Jan 6, 2024

Imperiums: Greek Wars - Kube Games

Today's Spotlight will focus on one of the most interesting new mechanics that will appear in the Rise of Caesar expansion, Scenario Transition.
Given the number of questions and requests we have had on this topic it is clear that it is one of the top additions many players wish to see in the game. We have been considering it for a long time and it is definitely something we want to continue building on.

When Caesar conquered Gaul, he already was a Roman hero. However, as he stood at the northern coast looking across the misty Channel, thinking about the mysterious land and the tribes that inhabited it, he knew that his quest must continue. This next conquest would be the continuation of his life's efforts, using the experience of his legionaries, the infrastructure he built in Gaul, and all the skills and experience he had gathered in the many battles with the Celts.

Let's give the word to Pavel, our lead developer, to tell you in detail how this will work in game.

#Discussions_QuoteBlock_Author
Transition between scenarios has been on the waiting list for a long time. It was logical due to our chronological approach to the DLCs and something I personally really enjoy in other games, e.g. in Panzer General where I could take my well trained units into the next battle. However, this functionality is quite difficult to implement (more than you might think!) and many questions had to be answered first, such as:
What should be transitioned - units, cities, roads, terrain modifications, diplomacy relations, tech tree, or even resources?
How will the transition affect the game difficulty and still align with the preferred level of the player?
Should the transition be automatic or player-specific?
What will trigger the transition?
Should all factions be allowed to use this mechanic?
and so on.
Apart from this, there were a number of technical issues I had to consider:
The more things you allow to transition, the more "skewed" the scenario will be when compared to the stand alone scenario (with its fixed initial setup and balancing).
For example, if one faction should struggle with a lack of food in the second scenario but terrain improvements are transitioned from the first scenario, it would instantly solve the food problem and completely change the balance of things.
Similarly, bringing experienced units into the second scenario will affect the balancing. Things such as this could break the historical immersion.
How will the cities be transitioned regarding their size, name and improvements? Will Lutetia still be Lutetia in the second scenario if the player renamed it to Paris?
The list could go on, but you get the idea ...

So what approach have we taken?
Considering all of the above, it will be possible to transition units, cities, roads, terrain modifications, "Politics in Rome" (alternation to the Tech tree in other expansions) and partially the diplomacy relations. Resources on the other hand, will not be transitioned as it would unbalance the whole scenario instantly.

The transition is automatic, the player cannot choose what will or will not be transitioned, this will be taken care of by the transition balance algorithm. Even though players would certainly appreciate it if they could select the units they want to take with them, it would be near to impossible to balance. In this case, if a player has too many experienced units in the first scenario, only some of them will be transitioned.

When certain trigger conditions are met, a pop-up window will ask a player if he wants to move to the second scenario. There is no way of delaying this decision, no "ask me later" option. Do you want to move on to the next quest or do you want to keep playing and lose the possibility of smoothly jumping from one scenario to another?

Transition is only allowed for the Roman Republic faction as it would have been historically very inaccurate to enable this for other factions.

Very interesting is the transition of diplomacy relations and factions in general. We created a very flexible way how factions are "taken" to the second scenario, allowing for example the transition even before Gaul is defeated. This would lead to the opening of a second front while still fighting the hostile Gauls at the same borders and battlefronts of the first scenario.

All in all, I am quite happy that we have managed to implement this mechanic and with how it works. It is very flexible, allowing us to build on it in other potential DLCs while being also quite accessible to the modders.

No true conqueror could look into the fog hanging low on the sea and not dream of the next great conquest, especially when the knowledge of what is on the other side is veiled in mystery. Seize the opportunity, earn your glory, or die trying!

The release of the Rise of Caesar expansion is getting closer every day, so please don't forget to wishlist it and claim the release discount. We would also appreciate it if you subscribe to our company channel. We hope to have news about our next game soon!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2250440/Imperiums_Rise_of_Caesar/

Please, stay tuned for more.

Yours,
Kube Games team.

Jan 6, 2024

Getting ready: Party creation, playable races

Archaelund - DavidBVal

Before the adventure begins you need to do two things: create a party and choose a difficulty.

Creating an adventuring party

A standard party is formed by 4 adventurers. You are allowed to make a smaller party, but be warned... you'll get beaten. Badly. Later on, up to two companions can join your party. It doesn't matter if you have a smaller base party; you can never have more than 2 companions joining you.

The proccess of creating a character is straightforward. I don't like the games where you are forced to make a lot of uninformed decisions at the beginning, but of course this is still an RPG with a lot of depth, and some choices must be made. The good news is most of the choices will come later on, as you level up. And in character creation you can know how everything works by just hovering over stats.

If you're in a hurry to get into the game you might just create a random party with one click, which will automatically create a reasonably balanced party of four with at least one decent fighter, one decent healer and one spellcaster (other roles may vary). By "reasonably balanced" I mean exactly that: it can face the dangers ahead, but as you learn the ropes of the game you might probably do much better.

A good thing about random parties is they can be edited. You can go through the characters one by one and adjust some details, or completely redesign the characters.

First choice: race

In this version of EA, you can choose among five races to create your characters. (Two more races will be added in future versions, and it's also planned to add separate human cultures). The race selection screen displays all the information you need to make a choice.

I'll post here the game information about the non-human races, so you can get a little familiar with them.

Varannari

Tall and athletic natives from the primeval forests of Varannar are easily recognizable by their green skin and strong, long limbs. Varannari are brave, likeable and loyal, but prideful and temperamental.

In Archaelund: some Varannari were brought to Archaelund by the Mercians as slaves, but escaped into the forests to form nomadic clans and live once more according to their ancient ways. Most of them, however, are part of human society and have come as colonists or adventurers.

Trait bonuses: +1 Strength, +1 Endurance
Trait penalties: -1 Intellect, -1 Self-Control
Special abilities: Varannari gain a +15 bonus to the Survival and Athletic skills.

Goblin

In the civilized Exiled Kingdoms, goblins are considered monsters due to their renowned wickedness, and attacked on sight. The Archaelund Marches, however, can’t afford any available force to go to waste, and some goblins a tad less psychotic than their brethren can make a career as scouts and archers. Some of them become jesters for one of the Lords of the Marches, although their awful jokes are often more painful than their dented blades.

In Archaelund: Goblins are a common sight in the largest cities, where they live assimilated into human society. But many others are dangerous outlaws, sometimes led by shamans of their dark religion.

Trait bonuses: +1 Dexterity, +1 Awareness
Trait penalties: -1 Strength, -1 Self-Control
Special abilities: +1 Movement Point. They have innate resistance to fire (+25%) but are vulnerable to cold and shock damage (-25%)

Minotaur

In ancient times a wise and prosper people, nowadays turned into bloodthirsty monsters, roaming ancient mazes built by their ancestors while oblivious to their meaning. A few of them, however, are intelligent enough to become civilized (under a very generous use of the term) and make a living through their fighting abilities. Minotaurs are large, incredibly strong and aggressive, but often simple-minded and fearful of sorcery or the undead.

In Archaelund: Minotaurs are rare, and sometimes frowned upon. They are often front-line fighters in adventuring parties, or lead bandit groups. However there are exceptions and a small number of Minotaurs insist upon unveiling their ancient past and recover the wisdom of their ancestors.

Trait bonuses: +2 Strength, +1 Endurance
Trait penalties: -1 Dexterity, -1 Personality, -1 Intellect, -1 Self-Control
Special abilities: Minotaurs need two rations per rest. They don't have a 'Feet' slot, and can't wear boots or shoes. They are also unable to wear most helms.

Batrax

Batrax are small amphibious humanoids, nimble and dexterous, intelligent and innately adept in the magical arts. Unpredictable in the extreme, they can be equally violent or sociable when met in the wildlands.

In Archaelund: wild Batrax are feared in the coastlands, where they often ambush their victims with sharp harpoons and deadly magic. Some of them, however, claim human ancestry and wish to live among humans and learn their ways, citing a fabulous tale about a human adventurer who spent a night of passion with a Batrax princess. Unlikely as this tale may be, their abilities as scouts or sorcerers are undisputed and has earned them a place in Archaelund.

Trait bonuses: +1 Dexterity, +1 Personality, +1 Intellect
Trait penalties: -1 Strength, -2 Endurance
Special abilities: Batrax can hold their breath longer than other races. Vulnerable to fire (-50% to resistance). Batrax don't have a 'feet' slot and can't wear boots or shoes.

About game difficulties

After your party is created, and before you can begin your adventure, you must select a difficulty for the game. This can't be changed later. Once again, hovering over each difficulty will give you all the details, but it might be hard for you to determine how relevant are the listed changes.

My advice would be to go with New School difficulty, unless you truly enjoy challenges. As in many RPGs, the game becomes easier as you learn the ropes. For people with experience in old RPGs, Old School might be more enjoyable. It will force you to be more careful. The other two available difficulties (Explorer and Cruel) are for people that want a more gentle or an extremely ungentle experience. Iron Man mode is not available yet.

That's all for this write-up, in the next one I'll explain some aspects of the rest of character creation aspects (careers, skills, magic)

Jan 6, 2024

Dev Blog #10 – Onion Roster Design

GladiEATers - MilkBubblesGames

Crying Powers!

When cut, onions release a chemical called lachymatory factor, which contains sulphur! If you’re like me, this makes me cry my eyes out to a gross extent – even after years of chopping. This was our first design touchstone when it came to designing the GladiEATers roster – crying.

Root Motiff

We think the best roster designs are formed around a central image. For onions, we reinterpreted the Eye of Horus into a simplified crying eye. Blue is a colour that seemed to be associated with the eye in culture and jewllery, which made the blue tear association feel very natural.

Eyes on eyes (on eyes)

Our Raw Onion GladiEATer starts the roster with the motiff strong. Being a bulb with eyes crying all around. It also sets the stage with the most simple cry inducing ability:

Tear Up: - Enemy Cries. Being a weak, low time to cook, Raw creature, two of Raw Onion’s abilities are sacrificial/ make Raw Onion into more of a consumable, like the Raw Egg.
Peel Feel: - Makes an ally’s next attack inflict crying. - But destroys the Onion in the process.
Stembutt: - Deals a small amount of damage. - Takes a small amount of damage.

How good does this make Raw Onion? I wish there was some explanation of what crying does…

...What crying used to do

Originally, crying made all your abilities target enemies and allies randomly. This was a natural first iteration of the mechanic, but after a few months of testing, we realised this wasn’t the sort of "wow that’s fun" randomness. Instead ,it was the type of randomness that either:

Feels mediocre if a crying enemy hits another, less optimal, target on your team.
OR
Feels bad if it hits an equally optimal target on your team (you’d ask, what was the point of me making them cry).
OR EVEN WORSE
Feels terrible if your enemy casts an area of effect ability that targets your entire team - making your random targeting debuff completely irrelevant.

What crying does

Instead, we saw crying as an opportunity to partly fix another problem. We were worried that some players would decide on 1 ability of the 3 a GladiEATer has to be the best and continue casting that on repeat - without getting to have a strategic decision every turn.
To prevent this, we changed the crying debuff to stop the player from casting the same ability twice. Now the player has the interesting situation where they are forced to change up their strategy, picking the best of now two of their abilities.

This felt like a step in the right direction. However, with so many tear inducing abilities and a relatively minor effect that does not stack - what gave players a reason to make a GladiEATer cry twice? Blocking more abilities felt too limiting for the enemy. So, what about an explosion. Everyone loves explosions.
Now, when a crying GladiEATer is made to cry again – the tear explodes - dealing significant damage.
Thematically, this could be interpreted as the GladiEATer having a tantrum, or getting so sad that they take damage. Poor things ☹

GladiEATers crying is represented by a tear drop under the GladiEATer’s eye, which we’ve set on every single sprite (even those with no eyes!). Additionally, the 2nd time a GladiEATer is made to cry, the tear explodes as the damage activates and the crying stops.

More Onions!

Diane’s onion creations involve chopped Raw Onion Slices. These hover around melancholically, with occasional woeful outbursts:

Projection: -Deal damage randomly, 3 times! [Nothing like taking your sadness out on someone random]
Teary Gaze: -Enemy Cries.
Peeling Bad: -Lose 25% Max Health. –Gain 25% Power. [Keeping in-line with the peeling punnage]

The Grilled Onion Slice has honed its tear powers, developing… arms! This groundbreaking adaptation allows it to hone its tears into targeted balls of sad power.

Teary Touch: -Deal Damage and make an enemy cry [Not a tear Hadouken]
Spreading Sulphide: -Ally’s next attack makes targets cry .
Regretful Vanquish: -Charge Up. -Deal Damage equal to ½ of target’s missing health.

Regretful Vanquish has the Grilled Onion rubbing its eyes to form a massive scounrful tear. It is great for taking down high health enemies.
Spreading Sulphide also synergises powerfully with abilities that target multiple enemies, such as Raw Onion Slice’s Projection or even Tomato Spit which Diane’s Tomato Slices have access too!

Too Sad, Too Furious

Fried Onion Rings. They’re onions, they cry, and they’re fast. The Fried Onion Ring shaped like a literal tire and greased up by never ending tears, this sad speed demon only knows get fast or cry trying:

Greasy Steer: -Deal damage and get faster.
Battery Burnout: -Lose life and get faster.
Tear Streaks: –Draw a tear line, [[i]similar to how tire marks burn rubber on the ground]

cry

Diane's Design Link

We linked Diane’s design to the onion’s by putting our augmented Eyes of Horus on her as a sleeve of tattoos. Diane’s ability of pushing her already low health (and therefore sad) GladiEATers made thematic sense with her crying creatures being sad to work for her. Finally, Diane makes other chefs cry due to her meanness, much like her onions.

Oni-off

Saying goodbye always makes me sad ;( Thank you for reading a bit more about our crying onion buddies. There’s even more GladiEATers to talk about, perhaps even onion based GladiEATers yet to be announced??

Consider joining our Discord or leaving a comment – that would bring a tear to my eye.