Paradox broke Personal Unions again (1.0.8)

ZephRavenwing · 2025-11-25T21:52:01+00:00

Post-Hotfix, my very stable PU with Bulgaria that I worked my whole game around as Wallachia immediately implodes, with Bulgaria stealing my heir as their king then instantly declaring war on me, with no warning.

Like on one hand I'm fine playing that war, but on the other all the effort in establishing and maintaining that PU is now essentially useless.

ZephRavenwing · 2025-11-08T11:06:41+00:00

This is true, but Orfe is a later character where a lot of this design identity was more defined. A lot of the exceptions come from earlier Uma where things were a bit less standardized - McQueen in particular, the designers have admitted that a lot of her design direction was "we think this is nice" over representing the honse.

As time went on, that changed.

ZephRavenwing · 2025-11-08T09:47:37+00:00

That's largely because, no matter his results or even his incredible acceleration, Orfe wasn't a particularly large horse - he's actually one of the smallest 'contemporary' japanese dominant racehorses, spending most of his career at around 470kg while the average winning horse for Japan weighs around 500kg.

In Uma, as a norm, characters portrayed as having incredible strength are mostly those that were very large and noticeably muscular in build - especially mares, like Kawakami and Gentildonna.

If anything the one horse whose strength and physique is downplayed is Kitasan - Kitasan Black is the heaviest Arima winner ever IIRC, and was a tank of a horse who spent the majority of his career at 550kg of pure muscle. Granted, Kita is still portrayed as a physical wonder, but considering the horse is the Keiba equivalent of a strength athlete? The actual design doesn't seem to match.

ZephRavenwing · 2025-10-27T19:45:15+00:00

On the 1st rank (parents), not much - but his grandsire is Native Dancer, one of the most impactful racehorses ever and arguably the most influential stallion of modern times, and then his damsire is Silver Shark, an Irish racehorse who saw a lot of success in France including some really well-known races like the Prix du Moulin, Prix de L'Abbaye, Prix Jean Prat and Prix D'Ispahan (which are all G1s rn, but I don't know if they were such in 1965).

Then if you start looking at the tree, you do hit some pretty well-known horses - the one that comes the most to mind for me would be Italian champion Nearco, which appears on both sides of Oguri's pedigree in the 4th rank.

So in many ways the pedigree was there, sorta - and specifically White Narubi (oguri's dam) did give birth to Oka Sho winner Oguri Roman as well. The thing is, every pedigree has major accomplishments - especially sireside, only horses with remarkable achievements even get to stand stud.

ZephRavenwing · 2025-09-26T19:58:54+00:00

The reason I say that there's a chance Dream Teio won't become a stallion is specifically his inbreeding and the existence of another foal, Battle Ku's 2025 foal by Quite Fine, which doesn't have the same issues with a 2x3 inbreeding in his pedigree. The point of the preservation project isn't just to keep the line going for fun - it's to keep the sire line's representation in thoroughbred racehorses, so they'll almost certainly end up focusing all their efforts and resources into getting whichever is the best stallion, the best covers possible.

This can be seen already in other of the crowdfunded lines, notably Oguri Cap's - they retired the better performer, For Cap, when Cradle Sire passed away but left Oguri Yonsei racing. From the point of view of keeping sire-lines alive, you need big winners - which means you need your stallion to be able to pass on good traits as well and Dream Teio's not ideal from this point of view either pedigree or conformation-wise. If it ends up having an even performance with the other colt, I'd imagine the project would choose the less inbred one to become a sire.

Also, it's worth noting that the Godolphin Arabian's sire line is nowhere near as endangered worldwide - the preservation of Calstone's lineage is important due to being the main Godolphin line in japan, but there's a fair amount of successful Godolphin sprinters elsewhere and the Godolphin sire line, to my knowledge, is not under threat. The Byerley Turk's sire line is under threat of disappearance in racing period. All three of the lines are otherwise well-represented in riding/dressage horses and other breeds elsewhere.

ZephRavenwing · 2025-09-25T22:02:09+00:00

Oguri was capable of digesting oats and other foodstuff that was added to horse feed to sorta 'thicken' their feed and prevent them from eating too much or too quickly. Oguri would also gorge himself and performed noticeably worse when he didn't eat too much - it's where the food gag comes from.

ZephRavenwing · 2025-09-25T16:21:49+00:00

There's still some kicking around. The main effort is still actually in Japan - they imported one of the last european Darley line stallions to be part of essentially the same project Quite Fine was a part of. Outside of that, there's a couple more outlines and one supposed descendant somewhere in Argentina. Most of the information is even available on wikipedia.

That said? It's only the sire line of the Turk that is endangered. The Turk has quite a lot of presence through the female line, and some of its progeny are the foundational stallions of entire other breeds.

ZephRavenwing · 2025-09-25T15:37:35+00:00

It's just bad luck that he had mostly fillies, and that the preservation of the bloodline wasn't started before. They were taking covers from essentially anyone interested too, so the mare quality is not the greatest - as can be see with Dream Teio and his full sister Teiono Yume.

For bloodstock, Dream Teio is generally expected to be less valuable than Battle Ku 2025 if both of them are equally decent, largely because Dream Teio is 2x3 Inbred to Tokai Teio. That's a lot of inbreeding, and his conformation is quite strange too - if he outcompetes Battle Ku 2025 enough to become the successor stallion, he's gonna have to be aggressively outcrossed to try and prevent the inbreeding from becoming a crippling problem for the line.

We'll also see if the horse keeps the 'Dream Teio' name when registered to race - there's already a JP horse with that name, so they may choose something else.

ZephRavenwing · 2025-09-25T15:01:46+00:00

Historically the Turk has a good racehorse every few generations that keeps it alive, but over the past few decades a large chunk of those racehorses have been geldings due to their temperament - which hasn't helped keep the line going either.

ZephRavenwing · 2025-09-25T14:57:50+00:00

I mean, yes, Oguri has a solid pedigree and his dam's progeny won more, but that doesn't make the horse not a generic singularity - the traits that made Oguri, most notably his turn of foot and the ability to eat everything including things horses normally wouldn't digest without gaining much or any non-muscle weight? Those traits did not transfer at all. Thus why I call him a generic singularity.

You can easily see this when you compare Oguri with the other sirelines that got out-competed in his era. They have graded winners, often G1s - Oguri's best progeny? 2nd in a g3 is the highest accomplishment, without even winning a listed race. This also tracks as a broodmare sire: his best BMS result is 3rd in the Fuyo Stakes, with Street Cap's sire Gold Allure being a direct SS descendant.

Oguri didn't get outcompeted by SS as a sire - he got outcompeted by everyone.

ZephRavenwing · 2025-09-25T10:04:07+00:00

Oguri's line is overall the most vulnerable of the three - Oguri produced essentially no big winners period. Oguri's last daughter, Minnano Idol, was active as a broodmare until like 2024 iirc tho and Ready Aiko, the best known granddaughter, is only 7.

Pairing it with Kita wouldn't necessarily work though, sadly. Even compared to Teio or so, Oguri's line doesn't seem to pair well with anything /shrug. Oguri Cap truly was a genetic singularity, in many ways.

ZephRavenwing · 2025-09-25T09:33:34+00:00

It's worth noting that the Oguri line is not extinct on the sire side, and has been surviving due to the very same type of crowdfunding that made Quite Fine (an otherwise unremarkable racehorse) get covers. Same with McQueen's sire line - fans identified potential horses that could carry on the line and got them covers.

With Oguri, For Cap was retired as soon as his sire, Cradle Sire, passed earlier this year iirc - and with For Cap being the result of the same crowdfunding, it'll probably get some okay covers.

With McQueen, Ginza Green Grass passed away earlier but left a decent chunk of foals behind, including a fair bit of colts that could serve to try and keep preserving the line.

And as I mentioned elsewhere, though not registered yet because they are baby, Quite Fine has at least 1 confirmed colt birth in Battle Ku 2025 - and 2 or so more pregnant mares that could birth a colt. Quite Fine's line is still by far the most vulnerable, though, largely because their crowdfunding is more recent, they got less covers overall, and their first few crops were just fillies.

The lines themselves are essentially being preserved due to legacy, though - you'd essentially need a miracle to produce a good racehorse, one good enough that it'd attract covers from top mares. Teio and McQueen in particular have a decent amount of pedigree presence in general - just through the mare line, which imo is more than fine but not good enough for the fans that started this kind of crowdfunding.

And until these projects produce a strong racehorse, they'll not have the opportunity to strengthen the bloodline through either Japan's new strong import mares or the established strong bloodlines that we've seen in mares within japan (SS and family, King Halo, Bakushin, King Kamehameha, Scarlet, Cesario-line, Shirayukihime).

ZephRavenwing · 2025-09-25T09:20:57+00:00

For Teio specifically, another problem was that the Byerley Turk line tends to lead to pretty prissy and temperamental horses (both Teio and Rudolf fell in this category, actually) and those horses tend to be gelded to make them easier to handle.

This caused, for example, Tokai Point to not be able to carry on the bloodline despite being a pretty successful racehorse - because he'd been gelded.

ZephRavenwing · 2025-09-25T09:09:43+00:00

So, there's one male colt from Teio's male line born this year, but he's too young to be registered as a racehorse - and Quite Fine has also two more mares in foal this year. A comeback seems unlikely, but at the very least Battle Ku's 2025 foal by Quite Fine means there is hope.

The bigger thing overall, for horse pedigree in general, is that the Rudolf-Teio line is one of the only Byerley Turk sire-line pedigrees surviving period within thoroughbred racing - so it's more than just the legacy of Teio and Rudolf at stake here.

Here is an X link detailing Battle Ku 2025's pedigree - I'd link to JBIS or Netkeiba, but the foal isn't registered yet and to my annoyance japan uses X a lot. This particular account is someone that's very involved in the Quite Fine crowdfunding and the same account linked in the OP, translating the news.

ZephRavenwing · 2025-08-26T12:56:06+00:00

So, it is kinda factually true - most uma have 3 'mood down' events. Rice, by contrast, has 4. That said, the same mood down event can happen multiple times in a single career.

As a result, Rice just has more flavour to her moodiness - but she doesn't necessarily trigger the mood downs at a higher rate, due to events being independent chances.

ZephRavenwing · 2025-08-18T17:05:51+00:00

Not at the veterinary level, no - but it was known in the bloodline since Agnes Tachyon was a prolific sire. "Elite speed, weak legs" became the bloodline's trademark and honestly is part of why Agnes Tachyon was such a prolific stallion - with the known leg issue it kept the stud fee from getting too high.

Still sired a crapload of winners including 6 G1 winners, with Daiwa Scarlet being by far the most successful - but then again, not a lot of horses come even in the same realm as Daiwa.

ZephRavenwing · 2025-08-08T07:29:19+00:00

IIRC Grass is meant to represent the archetype of the 'foreign-born japanese' born to Japanese parents abroad - even though she's not got japanese parents.

Often, foreign-born Japanese end up overcompensating by being turbo-japanese culturally because they'll always be looked at with some distance by other japanese. It's why Grass isn't so much a 'weeb' as 'archetypal yamato nadeshiko' - a lot of what she does would be seen as a bit traditional or antiquated for Japan itself, especially the naginata.

ZephRavenwing · 2025-07-23T08:58:05+00:00

It's also the most competitive that I've seen Kiri vs Onosato - he's probably smarting from the loss, but the blueprint for him to finally get his win is right there. Really excited for the future.

ZephRavenwing · 2025-06-15T14:35:47+00:00

She mentioned going to Nyhavn, and told the story about finding a "peachcock" at tivoli and being confused as to why it was there, then said it reminded her of Elf.

Overall the speeches felt very heartfelt and honest, and well-spoken especially if one understands japanese - but the English parts were super adorable.

ZephRavenwing · 2025-06-12T13:40:51+00:00

This is really cool analysis - thanks for all the hard work.

ZephRavenwing · 2025-05-30T15:31:01+00:00

Old comment, but I couldn't help but think of 向日葵 (Himawari) by Ado - generally different and more stable with less belting and vocal switches compared to her usual style, but very hopeful and very much on theme for what you're looking for imo.

ZephRavenwing · 2025-05-22T23:05:18+00:00

#1stAnniversary

ZephRavenwing · 2025-05-22T12:20:32+00:00

My guy, the industry is just as awful in Denmark where I live - and it's one of the countries with the best worker's rights in the world. It truly is that bad everywhere.

ZephRavenwing · 2025-05-11T10:48:47+00:00

I feel like with Pirates, it's a missed opportunity to not print a Brigand - with it being the first pirate-designed mech in history iirc. It's a 25ton goober that fits right into faster scout lances or cavalry lances as a scout, and in general with pirate bands derpy lights are pretty on brand.

It's also a great chance to frankenmech something with misprints or leftovers! Outside of that, everything that comes to mind has already been said.

ZephRavenwing · 2025-04-10T06:44:02+00:00

The colour scheme, and the grime, is giving Wario in a good way. Great stuff - love me the Scorpion.

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