This is in "dream feat" territory for a Dark ages experience, so I'll try to be concrete amap.
I'm not a period buff admittedly, but regardless I think there's tons of potential to riff on vanilla features, esp. more recent ones.


-More depopulation events in border/migration zones; currently starting pop count is rather high across the board (raising levies on day 1 is epic. ngl); the integrated cultures mechanic helps with this on start date, but it could be further mitigated with some RNG (for instance, chance of spawning semi-loyal, province-sized feudatories in Frank lands, motivating the player to grow the powerbase in the capital region and occasionally make friends/be a tad more involved in subject affairs?),or decade-spanning malus for pop growth
-> If it's even feasible: to simulate devastation on the western border, it could fun to have the ability to inflict negative monthly civ. spreading out a territory (e.g. as RNG or cohort action when tribes pillage/annex a sedentary city, eventually barbarians could spawn as "bandits" in adjacent impassible terrain, perhaps even mid-late-game Magyar and Viking surprise iteration in presence of depopulated territory)
-As for warfare balance, overall, would it make sense to trade off a higher pop count for higher levy modifiers (accumulated during a play through) to simulate the transition towards feudalism (even if it still has a few centuries to go)? For instance, even Byzantine AI could slowly devolve into this paradigm a few centuries in.
-Huns, and maybe other, hand-selected tribes, could spawn LH or HA instead of LI when migrating (I'd simp for that!)
-Phasing out of slavery in some early Christian societies (maybe as a feature when present as the state religion) -> higher slave-to-freeman ration overall + lower overall freeman impact on powerbase. This can be accompanied with citizens producing 0 research, leaving it all up to nobles (tech grows very fast atm, and it's easy to mute dissent with a couple of oratory inventions).
-Inventions, traditions and army comp are all in everyone's mind, I have do doubt. I'm no modder, but I'm sure these can be a pain to implement. My blind guess would be that tweaking traditions first would have the highest impact on the experience, even in the eventuality army comp and inventions remain the same. (e.g. traditions that also change levy composition at some points, for instance Franks and Byzantine ending up with more HC/ or that sets a minimum % if integrated culture doesn't include it). Another focus option could be fort defensiveness, which is at times sorely lacking as sieges are very brief.
-Harsher weather penalties! I think this is the right setting to dare 12+% winter attrition, and other slaps of the sort. Currently, baguette is steamrolling through the European plains like they're building a national railway ^.^.
-The convert to Latin decision, in many cases, simply cancels most provincial disloyalty and levy size restrictions (leaving varying degrees of leftover Germanic, barely noticeable in some cases); eg. as the Visigoths, I had little motive to maintain starting culture outside of potentially forming the HRE). Not to mention it also unlocks Latin traditions, currently a disproportionate quality advantage when using legions.) -> In the best of worlds, the culture clash should eventually result in an ethno-genesis (in the shape of a new culture group, once more focusing on the West), but I have no idea how feasible that is via decision, or a "A New People" mission perhaps? I know it's historically too early in some places, but no other IR mod I know of does this :-)
-Last thing I noticed is regarding characters: competence for days! I've not seen portraits with pips over 12 with so much regularity in a while. Intended or not, it's refreshing. I haven't gone as far as founding the HRE yet, but it would be fun to have something resembling the "release autonomous enclave" mechanic from vanilla (the one in growth mission tree), where you assign a potentially good character to run the feudatory; better yet, it can be choosing between this, and moving HRE capital upon ruler death...). Again, with an inclination towards fragmentation and levy-boosting this would help get that medieval feeling settle in.
Also, apologies, I'm not aware if/which end date was applied. My admitted bias is here is towards fragmentation (in the west at least), leading up to an ideal status of low tech/low pop/tax and manpower constantly bouncing up and down dramatically. The loads of cannon fodder sent out as levies is one of the fun parts of this mod, and I'm of the opinion it would be even more fun if the player was further encouraged in-game to work towards this paradigm over legions.

"-More depopulation events in border/migration zones; currently starting pop count is rather high across the board (raising levies on day 1 is epic. ngl); the integrated cultures mechanic helps with this on start date, but it could be further mitigated with some RNG (for instance, chance of spawning semi-loyal, province-sized feudatories in Frank lands, motivating the player to grow the powerbase in the capital region and occasionally make friends/be a tad more involved in subject affairs?),or decade-spanning malus for pop growth
-> If it's even feasible: to simulate devastation on the western border, it could fun to have the ability to inflict negative monthly civ. spreading out a territory (e.g. as RNG or cohort action when tribes pillage/annex a sedentary city, eventually barbarians could spawn as "bandits" in adjacent impassible terrain, perhaps even mid-late-game Magyar and Viking surprise iteration in presence of depopulated territory)"

This could be done, and in fact has been talked about and planed, though the pops have been cut down quite a bit already.

"-As for warfare balance, overall, would it make sense to trade off a higher pop count for higher levy modifiers (accumulated during a play through) to simulate the transition towards feudalism (even if it still has a few centuries to go)? For instance, even Byzantine AI could slowly devolve into this paradigm a few centuries in."

Pretty neat idea, perhaps a guy could lower the amount at the start and add tech for higher levys.

"-Huns, and maybe other, hand-selected tribes, could spawn LH or HA instead of LI when migrating (I'd simp for that!)"

Neat idea as well, but I don't know if this is possible. I will ask around in the mod coop.

"-Inventions, traditions and army comp are all in everyone's mind, I have do doubt. I'm no modder, but I'm sure these can be a pain to implement. My blind guess would be that tweaking traditions first would have the highest impact on the experience, even in the eventuality army comp and inventions remain the same. (e.g. traditions that also change levy composition at some points, for instance Franks and Byzantine ending up with more HC/ or that sets a minimum % if integrated culture doesn't include it). Another focus option could be fort defensiveness, which is at times sorely lacking as sieges are very brief."

Inventions and traditions are not too hard to code, but to do them in a way to
1. Keep the game fun
2. Make it balanced
is hard without a lot of testing, so since it's just me now, this might have to fall on users at least some what.

"-Harsher weather penalties! I think this is the right setting to dare 12+% winter attrition, and other slaps of the sort. Currently, baguette is steamrolling through the European plains like they're building a national railway ^.^."

Yep This is planed as well.

"-The convert to Latin decision, in many cases, simply cancels most provincial disloyalty and levy size restrictions (leaving varying degrees of leftover Germanic, barely noticeable in some cases); eg. as the Visigoths, I had little motive to maintain starting culture outside of potentially forming the HRE). Not to mention it also unlocks Latin traditions, currently a disproportionate quality advantage when using legions.) -> In the best of worlds, the culture clash should eventually result in an ethno-genesis (in the shape of a new culture group, once more focusing on the West), but I have no idea how feasible that is via decision, or a "A New People" mission perhaps? I know it's historically too early in some places, but no other IR mod I know of does this :-)"

Yep that decision was made way back in the day before levy and hell it was there when mana was still a thing. Most decisions, events and so on, need to be redone.

"-Last thing I noticed is regarding characters: competence for days! I've not seen portraits with pips over 12 with so much regularity in a while. Intended or not, it's refreshing. I haven't gone as far as founding the HRE yet, but it would be fun to have something resembling the "release autonomous enclave" mechanic from vanilla (the one in growth mission tree), where you assign a potentially good character to run the feudatory; better yet, it can be choosing between this, and moving HRE capital upon ruler death...). Again, with an inclination towards fragmentation and levy-boosting this would help get that medieval feeling settle in."

I intended it for the ERE, and Ireland, but since I did not do any work on anything else, I don't know for sure. I think the autonomous enclave thing could be done, yet I am not too worried about that right now.

"Also, apologies, I'm not aware if/which end date was applied. My admitted bias is here is towards fragmentation (in the west at least), leading up to an ideal status of low tech/low pop/tax and manpower constantly bouncing up and down dramatically. The loads of cannon fodder sent out as levies is one of the fun parts of this mod, and I'm of the opinion it would be even more fun if the player was further encouraged in-game to work towards this paradigm over legions."

End date is really not picked yet. I agree that levies should become the backbone but at the moment it is quite hard to balanced.

How long have you played? It would be nice to get feedback, since I have not really played post 50 years in a long time.

Oh wow, such a great answer, I knew this had a previous iteration but wasn't aware of these details. Thank you! I was also absent for a bit, so yes I'd be glad to share what I've seen so far.

All in all I tried 3 playthroughs + a quick drop-in to form HRE with Ostrogoths (no other mods running, normal diff., all fairly casual/moderate on the min-maxing)
-1st as south slav tribe, got systematic CTD after ~60-70 some years, but this save file is no longer around unf. Nothing too memorable, other than culture in the non-populated Batic was simply tagged as "Slav").
-2nd as Visigoths, no bugs/issues but gameplay-wise, after taking Iberia I eventually hit a wall at trying to even chip away at Franks and Ostrogoths some 175 years into it (I would've needed to focus on these two way more early game).
-3rd as Munster (went a bit past the "endgame"). I wanted to see if doing a tall-ish (4700 pops), freeman-centric Albion could stand head on to Paris (Over 27000!!! pops, tons of huge cities and overcrowded rural areas/ pop growth has exploded since 2.0)...let's just say my light-hearted mix of levy/legion + mil trad was not a dud, but still outnumbered many times over, and contending with similar-sized navy.


Runs 2 and 3, I can say for sure everything converged towards a handful of rather stable colossi on the map (Frankish kingdoms are at it early on with each other, and Burgundy rarely lasted for any length of time; Byzantines reconquer moderately, but with little to no setbacks if Arabs don't unite). I wasn't always paying attention to AI, but did get rather frequent "x Civil war comes to an end", despite barely seeing it unfold on the map (even when drawn out) and seldom getting a trade offer from rebels; this lead to a periodic cycle for large AI nations where governors sit at 100% loyalty for 10-year periods, followed by a tiny civil war another ~10 years later; rinse and repeat.

Since religious conversion towards Chalcedonian happens rather quickly (understandable in this context), it's one less step required towards full pop assimilation, and in this case it shows (not sure how the AI is set to behave in this regard, could just be late-game tech making it happen passively):[other gone screenshot, Frankish was 85% of pops in the massive empire]. -> By comparison, 2nd run had diverse migratory tribes just chilling in the steppes (and Franks were constantly fighting Ostrogoths for small gains, with Pannonian/Bavarian tags caught in the cross-fire for some time, more how I envisaged it); needless to say, in the 3rd run defensive leagues of 5+ members didn't stand an ounce of a chance against an empire spanning from Brittany to Danube, Vistula and eventually Crimea (and beyond!).

Per se, the Charlemagne-on-steroids trope isn't far-fetched here, but I will admit there's nothing to mitigate currently and the thought of Merovingian kings (no dynasty change in my run) taking a dip in the Caspian edges towards insanity. As you mentioned, there's so much interconnected balancing involved -> the overarching feeling is that, past the first ~75-ish years, the West starts pushing East (snacking on smaller tags), and there's not much happening the other way around (even on the run where Arabs united, they pretty much went idle after conquering Mesopotamia.) Bulgars are somewhat active, but it feels empty if they're defeated for a reason since I noticed annexation happens almost all the time.

I'm seeing two notions emerge from this, and it makes me wonder about diplomacy. :


-Could AI be pushed towards having larger-sized clients to some extent, thus delaying them reaching 500 provinces too early on? Any balance in this regards appears to go out of the window as soon as AI reaches great nation status, and it only blobs from there.
E.g. In the first screenshot I hoped to share, Slavonia was textbook buffer between Franks and ERE; they remained pagan, independent and with no relations/nothing going on really, whereas they could be steered into acting as an unruly subject for either empire -> Concretely, this could be, for example, 500+ AI more inclined to renew attempts at subjugating a nation that successfully revolted a first time, wearing them down in the process. In the same vein, I can see this prolonging the lifespan of newer tags (Burgundy, Bulgars, Avars, Poles, etc.). Even if they don't turn out to be popular playable nations, it's a bit anticlimactic, to see them gobbled up so quickly by AI on the first occasion.

-"Liberate nation" in peace deals. from what I observed in vanilla, you can typically liberate tags that were present at game start -> is there a path where more options could be available early on?
Either this, or if I dare: the ability to liberate a non-capital territory w. preexisting fort as a new tag (accompanied by forcible conversion of the ruler-to-be when Christian tags demand peace in such way, perhaps?). I could expand and get carried away easily here, so I'll stop; in any case, I can see having the ability to liberate rural petty-kings being in the right spirit. :-).


For traditions/army/tech, I'll admit, I was hoping other players had more exhaustive and immersive ideas in this regard. The balancing act would prompt one to have it all laid out in conjointly. -> For one, I'm not sure what the plan is for army comp, and all of tech feels like a bit of a beast. My quick guess is that the army base ingredients could roughly remain as they are, just re-shuffled in terms of proportion via traditions (ok, new unit icons would go a long way for flavor, minimally another icon to replace the scutum for HI; I'll let you know if I suddenly develop visual art skills ^.^'). (I also now recall chariots are the default secondary unit icon selected for these nations at game start)
->I can try riffing here, with the West in mind as an initial example (and to keep it macro) - I think traditions should focus on evolving said proportions (1 slightly larger tree per starting culture); in most cases in the West, it currently ends up fielding levies with masses of LI/bit of HI-or-sth else)/LC, with eventual legions that spam Archers/LC (roughly 10:1 from what I saw).
Ideally (aka. in a levy-only/levy-favoured scenario, player and AI both would access an army model that allows the player to "detach" a contingent that would act as their better fighting army (w. HI and HC):
-Branch 1; Increasingly stronger and present HC to represent the growing influence of the nobility. Could be accompanied w. governor disloyalty)
-Branch 2; for non-byzantine Westerners at least, it feels as though HI should be "earned", i.e. representing retinues in some form.
-Branch 3; could be the levy size/attrition/defense one, perhaps paired with malus on pop growth/supply limit/faster war exhaustion increase.
-Branch 4: could be the "royal branch", boosting various stats for that first levy, for example. I also think this should be the way to access legions, instead of changing a law that is available on start date. Is there a way, in theory, to only apply some of these effects to the ruler's region (ie starting experience, morale,discipline,siege ability)? This could even be applied to Byzantines in some fashion, e.g. Varangian guard.. Hypothetically, this would be the suitable branch for accessing another culture's traditions as well.

Tech is still a major point: it goes fast and the high pop count throughout caps it rather quickly for the big tags. All the passive tech-level bonuses add up nation-wide (territory pop cap, pop/food growth, civ, etc.), and by the time the initial spurt of invasions conclude 75 years into it, there's practically nothing to hold it back. -> I noticed the game clock is like 100x faster than in vanilla at speed 5, and I highly suspect it has to do with the fact there are fewer tags on the map. I guess it boils down to the lack of setbacks near start date + pop is still high overall. Maybe actual cities could be the target of merciless depop events? Since rural areas are not too shabby at start, it could help direct the "slow down there" factor to tech and trade.

Hope this helps to some extent! I can't promise prolonged testing, but I'll keep playing this great mod nonetheless; might even join the eventual Discord since we can't share screenshots in these posts.

Something to due with holdings and character interactions to more simulate the partiton of land and the beginning of feudalism

It would be good if you could add content beyond you know reform empire sit around, you know.

1)Create "black bulgarians" culture and "slavic bulgarian" culture so people can create slavic bulgaria if they need instead of using some asiatic culture what is more accurate at some point but i think i people want to play asiatic they can play as "black bulgars" (thats how they being called by historians black bulgars is kutrigurs and utigurs)

2)Separate croats serbs and others southern slavian groups.

3)Fill north because there was a lot of tribes.

4)Fill east part of the map (north from the polanes) with other slavic groups and tribes and add baltic tribes.

If you need a maps of tribes settlement write me in ds SirCatAngry #5685.