VorV DD 5: Gondor and Isengard in VorV

Of course, I couldn’t completely overhaul Greater Enedwaith without giving the other countries some content to interact with them. Today we’ll discuss Gondor and Isengard, and next week cover Rohan and Mordor.

As you may have noticed from the map DD, Gondor has lost some territory in the west. Never fear, they may reclaim it. You can also see here that Pinnath Gelin is now a tag; the states of Pinnath Gelin and Anfalas have both been broken up into smaller chunks and given cores of their respective fiefs, which are releasable countries. Expect this treatment for the other fiefs of Gondor whenever I get around to making flags for them.

The Reunited Kingdom can no longer claim all of Greater Enedwaith with a single simple focus. Secure the Western Tribes unlocks the ability to offer protectorate status to any tribes you’ve guaranteed– they pay a portion of their resources and industry and in return get any states that you or your allies occupy in the region. Note that this is an idea, not a subject type, so once you’ve crowned a king you can Integrate our Protectorates, which allows you to demand they become your vassal with similar acceptance calculations to the Blood Oath system.

Isengard has a much… chonkier, shall we say, branch for interacting with the region. The Cooperate with the Dunlendings branch has three ‘sections’. The first unlocks the Blood Oath system for Isengard, provides several general bonuses to subjugation, and improves relations with the Dunlendings specifically. The smaller branch off the left is only available to La Resistance owners and improves the potency of spy networks in the realm of Blood Oath diplomacy. The remainder of the cooperation tree provides numerous diplomatic bonuses and interactions with the tribes of the other 5 regions.

The Conquer the Dunlendings branch does just that– provides wargoals against each of the regions of Greater Enedwaith. You can choose to either Rally them Against our Common Enemies, gaining a special occupation law that significantly boosts the states’ contribution to your war effort, or to Rely on Collaborators, which spawns a collaboration government. The Province of Dunland starts with no cores but has massive buffs to compliance gain and tribal coring cost, so can integrate any tribal states with relative ease.

Isengard’s puppet exploitation system has received a facelift. The most obvious change is that, instead of a clunky list of decisions, you now activate them through this scripted GUI, but I also did a lot more work on it; the prerequisite states for any region to count as your vassal are now more clearly explained and ones that you already control are highlighted in green. These are now also regular triggers checked every frame, rather than every month. Finally, I’ve buffed ALL bonuses given by this system (including the designers), re-shuffled which buffs many regions give, and removed the option of exploiting Elven vassals, as I simply don’t feel they would be receptive enough to Saruman’s manipulation.

And finally, a feature I’ve always thought should be included but never got around to implementing until a player (faustasisbadatgames) recently requested it: the ability to explode the Hornburg! The focus Harness Earth now grants Harness Fire’s old bonuses (which, by the way, have been buffed– all of those focuses branching off of the factory focuses now grant a much larger bonus and only take 35 days. Back to the topic at hand, Harness Fire unlocks production of the new ‘Black Powder’ equipment and this decision:

This decision is not limited to Helm’s deep: you can use it on any state with at least 1 land fort that you either have units in or is adjacent to a state you control. With enough black powder you can blast your way through the Rammas Echor, Moria, Erebor… or even the Black Gate.

That is all for today. As previously mentioned, next week I’ll cover the new content for Mordor and Rohan… and possibly a release date.