Hello all, and welcome to the first development update for Antarctica Universalis! For those not previously aware, this is an upcoming mod for EU4 with the goal of providing a fresh new experience for players, without feeling too unfamiliar or different from the base game. This is done through an entirely new map and a slight overall rebalancing, but with similar religions and cultural analogues.
An important bit to clarify is that this mod does NOT take place on earth as we know it, where Antarctica is inhabited by humans in some post-apocalyptic global-warming world, or like a setting like Green Antarctica. Rather, this takes place on an entirely new world, where Antarctica is simply the only continent. This means that the equator runs through it, and extends pretty far north and south. Humans also exist on this world, and their history follows a similar path to OTL human history.
Apologies to you all for the radio silence since I first advertised the mod on reddit. While a few contributors and myself have been busy bringing it to life, we’ve run into a few issues that slowed down progress. The first, is the fact that I landed a nice, but challenging programmer job, working 40 hours a week. The next is the fact that, while many of us want to work on the fun bits like events and missions, there is still much grunt work to be done. This includes development, province naming, idea sets, etc. But lastly, the big thing preventing us from dropping more content teasers, is the issue of religions.
You see, at it’s inception, the world of Antarctica was built around the idea that base game/OTL religions would be placed into the game. After a talk with a friend, we decided it would be best to use new denominations of real world religions. But after further discussions, we realized that it would be even better to create completely original religions; even if some may be analogous to OTL religions. The benefits of this are multiple. First, we avoid potentially disrespecting these real religions with our fictional interpretations thereof. Secondly, we hold more creative freedoms to create new interesting religions. And third, we retain the important aspect of “familiarity”, since some of the big religions are at least partially inspired by OTL religions.
The first religion to be converted was Christianity. Wanting to keep the “divinity” and “righteousness” vibes, I realized that a religion based around the monotheistic worship of the sun fits best. Thus, the Salorium faith was born.
The next religion was Judaism, which stuck out on the original map teasers like a sore thumb, as it was the only religion present that used an OTL name (the others’ religions already had new denomination names, like Episcopic or Aryi). The religion designed to replace it is the Chazhuranic faith, and apart from it’s insular and traditional vibes, it was not designed with the intent of feeling too much like Judaism. As for the Chazhuranic faith, it’s worship also centers around worship of a monotheistic earth-mother who dwells at the core of the earth, eternally slumbering.
At this point, I started to see a bit of a trend developing. This was that both religions were based on some fundamental element. Initially we thought we might go the route of making the abrahamic religions represent the different major celestial bodies (earth, the sun, and then the moon for ‘Islam’), but I decided to press the religions into the four fundamental religions instead (fire, water, earth, air). Thus, we decided to give the replacement to islam an air motif. This religion still needs some worldbuilding/theological work, but right now my running idea is to make the two-headed (or just eagles in general) the primary holy symbol. The eagle, representing authority, expansion, and freedom of movement (i.e. trade). This religion will have the name Sharyi.
At this point, some of you may remark that, if we are going for the decision to make a religion for each of the four elements, we come one short if we use the Abrahamic religions. Well thankfully, there will be a fourth religion, named the Palcyric faith. This religion has a heavy focus on trade, wealth, prestige, and patronage. It will be covered more later, but it is inspired by the Hellenic pantheon, and thus, will be a polytheistic faith.
The details of the religions and their denominations will be delved deeper into later, but for now, let me show the current state of the world!
Its starting to fill up quite nicely!
I plan on creating more posts, where each one will cover the history and current situation of particular regions, along with some that will cover some overall gameplay changes and philosophies.
As a final announcement, I will be changing the #develop channel from private to public, and that we will be working on releasing a very early alpha release. This means that there wont really be any flavor yet, but we will try and get idea sets and most religious mechanics done before then. Most of the provinces will also be set as wasteland for now, until tags are added there.
So until next time, and don’t forget to stay hydrated!
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