[II] Feature Preview 6: Imperial Support
Italia Invicta Feature Preview #6: Imperial Support
Hello and welcome to our next preview.
First of all, I have an exhilarating announcement to make: We finally found a skinner for our mod, and an excellent one at that! His name is ev1 and his first work for our mod is intriguing new skins for the Varangian Guard unit (he also made the above banner).
Varangian guards also play a huge role in the feature I want to talk about today: The Imperial Support request.
This feature is inspired by the fact that Roman Emperors would frequently lead campaigns in their outlying themata, such as southern Italy, and would even more often send part of the imperial armies to help when the local strategos was in trouble.
As the Catapan (katepanos) of Italy, you are the first and foremost ruler over the Greek territories on our map, only surpassed by the Emperor himself; therefore it is both your privilege and your duty to protect and sustain the provinces in your charge.
Sometimes, however, you may not be able to defend your holdings only with the local resources you can muster. In this case, you will have the opportunity to request support from the Emperor himself, who will then send an army to aid you in your struggle.
In gameplay terms, this translates to a special application of the levy script. As long as you control at least one Royal Demesne settlement, you can trigger this feature and receive fresh, well-trained forces a turn later. These forces will be quite expensive to maintain, however, so you won't wish to keep them in the field them for longer than necessary.
Using the feature has other drawbacks, too: Summoning the imperial army is seen as a sign of weakness, and will therefore increase unrest in your cities and be detrimental to your diplomatic situation.
In addition to that, you won't be able to invoke it very often, you'll probably not see it more than a few times in your campaign. The Emperor is especially resilient to support aggressive moves on your part, it'll be easier to get his help when your settlements are directly threatened.
This very interesting and useful feature is one of the few ways to get your faction-specific elite units for the Catapanate. They're quite rare and for most of the time you will have to rely on local levies and your well-trained standard infantry units.
One of these elite units is of course the Varangian Guard, the Emperor's loyal bodyguard of Rus and Viking mercenaries which was instated in the 10th century as a replacement for the chronically disloyal traditional bodyguard, which often would be all too involved in the palace intrigues that haunted the Eastern Roman Empire through all of its existence, and grew ever more important over the next centuries.
To conclude this preview, ev1 made some screenshots of the promised Varangians (and a signature banner as promo material). I'm really astonished about how good they look!
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[II] Feature Preview 1: View City
[II] Feature Preview 2: Degrees of Independence
[II/AD] Feature Preview 3: Authority
[II] Feature Preview 4: The Levy Script
[II] Feature Preview 5: Scalable Difficulty
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Originally Posted by Kadagar_AV
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