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Hello and welcome to this development Diary for Imperator: Rome!

This will be the first diary where we go into more detail about what will be in the 1.1 “Pompey” patch. Today I will be talking about some of the changes coming to navies, and things we are doing to diversify religions. As always with development diaries any numbers should be seen as temporary and are subject to tweaking :)


Unlike Land combat, Naval combat in Imperator: Rome at release was in many ways inherited from its predecessor, EU: Rome. That system builds on ships having a chance of ships targeting other ships and dealing damage to them, sometimes even being able to deal damage to their own friends. The EU: Rome system also had only one type of ship, with modifiers representing the differences in naval design as well as tactics between the various parts of the map, most notably the discrepancy between naval philosophy between the eastern and western Mediterranean.

While functional, especially for small engagements, we felt this system did not adequately reflect the realities of Hellenistic and Roman naval combat. What were these realities then?

Detailed accounts of naval battles from the era are actually somewhat sparse. Historically navies were made up by a great variety of different types of ships, with different roles. Normally ships from this era are classified by the number of rowers in one section used to propel them. A three (or Triere) is bigger than a two but smaller than a six (Hexere) and would be used for different purposes.

A directed naval battle would often involve galleys forming a line of battle, with the goal of preventing the opposing side from forcing through it. The primary ways for ships to engage were bombardment using arrows and artillery, boarding and ramming. Heavier ships would generally be taller, and harder to board. Ships heavier than 2’s or 3’s would also generally be “Cataphract” - covered - to protect from arrows.

Over time ships would grow bigger and bigger, especially in the confrontations between the big and very rich successor kingdoms in the eastern mediterranean. In the western mediterrenean ships would never be as big and with the ascendance of the Roman Empire the custom to build the bigger ships would be forgotten, with the battle of Actium generally being regarded as the end of the Big ship era.

At the start of our game however, and for most of the timeline the trend in the east was to build greater and greater ships, with some truly huge galleys seeing the day of light. The use for these enormous ships (with 10 sections of rowers or more) remains a point of discussion to this day, William M Murray argues that these behemoths of the sea were more useful for siege craft, used for naval assaults on the many ports of the Aegean, the Levant and Asia minor. Their big marine attachments, huge and very heavy high quality rams (a modern laboratory test concluded that the heavier rams in use in this era are impressive even in the light of modern engineering) used to capture ports, by forcing through floating barriers, as well as carrying full siege engines and catapults on board. The various ways to do the latter was something greek navies specialized in general in, with manuals written at the time for how to best conquer or defend a port by sea.

The super heavy ships (which in Imperator is considered to be anything above 8 sections of rowers) were never extremely common, but they did have a given place in the navies of the east and we have wanted to include them and their role, and so our rework is inspired by Murray’s work.




To better cover the variety and uses of navies will be forming a line of battle. As on land there will be a first row, a second row, and a flank. Ship types will be broken into 3 categories, and individual ship types will have strengths and weaknesses. Mainly the goal is to allow different roles for light and medium ships, based on their usage in the era.

Light ships have high maneuver, allowing them to target opposing ships much further from their position in the line of battle, and can deal more morale damage. Medium ships have less maneuver range but are instead more resistant to damage. The Wood trade good will now be considered to represent access to great amounts of high quality ship building wood and no longer be necessary for the lighter ships, since these should generally be buildable by the wood that would be available in most cities even if it was not their primary export. The medium ships however still require access to wood, and importing wood helps the quality of all ships produced.

Heavy ships (“8s” and “10s”) will have a very limited maneuver (with the 10s just able to target the ship directly in front of them). While they can deal a great deal of strength damage, and probably easily sink any given ship in front of them, they are likely to be swarmed and sunk or even captured if fighting without support against a great number of lighter ships. Heavy ships will however have access to 3 unit abilities (more on that below) and since their niche use was more common in the eastern mediterrenean they will require unlocking via military traditions. Traditions that do not unlock heavy ships will instead strengthen the use of lighter and medium ships.

Lastly when possible ships will make use of cultural names, a Greek bireme will for instance go by the name of Lembos while an Illyrian or even Roman will be called a Liburnian.

• Light Ships: (High maneuver and Extra Morale Damage dealt, useful on flanks and possibly in first row) - Does not require Wood.
  
• Liburnian: Uncovered Bireme. Cheap. Very light ship. Very quick. Used by Pirates near our start but is later one of the main Roman war vessels.Deals low damage against all but has Extra Morale Damage dealt. 6 Maneuver allows targeting ships far away in battle.
  
• Trirere: Could historically be covered or uncovered. Light ship but heavier than the Liburnian Biremes. Also very Quick. A bit more expensive and takes more damage than the Liburnian. 4 Maneuver.

• Medium Ships (Fours &, Fives, Sixes & Sevens) - Better staying power but much slower. Historically these are ships that would go prow-to-prow. Much more efficient at both Ramming (strength damage) and Boarding. Vulnerable to the sides against lighter ships. Requires Wood.
  
• Tetrere/Trihemiolia: Cataphract with Four Rows. More costly and for a long time the standard ship in any navy.Does not excel at anything but is also not bad at anything. 3 Maneuver.
  
• Hexere: Cataphract. 6 Rows. Much Slower but still in widespread use for much of the era. Extra Strength Damage dealt 1 Maneuver.

• Heavy Ships (Eights, Nines, Tens up to Sixteens and Forties) Extremely expensive. Huge Rams, fitted with Catapults and siege weapons. Vulnerable to being isolated and attacked from many sides. Stopped being used entirely around the end of our game but during the greek era could make up as much as 30% of a fleet. Requires Military Traditions to unlock.
  
• Octere: Heavy and Expensive. The warelephant of the seas.Takes less strength Damage. Deals more damage against all. 0 Maneuver (so cannot engage unless opponent is directly in front of it).
  
• Mega Polyreme - Extremely Expensive. Represents ships of size 10 and up. Withstands more strength damage. Can create a breach on a seaside fort. 0 Maneuver.

When a ship reaches 0 morale while not yet being at 0 strength there is a chance it will be captured. Capture chance will be based on the type of ship that was targeting the removed ship and the removed ship itself. Mediums and heavies have slightly higher chances to capture lighter ships, but since lighter ships deal more morale damage they will get more chances to capture ships overall. A fleet of only light ships is far more likely to take a higher number of prizes in any given battle.

A captured ship is still removed from battle but will be added to the opposing navy that the capturing ship belonged to.




With more ship types available the Tactics system is going to be used at sea as well. Depending on your composition different tactics will have varying efficiency. Choice of tactic can also affect how likely the battle is to result in the capture of ships.

• Capture Port: Unit ability that can be used by a navy that has 5 Heavy Ships in it. Takes direct control over an unfortified port. Useful for establishing a beachhead before a full on naval invasion.
  
• Port Raid: Unit Ability that can be used on a fortified port with an ongoing siege by a navy that has one Heavy Ship at above 95% strength in it. Creates a breach immediately. Reduces strength of Heavy Ship by 30%.
  
• Port Assault: Unit Ability that can be used on a fortified port with 1 fort level by a navy that has one Hyper Galley at full strength in it. Reduces that fort by one level and reduces strength of the Hyper Galley to 20%.

(debug mapmode screenshot to illustrate the extent of range)

All countries will now have a naval range, calculated from their closest owned port. While naval range will be somewhat forgiving ships in navies that go outside of their naval range will take heavy attrition.




(WIP screenshot of navigable rivers, these rivers will have a different look to more clearly show them as navigable though they do not right now)

While most rivers would not have been fit for the galleys of this era to make much use of them some rivers will now be navigable. For land units such a river will have to be crossable at fording points (similar to straits). Land provinces adjacent to a great river will also have an increased population capacity (more on that in a later diary).




(Screenshot of naval terrain in the simple terrain mapmode)

Not all sea areas are created equal. In Pompey patch there will be 3 different terrain types which also have an effect on which ships are more efficient there and in some cases may confer a defender advantage.

• Open Sea: No combat modifiers
  
• Coastal Sea: Used in archipelagoes and in areas adjacent to land, defender advantage.
  
• River Terrain: Navigable rivers will favor the defender and greatly favor lighter ships.

To summarize these changes to naval battles the goal we aim for is for Naval combat to be more dynamic and for what type of navy you want to build to be more of a choice and dependent on your circumstances.

We also want it to have a stronger relation to how naval battles were fought and theorized in the era, and make it possible for navies to play a role in projecting your military ability overseas, as was done by the successor commanders such as Demetrius Poliorcetes. If you want to spend the resources on it you should be able to build a naval force adept at capturing islands and ports which should be especially useful in the Aegean. Making maintaining a navy more meaningful both offensively and defensively.




(Buddhist Omens for a Mauryan empire with very low Religious Unity/Omen Power)

As was mentioned in Johan’s Design Corner post yesterday another thing we want to achieve in the Pompey patch is to give more variety in how different countries play. One of the things we will be doing to achieve this is the addition for base country bonuses for religions, so a Tuistic state will for instance have an easier time migrating their pops.

The other part of it is we have implemented different Omens depending on your religion and culture. Roman and Greek Omens will no longer be identical in what they do and further removed religions such as Kemeticism or Buddhism will have a completely different set of omens to choose from.

The system, which is fully moddable, will also support special cases. Some countries will also have access to their patron deities for omens, as long as they stay with their native religion.

Egypt will also have different Omens depending on if they adopt the Serapis cult or if they stay with their traditional greek pantheon, but the Serapis omens are also different from the ones native Egyptians have access to.


(Current Roman Omens - more familiar in many ways than the ones for Buddhism)




On release only a handful of countries (mainly the Dharmic countries, Bactria and Egypt) could easily switch their country religion. With religions now being more different a more generalized approach has been taken to changing state religion, especially as a number of countries in this era did adopt a foreign religion.

As long as you have at least one character in your country of a foreign religion you will be able to see what it would take to change to that character’s religion. The requirements currently are:

• A majority of the free (non slave) pops in your capital must follow the new faith.
  
• In a Republic your senate must approve.
  
• In a Monarchy you must have at least 70 legitimacy.
  
• In a tribe the clan leaders must approve.
  
• Your High Priest, Pontifex, or equivalent must follow the new Religion.

The effects of switching religion can be far reaching, so it is not always a decision to be taken lightly however.

• All character that do not already follow the new faith will lose 20 loyalty. The ruler and loyal members of their family will also convert.
  
• The 6 most prominent loyal characters in the country will convert.
  
• For a period you will enjoy more efficient religious conversion to help establish the new faith (as long as this bonus is active you cannot change your faith again).

That was all for today, but far from all of the things that are planned for the Pompey patch. Next week Johan Andersson will be back to talk about some changes to internal politics. :)

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Go here to read the original post, and to interact with the developers

We have just released our first hotfix for Imperator: Rome! Thank you for all your feedback!

Please note that this patch won't be compatible with 1.0 Ironman saves. We apologize for the inconvenience caused, but it was not possible to do the necessary fixes and remain save game compatible. The previous version will still be available in the Betas tab for those who want to finish an ongoing Ironman game before updating. Non Ironman games should still be fine however!
(Right click Imperator: Rome in Steam -> properties -> BETA -> pick 1.0 in the dropdown list)

We will not be able to collect any bug reports from Steam I'm afraid, so if you experience further issues, please use official bug report forum, thank you!

1.0.1 Demetrius Patchnotes

###################
# Gamebalance
###################
- Tweaked Mercenaries to be less numerous and a bit more spread out.
- Country Capital now has one extra building slot.
- Fortifications in capitals are now normal buildings, and not something that magically appear. First level is still free.

###################
# AI
###################
- Fixed disloyal generals being overly helpful and attacking enemy armies.
- Fixed AI not attacking rebels/barbarians.
- Fixed reserve objective behaving rather offensively.
- Reworked AI reconnaissance objective to patrol on borders rather than around a point.
- Army and fort maintenance is auto set to normal maintenance on outbreak of war.

###################
# Interface
###################
- Fix to naval combat interface martial skill icon overlap.
- Fixed top-right corner of topbar visually overlapping score indicator.
- Added truces to diplomatic mapmode.
- Tweaked Combat Prediction Indicator to be more accurate.
- Adjusted default UI scaling.
- Tactics view is now scrollable when it needs to be.

###################
# Performance
###################
- Optimized daily tick to improve stuttering
- Added option to run a benchmark. Use the launch options with ‘-benchmark’ to run a ~4 minute benchmark, testing GPU & CPU.


###################
# Bugfixes
###################
- The game will no longer resend all diplomatic messages to the player that has been saved, each time the game is loaded.
- You now get new inventions when you get new technology from events, unit abilities and other effects.
- Fixed Out of Syncs related to siege & combat.
- Fixed wrong type of apostrophe being used in English version.
- Barbarians no longer have "TRIBE" in their name.
- Fixed issue where mapicons were showing invalid state (such as ended combat or sieges) after a peace deal.
- Fixed rare crash if province was no longer owned while trying to build a fort.
- Fixed rare crash related to events.
- Saving now happens on a background thread, shows a message and will pause the game in multiplayer.
- Disabled pause menu interaction when saving.
- Fixed bug where in some cases a 'zero' navy or army could exist
- Game will now calculate surplus before removing extra trade routes, to prevent incorrectly removing a trade route.
- Can no longer remove disloyal commanders from their armies
- Combat dice rolls are between 1 and 6 now instead of 0 and 5
- Fixed bug where in some cases a 'zero' navy or army could exist.
- Fixed case where country name would contain unlocalized text.
- Fixed potential crash when returning to lobby in multiplayer.
- Fixed potential crash when unit constructions finishes.
- Permanent province Modifiers will no longer be removed on conquest.
- Stopped the Pharos Lighthouse event chain from occasionally concluding prematurely.
- Updated localization in French, Chinese, Spanish and Russian.
- Fixed party conviction being several magnitudes too large when loading an ironman save.
- Fixed incorrect popup when guarantee is upgraded to alliance.
- Fixed bug where clan chiefs could sometimes have count for more than one.
- Fixed bug where provinces couldn't be searched for when playing with Russian or Chinese language.
- Various fixes to the Paradox account creation interface.
- Fixed searching for lobbies in lobby browser menu
- Fixed ‘november’ crash due to not enough threads available for processing
- Fixed startup crash on windows 7
- Mare Nostrum achievement no longer requires a small part of the northern Spanish coast.
- Fixed bug with barbarian removal in impassables for minor and major spawn points.
- Fix potential oos caused by imprisoning dead characters.
- Fixed bug where the decision to form Kushan did not properly check the current tier of a country
- Forming Cyprus now requires you to be suitably small.
- Fixed ironman permitting different mods when loading save.

Go here to read the original post, and to interact with the developers

Join us for the finale of the Dev Clash with HotRod and DDRJake as your host! This is the final session! We will hand out trophies to our players! Make sure you tune in to vote for your favorite warmonger! Join us on Twitch at 15:00 CEST!

Hi everyone and welcome to the first post-release development diary for Imperator!

As soon as the first patch, Demetrius, is ready, it will be released this week.

For Imperator, some things will be similar to how we have developed games since we released CK2, and some will be new. We will aim to have two major updates each year, with accompanying big expansions, where we focus on flavor in the paid content, while having core systems primarily part of the free patch. We have been working on ideas for our first expansion, but before starting on that one, we are doing a big free patch, which contains a lot of free features for all of you.

This free patch has been in development since the release version was frozen in mid february, so it contains all the things the design team have been working on, while QA and Coders worked on stability, AI and polish for the release.

Our first big patch called ‘Pompey’ will be out before the summer holidays, and will contain some new features, and lots of balance changes. We’ll talk about some of the balance changes in this development diary, and for a list of most new features go to the roadmap right here!


Technology
While the technological research in the game was working mostly fine, we had some edge cases that did not work out all that great. First of all, it was impossible to really catch up when you were behind, unless you were a really small country, so we did a reversed ahead of time penalty from when you are behind Secondly, it was also possible to stack your research output so high that ahead, rendering the ahead of time penalty useless, so we made the ‘ahead of time penalty’ a multiplier on your tech speed. Finally we changed the base time for a new technology from 15 to 20 years.


Shattered Retreat
The action of voluntarily doing a shattered retreat was a bit over-powerful, in that while it was useful, it had almost no drawbacks. Now when you do a manual shattered retreat from the unit interface, that unit will also lose 50% of its remaining strength.


Truce Breaking
As you may have seen in the dev clash, breaking a truce had no impact on your reputation, so it will now increase your aggressive expansion as well, just like some other games we do.

Mercenaries
Mercenaries, while performing mostly like we intended, where too much of a renewable resource. What we have done is reduce the amount of mercenary companies, and not stack them all in the most heavily populated areas.

We also made it so that mercenaries can not be stackwiped, and if they would have been, instead they now charge their disband fee from employer, and leaves his employment.

Mercenaries that are no longer employed and marching back to their home city, will no longer reinforce during the march.

You can no longer recruit mercenaries that have not recovered all their strength.

Regnal Numbers
We have added in the functionality for monarchies to use regnal numbers on their rulers. So your 4th Alexander will be “Alexander IV Argead”.


Assassinations
These were a bit powerful, and rather devastating if you played a monarchy or tribe. So in those nations, the military skill of your master of the guard or bodyguard reduces the success chance of that action.


Governors
One thing that was completely missed when developing the game, was the aspect of having the governors attribute matter. This obviously needed to be changed, so now finesse skill of governors will impact the output of the cities they govern by 5% for each finesse.


Population Growth
Population growth also had a few problems in that we had only one variable to play with. After a lot of discussion and testing we split it up into population capacity, which terrain, technology, civilization level and granaries impact, and population growth, which is impacted by resources and situations like your city being burned to the ground by invading armies.


Stability
The old stability mechanics were partly legacy from the first PDS game ever made, with a range from -3 to +3, and also one of the most complained usage of power that we had in the game, in that people did not enjoy being able to instantly increase stability if they just had power.

First of all stability is now 0-100, and decays towards 50 over time. Of course all events and mechanics changing stability have been adapted to the new range.

Stabbing a pig costs 100 power, and gives +0.5 stability a month & increased pig-stabbing costs by 50% for 5 years, and this is stackable, so the more pig-stabbing you do, the faster it will increase in that timeframe.

Threshold for starting wars is a minimum of 10 stability, and you need 10 stability to appoint people to government.


War-Exhaustion
In a similar way War-Exhaustion has also been overhauled, in that it is no longer an instant reduction for some power. You now spend power to add an overtime reduction of it, and this can be stacked in a similar vein as pig stabbing.


Legitimacy
When changing Stability and War-Exhaustion, we also took a look at legitimacy, and made it work the same way. Legitimacy is no longer instantly increased from a button press, but a stackable short-term increase you can pay to get.


Modding Support
One little thing with all these balance changes is that to make them more easily handled, we changed the price-structure we use for lots of actions, to support 4 new values, instead of just gold, powers and manpower.

These 4 values are stability, tyranny, war-exhaustion and aggressive expansion. So if you wish for assigning ideas to increase your war-exhaustion in your mod, now you can do it.



Stay tuned for next week, when we’ll go deep into how much more fun the naval game will be in 1.1.

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Want to engage in discussion with our devs for today´s development diary? Come to our forums! Here is a link to the thread!

Hey everyone,

With Imperator: Rome, a project very close to our hearts, now released and finally in the hands of our awesome community (that’s you!), we have been taking the time to look at the feedback you’ve provided. As always, we pride ourselves on the continued support of our games and by no means will Imperator be different.

We are working towards releasing a 1.0.1 patch early next week, which we’re calling ‘Demetrius’. This patch will improve the AI, fix compatibility issues, game crashes, some multiplayer out-of-syncs, and will also contain some performance improvements.

At the same time, we have been looking at all the feedback from play-testing, our Twitch and YouTube communities, and the press for the past month and a half as we prepared for release. Now we are adding all of your feedback from Steam, the forums, and social media to that! With it, we have begun developing a major patch which is aimed for release in June.

This 1.1 patch is nicknamed ‘Pompey’ internally. We will go into more detail with upcoming development diaries before it’s released. Pompey will cover the following topics:

• Balancing of Technology Progress, Mercenaries, Shattered Retreat, Truce Breaking, Assassinations, Governors, War Exhaustion, and Legitimacy.
  
• Improving the mechanics for Population Growth, Stability, and Barbarians.
  
• Tweaks to Civil War mechanics, with new power-base mechanics.
  
• Naval rework, with Naval Combat mechanics and multiple ship types, as well as navigable major rivers.
  
• Deeper Holding mechanics for characters, where you can give characters holdings and they can purchase new ones as they grow in wealth.
  
• More character interactions.
  
• New Piracy mechanics.
  
• Redesigning of functionality where instead of spending power for an instant result, you now spend power to nudge it towards that result over time.
  
• Better abilities to play tall, including centralising trade, impacting specific cities, etc.
  
• Tribes being able to decide what units their retinues should have.
  
• Dual Ruler mechanics for Roman Republic, and Consorts for Monarchies.
  
• Government Abilities for all government categories.
  
• ‘Quality of Life’ features like viewing all characters in a foreign country, new alerts, road building being a continuous action, and more.
  
• Adding of features from previous PDS games like moving capitals and regnal numbers on monarchs
  
• Much more modding support.

Whilst we have already started towards patch 1.1, we will continue to look at fixing any major issues that come up between now and then as well.

Johan Andersson

For the list of currently known issues click here.

And if you are interested about the development of Imperator: Rome and why certain elements are not yet in the game Johan created a thread on the subject right here!

Ave citizens! We have had a great time seeing you all playing Imperator. The feedback has been valuable. Using that, we have already begun constructing the road ahead! Tune in on Twitch at 16:00 CEST and discuss with us the future of Imperator: Rome!

https://www.twitch.tv/paradoxinteractive

We are putting up an FAQ on our forums with the currently experienced issues! Thank you all for your feedback, we are working hard to fix these nasty bugs! Make sure to share this with your friends to help them out!
https://pdxint.at/2UHvf36

Additionally you can go here to report an issue on Steam!
https://steamcommunity.com/app/859580/discussions/1/

And if you want to be extra thorough here is our support website if you need some more help! Our team will be happy to guide you in fixing the game!
https://support.paradoxplaza.com/hc/en-us

Want help to forge the greatest empires the world has ever known? Then you should check out our tutorials done in partnership with Many A True Nerd! Run it in the background or on another monitor! Click here to reach the playlist: https://pdxint.at/2VtsKWw