With Ubi sinking, ironically, I think Paradox has a good shot at obtaining the HOMM franchise if they really want to go the fantasy GSG route. HOMM, for various reasons, already lend itself well to the GSG format: discrete races, an already established setting, built-in political entities to use, and more importantly, a lot of wiggle room to do what they want. Erathia alone has shit like Erathia, Av-Lee, Bracada, Kreegans, etc, and they all have their own lil rivalries and shit you can use. (Technically there's that issue of NWC ending the old world in HOMM4 but it's easily retconned lore. Or they can just use the HOMM4 setting, or even the Ubislop HOMM5+ one.)
Occluded if that is what you mean, but more likely, you just can't. Depicting the central figure of any religion in a detached, secular fashion is going to piss a lot of people off, either the adherents of that religion, or seculars/non-adherents who object to the religion's narrative being taken verbatim, or both if it is some historiography that neither group likes. Mohammad, especially, is thorny because Siddhartha, Jesus, and other pre-modern religious movement leaders weren't running around as a warlord (at least in the same way as Mohammad). So it is much easier to relegate them to "just" the status of oblique events, where you take the fence-sitting approach to any purported miracles so innocuously that it would only be the most unreasonable to actually take issue with it.
Now, if you ask what I would do? I would do the same as Timur in EU5; he spawns in as a courtier in the court of whoever owns Mecca at his birthdate and when his flight to Medina occurs, it starts an event chain where he tries to seize power and convert the Arab polytheists and Jews to his new religion or die trying. Obviously, being two centuries in more or less from the start of such a game, there would be a lot of chances for a player to mess with things and get prep time, which might make it underwhelming. You would really need to plan out and balance well to make it worth doing and not just be a fuck you lose button, but still have a bit of challenge.
Wanted the game to be more of a sandbox and know that the players are upset over it feeling more meaningless with the content in the game feeling very disconnected, the quality of the simulation in the game doesn't match the human layer
Update 1.2:
Urban Rights for specializing urban locations
Trade orders allow for more manual control of automated trade
More proper heavy/light cav/infantry split
HRE Facelift
Terrain specialization based off of capital, you get a 20% proximity speed bonus in whatever terrain your capital has
Health and cabinet traits for character
Update 1.3:
Great powers rework, not based around dominating regions instead of score. Regional power rank added
Estates will have separate cultures and religions
8 new estate interactions
Reformation will be reworked to use the new movement system from the Byzantium DLC
Rebel negotiation
Cutting profit margins for production buildings to reduce snowballing and make choosing them more important
Update 1.4:
Country ambitions system for selecting long term goals and creating dynamic rivalries and conflict
Narrative expeditions that can be manned by characters
Dynastic content
More economic warfare
Catholicism update and Crusades rework
Camels as both levies and a trade good
Update 1.5:
More mechanics for building-based countries
Christianity rework, more dynamic schisms and mending
Wanted the game to be more of a sandbox and know that the players are upset over it feeling more meaningless with the content in the game feeling very disconnected, the quality of the simulation in the game doesn't match the human layer
Update 1.2:
Urban Rights for specializing urban locations
Trade orders allow for more manual control of automated trade
More proper heavy/light cav/infantry split
HRE Facelift
Terrain specialization based off of capital, you get a 20% proximity speed bonus in whatever terrain your capital has
Health and cabinet traits for character
Update 1.3:
Great powers rework, not based around dominating regions instead of score. Regional power rank added
Estates will have separate cultures and religions
8 new estate interactions
Reformation will be reworked to use the new movement system from the Byzantium DLC
Rebel negotiation
Cutting profit margins for production buildings to reduce snowballing and make choosing them more important
Update 1.4:
Country ambitions system for selecting long term goals and creating dynamic rivalries and conflict
Narrative expeditions that can be manned by characters
Dynastic content
More economic warfare
Catholicism update and Crusades rework
Camels as both levies and a trade good
Update 1.5:
More mechanics for building-based countries
Christianity rework, more dynamic schisms and mending
Gilded Destiny News
Dev Diary 35 has been released. There is some insight about Gilded Destiny's development process; the creator tool got some upgrades to make modding easier, and situations have been added to make tracking events easier.
I'm away from my computer this week and very busy, so didn't see the rites DD so I'll keep it brief. Basically rites are subdivisions of faiths, where they have a unique value in relation to the baseline faith of if they are in accordance with them, and if it's above 50, they might get kicked to the curb to become a new faith, with over 100 simply becoming a separate faith to begin with if created as such. Bunch of religions are being reworked to use rites, with Islam going back to Sunni, Shia and Kharijite. I assume more faiths like Buddhism and hope big polytheistic religions will do it too like Slavic and Tengri. Seems like a good way to doing regional variety of faith without making them wholly separate. I am surprised they didn't add a British/English rite, given the reason for the papacy backing William was to bring the church in England back in line with Rome's promoted doctrines. Given that was a big fucking problem for the Papacy in medieval period, I hope they maximize rites for the west to help simulate that out given you can play as the pope.
Edit: very interesting thing found in the dev replies, all virtues/sin traits are more based on the tenets that are permitted or forbidden respectively with cutoffs for the magnitude, so what is viewed as sinful or virtuous can shift over time, very neat!
Edit: very interesting thing found in the dev replies, all virtues/sin traits are more based on the tenets that are permitted or forbidden respectively with cutoffs for the magnitude, so what is viewed as sinful or virtuous can shift over time, very neat!
CK3 redemption arc would be the funniest result of this. I do hope it will be good, but I'll wait until they really outline how the ecclesiastical gameplay is like before I predict if By God Alone will be good or just okay.
The base vassal annexation cost has been quadrupled in 1.2, from 50 to 200. A good change imo because previously you could centralize your realm and annex all vassals too fast
Early game it's not only valid strategy, but a necessary strategy if you want to expand as anyone. You can't integrate land fast enough and don't spread enough control to hold all the land by yourself.
