May 27, 2019

Development Diary #52 - Characters and Internal Management

Imperator: Rome - Para_Rod

Hello and welcome to another Development Diary for Imperator: Rome!

One of the things that we want to address in Pompey Patch is that we want to make the internal life of your country more visible. Today I will be talking about that, together with a number of improvements to internal management in the patch. :)

Preferred Clan Retinue Units

While Clan retinues are a tool for your Clan Chiefs to assert their own authority, as well as a resource for your tribe when at war, it can at times be a problem that the Chiefs get to pick what unit types they recruit themselves. Since unit types are so important to the general balance of warfare tribes will in the Pompey Patch be able to specify which units that your Clan Chiefs are allowed to recruit to their armies (as well as how they deploy them) in their government view.
Overall Clan Retinues have also been adjusted to be smaller than they currently are in release.

Holdings Rework

One thing we were looking to improve in the 1.1 Pompey Patch is Holdings. In release Holdings are currently things you hardly interact with. While they provide income for your characters you have little control over how they acquire them and you have little reason to get invested in where someone currently owns holdings.

In Pompey we want holdings to be more relevant. They should be the base of power for many of your characters, and they should be the means by which those with no government employment get their income. They are intended as a way to reward characters or harm them, should you take them away. They will also tie a character more to the cities on the map in your empire.

A Holding in Imperator is an estate in a city, with associated slaves, and a holding is always owned by a character. This provides the character with both income and increases their power base ( as described in this diary ).

For it to be possible for a character to have a Holding in a city, the city needs to have at least 10 slaves. An additional Holding in the same location can be added with every additional 10 slaves.

Once a holding exist the 10 slaves associated with it cannot be moved, or promoted. But they can still starve.

Characters will over time use their wealth to purchase holdings themselves, but you can also grant them directly to characters for a large loyalty boost. The number of holdings each character own at the same time is limited by their finesse skills, and when they die their children will inherit it.

Privately held holdings can be confiscated using the existing Proscription interaction, if you have imprisoned a character.

Events, civil wars and other content will make use of a character's holding going forward.

New Governor Policies

In order to make it easier to redistribute your population, Pompey update will add two new governor policies, which will let you impact your population in your province in a way you prefer.

Centralize Population
This Policy reduces output from the province by 10%, as it will move one pop every 3rd month from a random city in the province, and put that pop in the capital city of the province, if the capital is below the population cap.

Decentralize Population
This also reduces the output from the province by 10%, and it moves one pop every 3 months from a higher populated city in the province to a lower populated city in the province, evening out the population in the province over time.

Trials

A big change in the Pompey patch is that Disloyal Employed characters such as office holders and commanders can no longer be dismissed. Instead there is a new character interaction to bring someone to Trial. The starting chance of success will be dependent on a number of things, among them how corrupt the character is, or how large their power base is.

The actual trial itself however is an event chain in which your actions will affect the outcome. Bringing someone to Trial may also misfire and a failed trial may lead to the accused character using their power base to ignite a Civil War.

Create Mercenary

In a monarchy you can at any point send away a loyal member of the Royal Family to be a mercenary in foreign service. This potentially gets rid of family members that could be troublesome in the future, but it is not a permanent fix. The mercenary prince may well return one day with expectations on their new home life after their foreign adventures.

With that I will leave the word to @Arheo to talk about the new Schemes system:

Schemes

Character events in Imperator have been a great source of fun from the inception of the character system. A surprising amount of events occur for characters in a court or country, and can have a variety of effects from murder to jailbreaks.

This said, it became clear from feedback after launch, that these events were rarely being experienced, and when they were taking place, did not provide enough (if any) feedback to the player. In an effort to make these more visible, as well as to provide a framework for additional and future work on the character system, we have reworked the Ambition system to act as a tool for expressing a variety of character-focused content. You may not have realised, for example, that a number of your more brawny characters engage in underground pit-fighting on an occasional basis; or indeed, that your powerful senators have been stealing from one another behind your back.

Mechanically, schemes are a type of ambition that a character can perform, having a clear goal (for example, to assassinate a political rival, or purchase a holding), and a finite duration. The target and duration of a scheme will be displayed in the character menu, and be visible in the character tooltip.

The outcome of a scheme can vary, and you may find yourself responding to more character events than before, however the frequency of this is being closely monitored by the system to prevent being constantly bothered by popups.

Whilst primarily a vessel for displaying the web of subterfuge that goes on in a court, the player will also be able to interact with certain schemes to assist or interfere, or in some cases, convince a character to drop their scheme altogether.

In addition to this, a player’s Ruler has a selection of schemes available to them, accessed through the character interactions menu. These are designed to address existing issues, and enhance some of the new features coming in 1.1.

Ruler Schemes
Since your ruler is a character more closely tied to your country you are able to pick what schemes they pursue. Including:

Siphon Funds:
The ruler will attempt to divert state funds to enlarge their personal wealth.

Influence Character:
If there are characters in your country that are more gifted than your current monarch you may attempt to influence them to put their expertise to use.

Assassinate Character
Among the schemes you can adopt for your ruler is one to assassinate someone, either abroad or in your own country.

Prove Legitimacy:
In monarchies the ruler can try to improve their legitimacy by researching their lineage. While any type of research will increase the perceived legitimacy of your ruler there is also a small chance of discovering a long lost link to one of the blood lines in the game, if you are Hellenic.

May 20, 2019

Development Diary #51 - Trade and Provinces Improvements, Barbarians and Heritages

Imperator: Rome - Para_Rod

Hello and welcome to another development diary for the Pompey update! This time we’ll talk about new benefits to playing tall, and also discuss changes to barbarians, slaves and much more.

Trade Changes
We have done some changes to trade that may not seem that impactful to you at a glance, but gives us more tools in making the game deeper and more flavorful.

We removed the sources of easy extra trade routes in all provinces, as it was too powerful, and was a no-brainer to always go for those, and they also made for a huge snowball of trade.
We also made trade entirely handled as a province activity, and not a city activity. While each city provides some commerce from its citizens, the income from commerce is handled at a province level, so you can see the income from a trade-route at the one place it happens.

We removed the hardcoded benefits on a trade that were going to be exported, and instead we have 2 unique modifiers increases the value of your foreign imports and your foreign exports. The economic policy for commerce is now used for whether you want to strength your benefits from exports or your benefits from imports.

Improving your Provinces
One problem we identified was the lack of options at times when playing tall, and that you had too much resources that you had no use for when you were not busy conquering. Now he have added 4 new province level abilities, that each cost 400 power of its given type, and starts a process that 2 years later will give you a permanent bonus to that province. These can then be repeated as much as you like, but you can only have one process going on in a province at the time.

Install Provincial Procurators - Military Power for 2% Population Output and 0.01 Monthly Province Loyalty
Promote Infrastructure Spending - Civic Power for +1 Building Slot.
Entice Business Investments - Oratory Power for +1 Import Routes
Make Religious Endowments - Religious Power for +3% State Religion Happiness in Province
There are also other ways to do these State Investments, other than spending lots of power. There are events and decisions, like country-forming, that will give you an amount of free state investments, which is then used instead of the power cost.

Also, there are three different abilities you can do in each city.

Move Capital - First of all, you can move your capital to that city, for a large cost of civic power cost, where it becomes cheaper to move to a bigger city, and more expensive to move to a smaller city.
Relocate Provincial Capital - You can change which city is the capital city of a province for 50 civic power . Province Capital will be set at start of the game, and only change otherwise if conquered by another nation.
Coordinate Urban Development - Pay 100 Civic Power to start a process that at the end of 2 years time, you will get +1 local civilization in that city until the end of the game. This can be repeated as much as you want, but you can’t do it more than once in a city at the same time.

Buildings have changed with the population rework mentioned earlier, and by the trade rework mentioned today.

Marketplaces : +10% Tax Income from City
Training Camp: +10% Manpower
Fortress: +1 Fort Level
Granary: +5 Population Capacity

Now some of these may make you go “what the hell?”, I like to point out that granaries just don't give +5 pop capacity in most cases.. As there are modifiers like Grain giving +10%, Adjacent to Major River +50%, Warm Climate +90% etc...

Barbarian Rework
A lot of things regarding Barbarians work similar to have they did in the original EU: Rome, and that was just not good enough anymore. In Pompey you will now see the following changes to barbarians.

Paid off barbarians will no longer loot your territory.
Barbarians that have not fought in a battle will never accept to surrender.
Barbarians will no longer care about “potential strength” when you negotiate with them, only about armies in the same general area.
Barbarians are no longer clever enough to use zone of control propagation, even if they do take a fort.
Barbarian have no longer any attrition in unknown provinces.
Barbarians reinforce twice as quick when not siegeing.
Barbarians will now grow in size as they take over provinces containing tribesmen.

Zone of Control Changes
There have also been two major advantages to friendly zone of control in Pompey. First of all, they now protect against all the nasty things barbarians do on your territory, but most importantly, friendly zone of control now protects against the attrition you get from bad climate. This makes is so that you don’t lose half your army because you live in a desert, nor will you take a huge hit every single winter as a German tribesman.

Slaves Distribution
We did some changes to slave distribution in Pompey, in that each time you take a city, the amount of possible cities getting slaves are far larger, and not weighted towards 50% reaching your capital. Now it will consider more provinces the bigger your nation is, and also add in ports, and not just provincial capitals, and cities where the commander has holdings etc, to get a better spread.

Heritages
One of the biggest complaints we had with the release was that nations felt the same. While we had a wide variety of countries, with different populations and governments, there needed to be a bit more of identity to them. Even if any city state on Crete would have a great number of similarities with other City states on the same island, there were also differences. This is why we are adding Heritages to the Pompey Update.

A Heritage has 2 benefits and 1 drawback, so give a sort of identity to your country. There is a dozen different generic heritages that depends on your geographical position, for instance you would get Seafaring Heritage if you start with a port, and Desert Heritage if your capital has desert terrain.

Over 20 countries will have unique Heritages in Pompey, and we will keep adding more in future patches. Some are for powers that have their glory days behind them while others are for countries that would rise to become influential in the future. As an example here are some that we have added for Egypt, Carthage, Syracuse and Athens:

May 13, 2019

Development Diary #50 - Political Changes in Patch 1.1

Imperator: Rome - Para_Rod

Hi everyone and welcome back to another development diary! This time we look into some of the political changes for the Pompey update that will be out in June.

Eligibility in Republics

Different republics will have different age-requirements for who can be elected to become ruler. Rome for example, require its rulers to be at least 35 years old.

Co-Ruler/Dual-Rulers

In the Pompey patch (v1.1), Aristocratic Republics will have Consuls & Co-Consuls. When elected, the one with highest support becomes Consul, and the one with the second highest number of votes becomes Co-Consul. This often means that they come from two different parties.

When it comes to power generation, the stats of the Consul with the highest attribute will be used, giving a nice benefit to the country.

The loyalty of those of the same party as the Co-Consul gets a positive impact if he is loyal, and negative impact if he is disloyal. We simulate the friction between the two consuls by the loyalty of the co-consul. Also, if the Co-Consul gets low loyalty, the power costs increase by up to 25%.

The Co-Consus gain popularity by the same factor as the first consul gains popularity, and the ruler popularity that other characters look at is the average of both Consuls.

Any ruling trait that a Co-Consul has will also be added to the country.

A major drawback for Aristocratic Republics is the fact that impact of ruler corruption could be doubled, as both Consuls corruption is added together for the country.

Consorts

In some types of monarchies, the consorts have some sort of supportive abilities. In such a monarchy, the consorts works like a co-ruler for how you gain power each month, ie the highest score of an attribute of the ruler and his/her consort is the one considered, so the capabilities of who you marry to your ruler is important.

Consorts also get a loyalty-hit over time, if they are not the parent of the primary heir of the current ruler, and if they become disloyal, they will increase the power-costs by up to 25%, scaled by how disloyal they are.

Government Abilities

In the Pompey patch we have added some extra abilities for each of the three government forms, where you can strengthen yourself.

Republics
Each party has a specific action connected to it, where the cost is halved if that party is in power, and also increase the populist popularity.

Civic Party - Pay Civic Power for cheaper building costs.
Military Party - Pay Military Power for more discipline .
Mercantile Party - Pay Oratory Power for cheaper trade routes.
Religious Party - Pay Religious Power for cheaper conversions.
Populist Party - Only if populists are in power, pay money for reduction in corruption and populist support

Monarchies

War Council - You can Summon a War Council once every ten years, where your important courtiers will propose different places where you should start wars, giving you claims on adjacent areas.
Demands Oath of Allegiance - Spend lots of oratory and religious power to increase the support for your Primary Heir over time.
Hold Games - Spends money of both the country and the ruler to increase his or her popularity.
Patronize the Arts - Spend Civic Power to gain Primary Culture Happiness and Civilization Increase over time.

Tribes

War Council - Same as for monarchies
Assemble Raiding Parties - Spend Oratory and Military Power to get a boost in Enslavement Efficiency.
Encourage Tribal Migration - Makes you lose 5 tribesmen pops, for a tick down in centralization.

(And there is more new things for tribes, mentioned in a later development diary.)

Power Base & Civil Wars

In Pompey each character in your realm can have a potential power base. This is both an abstract gauge of how influential they are in a country as well as a meter for how many troops they could raise in a civil war. The total power base in a country will range up to around 300 and it is scaled within that country.

Power base is primarily derived from:

Loyal Troops
Owned Holdings
Titles
How much of the country’s population that is ruled by a character who is a Governor or ruler.
Ruler Popularity (for the ruler)
Character Wealth

It can also be modified by interactions, events and other script content...

For purposes of Civil Wars the game will no longer count Loyal Cohorts but instead the Power Base of all disloyal characters.

The threshold for civil war is 33%, with positive stability increasing it, and negative decreasing it.

Character Interactions

We will go deeper in a later developer diary about the new abilities we will be adding, we can now mention that we are rebalancing the costs quite heavily for them, removing the power costs, and using the new abilities to impact Aggressive Expansion, Tyranny or Stability from it. Recruiting a character from another nation wlll increase your AE, while bribing will be done with the rulers own personal money.

Next week we’ll talk about playing tall, changes to barbarians, trade & slave distribution, while going into more detail about heritages.

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May 6, 2019

Development Diary #49 - Navies in Patch 1.1

Imperator: Rome - Para_Rod

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 :)

Navies in the Imperator era

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.

Ships & Naval Battles

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.

The Ship Types:

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.

Capturing ships

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.

Naval Tactics

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.

Naval Power Projection Unit Abilities:

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%.

Naval Range

(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.

Navigable Rivers

(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).

Naval Terrain

(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.

Omens & Religions

(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)

Converting Religion

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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