Welcome back for this week’s Imperator dev diary.Today, I’m going to be talking a little bit about the three mysterious boxes that a few of you picked up on when we took a look at the new Religion View wireframe the other week.Linked strongly to Holy Sites, the Sacred Treasures system will be included as part of the Archimedes update. We will be including a set of general treasures for all owners of I:R, and a set of treasures as part of the Content Pack, with a Greek theme, as per the rest of the pack.Sacred treasures will appear in holy sites around the world, and are intended to represent famous or important artefacts that were known or presumed to have been revered in the ancient world.It’s important to note here, I think, what treasures are. Just as with the deities and omens, we’re keen to stress the importance of belief and ritual in antiquity, rather than treating these items as ‘magical’ in nature. The vast quantity of carved/written requests for blessings or even curses that are still found by archaeologists at temples and holy places dating to antiquity, shows that religion was a hugely relevant, almost transactional, part of life.Every holy site will have a number of slots for sacred treasures, represented as above in the religion view. This corresponds to the ‘level’ of the holy site, which in turn corresponds to the city status of the territory in question. A settlement will be able to sport one artefact, two in a city, and up to three in a metropolis.I’m keen that treasures are considered unique. Treasures will be created at the beginning of the game, and there will be a finite number. Where the Pythia in Delphi might begin with a brazier of Oleander, you will not find 45 Braziers of Oleander doing the rounds 100 years into the game.Treasures themselves will exert a provincial effect, applying a modifier to all territories within the province in which they reside. This makes it very relevant where your holy sites are located, and which city status they possess.Naturally, putting all your eggs in one basket can have a down side. Treasures are fair game for looting, and the desecration of a holy site by a unit will pass all contained treasures to the looting nation.Treasures can only be actively placed in holy sites which represent gods currently worshiped in your pantheon, and treasures present in holy sites of other deities will have no effect. To add a level of commitment to your choices, you will be unable to remove a treasure unless the holy site is desecrated (possible through the Religion View screen).To an extent. We’re addressing this in a couple of ways. Firstly, the various pop output bonuses for Capital, Capital Province and Capital Region are being cut down significantly. Secondly, by tying treasure slots to city status, you would need to have 4 metropolises in one province in order to stack the maximum number of treasure slots. This makes it theoretically possible, but a significant logistical challenge to feed and supply a fully decked out province.You most certainly can. Time allowing, I will also be looking into allowing characters to benefit from possessing treasures, replete with character effects. Nota bene: I have no current plans to enable the character aspect of the sacred treasures system in the base game.Next week, we’ll be showing off some more missions that will be coming as part of the Magna Graecia content pack, as well as an interaction with the deity mechanics that I hinted at a few diaries ago./Arheo