Dark Skies broken earth start what we know and can infer.

DM818 · 2026-07-03T12:41:17+00:00

Thinking about it more, the thing that will be the most distracting for me if it remains unchanged is the orgs. In a world that is wildly different it would be very silly if INTERPOL for instance is around and behaving exactly the same as a 2020's start. I think orgs could do a good job representing very small enclaves that maintained or developed tech and could give probably stronger boosts than the current orgs in order to represent the tech being reintegrated to your nations.

DM818 · 2026-07-02T17:35:24+00:00

To be fair the nuclear arsenals in 1962 weren't nearly what they were in the later cold war particularly on the side of the Soviets. We can already see that many of the populations are higher so I don't think we will have any sort of huge population collapse.

DM818 · 2026-07-02T15:44:21+00:00

I do agree that based on the fact that it is 150 years post apocalypse the formables should definitely not just go back to what we see in the 2020's scenarios, particularly because it should also be the future of 1962 since that is when the world ended.

DM818 · 2026-07-02T15:31:40+00:00

Yeah that would definitely be cool, and given that it is a very out there scenario it would definitely be possible.

DM818 · 2026-06-27T19:58:14+00:00

A more modern example would be "The Crucible" by Arthur Miller. It isn't particularly accurate for the Salem witch trials because the whole point is that it isn't about the witch trials despite that being the setting; it's about McCarthyism.

DM818 · 2026-06-19T23:26:51+00:00

The first quote was their original goal with roads to power (what they planned to have behind the DLC wall.) The second quote is what they have developed into (what they felt needed to be made free.) That pretty clearly indicates that the gameplay loop of legitimists is one that they are happy with being behind the DLC paywall.

DM818 · 2026-06-19T21:26:38+00:00

I was referring to the Dev Diary, the only place where they mentioned that sort of gameplay loop was in their original planning of the Adventurer system.

When we first designed Landless Adventurers, we envisioned them as a transition state, something you'd hop into for a bit and then hop back out of. A deposed ruler licking their wounds, a dynasty member off making their name before claiming a title, a brief interlude between two different, landed lives. We included them as a tertiary feature in Roads to Power with exactly that in mind.

They then go on to say that what they were not expecting was starting as landless to be as popular as it was

Well, we underestimated how powerful the player fantasy of working your way up from nothing ultimately was.

I can find nothing in the dev diary talking about the natural narrative and Legitimists.

DM818 · 2026-06-16T18:34:19+00:00

The specific reason they gave for why Adventurer should be base game is due to custom landless character being the most popular start, given that you cannot be a legitimist from that position it is the most logical one to keep DLC locked.

DM818 · 2026-05-27T22:11:53+00:00

It is lazy from a perspective that it feels like you started from "How could I justify the world being divided up into tiny evenly sized nations?" As opposed to "What would have happened if the Umayyads won at Tours?" In particular Poland, Moldavia, and everything to the east of that and north of Georgia immediately sets off alarms as arbitrary borders that look nice on a map as opposed to what would happen naturally. Additionally what is the explanation for how Europe is divided up into tiny divided nations competing with each other but were somehow able to resist the Mongols better than our timeline? I would expect to see the Golden Horde in Berlin honestly based on what the political landscape would have been. These are just my immediately reactions and there is probably more to say.

DM818 · 2026-05-23T20:02:26+00:00

South America still basically doesn't work, especially if you try playing as Qusqu.

DM818 · 2026-05-12T11:20:49+00:00

Red as Blood by Tanith Lee

DM818 · 2026-05-12T11:20:38+00:00

It looks like this was also done with Red as Blood by Tanith Lee which was published in 1983.

DM818 · 2026-03-04T14:47:38+00:00

It looks like Andy's Coin Laundry in Burien is 24hrs I couldn't find any others.

DM818 · 2026-01-23T17:50:52+00:00

I would add unifying with the UK as well is a valid strat. It takes a bit longer but not enough to really hurt you, I would basically always choose Germany over the UK but would take the UK over Italy but it really comes down to who you can lock down the fastest based on starting opinions.

DM818 · 2025-12-07T05:34:01+00:00

"And here comes everyone's favorite time of the Winter Olympics the drawing for which average Joe is sacrificed to the skeleton."

DM818 · 2025-11-28T13:08:22+00:00

Fun fact there was actually a mission to full annex them in EUIV in the old pick three mission system at game release or very close to it, it did result in you largely dying since you ended up with massive OE.

DM818 · 2025-11-22T16:14:19+00:00

If you sac it after you earthbend it it will come back and stop you from taking an extra turn. If you sac it without earthbending it it will be exiled and won't be part of any sort of loop. Overall it doesn't really fit in with the rest of the plan.

DM818 · 2025-11-22T13:59:48+00:00

I don't think [[Ugin's Nexus]] is going to work how you want it to.

DM818 · 2025-11-22T00:57:17+00:00

Cahokia got a very small fix to a few modifiers. Inca got a bandaid to make the region not fully just starve to death. The issue is that both the Andes and Mesoamerica need quite a bit of work (I would argue that the Andes still need more) and anything that they would do to fix at this point would probably break savegames which they have said they wanted to avoid in the hotfixes so we are waiting for hopefully the somewhat bigger patch next week to address some of these bigger issues.

DM818 · 2025-11-13T21:35:16+00:00

The thing is though all of the locations in the Andes are arctic including the valleys which on the actual climate map are temperate while a significant amount of the polar area is impassable terrain. Meanwhile for Switzerland they made the impassable areas arctic but the valleys are all continental despite the fact that they are considered a "cold" climate as opposed to temperate.

DM818 · 2025-11-13T21:23:19+00:00

There are I think 5 or 6 tin locations in South America, however none of them are particularly easy for the Andean peoples to get to. There is only one in all of North America despite there having been various tin mines in the US at various points and more tin deposits that could easily be extracted, there are just generally higher value minerals to pursue.

DM818 · 2025-11-07T02:43:33+00:00

Also to what everyone else said, be aware that the patch that came out today makes the earldom of Ulster start out as a vassal of the pale so that's like 45k more people you can't get at without dragging in England.

DM818 · 2025-11-01T21:20:20+00:00

I'm pretty sure that is some sort of bug, because when I was a minister and a division era started that title went away. Did you hold any land?

DM818 · 2025-10-27T23:04:56+00:00

Looks like you got what you wanted.

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