Imperator Dev Diary - 20/03/23

[Jorlem]

Pig stabbing replaced with a more general solution for monotheistic religions.

Woo! Now I won't be completely dependent on events for stability when playing Judea! Thank you!

 

[___Vardan]

These changes look, adult, especially the loyalty issue was much wanted.

 

[UBERWASP]

All welcome changes, especcially loyalty, and religious conversion! Army construction, battle, sieges, research and economy still needs tweaks and further improved mechanics.

 

[Denkt]

Do you understand that you can't simulate that if it isn't a full rework to the military?? In this game a heavy infantry is the same, you cant see the differences with a Phalanx, a Hoplites and a Roman Soldier with scutum and sword. The only differences is with the tactics, Phalanx and Triple axis work for all the heavy infantries.
Phalanx wasn't outdated, I remember you that in the few two centuries of EU4 the Phalanx was reborned. If the Greeks lost to the roman in the battlefield was because they didn't use enough cavalry to do as Alexander with the tactics of the anvil and the hammer, if you watch these battles in Kings&Generals you will see the lack of cavalry was their doom and why was easily beaten for a soldier who may flank them when the Phalanx formation is broken due to bad terrain.

The developers have said the military system is going to be reworked, which according to the plan seems to be in autum. The issue with the phalanx is pretty clear, it is dependent on alot of stuff, right terrain, cavalry advantage, protected flanks and so on while the roman system generally worked no matter what which is a huge advantage which is quite clear given the many battles the romans won against such formations. I feel the more ifs a formation need the more weakness it have.

EUIV time period is more than a thousand years away and have technological development not available during Imperator: Rome time period which gave the pike phalanx an renaissance.

If anything I think CK3 have a better military system with their idea how men at arms will work. Each men at arms have their own counters and terrain bonuses and penalties, this way it would be easy to make roman legionaries different from macedonian phalanx, also CK3 have a much better idea about combat width which is based on the terrain and size of the defending army instead of being the same everywhere.

sure bro, but keep in mind Imperator doesn't allow that, because you are always on par with the rest of technology branchs, you cant surpass more than one or two levels of technology, Roman may be more advanced on the military, but not in the civic one, we may have now the military points which may help to simulate countries with a lot of military experience, and more for Rome cause they have a lot of free casus bellis and they will gain more military traditions so they may surpass the other Greek states.

It do show an issue with Imperator: Rome technology system, either you are advanced in Everything or you are not, there is nothing inbetween or specialization. The military tradition system don't make all that much sense since it assume a nations military development is predetermine 300 years into the future and given that the romans Changes their military quite alot just decades Before the start date should tell that these states was capable of quite major military reforms.

Anyway I think the technology system would be better if you could have cases such as rome being 10 in military technology but just 5 at religious technology, so some ability to prioritize certain areas over others.

 

[Kahldris]

Good stuff, however any word on making manpower something you have to worry about again? In my games as Egypt and crete manpower was something I dont have to worry about much at all anymore.
As crete....

 

[Denkt]

Good stuff, however any word on making manpower something you have to worry about again? In my games as Egypt and crete manpower was something I dont have to worry about much at all anymore.
As crete....

Given that they reduce tax income and increase research production it seems strange if they did not touch Manpower at all given it is probably the resource people complain the most about. However reducing Manpower may have negative impact on the smaller low pop nations who can have to wait forever to even get up a small army while not really impacting the big nations much.

I feel the only way to fix it would be a complete redesign of the military system.

Also, are monotheists better at conversions? Can you optimize/build your religion for it?

They should be since they can't use the Parthenon mechanic to satisfy various religions which mean their only option is conversion.​

 

[Gurkhal]

Awesome! Really looking forward to this.

 

[Mikebloke]

Pig stabbing replaced with a more general solution for monotheistic religions.

Both the sound and icon for increasing stability, have been changed in the Archimedes update. The religion focus of the update seemed like a good opportunity to give our monotheistic religions some care.

Yes, finally! A shame its only for monotheistics though, pig sacrifice appears to historically only been used by the poorest of roman families, and very little use outside of it. Please consider changing it to a Ram at least, and consider the other faiths who were more likely to just use humans I did a whole topic on it in suggestions awhile back...

 

[Lord Lambert]

The addition of food supply resulted in a significant bonus to the defender in a siege situation.

I'm not sure I agree with this statement at all tbh. While I am not against the changes, I do feel like this is just... inaccurate.
With food being a thing, the attackers in any siege won't take attrition, they won't drain their manpower slogging their way through a well fortified enemy. That in itself is not only huge for the manpower savings, but also because it's now very viable to siege with large armies, rather than going as small as you can get away with to avoid as much attrition as possible, this leaves your siege stacks much less vulnerable to attack.

yeah, I can't really get on board with saying the changes advantaged the defenders here.

 

[Palando]

I'm not sure I agree with this statement at all tbh. While I am not against the changes, I do feel like this is just... inaccurate.
With food being a thing, the attackers in any siege won't take attrition, they won't drain their manpower slogging their way through a well fortified enemy. That in itself is not only huge for the manpower savings, but also because it's now very viable to siege with large armies, rather than going as small as you can get away with to avoid as much attrition as possible, this leaves your siege stacks much less vulnerable to attack.

yeah, I can't really get on board with saying the changes advantaged the defenders here.

It's more about the time it takes to siege down a fort, really. It takes quite a while to siege down OPMs or some more fortified areas, slowing down the game a bit too much for my taste.

 

[Rubidium]

I'm not sure I agree with this statement at all tbh. While I am not against the changes, I do feel like this is just... inaccurate.
With food being a thing, the attackers in any siege won't take attrition, they won't drain their manpower slogging their way through a well fortified enemy. That in itself is not only huge for the manpower savings, but also because it's now very viable to siege with large armies, rather than going as small as you can get away with to avoid as much attrition as possible, this leaves your siege stacks much less vulnerable to attack.

yeah, I can't really get on board with saying the changes advantaged the defenders here.

Stored food in a settlement (which almost every settlement develops fairly quickly) gives a bonus to the defender (multiplying the length of the siege phase, i.e. the time between dice rolls). So it takes longer to siege every fort.

Hence why the change was to decrease the base length of the siege phase to compensate.

 

[Lord Lambert]

It's more about the time it takes to siege down a fort, really. It takes quite a while to siege down OPMs or some more fortified areas, slowing down the game a bit too much for my taste.

True, but it hasn't slowed sieges so much that it is now harder for the attacker. It is still easier for the attacker than pre-patch.

Stored food in a settlement (which almost every settlement develops fairly quickly) gives a bonus to the defender (multiplying the length of the siege phase, i.e. the time between dice rolls). So it takes longer to siege every fort.

Hence why the change was to decrease the base length of the siege phase to compensate.

I would argue as well that there are ways around this. Take out the provincial capital first, take out the food producing provinces, and the final forts will fall much much faster as the province runs out of food.

Again, my point isn't that sieges haven't changed, I am merely pointing out that the attackers got a bigger advantage with the introduction of food than the defenders did, which I don't really see as arguable at all. It's pretty obvious that a slightly longer siege is not even remotely as painful as monthly attrition on a sieging army.

 

[Rubidium]

I would argue as well that there are ways around this. Take out the provincial capital first, take out the food producing provinces, and the final forts will fall much much faster as the province runs out of food.

Again, my point isn't that sieges haven't changed, I am merely pointing out that the attackers got a bigger advantage with the introduction of food than the defenders did, which I don't really see as arguable at all. It's pretty obvious that a slightly longer siege is not even remotely as painful as monthly attrition on a sieging army.

The issue wasn't that sieges were "harder," it's that they were "longer" (even more so if you have to spend time capturing the food supplying regions first, and in my experience it takes quite a while for most provinces to run out of food even once you do so), which both made wars longer and less fun (watching the siege timer tick down is boring) and assaults more powerful (as they now save more time compared to a siege).

Hence the solution being to reduce the base siege time, thus adjusting the length of sieges back towards what they were.

 

[Marcus Pica]

and consider the other faiths who were more likely to just use humans

Tribal countries can already enact human sacrifices.

 

[manager2525]

Tribal countries can already enact human sacrifices.

I really hoped that they would tie human sacrifices to religion (specifically with those that historaly had them as elements) rather than being tied to a goverment form. Having a Jewish or Zoroastrian tribe performing human sacrifices at the timeperiod feels so wrong.

 

[Lord Lambert]

The issue wasn't that sieges were "harder," it's that they were "longer" (even more so if you have to spend time capturing the food supplying regions first, and in my experience it takes quite a while for most provinces to run out of food even once you do so), which both made wars longer and less fun (watching the siege timer tick down is boring) and assaults more powerful (as they now save more time compared to a siege).

Hence the solution being to reduce the base siege time, thus adjusting the length of sieges back towards what they were.

Again, I don't disagree with ANY of that. The Dev Diary did not, however, state that sieges took longer, it stated that the defenders got a "significant bonus"
My argument, which no one has yet even attempted to dispute, is that the attackers got an even bigger bonus with the advent of food.

 

[Gurkhal]

I really hoped that they would tie human sacrifices to religion (specifically with those that historaly had them as elements) rather than being tied to a goverment form. Having a Jewish or Zoroastrian tribe performing human sacrifices at the timeperiod feels so wrong.

Now I don't claim to know very much about Hellenistic Judaism or the Hellenistic history of the Jewish people but when speaking of Jewish tribals one idea I have is for a unique goverment/law/reform/whatever where the tribe would institute a system of judges, as in the Old Testament judges like Samson or Gideon, which would be an angled towards war and spreading Judaism within the tribal population.

Would this make be good gameplay option, make semi-sense historically, be theoretically possible to adapt and not offensive?

I find the system with judges kind of interesting in the Old Testament and so wouldn't mind to see it implemented in some form in Imperator as an option. And could perhaps also help with making Judaism plausible for tribals by allowing a way to speed up conversion rates and also give an additional bonus to warfare.

 

[Todie]

@Rubidium @Lambert2191 sieges may sometimes take longer and sometimes shorter after the food changes, pending the circumstances and dilligence of the attacker. Given enough dilligence, the attacker will make up for lost time through assaults - particularly in times and places where lengthy sieges would be a nuisance.

In my opinion, the notable issues with all this is one of (im)balance of the manpower resource and (un)inuitive implementation of the siege assault mechanic.

... feeling like manpower doesnt matter in singleplayer and that you’re fucking up if you do an assault with too many eligble cohorts present.

in 1.3, if you’re in a war that you've got the numbers to win, its kind of sad that playing the war effectively just commes down to mitigating gimmicks - how slow do i want to play to save ingame time and manpower as compared to haphazardly seige things and throw away manpower on inefficient assaults when i get impatient?

Improvments to AI agressivness and opportunism vs large player empires could probably alleviate this to an extent.

The game is pretty great, but if these few holes were plugged it would play a whole lot better.

.. maybe we’re still missing some change that hasnt been mentioned though.

 

[Denkt]

Attacker don't lose much Manpower from sieges right now, on other hand supply trains are not free, in fact they are among the more expensive cohorts, so the Manpower cost have been traded for a gold cost with the addition of food.

In 1.6 the warfare system will be changed but we don't know how, I suspect we may see the combat system scrapped and a new one to replace it but I don't actually know, however given how they changed naval combat, a change to land combat is probably somewhat likely.

Manpower and gold income simply stop being a problem if you expand enough and optimize your economy which make the game feel less strategic since if you stop caring about the resources, it also stop all strategies based around the use of these resources. In fact the only way that may fix the problem may be a whole redesign of the economy which may be something that happen in the future.

 

[Rubidium]

Again, I don't disagree with ANY of that. The Dev Diary did not, however, state that sieges took longer, it stated that the defenders got a "significant bonus"
My argument, which no one has yet even attempted to dispute, is that the attackers got an even bigger bonus with the advent of food.

You are overthinking this. The claim that is that defenders get a "significant bonus" and they do: a NUMERICAL bonus (modifier) to the siege timer. As this produces longer sieges (as this modifier is positive the vast majority of the time), the devs reduced the default siege timer length so that the average length of sieges is the same. It's the same as saying that Light Infantry get a bonus to morale (strictly true, even if it sometimes has negative effects overall due to increased casualties).

The original statement had nothing to do with the overall strategic effect of food on sieges and warfare, which is much more complicated.