military unit diversity so I can reward players with cool sites and rewards like special buildings and such. I would like to do Real-world adventures that almost happened or actually did, or common bard's tales and such but historical fiction or tales from event chains in Medieval Total War or CK2 I'm not opposed to. Time period might be as early as 1205 but probably about 1218, as that's the fall of Attlea (an important port in Anatolia and prime POD)
I want to explore lateral play in building this thing too.
As for general feedback, I like to play without sounds so I can listen to audiobooks, and I also don't mind busywork so much.
But what parts of the general CIv 2 experience do you guys consider busywork and what do you feel can be done to mitigate it in scenario design without crippling an already stupid AI?
What new TOT features do you really like and wish more people took advantage of? Or don't like it? For me I HATE the no rush buy system, I understand why some would like it but for me, it takes away from the game experience in that I when because I'm I work harder than the hardies and smarter than the smarties. I love the naval vessels on rivers, and just wish there was a way to make rivers combine into ocean-looking tiles for big rivers like the Mississippi in most North American maps. Hearing thing like this could help give me mechanical ideas.
I also am trying to get into more Eastern Empire history podcasts to get fall more detail into individual decades of the paleologi decline. For instance, I didn't know until recently Michael VIII could NOT go into the Rum Sultanate to put a claimant on the throne because part of his alliance with the Golden Horde meant he was getting Mongol Mercenaries to fight Epirus as long as he didn't screw with Rum. So to attack Rum, he'd have been a MFers trying to ice skate uphill, against the Mongols. And suddenly everything makes sense.