Folks, the Bengal tiger has been out of the bag for a week now, so I think it's time for the first dev diary onIn this first entry, I will just give you a quick overview of what this new expansion tois and what it is not. In the weeks to come, I will cover each feature in detail.First of all, why India? Well, it's always been a long-term goal of mine, and we have gone through the obvious stuff by now. The old eastern edge of the map is suboptimal, both politically and geographically. Many powerful states that interacted with Europe are cut in half, not to mention that the southeastern corner of the map is unhistorically dull. In general, adding India will make the whole Middle East more interesting to play. Most importantly though, India is such a dynamic and fascinating region!Now, there has been some speculation about how the map will be handled exactly, and the answer is simply that we are extending it far to the east. It's not a separate map or anything like that. This means that everyone who owns the game will be able to interact with, (and conquer!) India, whether they ownor not.In order to extend the map and try keep the wasteland areas to a minimum while at the same time making sure India was big enough, we had to twist the entire eastern part of the old map. While the new map projection is no more realistic per se, we did seize this opportunity to correct some fairly major problems with the old map, especially around the Caspian and Aral seas. The addition of all this new territory also meant we could finally put many provinces in their correct place (we had tended to crowd the eastern edge of the old map with provinces that were actually off map, due to their importance.) Apart from all the new Indian provinces, we have also added provinces in central Siberia, Transoxania and Afghanistan. So far, I think we're at about 330 new provinces, bringing the total count up to 1442 (including all sea zones), and it's likely we'll add some more before we're done.Best of all, none of this will cost you a dime. However, if you wish to play as a Hindu, Buddhist or Jain ruler - with all the associated mechanics, graphics and events - you will have to buy the expansion. You really don't want to miss out on things like reincarnation, holy cows, levitating monks, Thuggees and tiger hunts! Oh, and there will be a unique set of Indian portraits included inCan the game really handle all these new characters and provinces without slowing to a crawl? Yes. Actually, memory usage was the bigger issue, but we've comfortably reduced that by more than 300Mb, which allows us to add all the extra characters. We've also optimized the game for speed, but it might end up running a bit slower than before (though it should only be noticeable on speed 5 unless you have an ancient rig.) I should also mention that due to the drastic changes we are making to the game, old save games will not remain compatible with version 2.1! However, version 2.0.4 will remain available as a beta branch on Steam.That's all for today folks! Peace.[video=youtube;TBQmY4TKUrc]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBQmY4TKUrc[/video]