Hello everyone and welcome to another development diary for Imperator. Today you are sadly stuck with me, as Trin Tragula has the day off for New Years Eve. We’re busy working towards the beta milestone, improving interfaces, fixing bugs and teaching the AI new tricks.
In todays diary we’ll take a look at some interface & mechanics changes that have happened in the last month, before we get back to our regularly scheduled diaries when Trin Tragula will talk about Mercenaries and delve into the Ethiopia and Arabia.
Regional Governors
With the evolvement of the game design, the fact of having one governor per province turned to be less fun than expected. The management and interaction with a large amount of governors in a medium-sized empire forced them to become too irrelevant.
Now the map is divided into regions, where each region have 7-8 different provinces in them, and each province have 10-12 cities in them.
Each region, unless its your home capital region will have a governor assigned to them, while each province have its own possible governor policy.
Changing policies no longer impact the loyalty of the governor, as it turned it into a non-choice in most cases, but instead have a oratory power cost that is the same whether its a governor or your rulers directly controlled provinces.
Units can now be assigned to cover an entire region by giving control over to the local governor, reducing unrest in the cities, and helping the loyalty of the governor.
Not Just a Name
A lot of the times, you get messages about characters in our games, you go, who was that Naughtius Maximus anyway? So, we’ve decided to rework how we refer to characters in messages and in the UI, by referring to them by their titles, relationships to titleholders, or other statuses. So now, you’ll be able to see that the character attempting to befriend your ruler is the brother of the commander of the 24th Legion, and you can more easily ignore him.
Importance of Families
Another thing that became more obvious during playtesting was that just having characters, really did not give them the life they needed to create a living country. We had the concept of characters belonging to families in the game already, but it was merely a name and a prestige value, and nobody paid any attention to which family a character belonged to, so we made the following changes and additions.
Each country have a list of official families that characters belong to. The amount of official families in a country depends on the size of the country. Not every character in an official family has a direct close blood relation, but they are all considered to belong to the same family. All members of the same family contribute to the family prestige, and reap the benefits and drawback of the reputation of that prestige.
Characters may be in your country, but belong to a foreign family, and those characters will not marry on their own, or be entirely trusted.
There is also a new Family View tab in the characters view, where you can view all families in your country, and their members.
Finally, when conquering and annexing another nation, you now have choices of how to handle the families of that country, even allowing them to become families of your nation on a family by family basis if you so choose.
Diplomatic Action Pending
One of the main problems we’ve had in our games is the constant need to check the tooltip of greyed out diplomatic actions, so you can see when you can send a diplomat again.
In Imperator, we now tell you the date, above the list of actions, if there is a diplomat enroute. Also, primarily for multiplayer, you will see which diplomatic offer you have sent, if it has not been replied to yet.
Instant AI Diplomacy
Another thing that we discovered during playtesting was how awkward it was with setting up trade-routes with foreign countries compared to internal trade, when you had to wait a day for the AI to reply, while trade internally was instant.
So we changed how AI responds to all diplomatic deals, by no longer having them reply the next day, but instead checking it immediately, so you get instant feedback. This had the side-effect of estimated AI replies being more accurate since the state of the world have not changed between pressing the button and them replying.
Loyalty Gain on Troops
One of the main problems with the original EU:Rome was that a lot of the mechanics were hidden, and you did not really see what was happening. Now we have made it so you can see how likely a general is to gain the loyalty of a cohort each month.
This is primarily based on the characters Charisma, but traits and laws are also important.
Attrition for Units
One interesting aspect of our units was the problem that when you had enough money and access to certain goods, some types of units where always superior. One of the primary reasons for that was there was no difference between units when it came to how much attrition they would take in an area. So marching 20,000 men with War-Elephants through a low supply area meant they lost the same manpower as 20,000 Light Infantry.
This have now been changed, so that Light Infantry costs 50% of a normal unit supply, Heavy Infantry & Heavy Cavalry cost about 50% more supply, while War-Elephants costs 500% of normal supply.
The impact of this is that 10,000 Light Infantry will require a Supply Limit of 5 to not take attrition in a non-desert province, while 10,000 War Elephants require a Supply Limit of 50 to not take attrition, and 10,000 Heavy Infantry would require a Supply Limit of 15.
This means that different terrain and areas have needs of different types of armies for efficient warfare.
Trade
Most of the times when you have a nice capital surplus bonus of a specific Trade Goods you do not want to lose that bonus. That is why we have added a checkbox at the Trade View, where you can set it to auto-decline all trade proposals where you would lose your capital surplus bonus.
The National Overview
The main information page in Imperator, is what we call the country overview screen. That one has been evolving constantly during development, and will continue to evolve as we work on the game. Since the last time we showed this screen in the middle of November, we’ve now added some nice pie-charts so you can depict the distribution of your population when it comes to type, religion and culture.
You can now also directly set the governor policies of every province from this sortable list of provinces.
Since the popularity and corruption of your current ruler is important for your country, it is also displayed prominently at the the national overview.
Your Ruler Popularity reduces your tyranny, and in a republic, increases the senate influence of the rulers party. Monarchies and Tribes get other benefits of a rulers popularity, or lack thereof while corruption of a ruler has a few different drawbacks.
Improvements to the User Interface
First of all, most screens, including the character view have a “back” button, so you can easily get back to the previous one.
Secondly, we’ve added automatic “shortcut-icons” to tooltips to tell you which button can be used from the keyboard for that action.
Finally, we’ve added filter and sorting buttons to most screens with long lists of characters, countries or provinces.
We’ve done far more of course, but there’s lots of development diaries left for you until we release the game. Happy New Year everyone!
Why Pdox is not making this historicaly accurate?
Hello and welcome again to one of the Developer Diaries of Imperator:Rome!
Today I will be talking a bit about how Mercenaries work in the game, as well as some words about the Arabian Peninsula.
Mercenaries
Armies came in many shapes, forms, and levels of professionalism, in the era that Imperator:Rome covers, something we to some degree try to cover in the Military Traditions that we have spoken about in previous developer diaries (and which we will return to).
One big difference however is that not all troops fought for the country in which they were born. Then as well as later in history mercenary groups played a big part, such as Cretan Archers, the famous Mamertines and others.
At times Mercenary groups played a decisive part in conflicts, as did their tendency to abandon an employer that could not pay them.
In Imperator Mercenary armies are always present, spread out over the map, using their own banner and the unit graphics of the local culture. As long as a mercenary army is not hired by anyone it will also not count towards the supply limit in the city they are located. Mercenary armies all have their own General, to whom all the troops are loyal.
Mercenary Overview Screen. Here you can at all times see what Mercenaries exist (sorted by Proximity) and who has hired them. It also displays the monthly cost of employing each Mercenary group. You can also see Papirius’ unemployed Mercenaries on the map between Rome and Etruria.
Hiring a Mercenary regiment comes at a one time cost of 50 Military Power, but also obliges you to pay their upkeep for the duration of their employment (at a rate 400% more expensive than what one of your own armies would cost).
Hiring the army immediately brings it under your control, but does not move it to your territory. Instead, hired mercenary armies hired outside of your territory will begin in a state of exile, so they can be brought to your territory to then be used in whatever conflict you intend.
Any Mercenary company in diplomatic range can be hired, but their high upkeep means that hiring an army far from your conflict could get expensive as you would be paying their upkeep from the day they are hired.
Once no longer exiled, the mercenary army will act as any other army under your control, except for the fact that you cannot remove its leader, or remove any units. They will use your military bonuses, you can alter their deployment and their military tactics.
As with any army you can also disband a mercenary army at any time it is not in battle. Their increased upkeep cost will however also mean that disbanding them can be quite costly.
Once disbanded the mercenary army will again be considered available for hire, and it will begin its journey back to its home location.
Desertion & Mercenary Princes:
Mercenaries are not only known for how useful they were to their employers. Men like Pyrrhus and, in his youth, Agathocles, also made names for themselves as Mercenary captains when their prospects at home looked bleak.
Succession and Monarchies is something we will talk more about later but it is possible for the Mercenary company list to be supplemented by characters from the wider game world, such as disenfranchised heirs.
Last of all, should you not be able to pay your mercenaries you may find that this makes them quite unhappy. Among the various possible events that can happen as a result from a negative treasury (as mentioned in the diary on Economy) is that mercenaries might offer to join the opposing side in an ongoing war.
Arabia
For the map part of today’s diary we are going to be looking to the south of regions we have previously visited. In 450 AUC or 304 BCE, the Arabian peninsula is at the same time isolated and integrated in the Mediterranean world.
The region is closely tied to the trade network of the Indian Ocean, which while not nearly as developed as it would become later, was still ancient by this time.
It is this trade in spices, cloth and incense that brought greek traders and explorers, to the region and eventually led to Roman trading posts on the Indian subcontinent, and it is this trade that is the lifeblood of the more advanced of the Arabian kingdoms.
Arabia Felix / Felicitous Arabia:
Throughout history southern Arabia has been the more densely populated and more developed part of the peninsula. The temperate highlands provide basis for agriculture and larger cities while the coastline is strategically situated to benefit from the trade flowing between Africa, India and the Mediterranean. This is how the region came to be described as Felicitous Arabia in greek and latin, or Al Yaman in Arabic.
In 304 BCE this region is home to a number of ancient kingdoms, with their own writing, bureaucracy and mode of government. Up until recently this area was dominated by the Sabean kingdom, but it is now divided between a number of smaller kingdoms.
Apart from the Arabian majority this region is by our start date also home to sizable Jewish communities, though these are at the time of our start not in control of any of its states.
- Saba: Ancient Autocratic Kingdom and center of Semitic civilization in Yemen. In many ways in decline at our start date and challenged by smaller nearby arabian kingdoms.
- Himjar: Kingdom of the Himyarites who eventually would come to dominate the region. Rival to the other south arabian kingdoms and already in control of the important coastal strip along the Bab el Mandeb strait between Arabia and Africa. Himjar starts independent and unaligned.
- Qataban: Small kingdom in southern Yemen. Starts in control of the southern part of the Yemeni highland as well as some of the Incense ports of the south.
- Hadhramut: Ancient South Arabian kingdom that was eventually conquered by Himjar. Controls some of the most valuable incense producing regions but is generally not nearly as rich and fertile as western Yemen.
- Ma’in: Kingdom of the Mineans, who predate the kingdom of Saba but only recently rose to relevance in the region.
Northern & Greater Arabia:
Northern Arabia is not nearly as fertile or settled as the south, it is dominated by the huge Syrian and Arabian deserts, which most peoples have a hard time crossing. The Arab peoples have however made the trade through and around their peninsula their main source of income and their kingdoms can be found all around the deserts.
While never the dominant force that they would become later in history, some Arab kingdoms such as Nabatea, Himjar, and later Hatra and Palmyra, would prosper in a region that was constantly at the edge of the conflicts of greater empires.
Arabian pops are also present far beyond the region where Arabian states exist at our start, opening for the possible formation of more such states in the future in Syria and Mesopotamia.
- Lihyan: Up until recently a small city state kingdom based around the Dedan oasis, south of Nabatea. Have recently grown to control a wider region, wresting control of the Tayma or Tiamat oasis from the Qadarites.
- Thamud: Independent Tribal state along the red sea coast attested for hundreds of years before the start of the game.
- Thaqif: Independent Tribe controlling the area around the Ta’if oasis.
- Qedar: Old tribal federation formerly in control of the region conquered by Lihyan. Traditionally allies of the Nabateans but at the start of the game unaligned.
- Gerrha: Independent Tribal kingdom in control of the eastern arabian coastline (Barayn).
- Maka: Tribal Kingdom in modern Oman. Was previously under Achaemenid rule but has since slid into obscurity and been left to its own devices.
- Tylos: Small trade kingdom on the island today known as Bahrain. The economy of Tylos is based on pearl fishing and it is home to a sizable greek minority.
