Greetings all!

Today I’m joined by Trin Tragula who will bring you up to date on some of the rebalancing and tweaking that has taken place in the Cicero update, after I’ve explained a little about the changes we’ve made to the food and pop systems. These changes are not currently live on the open beta, so those of you who have kindly opted in to the beta to help us out, will have some new information to read.

It has been rightly pointed out that the way that starvation applies in the current beta iteration results in some undesirable results. To solve this, starvation will no longer be applied at a flat rate, which caused Settlements to dwindle away when a large city is present in a Province.

Instead, provinces which run out of food will apply a -75% total multiplier to the population capacity of all Province territories. Overpopulation will now yield a small (-0.03%) population growth malus for every pop over the threshold, alongside the happiness penalties previously implemented. This solves a number of issues we had when playing with Cicero, and feels like a much more organic solution to starvation and overpopulation. Territories that exceed their population capacity will begin to slowly grow fewer pops, organically reaching a stable population point, and starvation will no longer punish Settlements unduly.

In addition to these food changes, we’ve taken a pass over the initial setup of the territory map, adding food resources to a few Provinces that were lacking access to a renewable food source, and removed a series of buildings that were erroneously lurking in territories of the wrong category.

A seemingly minor, but important change coming to population, is in the way that ratios are calculated. It was previously possible to raise the desired ratio of a pop-type to well above 100%, and depending on the order (from left to right) in which it appeared, would be given precedence over other types. In an effort to solve this problem, and provide a better baseline with which to balance setups, we’ve elected to normalise pop ratios across the board.



In practical terms, this means that a territory which in the old system had 20% Desired Citizens and 10% Desired Freemen, would now have 66.6% Desired Citizens, and 33.3% Desired Freemen.

This system is much easier to balance around, and should never result in a situation where it becomes impossible to gain any pops of a specific type in a territory.

Some valuable feedback regarding the cost of founding a city has been given and received, and we’ve changed the cost from a scaled gold cost, to a flat gold cost. This seems logical, as the benefit from a city does not scale linearly with national income, as a scaling cost would imply.

Now I shall hand over to Trin Tragula, to explain some of the balance changes we’ve made, in the Cicero update!

/Arheo


Hello and welcome to this second part of today’s Dev Diary. Here I will show some of the changes that Cicero brings on the balancing side. One of the greater benefits of an open beta is that we have been able to change things based on the feedback players provide as they try out features. Some of this you will already be aware of if you have been playing the open beta, some of it will be new even if you have.



Traditions are in many ways the main thing that differentiates countries in various parts of the map, and in some cases they also unlock things that you cannot otherwise make use of. As such there will likely always be many opinions on them and their relative balance.

Offense, Defence and Discipline: Something that has been frequently mentioned by the community is the fact that traditions have not always seen to the full picture when it comes to the use of unit specific Offense, Defence and Discipline modifiers. As of the Cicero Update almost all such modifiers from traditions have been changed. Some have increased, others have decreased and in many cases a Discipline bonus has been turned into one for Offense or Defence.

Levantine Traditions: When traditions were originally conceived the intention was always that Egypt make use of the Levantine set. This later changed to make the successor kingdoms all use the same (Greek) Tradition set. In the name of variety Cicero has brought the Levantine set back to Egypt, while also reshuffling it a bit to make the middle path able to unlock Mega Polyremes. The Legacy of the Builders tradition will now also provide extra building slots in cities.

‘Barbarian’ Traditions: Perhaps our most wide reaching set, that of the Barbarian Traditions, have seen an increase in bonuses related to Light Infantry and Chariots.

A fair bit of the feedback we have been getting during the open beta has related to unit type balance. In some ways the new food system has meant that units with a higher weight are more valuable now, and to some degree this feedback has just related to general concerns present since 1.1 or before.

Elephants:
While elephants themselves have not been changed their general viability has increased with the introduction of food. Having a healthy food storage, and taking control of the enemy food storage in offensive warfare, have made these giant beasts of the battlefield a much more viable option in many cases.

Horse Archers & Light Cavalry:
The effectiveness of flanking means that both Horse Archers and Light Cavalry are very useful, more so than is warranted by their cost and availability. As of the Cicero patch we have increased the attrition weight of both, reflecting the great need for food of horses. Mounted archers will now also take extra morale damage and therefore retreat more quickly from the field of battle if they are opposed, much like archers do when deployed as skirmishers.

Chariots:
Chariots are a tricky unit type balance wise since they were largely outdated in many ways by the start of our game, yet they were still in frequent use in some societies. As of the Cicero patch Chariots are cheaper to recruit (from a cost of 8 to 6) and traditions that boost them have been further increased.

Heavy Cavalry:
While expensive Heavy Cavalry was a central part of a number of prominent armies in this timeline. Cicero patch increases the viability of Heavy Cavalry by reducing their price to 10 (this is further reduced by Military Traditions in many cases).

Mega Polyremes & Octeres:
The idea of the Heavy ship class was always that its main use would be the special abilities that they have access to, that allow them to influence land warfare and help more directly with naval invasions than other types. This is why their maneuverability is low enough that they can only target a ship directly in front of them, but even given that these ships have tended to perform very well against other ship types. More so than intended, even given their high cost.

For this reason both Mega-Polyremes and Octeres have now lost their greater ability to absorb strength damage, making them slightly less useful in ship to ship encounters.

Even if the need to match your national idea to your government type remains in Cicero the removal of monarch power has made it more important that national ideas can compete with each other for utility.

The bonuses have therefore been revisited, both with an eye on their value and to adopt them to our new game mechanics such as food or conversion.

Central Urban Spaces:
Province loyalty gain increased from 3% to 5% to make the idea more worthwhile.

City Planning:
With the introduction of cities a national idea that gave more building slots in only cities turned out to be of limited use. Instead this idea now gives a general increase in Population Capacity.

Standard Construction:
With buildings playing a larger role in the game, and with the more expensive buildings in settlements this idea has grown more useful. It will remains o but the discount for buildings have been decreased from 20% to 15%.

Grain Stockpile:
Instead of increasing population growth directly this idea will now increase Food output as well as the food capacity in every Province in your empire.

Institutional Proselytism:
This idea will now increase population conversion speed in your nation.

Siege Training:
In order to make this idea more worthwhile the bonus to Siege Ability is now 15%.

That was all for today. It is however by no means the only tweaks coming to the Cicero update! We will cover more changes, as well as more of the general features of the Cicero Update next week. :)

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Click here to discuss this week's development diary with our team!

Welcome back to another Dev Diary for Imperator: Rome!

Once again, we’ll be covering some information that those of you using the open beta branch will already have been playing with.

Before we dive in to the mechanics and solutions behind the monarch power rework, I’d like to explain a little bit about the impetus behind the changes, and the varying factors at play.

One of the more controversial aspects of the game at release, was the implementation of Monarch Power. After reading reams of feedback on the subject, and considering the available options, we elected to look at reworking the entire concept of Monarch Power in the Cicero update.

The community issues with the 1.0 monarch power system could broadly be boiled down into two main categories:

• The lack of control over the stats that your monarch or ruler has.
  
• The inconsistency of the varying purposes power was intended to be used for.

In essence, we needed a system that acted as an anti-snowballing mechanic, felt like something a player had control over, and which avoided any unnecessary abstraction both conceptually and in terms of practical use.

Enter Political Influence. PI is intended to represent exactly what it describes: the influence that a government or nation has over their own political establishment.

The way in which it is produced is also related directly to the political establishment. Each primary Office holder in your nation will contribute to the PI gain of your nation, based on their loyalty to your cause. The more loyal your cabinet, the less practical power you will have to perform the various actions associated with PI.

Which leads me comfortably to the next topic we covered as part of the power rework, and point two of the community issues surrounding Monarch Power. A huge variety of actions that previously had a token power cost, have been redesigned to use one of our newer, more dynamic resources. Tyranny, Stability, Political Influence, Corruption and even Aggressive Expansion have a more clear-cut purpose; the logical solution was to use these to represent the consequences of your actions, rather than attach an abstract cost:value ratio to things such as Bribery, selection of National Ideas, inviting investment, and more.



Of course, there are still actions that demand the use of more conventional currency. Gold still plays a large part in a functional government of Antiquity, perhaps even more so in the Cicero update. The power cost for inventions, for example, has been replaced with a scaling gold cost, representing the direct cost of investment into research and development:



In addition to reworks to the cost of many actions and abilities, it became quickly apparent that many actions needed no cost at all, and functioned as their own opportunity cost, or had a consequential cost. An example of this would be the Assault ability for armies; the manpower lost during an assault vastly outweighed any token power cost, and as such, has no action cost in Cicero. Citing an example of opportunity cost, Omens will no longer have an up-front price; the opportunity cost comes of being tied to your chosen omen for the entire duration, unable to switch or cancel the ongoing omen.

The one instance that we felt was not covered by any of our new or old systems, was the Military Tradition mechanic. This needed something unique, and as such, we needed a unique method by which to unlock and acquire traditions.

It felt appropriate to treat Traditions as a self-contained system, and the Cicero update will include a Military Experience resource. This will be generated over time at a modest base rate, but is modified by the average combat experience level of your national cohorts.

Military Drill is introduced alongside this, as a way for armies to maintain a certain level of experience during peacetime. The employment of Mercenary forces will detract from a nation’s Military Experience gain, but have been made vastly cheaper to maintain, to compensate for this.



Rulers will not be entirely without merit in the Cicero update, with each of the four statistics granting you bonuses to certain stats, scaled by the value of the stat itself:

• Martial: Manpower Recovery and Land Morale Recovery
  
• Finesse: Commerce Modifier and Build Cost
  
• Charisma: Monthly Tyranny Decay and Claim Fabrication speed
  
• Zeal: Monthly Stability Increase and War Exhaustion Decay

A skilled ruler will therefore still be important to a state, and a weak one will be noticeably less potent.

To conclude, we realised early on in the testing cycle for these changes, that it felt more organic, dynamic, and most importantly fun, to utilise resources in this way. That said, if you wish to be the judges of this yourselves, the open beta for the Cicero update is still underway, we invite you to try it out!

/Arheo

Click here to discuss this week's development diary with our team!

Greetings all!

In today’s dev diary, we’ll be covering the details of the reworked population simulation in the Cicero update. As a small note: those opting in to the Cicero open beta will already have experienced many of these changes in action.


Perhaps one of the largest tasks in the Cicero update has been the creation of an organic, living population simulation, which reacts to, and interacts with, the fabric of the game.

Up to and including the Pompey update, the manipulation of pops required direct player involvement, either through manual pop conversion/assimilation, or through the invoking of an appropriate governor policy.

In Cicero, all aspects of the pop simulation will be dynamic, driven by situation, and occur over time in any given territory.

Each poptype will have unique base speeds for assimilation, conversion, promotion and migration, which will be modified by numerous local factors such as local unrest, differing dominant culture or religion, and city/settlement status.



In addition, territories will have a desired ratio for each poptype, and population will promote or demote to attempt to fill this ratio. Promotion and demotion will increase in speed based on the size of the territory they are resident within, rendering it possible for large cities to have functional social mobility.


Migration is a new concept to Imperator, both replacing and augmenting in equal measure the pop movement feature included in the base game.

Every territory will now have a Migration Attraction value, derived primarily from how much free pop capacity is present.

Pops within a territory will consider any territory that is either neighboring, within the same Province, or if coastal, a Port province, as a valid migration target. If the attraction of a potential target is higher than the territory in which they reside, a migration will begin. Only 1 pop can be migrating from a territory at any one time.

Importantly, Slaves will not migrate of their own volition, they must instead by moved manually. For Tribal nations, tribesmen may be moved manually. Both these actions will cost gold, and rather than moving each pop individually, a more accessible menu has been created:



Sieges, low food supply, and outright starvation will cause pops to flee their homes, bringing a new dynamic to warfare and attrition.

Interaction with the City and Settlement feature detailed in last week's dev diary is high; you will be experiencing a much more centralized, city-weighted population distribution as the game progresses, using settlements primarily as resource production sites.

As before, these changes are available in the Cicero open beta branch if you feel like checking them out.

/Arheo

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Click here to discuss this week's development diary with our team!

Greetings all!


Now that the summer hiatus is over, dev diaries for the Cicero update will be getting back into full swing, starting with the explanation of a few features that we've been tinkering with recently.


To start with, we’ll be taking a look at the introduction of the categorization of Territories. Prior to 1.2, all our base level administrative units were known as Cities. As part of the redesign here, our collective noun for these will now be Territories.


A Territory can be assigned any one of the following categories:

• Settlement: Representing a sparsely populated area of land, settlements have penalties to output, migration speed, and poptype ratio. Settlements will only support one building, but will have their own unique set of powerful buildings, so you can specialize them accordingly.
  
  
• City: Cities have a large bonus to population capacity, and will act as focal urban centers for your empire. Cities will be able to support all the buildings you’ve grown accustomed to in the Cicero beta thus far, but will feel a lot more unique as a result of their scarcity. Cities will also have a penalty to trade good production - they will tend to consume, rather than create, resources.
  
  
• Metropolis: A metropolis can be designated when a city reaches a large number of pops, and are considered the peak of a city’s urban evolution. A metropolis will not have access to any unique buildings, but will improve living conditions for certain pop classes.

Settlement Buildings

• Latifundia: 40% Local Slave Output, 25% Local Population Capacity. Latifundia are limited to territories where Mines are not applicable.
  
• Mine: -5 Local Slaves Per Good, 25% Local Population Capacity. Requires Marble, Stone, Precious Metals, Base Metals or Iron.
  
• Farm: +50% Local Food Modifier, -5 Local Slaves Per Good, -10% Freemen Ratio, 25% Local population Capacity. Requires Vegetables, Grain, Fish or Livestock.
  
• Hill Fort: 20% Local Freemen Happiness, 40% Local Freemen Output, 25% Local Population Capacity.
  
• Provincial Legation: 75% Migration Speed Modifier, 20% Local Pop Assimilation Speed.

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As is appropriate for the era, cities will be able to be founded from settlements, allowing you to shape the world to your own desire.

An important part of this rework is the visual appearance of territories on the world map. Whereas previously, each territory showed buildings appropriate to the population of said territory, only Cities and Metropolises will now do so:



To accompany the cities rework, we are introducing a Food mechanic, to simulate the importance of a constant supply in the ancient world.

A modicum of food will be produced by all territories depending on their terrain type. Food itself will be stored on a Province level, and consumed by the pops living within the Province, based on their type.

In the beginning of the game, most Provinces will likely be able to sustain their own population, however, as the population of territories increase and more cities are founded, they will start taxing the food supply of a Province greatly.

This brings me to the more intriguing aspect of the food supply system. Various trade goods such as Grain, Fish, Livestock, and Vegetables, will now provide a flat increase to monthly food. These will be traded in the same way as before, however, the importance of these goods to large cities should not be understated. As a burgeoning urban area such as Latium begins to grow, more and more food will be needed to sustain the population there.



Of course, food is not solely a negative consideration. Province food storage can be enhanced by constructing granaries in constituent Cities or Metropolises. Bonuses to population growth and local defensiveness within the Province will be applied for every 12 months of stored food present in the Province Food Supply. Empires focusing on ‘wide play’ will not find the need to interact with this to a large degree, or at most, to focus on the core Provinces within their realm.

Naturally, food ties in strongly to warfare, with friendly units who would otherwise take attrition instead consuming a relative amount of food within a Province. Additionally, if a Province Capital falls to an enemy, they will be able to use the food supply to prevent attrition for their own troops.

Sieges, blockades, and occupation will reduce the food production of a Territory, which, in the case of Provincial Capitals, will also reduce any imported food, eventually starving a Province of its food supply. If supply reaches 0, a severe penalty will be applied to all cities within the state, rendering them much easier to siege, and increasing the migration speed of pops within the Province.



As a secondary consideration, being over the population capacity in a territory will no longer be quite as severe as it previously was. It will gradually decrease the migration attraction in a territory, and can be considered more of a soft cap than before.

You can view the original thread or discuss the diary on our forum thread here!

See you next week.

Hello everyone, and welcome to another development diary for Imperator.

In the Cicero update, we are changing the instant population manipulation mechanics to become a simulation over time that you can nudge.


Pop Movement/Migration
Slaves from neighboring cities, or cities within the same province, can still be moved manually into a city for a cost, somewhat similar to before. This will also be possible for Tribesmen if you are a migratory tribe.

Each city can also have one pop migrating at a time. If the Migration Attraction in a city is X more than that of another city then migration can happen to it if:

1. The destination city is a neighbor of the origin city.
   
2. The destination city is in the same province as the origin city.
   
3. The origin city and the destination city are both in provinces with ports in the same country.

Which pop is picked for migration will be random but a slave will never be picked unless the city is over its population capacity and the slave is not required for a holding. A pop that is currently migrating cannot be picked for Promotion, Assimilation or Conversion. It will also only be picked for starvation if it is the last existing pop in the city.

The speed of Migration can be increased or decreased by modifiers such as a city being looted, or a certain governor policy being used.


Pop Promotion
If the population of a certain pop type is below 33% in a given city then a random pop is picked for promotion. This pop will then over time start promoting to the underrepresented pop type. The speed of promotion will be dependent on modifiers as well as using the Social Mobility governor policy.


Pop Assimilation and Conversion
Similarly to Pop Promotion Assimilation and Conversion will happen to one selected pop at a time. Unlike the other two there will always be one pop chosen as long as there are pops of the non-state Religion or culture. The speed at which conversion takes place is dependent on a number of local and national modifiers however which means that de facto the pop may not be assimilating/converting.


As you can see below, the pop interface is in the process of being completely reworked for Cicero.



As the impact of governor policies now scales with Finesse, you need a really good governor, and perhaps a few special buildings to be able to convert and assimilate cities with another dominant religion and culture.




You can still manually move slaves as you like between cities, for a price in gold, but the UI have been completely changed, so instead of selecting a pop then a target, you instead go to the city you want slaves in, and then select what type of pop you want, and its origin and click for as many as you want in the same UI.



You can discuss the dev diary on our forum here. This will be our last development diary before our July hiatus, but we will be back next month with more!

Imperator: Rome has expanded its grip on the ancient world through a major new update! The “Pompey” update adds important changes to gameplay, adding greater depth and historical fidelity to Imperator.

Imperator: Rome takes you back to the dangerous days a decade after the death of Alexander the Great. The conqueror’s empire is divided while, to the west, Rome and Carthage are poised for a mighty struggle to settle the fate of the Mediterranean.

The “Pompey” update adds greater differentiation between the nations and cultures of the classical world, as well as major changes to the war at sea and kingdom management.



The features of this update include:

• Dual Rulers: The historic second consuls of Rome and suffetes of Carthage are now represented in these republics, and a monarch’s spouse contributes to the rule of the kingdom.
  
• Heritage: Nations now have traditional profiles that reflect their historic strengths, adding more differentiation between nations.
  
• Naval Combat: More types of ships and new tactical options for combat, similar to those available on land.
  
• Naval Range: Ships can travel a limited distance from a friendly port before suffering attrition. This attrition can be reduced by inventions.
  
• Pirates: Pirates now operate from a pirate haven in a specific province. Clearing out this base will reduce pirate activity for a while. Also, pirates may now be hired as mercenaries.
  
• Release Subjects: Reduce unrest by ceding limited independence to provinces that do not like your rule.
  
• Province Improvements: Cities can build special projects that come with major permanent bonuses, crafting a major metropolis for your realm.
  
• Stability Rework: Stability is now a 100 point scale (base of 50) with corresponding bonuses and penalties along the range.
  
• New Government Interactions: Give a specific family greater power, call a War Council in times of emergency
  
• Navigable Rivers: Fleets can now sail the great rivers of the region (Nile, Tigris and Euphrates) opening up new military strategies.
  
• New Commander Traits: Admirals and generals earn new traits while leading forces.
  
• Move Capital: Relocate your national center of power or provincial capitals.
  
• New Events: New event chains, including flavor events for Rome, Italy and Carthage. New events related to military commanders and slavery.

Known Issues

• Mac has a crash that can occur when viewing the Mercenary interface.
  
• Players can't get achievements outside of Steam. Investigation ongoing.
  
• The DLC tab has been removed from the launcher except for the MS Store version.

EDIT: PSA

1.1 Pompey will not work with older save games, so there is a 1.0.3 - Old Version rollback branch on Steam and GOG for players who wish to continue their current games.

Ave once more citizens! Tomorrow we will be taking a second look at the 1.1 Pompey Update.

Join us live on Twitch at 14:00 CEST with Rod and Peter, as they play as Sparta and experience the changes the update has to offer! https://twitch.tv/paradoxinteractive

Hello everyone and welcome to another Imperator Development Diary. Today we are in a bit of a “filler” development diary mode, as we have already told you all about the Pompey update, and you can already try it as a beta. Our goal is to have the patch finalised this week though..

So let’s take a look at the most popular nations to play in the last 2 weeks.

Rome 19.85%
Sparta 4.92%
Egypt 4.17%
Macedon 4.16%
Carthage 2.85%
Epirus 2.46%
Seleucids 1.92%
Ulutia 1.60%
Phrygia 1.53%
Judea 1.43%
Athens 1.32%
Byzantion 1.29%
Brigantes 1.23%
Syracuse 1.14%
Knossos 0.94%
Massilia 0.90%
Bosporan 0.87%
Maurya 0.81%
Armenia 0.80%
Caledonia 0.79%

It is clear that Rome is the most popular nation by far, even before adding in the new events and co-consuls for the Pompey Update.

We hope to be back with some more interesting diaries next week.

Ave citizens! The 1.1 Pompey Update is now available as an Open Beta! We’d love to hear your feedback on the update before it goes live on the 26th of June. You can talk about the open beta or view the changes on our forums here.

Due to so many mechanics being reworked, please be aware that previous saves will not be compatible with 1.1