14 DAY TRIAL // The team at Paradox Development Studio is announcing that it is introducing a new take on the Silk Road in the coming Horse Lords expansion for Crusader Kings II, designed to reflect the importance that the trade route had in the ancient world.
Karolus Magnus, a programmer working on the grand strategy game, writes in an official diary that the team is aiming to show how much wealth could be acquired by those who controlled the road that went from the Italian republics all the way to Cathay.
In The Horse Lords, gamers can own a province on the Silk Road in order to build a trade post, regardless of their government form, with options to upgrade them to get even more money.
The developer adds, "If a war breaks out and a part of the trade route is caught in the conflict, the trade will be cut from that province and onwards for that branch. The trade will instead go through any other branch and result in them receiving more of the trade than they normally would."
It will be interesting to see whether the new nomads added by the expansion will be powerful enough to hold the Silk Road for themselves or if the more civilized dynasties will try to control it to get all the generated wealth.
Crusader Kings II is also getting a raiding adventure feature
The new mechanics is designed to reflect the way some factions were able to dominate provinces that are far from their starting positions and will be offered to the Normans and the nomad factions.
Paradox explains that raiding money can be used to recruit more troops until they hit a threshold, and they will then seek to become landed.
Players will be able to offer them provinces to settle, but if the AI judges them to be unsuitable, a war will start, and the raiding adventure will seek to gain control of a duchy.
Characters in the raiding adventures and those linked to the dynamic mercenary system will get the Adventurer trait, which increases their ambition and their military skill and makes them a bigger threat for other dynasties.
The Horse Lords for Crusader Kings II does not yet have an official launch date.
