Sassanian starting positions and faction symbol

[Oroetlaboro]

Greetings Augustusng and community!

Being a newcomer to TW:A i soon stumbled upon your mod which looks very exciting. I plan to start a Sassanian campaign, but i have noticed that they have a lot of additional regions in EP compared to vanilla. As i understand it, this was done to do the Persians justice whose empire was stretching much farther into the East than the campaign map could show (which is a damn shame if you ask me, in Rome II the map was stretching significantly further eastwards). Your decision is to be respected for sure, but for me personally being at the edge of the map here feels like being artificially cornered or put in an insignificant position (this would not be the case on the other edges of the map, where you have "natural" borders like the sea, the desert (North Africa) or the almost empty forests of northern Russia. So i would (on the vanilla map) leave at least one region at the very edge of the map as my puppet state to keep the feeling that the world doesn't end there. Reading many subthreads here i gained the impression that the mod authors seem to be very open about proposals and constructive opinions. So, whaddaya think? maybe redo the few puny regions on the far East to be puppet states at the beginning in the next release (which, as i read, can be expected soon)?
A second, even more minor thing is - i actually like the vanilla Sassanian symbol more than the new one. This griffin/whatever thing looks quite cool and has a Persian vibe to it This cross - not so much.

Cheers and thanks for doing this hard work for us, the community!

[Augustusng]

Well, we did leave Makran and the Afrighids (Xvarazm in the mod) as the Sassanid puppet states in the East. I had decided that those two made the most sense to stay as puppet states, since (from what little I read) those regions did have a little autonomy historically. I don't think we'll be re-adding any more of the Sassanid puppet states though. The others don't make as much sense historically, though of course they are still present as emergent factions in those regions - they can rebel or be liberated to appear again. I feel like the White Huns present enough of an eastern threat to make the start interesting; actually, re-adding those puppet states would make the Sassanid start easier, since there would be more armies between their territory and the hordes of the White Huns.

As far as the faction symbol, well, I think this one also has a Persian vibe to it, but to each his own, I guess. This one fits in well with the style of our other new faction symbols, somewhat minimalist and rougher than the vanilla ones. If you really want to see the vanilla one again, you can delete the new faction symbol from EP pretty easily - in PFM, you just have to delete the appropriate entries for the Sassanids in ui/campaign_ui/effect_bundles and ui/flags.

[Oroetlaboro]

Thanks for the quick reply! What you say indeed makes sense (never doubted it, just wanted to know the reasons why). I'm off to build an empire!