Hello, and I hope you are enjoying the new update.

Just a couple of things about the changes and new content.


Any feedback on the fertility changes in v4.0 would be appreciated - if I've set this up correctly, you should now be seeing reduced fertility across the board, with fewer children being born and base health being slightly lower, as well as infant mortality being slightly more precarious. Now, obviously the game has lots of modifiers and traits which increase both health and fertility, so I'm not saying everyone will be dying all the time, but you *should* notice characters dying more frequently in middle age (as opposed to everyone living to 70 or 80 if they're not murdered), and a few less babies being popped out; this includes the 'extra baby' bonus per wife/concubine being reduced.

Keep an eye on these changes and let me know of your observations. This is the first set of changes relating to this, so consider it a WIP - I'll update based on feedback in future versions.


Along with the previously-added decision to restore the Roman Empire as the Latin Empire, it is now also possible, under certain conditions, to restore Rome when playing as Francia, Hispania or Britannia. This requires you to have established and fully control your starting empire, and then conquer the various duchies required to restore Rome normally. If you're the correct culture group (Frankish, Iberian or Brythonic) and haven't already Restored the Carolingian Empire, Avenged the Battle of Tours, or Reclaimed Britannia, you should be eligible. This should give you a fresh challenge for restoring Rome as one of its former provinces, and requiring you to reconquer the Eastern Empire instead of starting in the east and conquering westward.

In addition to this, I've revamped the Roman province borders and added a load more of them, including associated flavour events. This means that as you reconquer areas as the Byzantines or Romans, you should now see extra events pop up. This includes the areas you'd expect, but I've also thrown in some semi-historical ones such as Scythia and (Georgian) Iberia, depending on how far you can push the Empire's borders.

The final new decisions relate to the new Empire of Illyria, which is eligible to all Latin and Byzantine cultures but is primarily focused on giving the Dalmatians a fun end goal. This is admittedly quite a difficult start, but I know some people enjoy a challenge. Starting as the Rector of Ragusa (or one of his vassals in 867) you can carve out a de jure kingdom of Dalmatia along the Adriatic coast, and from there reconquer the old borders of Roman Illyria and establish it as a de jure empire, giving you an expanded Greater Dalmatia and reducing Croatia to a rump state based around Slavonia.


I've made various improvements to the Byzantines in previous updates, but in v4.0 I've added two new de jure duchies here: Macedonia, to represent the small Byzantine theme of Macedonia and to carve out a Greek slice of the large Bulgarian duchy of Philippopolis; and Galatia, to represent the old Celtic (and later Roman) province of Galatia, and to split up the large duchy of Anatolia. There are sources for a governor or strategos of Galatia in the 9th century, so his family have been added and given the duchy in 867; in 1066 it is simply held by the existing ruler of Anatolia, as at that time Galatia no longer existed as an independent polity.

I've also added Byzantine flavour titles for the area under the Emperor's control, so now dukes who are vassals within the Empire will be called Strategos, and they will rule Themes. Independent Greek rulers should still be called Doux. I realise that at some point PDX will do a flavour pack for this region and (probably) implement proper Themes, but for now I think this is a nice compromise.


This isn't a huge rework but I did notice that the Magyars in 867 have fictional vassals and Almos controls most of the territory himself. To improve the situation here I've added historical Magyar clans as vassals, including the Kabars (renegade Khazars who defected to the Magyars) on the Khazar border. I've also switched Almos' daughter-in-law from being a generic placeholder to a princess from the previous ruling clan. Now all of the major historical clans who invaded alongside Almos are represented as either vassals or courtiers.

Aside from some database tweaks and new CoAs that's about it.

v4.0 will be the last major update before the Iberia DLC hits on May 31st, so if anything I'll just do a small bugfix update if anything needs fixing (hopefully not!)

Anyway, hope you all enjoy the update.