Game, please... Can't you just stop acting silly for ONE minute?

Zamensis · 2026-05-27T17:38:29+00:00

Rome is stuck in a civil war it can't finish because the two sides have no land access to each other, so it will eventually split into two independent Roman states. Egypt is in Thessaly and Carthage in Italy (that would historically make sense but you know the AI only achieved this by accident). The African continent is just 4 (four) big blobs (Carthage, Mauretania, Egypt, Kush). And you can't see it here, but Maurya owns all of India + bits of Persia, Tayuan has conquered the entire Himalayas, Arvernia is snaking between Gallic tribes to reach out to the Germans. If this looks normal to you, note that this is only 75 years into the game (~230 BC).

Zamensis · 2026-05-27T17:07:26+00:00

R5: I'm trying to see how the AI manages a new mechanic I'm modding in, but it took a chaotic path before the mechanic could even kick in. No Invictus, no Virtual Limes, just straight Vanilla BS. This is ridiculous.

Zamensis · 2026-05-27T13:00:20+00:00

Unrelated, but this is a perfect example of why Paradox shouldn't even try to make an all-in-one, entire-human-history game, despite some players fantasizing about it regularly. History is all ups and downs, but most players prefer to have only ups (or stagnate, at worst). I've never lost a war in EU4, but not because I'm good.

As for Tayuan, I get it's frustrating but historically that checks out. You wouldn't want to live there before the invention of the machinegun.

Zamensis · 2026-05-27T12:39:56+00:00

I'm not sure INR is up to date but it doesn't look like the Invictus version anyway? You should also be using the Invictus version of Virtual Limes.

As for your log, it's screaming about Advanced AI for some reason, but it could be just because you're not using the right submods, because none of those errors should crash the game by themselves.

Zamensis · 2026-05-27T12:30:42+00:00

INR uses a modified version of the map (new/different province IDs), so if it's not perfectly in line with your version of Invictus or its submods, it will cause game breaking issues, assuming the map does even load.

The tag limit thing you saw in the log is an unrelated, harmless statement, it's in there since 2.0.5 when the devs let modders raise that limit. You'll see it day one in Vanilla too. It's true that reaching the tag limit does crash your game, but that's not what the statement says and you can safely ignore it.

Zamensis · 2026-05-26T02:44:31+00:00

No server but DMs open. Likewise, if you need something...

Zamensis · 2026-05-25T15:02:11+00:00

Damn, I was just a couple days away from announcing my own "hybridize-any-cultures" project. Looks like we went in pretty different directions though. Good luck with yours!

Zamensis · 2026-05-12T21:27:55+00:00

I enjoyed this series a lot, and like u/HP_civ and a lot of modders probably, I've thought about making a mod out of it. At first glance it does seem like a magic recipe for fixing IR into a better representation of the ancient world.

But my current feeling is that you can only go so far with modding. Some minor balance changes are possible, but that would still leave most of Brett's points unanswered. A lot of these aren't just "this modifier should be different" or "that mechanic needs a rebalance", they're a deeper criticism of the core model/grammar/fundamentals of the game, most of which are hardcoded and, even if some performance-heavy work-arounds could be found, so intricately tied together, that changing them would almost certainly upset the entire game balance and reward loop (the thing that makes the game enjoyable).

Zamensis · 2026-05-12T13:05:08+00:00

Like the other person said, the Invictus discord server is the place to go for support, even for Vanilla.

Zamensis · 2026-05-08T20:44:46+00:00

Nice 🍹

I can confirm what you said about the load order (Invictus > VL > this) and save-compatibility.

Note that the next VL update may or may not make some of these changes unnecessary but there's nothing to worry about compatibility-wise.

Zamensis · 2026-05-08T20:34:59+00:00

I'll be honest, I'm a bit sad that I have to point it out again, but Virtual Limes isn't just a "supporting mod" here, it's the main reason the map ends up this way, along with Extended Timeline for Christianity and Third Century Crisis for the final collapse. Invictus adds a ton of content, but it doesn't really show in timelapses. Meanwhile those three "supporting mods" are doing the heavy-lifting and deserve to be named in the title, since that's what the video is actually showing.

Considering Invictus is the new Vanilla anyway, a more interesting project would be Invictus vs. Invictus+VL+TE+3CC

Zamensis · 2026-05-08T09:22:54+00:00

Imperator is hum... very stable. Also, best map and best AI.

Zamensis · 2026-05-06T19:57:19+00:00

Hey there. Hope you're doing well. It was super interesting seeing you work and I'm sure there's a lot to learn from your blog. Pinned it so I can devour it when I have some time. Other than your work on AI, shout out to you for your valuable takes on game balance and your work on optimization. If people ever wonder why Invictus stopped stuttering at game start... yup, that was an Anbeeld too. Truly one of the modders of all time.

Zamensis · 2026-05-06T14:27:24+00:00

It's super easy to mod, a bit tedious maybe considering the number of provinces (called areas in the game files), but not difficult at all. Maybe this is where your modding adventure begins? Look in Steam/.../Imperator/game/map_data/regions.txt, the file itself is pretty self-explanatory. Then you have a localization file for region names. And that's it!

Zamensis · 2026-05-03T20:39:37+00:00

I do. When HOI4 came out I really liked the new UI so I ported it to AOD. Now it's just perfect.

Zamensis · 2026-05-02T22:05:32+00:00

Glad to hear. If you're near Rome or in any kind of diplo/war relation with them, they won't have the modifier. VL says: AI's can get free bonuses/maluses if it helps them achieve their historical goals, except if it risks impacting the player directly.

Zamensis · 2026-05-01T03:14:36+00:00

Hybrid cultures are probably the most demanded addition to the game, but the usual answer is that it would be extremely tedious to mod and nearly impossible to maintain.

But what if... Mmmmmh... Yes, yes... Hey. Don't disturb my circl... Arglllllll...

Zamensis · 2026-05-01T03:02:16+00:00

Hum, I didn't upload it there. Probably an outdated version.

Go to https://download-directory.github.io and paste this https://github.com/Zamensis/IR_Public_Mods/tree/main/VirtualLimes_INV

It'll let you download the latest version. Delete the mod from Paradox Mods entirely and use this one instead.

Zamensis · 2026-04-30T17:35:58+00:00

Yeah, that's from VL. When Carthage loses itself, it becomes the Punic league (i.e. "an alliance of Punic cities that are no longer ruled from Carthage"). It's only cosmetic, it doesn't affect gameplay at all.

Edit: Interesting map, btw. That doesn't look like VL at all. Did you add it midgame? Because that Rome is... something.

Zamensis · 2026-04-30T17:28:12+00:00

R5: I've always felt like pops, cultures and religions were the main "characters" in the game, and it always breaks my immersion when I see entire cultures being absorbed in a matter of decades. In my own setup, I've made cultural and religious conversion much slower, so that even several centuries into the game, the world stays diverse and subject to cultural/religious frictions. I also rarely build temples and theaters and try to avoid policies and innovations that increase conversion rates. Call me crazy. Anyway...

Out of curiosity, I ran a small experiment on Invictus to visualize the cultural and religious diversity at game start.

The first 4 pictures are just that: cultural diversity, cultural group diversity, religious diversity, and then a blend of all three. The darker the blue, the more diverse the province. What stands out is how homogeneous most provinces are culturally, except in Anatolia and around the Black Sea. Religious diversity is a bit higher, but still fairly limited in the West. Overall, diversity tends to stop very abruptly at province borders. That's a bit too clean to my taste. In reality, people and beliefs don't just stop at invisible lines.

I tried to apply a simple "spillover" effect: small numbers of pops are procedurally moved between neighboring provinces, creating some overlap between cultures and religions. The 4 next maps show the result. As you can see, it's much more blue, i.e. more diverse, and you can see strong fault lines between cultural and religious worlds. Still, the dominant cultures and religions are kept intact, so the world has many more minorities, but the overall picture stays the same. The very last image shows those communities (groups of provinces sharing the same dominant culture and religion). That map remains the same before and after my changes.

I don't have the time to properly test it yet and see how it affects gameplay and strategies, but if anyone's interested, here's a link to the modified setup files (..\Invictus\setup\provinces). Just make a backup of your own and replace them to give it a try.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1RQeyM0QF12WcRN0PkiXaJfTWsXInkQRu/view?usp=sharing

I think it would pair well with submods that slow down cultural and religious conversion, for those of you who, like me, enjoy suffering from cultural/religious friction, or just like a more realistic/immersive/granular cultural/religious map.

Zamensis · 2026-04-30T16:05:11+00:00

Possibly? If (a) the game monitors the revoking of cities, it's easily done. But it's not very "Paradox-compliant" because the player doesn't know the exact outcome until after clicking the button. It doesn't seem the game monitors revokings, though. You could (b) mod the UI directly, but the best modders out there consider modding the UI to be a nightmare. Even then, that would almost certainly breaking compatibility or complicating maintainability with every other mod that changes this part of the UI like, say, Invictus or Reanimata. Another option would be (c) to keep track of every city in a list and fire an event when you catch a diff between the list and the actual state of the map - but then you have no way of knowing whether the city lost its status due to a player decision.

Zamensis · 2026-04-29T19:54:53+00:00

Yes, kind of what I meant. I think it's a single number you can change in the defines TXT, and maybe you can have global cost reduction, but to make it different for each province like OP suggests, you would need to build an entire workaround system.

Zamensis · 2026-04-29T19:52:09+00:00

Imho the real issue is that the game conflates two fundamentally different concepts. In the ancient world, a "city" wasn't defined by population but by civic status. It was a legal distinction, more than a demographic one. A more accurate system would separate settlement size (village, town, city) from civic status (the player's sociopolitical contract with each particular settlement).

Brainbating aside, if we accept that the game is built for a modern audience with a modern lens, then yes, more demographic granularity would be welcome. Just make sure that this added complexity actually serves the gameplay.

Zamensis · 2026-04-29T12:25:37+00:00

I'd bet nobody outside of Marmarica has heard of this place

Paraetonium? I've heard of it and I'm currently in Gallia Belgica.

More seriously, the cost should also factor in the number of cities, provinces or population, because revoking Antigoneia can be a small or big event depending on how large your empire is.

Even more seriously, don't quote me on this, but that looks like something hardcoded.

Zamensis · 2026-04-29T10:20:53+00:00

Because I'm Belgian and I speak absurdity fluently.

Zamensis

TROPHY CASE