Newbie discussion on playing as Judea.

[rakovsky]

My first "Mission" is to conquer "Palestine" - the territory around me controlled by Egypt, the Seleucids of Antioch (ie. Syria/Antigones' empire), and the Seleucid's Vassal of Samaria. I spent a few years building my economy, started by revoking my tribute to the Seleucids and marched on Egypt with a Levy of 5,5000, but got crushed pretty quickly by Egypt. I reloaded my game and fought Antigones' Seleucids (Syria) instead, and still got crushed quickly. I can only think of either (A) waiting for Egypt to trounce on Antigones' Seleucids and then join in on the fight against Antigones, who has a pattern of losing to Egypt, or else (B) trying to build my realm first by conquering the little Arab countries and then coming back to fight the Seleucids' Syria and Egypt.

Option A worked well in that I got Samaria, but Egypt took the Seleucids so quickly that I didn't get a chance to capture coastal Philistia and Samaria before Egypt got it. Since I pressed "Start Mission" before Egypt took those lands over, my claims were no longer valid against those lands, as they were now in Egypt's hands.

[rakovsky]

- Hananiah Zadokite had about 15 Corruption points as governor of Cyprus. I raised governor wages and his corruption went down month by month to 10 (or maybe 10.80), at which point I replaced him with a governor with no corruption. Then Hananiah's father the king died, and Hananiah became king. He still has 10 corruption points, but they don't decrease, even with top wages. His skill set says he got the trait "Nefarious", and this adds 10 points. I guess that it's just a coincidence that I took him off as governor when he still had 10 corruption points, but I don't know if they would have kept declining when he was governor.

- The game at its starting time does a good job scattering Jewish populations around places in the Middle East where they would have been in a Diaspora in real life. But the game misses the large "Beta Israel" Jewish community of Ethiopia. There was also an ancient Jewish community in southwest India (Colchin Jews). (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cochin_Jews)

- I beat the second Mission, Arabia Felix, and it was alittle disappointing when sometimes I could only get one mark for beating one of a pair of missions, each with different rewards. That is, the mission tree posed a dilemma which one of two tasks I could complete.
- For my third mission, I chose Syria.

- Next to Durnatha in the middle of the Saudi Arabian desert, there is a Barbarian Stronghold. On the other side of the stronghold from Durnatha, there is an empty "uninhabitable desert" space with a Civilization level of 0. That is, there are three spaces in this row, and no others touching the stronghold:
| Uninhabitable Desert | Stronghold on a Desert Space | Durnatha |
I built a city on Durnatha and some buildings like a market, theatre, library, so that it's Civilization level is like 30-45. But the Barbarian Stronghold still doesn't have a Civilization points against it. Even if I bring my city's Civilization level to 60-100, I don't know if that will eliminate the stronghold, because it will still have a space with a permanent 0 Civilziation level on the other side of it.

- When I beat Rhodes handily, I clicked Suggest in the Peace Negotiations, and not only did the button give me all of Rhodes' territory, but it also made Rhodes a "vassal." Then in the Diplomacy menu, I saw that I have a "truce" with Rhodes and its three allies whose land I also took fully. Other players must have the same kind of experience where full taken, conquered lands become a vassal or the fully conquered nation has a "truce" status in the Diplomacy menu.

[Prince of Thieves]

Boy I wish they'd still develop this game and Judea is my primary reason. There is so much content they could develop based on this nation alone, it's a crime.

[rakovsky]

= I beat the Seleucids in a war, and the peace negotiations give me the option of demanding that the Seleucids free a couple "nations" from their territory like Bambyce. These are "formable nations." However, although Osroene is a formable nation in this land (the 1st-2nd century AD Abgarid dynasty's kingdom) according to I:R's data, I didn't get an option to ask that the Seleucids form it.

[rakovsky]

- I beat the "Matter of Syria" mission, and next I'll probably choose capturing "Upper Egypt" as my fourth mission in this playthrough as Judea.
- What's the practical importance of Holdings? They generate gold for major characters. But it doesn't seem like a big deal. They get money that they can use for little tasks, but holdings don't seem important for me to get involved in. Maybe I'm missing something.
- Is there any point to "adopting" women into a family if succession in dynasties is male-only? Maybe it preserves their character so that the women adopted into the family don't disappear from the character pool like other characters who appear to show up and then go away off the list.
- One of the laws for Freemen culture levels is the "Right to Enter Contracts". It doesn't seem very practical in the game because it gives slaves of the chosen culture 8% unhappiness.
- I think that in real life, ruling as the Judeans, in an ancient Judean kingdom, "freemen" of all cultures would have the right to enter into contracts. That is, Judaism and the kingdom of ancient Judah allowed Jews to make business contracts with gentiles, AFAIK.
- Gentiles wouldn't be the "nobility" in an ancient Jewish kingdom, and they could be freemen or slaves, but I don't know if they could be citizens.
- So in real life, freemen of all cultures would have the right to enter Jewish contracts, but in practice, this game option doesn't look very beneficial overall due to the negative impact on slave output.

[galadon3]

holdings generate a pool of powerbase (capped at 50 and with a max one holding can generate I forgot right now), those powerbase points are divided by the total number of holdings in the realm (including those unowned by anybody).
For a rapidly expanding state and one that has several provinces, armies etc, where those 50 powerbase points are not that big a deal you can mostly forget about them.
As far as I can tell they are mostly a big thing for smaller states, should one great family head snowball and grab most of them he can cause a civil war all by himself (because high percentage of powerbase in his hands) as well as being very hard to please.

[Jiggy]

Sorry for the late reply. Just used to hover around IR forum lately, went through this thread in detail now and saw the posts.

Originalmente postado por Rooter:

We officially now have another achievement ♥♥♥♥♥.
Please welcome Jiggy to the ironman club.
He is on an achievement binge I havent seen since I first started ironman in EU4.

I was just curious to see how the game goes in Ironman and yes it does make it very challenging as you need to think many times before hitting the declare war button, accepting allies and reacting to insults from other states.
Got kicked out completely a couple of times particularly in civil wars; twice I remember even before reaching 250 BC.
AI is very unforgiving at times, just won't accept white peace forcing me to become either a vassal, city-state or just get defeated and watch the game as an observer.
Learnt the hard way that even our rivals in a civil war can ally our enemies.

Originalmente postado por rakovsky:

+1. Good job, Jiggy.

Thanks buddy. I see you are also enjoying the game.

Originalmente postado por __h.stickeye_:

The only way to play imo.

Yeah. It has indeed changed my game-play from casual to rather focused.
Earlier I just used to blindly pursue the quests provided in the game for any state I play.

[Jean-Maurice Nya]

For monarchies and tribes, what galadon said is correct from my experience.
For republics, the powerbase will be interesting to interact with the Senate and make one of the parties more influent than others. Usually, you can make oligarchs very powerful with it and use it to enact the long mandate law and become a dictatorship.

Overall, characters with a big powerbase can be annoying, especially if they command a legion, a levy or a fleet.

[rakovsky]

"Boy I wish they'd still develop this game and Judea is my primary reason. There is so much content they could develop based on this nation alone..."
- Prince of Thieves

- The Imperator Rome game's centering of the game map and events from Rome to Mesopotamia to India reminds me of the book of Daniel and his description of four successive empires:
- Babylon
- Persia/Media
- Greece/Macedon
- Rome
The game starts just after the establishment of the 3rd empire, Greece, as the leading ancient world empire in the Mideast.
- In Daniel's description, the succession of these empires and major prophetic events seem to be part of fate and an indirect result of the moral actions of persons or nations. On one hand, Babylon (the first empire) captured and exiled the Kingdom of Judah as an indirect result of their multiple violations of the Torah. In Daniel 9, there is a prediction of the destruction of the Second Temple, and it would logically follow that this destruction would also be an indirect result of further Torah violations by Judah.
- The events of the 3rd-1st centuries BC in Imperator:Rome don't seem as closely correlated to Israelite piety. There is some overlap. In both Daniel's prophecy and in the game, Rome is predetermined to take over the game map from the Greek imperial powers (Antigones, Seleucids, Ptolemy's Egypt). But in the framework of Daniel's prophecy, and in terms of how real history played out another arrangement of political powers (like Greece holding out against Rome) wasn't realistic. Perhaps if Greece or Judah became especially moral, united, or pious, the prophecy or real history would point to other outcomes (like the survival of the Second Temple past the 1st century AD).
- The game also has a neat hidden event trigger for the Maccabean Revolt in case the nation of Judea no longer exists at a certain year in the 2nd century.

[rakovsky]

Good replies.

- Judaism adds a -25% Conversion rate. I guess the idea is that pagans are rather unlikely to convert to Judaism. However, historically ancient Judaism slowed down conversion after the game's timespan, ie. only sometime in the mid/late 1st-4th centuries AD. Before then, gentiles across the ancient educated world, like in Rome, occasionally converted to Judaism. The slowdown in conversion may have been related to the rise of 1st century Christian evangelism, the 70 AD destruction of the Temple, or 4th century Roman repression against conversion to Judaism.

- Judea starts with a Theocratic Monarchy, but after you get enough territory and an invention, you get the option of changing to Empire as your government. Each of these two forms of government has different advantages. I like having Judea under a Theocratic Monarchy. Is it worth changing government to empire?

- When you run the "In Matter of ____" Missions, and choose "Consult the Court" (the first step in the mission), one of the Effects is that you get +5 War Score. This sounds like you get a hit against you in peace negotiations. Is this a permanent addition against your war scores in the future for all wars? I'm guessing that it's just against you in your next peace negotiations only.

- The Bosphoran Kingdom has a white medieval-looking angel with wings as its flag. It's surprising for me, because I didn't know that this figure image of an angel existed before the Christian period, not to mention that the Bosphoran kingdom is neither European nor Mesopotamian. 😇

- The Austomatic Trading function seems broken. I try to always turn it "On", but I see that there are unused import routes (like "0 of 2" in the Administration menu), and setting them manually seems a little bothersome.

- I beat the Matter of Upper Egypt mission and chose Grow Arabia as my 5th mission. Depending on the Date when you click Finish on your mission, the game gives you a different target region for your conquest missions. The selection by the game for the next target region runs on a rotation.

- At this point in my playthrough, it's about 200 BC and I'm one of the 4 Great Powers (Maurya, me, Rome, Seleucids). Rome is growing at such scary rate, to the point where we might bump into each other militarily, and Rome's aggressiveness is worrisome, even though I'm on "Very Easy."

- I wonder, if I'm Judea and get crushed by 180 BC, would I get to play Judea again when it respawns during the Maccabbean revolt event of the 2nd century BC?

- I got a Relic in my Treasury in the form of a statue of Aphrodite, and I guess that I got it as a result of conquering a city. I'm playing as Judea with Judaism. Aphrodite has a pagan temple in Cyprus. I'm guessing that there is no way for me as a player with Judaism to place Aphrodite's statue into her temple in Cyprus. Is that correct?

[Rooter]

Games is nearly over my man, not much time to get the achieve.
By the Rivers Of Babylon
Where we sat down
Yeah yeah we wept
As we remembered Zion.

[galadon3]

Automatic trade isn't completely broken, it eventually gets to use those trade-routes, but it sure has issues, no idea why it takes so long to do it sometimes.
Afaik there is some benefit from unused routes too, but I think importing anything, no matter what, generates more income (might be wrong on that, I never extensively tested it).

[rakovsky]

Originalmente postado por Rooter:

Games is nearly over my man, not much time to get the achieve.

What are you referring to?

By the Waters of Babylon
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kx-QZw9THA

[Rooter]

Kingdom of David

(Go east) in the open air
(Go east) where the skies are blue
(Go east) this is what we're gonna do
(Go east, this is what we're gonna do, go east)

[Rooter]

No disrespect to your version,
I was referring to this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2FgDles4xq8

[Rooter]

Originalmente postado por galadon3:

Automatic trade isn't completely broken, it eventually gets to use those trade-routes, but it sure has issues, no idea why it takes so long to do it sometimes.
Afaik there is some benefit from unused routes too, but I think importing anything, no matter what, generates more income (might be wrong on that, I never extensively tested it).

Always import max trade routes in capital, increase them, you cant go wrong, unless no one will trade with you so keep improving relations with those who have what you want.