MA Update #4 Discussion

[shifty157]

Thanks GMM.

Thats a good question that you have.

I assume youre talking about our three dead regions. These regions (the saharan desert in the lower left, the arabian desert in the lower right, and the russian desert in the upper right) are areas that just cannot be conquered. They possess minimal to no farmable land and combined with harsh living conditions they are only inhabitted by small nomadic tribes. The result is that any imposition of a centralized government on these lands would not only be incredibly unprofitable (these lands truly provide no benefit of any sort) but would also be rather impossible.

To reflect this in the game we have created dead provinces. They are provicnes but their cities will be as far away from civilization as possible and surrounded by impassable terrain. So you can still move your armies around the province if you wish but you will never be able to conquer it (nor would you want to).

Obviously there are gameplay advantages to this as well. As you mentioned it does focus expansion toward the center of the map which is historically accurate and provides for better gameplay. We dont want the AI to have a couple of full stack armies just roaming about the edges of the map in these provinces so by moving the cities out of the AI's sight range and surrounding them the AI should completely ignore them.

However. That doesnt mean the provinces should be ignored. You will be able to recruit exotic mercenaries in these provicnes that you wont find anywhere else. We also have plans to spawn rebel raiding armies on the borders of these provinces forcing you to keep larger than normal garrisons in the area. None of this of course is yet finalized but thye are ideas that we would like to implement.