Dev Diary 17 - Release Date for v0.3, Hermetics Equivalent, New Counties South of the Border, New Candomble Mechanics, Changes to Mormonism, and Prarielander Culture

Heremetics Equivalent

Christians

Cult of Saints

Latter-Day Saints

Jewish

Old World Cultist



Afro-Syncretic

Pacifc

Occultist (both unreformed and reformed)

Hindu

The Ivy League society screen, with join conditions. Custom art provided by Deds.

Graduate

Lecturer

Professor

Dean

Members screen for the Ivy League.

New Counties South of the Border

The County of El Novillo.

Puerto Rico, remodeled. The new counties are called (clockwise): Abacoa, San Juan, Guayama, and Mayagüez.

Redrawn Pacific NW. Note that the highlighted county no longer belongs to the Haida.

The county of Uaça, in northern South America.

New Candomble Mechanics

New religious map of South America.

The "Select Patron Orixá decision".

Selecting a patron Orixá. Note that this is just the first of several different pages.

The "Follower of Oxóssi" character modifier.

Gaining the "Shrewd" trait.

Changes to Mormonism

Character screen for King Ammaron of Deseret. Note that there isn't a "secondary wives" tab anymore.

Description of the Woolleyite heresy.

The Woolleyites split from mainstream Mormonism in the early 20th century after polygamy was officially banned by the Church. Led by Lorin Woolley, the "Woolleyites", as they are known [after the Event], stubbornly continue to practice polygamy to this day. Mainstream Mormonism considers [plural marriage] heretical, and will excommunicate anyone who is found to be part of one. Click to expand...

The "Restore Woolleyite Presidency" decision.

The Strangite President. (Note that this character isn't defined, and that a new religious head will be generated at the start of every new game.)

Moks (Independence)



Quincy (Nauvoo)

Four Lakes (Voree)

Michilimackinac (Beaver Island)

Rochester



Prarielander culture

Prairielander culture.

New religion map of Alberta.

The Kingdom of Prairieland, in all its glory.

Other minor changes

New colormap for both land and water

New heightmap and terrain files

Added new history for c_chicago, explaining how the area ended up in the hands of the current Duke

Adjusted name lists of several cultures

Added new holy orders. Every single on-map religion (including Candomble, but besides Raven Tales) now has a holy order, but some of them will only activate if certain conditions are met.

Added several new historical rulers - check Lousiana, Lakota, and Ontario

Adjusted diversity percentages

Custom graphical cultures now have more than one hair color (this means that half of the map will no longer have black hair only)

Fixed various bugs related to Enatic succession

Added some new artifacts from the old world



Added a couple of Finnish gods to the Norse deity list, to represent Yooper influence

Removed ARKOpack CoAs, added new CoAs for various religions instead

Added new count in Oaxaca, Mexico. CUMBIA HAME HA!



Added a dozen characters from everyone's favorite Kaiserreich dating sim

Yep, today's Dev Diary is a big one! Figured we'd go out with a bang before v0.3 is officially released.First up, we've finally finished work on v0.3. We've ironed out most of the bugs, and we've made sure that we won't need 20 hotfixes after launch. (Hopefully.) We plan to release v0.3 of the mod onI know it's a little behind schedule, but hopefully, it will have been worth the wait. (Also, it obviously won't be save compatible. We'll keep v0.2 up on the Paradox forums so you can continue old playthroughs.)Let's just get right into it!The equivalent to the Hermetic society in After the End is known as the Ivy League. After the chaos of the Event, the Ivy League changed from a group of universities to an actual league of people dedicated to preserving the knowledge of the old world and attempting to rediscover the knowledge of the ancients. The following religions/religious groups will be able to join the Ivy League:The ranks are as follows:The Ivy League shares all of the same events, decisions, quests, etc as the vanilla Hermetics Society, although many things have obviously been renamed to fit with the setting. For example, instead of getting a horoscope for your kids, you will instead force them to take a "standardized test." "Helpers" are now referred to as "undergraduates", etc etc. I hope you'll enjoy using psychology to predict the future!Now that that's out of the way, let's get on to the other three major additions.BoneLorde, one of the original devs, has kindly done us a massive favor and expanded the map for us once again. Only two new counties have been added, but various areas have been redrawn to make them both more geographically accurate and more fun to play in.Let's go over the two new counties first. The first one is the county of El Novillo in Sonora. This area used to just be one big county, and splitting it up was a good decision from a gameplay standpoint. It makes defending the duchy from the east much more manageable.Now, onto some more changes. Puerto Rico has been redrawn so that the counties more accurately reflect the positions of real-life communities. (This means no more "County of San Juan" that doesn't actually contain San Juan.) We've also renamed a couple of counties there.We've also redone the Pacific Northwest a little. I don't have a before and after comparison, but you can load up the game and see the changes for yourself.Anyways, it's time to take a look at the other new county. Last, butnot least, I present to you... the County of Uaça!This county contains the city (in-game Temple) of Oiapoque. If you're Brazilian, you might already know what that means. If you aren't, Oiapoque is popularly considered the northernmost point of Brazil. This means that we have an additional Brazilian county in the game. Although it de jure belongs to the duchy of Cayenne and has the Cayennais culture, you might have noticed that it differs from the rest of the duchy when it comes to religion, which brings us to our next new feature.We've made a pretty striking change to South America in v0.3, and it will go a long way towards breaking up the Tres Potencias block in the area. Here's the new religious map of the region.As you can see, we've added the Candomble religion to the map, mostly in areas that are part of modern-day Brazil. We've also changed Candomble's holy sites, so that two of them are actually located in Brazil. Now, you might be asking, "Why add the Candomble religion to the map? Isn't it massively underdeveloped?" Well, I thought that too, so I went ahead and added a brand-new mechanic for it. You are now able to select a patron Orixá, who will protect and guide your character throughout their life.You can select from one of nine different Orixás, and your choice will be influenced by your preexisting personality traits - for example, you won't be able to select Orunmilá, the god of wisdom and prophecy, if your character is unintelligent or cynical. The AI will also be more inclined to choose an Orixá that reflects their personality - for example, intelligent or Zealous characters will be more inclined to select Orunmilá - but the player will have slightly more freedom of choice in this regard.It should be noted that this choice is permanent -Selecting an Orixá will give you a character modifier that boosts your stats in accordance with that particuar Orixá's attributes. For example, I have chosen to accept Oxóssi as my patron deity, so I will receive a permanent boost to my Martial and Intrigue stats.However, your relationship with your Orixá doesn't stop there. Once you have selected an Orixá, you will receive events that change your personality traits in accordance with your Orixá's own characteristics.I'm still not 100% certain on which particular traits should be granted by which Orixás, so you may not see this particular event in the final release. However, every single Orixá has events of this nature associated with them, so no matter what happens, you'll get something.This addition fleshes out Candomblé greatly and, in my opinion, makes it worthy of existing on the map alongside religions such as Voodoo and Mormonism. Speaking of Mormonism, that's the second-to-last major feature we wanted to show off.We've changed the Mormon religion pretty drastically for v0.3. First of all, we've adjusted the Mormon expedition mechanics so that Mormons will, well, actually go on Expeditions. They almost never did so in v0.2, and for that I apologize. We should've tested the mechanic more before release.Anyways, onto the new stuff. The first major change we've made isThis decision wasn't made lightly - we had several discussions about it as a dev team and consulted someone with in-depth knowledge of Mormonism, before ultimately deciding to remove the polygamy mechanic from mainstream Mormonism. The mainstream LDS church banned polygamy over a century ago, and it was honestly not really the best way of representing the religion. It's noton the level of giving Xwedodah to Revelationists, but it was close. It was always pretty difficult to manage the mechanic anyway, considering the relative lack of suitable marriage candidates and the fragile nature of the Mormon world at the start.However, don't worry. We haven't axed polygamy completely. We've added a new heresy that's all about practicing polygamy - Woolleyites.If you can't read it in the image for whatever reason, here's the description in full (adjustments made for readability):Unfortunately, we had to remove the Godbeite heresy to accommodate the new Woolleyite one. With the removal of plural marriage from mainstream Mormonism, Godbeites didn't have much going for them gameplay-wise, so they were axed. The other two heresies - Bickertonite and Strangite - remain unchanged, however. In fact, we've actually expanded on them.Every single Mormon heresy now has a religious head which either exists at the start or can be formed by a skilled player. Bickertonites and Woolleyites can restore their respective heads if they find themselves in control of Salt Lake City and have 1000 piety.Meanwhile, the Strangite Presidency always exists, and does not need to be formed via decision. It is headquartered in Voree, Wisconsin (the county of Four Lakes in-game).We've also taken this opportunity to change Strangite's holy sites. The Strangites never moved west, so it didn't seem right to have Salt Lake City and Provo as holy sites for them. Here are the new Strangite holy sites:Now, onto the final major change.The Canadian prairies have always been rendered in a somewhat odd way in-game. Non-native peoples were given the Canuck culture, even though that culture is clearly intended to be representative of the Vancouver/BC area, and they followed Sedevacantism, a heresy with no presence anywhere else on the map and which was almost impossible to increase the MA of - a total death sentence for a feudal realm in a tribal/nomadic region. Also, the de jure setup was kind of weird. Saskatchewan in Manitoba? Really?We've decided to change the region to fix this. We've added a new culture to the Canadian prairies - Prairielander (Rockland group). This culture better reflects the uniqueness of the Prairie region of Canada, and exists around the Duchy of Alberta at the start.We've also changed the religion of Alberta - it now follows Neognosticism rather than Sedevacantism, which should make things slightly easier for anyone who decides to play up there. Sorry, Sedevacantist fans!Finally, we've changed the de jure kingdom set-up in the area. The Kingdom of Manitoba has been expanded to include the duchies of Alberta and Stampede, and has been renamed to the "Kingdom of Prairieland", with its de jure capital moved to Edmonton.Hopefully, these changes will make playing in the far north more exciting than ever!We've also made numerous other more minor adjustments to the map and characters. Here are a few:I hope everyone's looking forward to v0.3! Sorry for the wait!