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Imperator Dev Diary 2020-14-12: The Longest Diary

Greetings all!

Today, you’ll be taken through a deep dive into the Antigonid mission trees coming in the Heirs of Alexander Content Pack.

Before we get started on that, however, I have a few housekeeping points to mention. Firstly, this will be the last dev diary of the year, as we are now leading up to Christmas vacations. Secondly, this also means that indeed, Marius and Heirs of Alexander will not be coming this year. This is a -very- comprehensive update, and we are going to take the time to get it right.

Yet you came here not for housekeeping, but for content; and content we shall provide.

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Some of you noticed this button in an early version of the UI rework - the time has come to explain more.

Selecting Heirs in Monarchies

No longer will the line of succession be an immutable certainty, altered only by accidental death.

For a hefty cost in resources and perceived legitimacy; you will be able to grant your approval to anyone in your ruler’s direct line of succession. As you might imagine, this may have consequences amongst the other successors…

This minor feature was something we’ve wanted to add for a while, and in the course of doing so, it became apparent that this allowed for the creation of an additional government type; namely, an elective monarchy.

Elective Monarchy

Strictly speaking, there were no traditionally elective successions that we know of during our starting time period (yes, that is a challenge - prove me wrong!), however, the election of Kings was a tradition which exists in many of our core nation’s histories - including Rome.

Monarchy government types will be able to enable Elective Succession with a Law, as with all other succession types.

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This variety of succession law greatly reduces all ordinary contributions to succession value; and instead gives all eligible characters in your nation a ‘vote’ towards the next monarch, chosen from amongst their valid successors.

The factors behind their preference for any given candidate are quite wide, including difference in stats, culture, religion, and quite prominently: age.

You will still be able to anoint a chosen candidate with the Anoint Successor feature, however this will be much less impactful than it is in other succession types.

In practice, elective monarchies can result in an unpredictable succession that yields you a monarch of advanced age - why would this be good?

Well, aside from being pretty fun, and encouraging out-of-the-box thinking in order to manipulate elections, successors in Elective Monarchies do not receive a pretender loyalty malus: they put all of their energy into getting themselves elected, and not stirring up trouble.

Unit Models

We’re not all the way there yet, but here’s a preview of the Scythian Levy:Legion models:

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And the Iberic culture group Levy:Legion models:

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And now it’s over to @Chopmist to take you through the Antigonid mission coming in the Heirs of Alexander DLC, in our latest attempt at creating the longest dev diary known to man.

/Arheo
 
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Looks really nice! The mission trees for Thrace and the Antigonids seem very promising! The different paths of the antigonids should probably make the game in the eastern med a lot more interesting, adding a lot of replayability

They seem quiter a bit better, or at least more interesting than the Seleucids and a lot better than the Ptolemys to be frank. The Ptolemys especially seem a bit lackluster to me. The fact that they do not seem to have the ability to try and attract greek settlers while the Antigonids and Seleucids do seems very strange to me. I have to of course look what the missions do exactly, when it comes out, but I do hope that there are at least some things about trade across the indian ocean. Ofc it only became very important during roman times, but why wouldnt a stronger, better led ptolemaic egypt not try and exploit those lucrative routs

From the dev diaries the mission trees of Thrace and the Antigonids look more appealing to me, but the question is, if they are just presented better in the DD or are they actually better? I guess the release will tell. Maybe the Seleucid and Ptolemaic Trees offer less replayabilits, but a longer and more detailed expierence in the first attempt after the DLC and Thrace plus the Antigonids offer more diverse playstyles and replayability, but therefore get only three instead of four trees and the Antigonids only one specific, if they don't choose the historical outcome. But we will see. I hope all trees are somewhat equally good and to me they look better than every other mission tree we have so far - first impression as I don't know most of the missions.
 
From the dev diaries the mission trees of Thrace and the Antigonids look more appealing to me, but the question is, if they are just presented better in the DD or are they actually better?

I think with the amount of history available for the Seleukid trees, I think they are certainly lacking. There's enough history there to make a few meaty missions trees if you just focus on the western (west of the Zagros) part of their realm. But there's an entire eastern half thats ignored, and ontop of that you could add the same amount of "What If?"/historical plausibility the Antigonid and Lysimachid trees are getting.

As for the Ptolemaic kingdom... Eh, its Egypt. Egypt never really expanded far from the Nile - always mostly been a problem of geography for that region.
 
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I think with the amount of history available for the Seleukid trees, I think they are certainly lacking. There's enough history there to make a few meaty missions trees if you just focus on the western (west of the Zagros) part of their realm. But there's an entire eastern half thats ignored, and ontop of that you could add the same amount of "What If?"/historical plausibility the Antigonid and Lysimachid trees are getting.

As for the Ptolemaic kingdom... Eh, its Egypt. Egypt never really expanded far from the Nile - always mostly been a problem of geography for that region.

I agree that the Seleucids lack an eastern focused tree (even if it has to be a "What if?") and that there is a lot potential left for additional trees. The current trees only cover the early game of the Diadochi, which isn't bad as long as the quality and detail of the trees are good - better than shallow trees over a longer time period. I guess it will be very important, if the missions are diverse, fun and add a lot of history, flavour and cool decisions. E.g. while the roman nine trees cover the whole game and almost creating the whole roman empire, after the initial couple of trees they are very vague, shallow and boring. So I prefer less, but more detailed and flavourful trees and I get the feeling the mission trees getting better and better - @Snow Crystal told in a stream on twitch, that he learnt a lot in terms of event and mission creating since release and I think you can see this progress overall. So lets see how it plays out - I guess we would need a second Diadochi DLC to cover all wished areas :D

But I hope older mission trees and events get revisited someday. E.g. I like the Epirus trees, but I think a couple of the optional missions (which you don't need, to be able clicking on the finish button) aren't really worthwhile to postpone the start of the next tree. I think the rewards of these optional missions should be a bit better. Now I prefer to concentrate on the trees about Greece+Macedon or the Romans earlier, before they get too strong instead of trying to play slower and earn some additional small bonuses with extra effort. It's sad that I don't care about certain missions because of that. I don't want overpowered bonuses, but some time limited bonuses in the early game aren't worth the effort and letting the enemies become stronger.
 
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Can you please explain what is it a DLC and not an update? I don't want to spend more money on a game that I bought for 64$! you're effectively making the game no fun for people that don't buy the DLCs.
 
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Speaking of Greek migration, I really hope that some time in the future, greek migration would be made into a new mechanic available for greeks away from home like the Diadochi, Bosphoran Kingdom, and Emporion rather than a simple mission.

There would be a lot of potential there, not to mention giving greek tags (which is a lot of tags) unique flavor. As tags within Greece would try to make their pops stay within their empire. While greeks away from home would do a lot of things to get a larger portion of migrating greeks to choose to migrate into their empire.

This added with the 2.0 levy system would mean that places like Emporion would really seek out Greek migrants as this would mean increasing their heavy infantry levies.
 
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Speaking of Greek migration, I really hope that some time in the future, greek migration would be made into a new mechanic available for greeks away from home like the Diadochi, Bosphoran Kingdom, and Emporion rather than a simple mission.

There would be a lot of potential there, not to mention giving greek tags (which is a lot of tags) unique flavor. As tags within Greece would try to make their pops stay within their empire. While greeks away from home would do a lot of things to get a larger portion of migrating greeks to choose to migrate into their empire.

This added with the 2.0 levy system would mean that places like Emporion would really seek out Greek migrants as this would mean increasing their heavy infantry levies.

This is such a great idea! lead by disloyal characters, some POPs decide to migrate to other tags where they are more than welcome. The player could promote this migration of foreign nationals using the character interaction mechanic. This character should be one with a holding that has unhappy pops (below 33%). In exchange, the receiving nation should give the character a holding in the nation.

There are already random events like this in game, we could implement it as a nation-character interaction.

The holdings map mode would display the loyalty of the owner and POPs when hovering over each holding for the player to assess the situation.
 
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Can you please explain what is it a DLC and not an update? I don't want to spend more money on a game that I bought for 64$! you're effectively making the game no fun for people that don't buy the DLCs.

There is both. There will be a DLC for stuff like the wonders and the mission trees and a free update for the game (with mechanics like the levy/legion changes). Not agreeing that you don't get new fun without buying the DLC.
 
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Many rivers were much more navigable in the ancient past. Mopsuestia definitely had a port in the past. (As did Adana and Tarsos). The Periplus of Pseudo-Skylax mentions the Pyramos is navigable beyond Mallos, Strabo too mentions the Pyramos is navigable (and he has personally visited the area). In medieval times when we have some clearer sources, we know it was the last shipping port on the Pyramos of importance (there might have been another, small port further upstream, but with the trade routes crossing at Mopsuestia it was of no importance.).
I have to agree you I suppose, but current period, we could not travel from modern Magarsa (we call Karataş) to Mopsuestia with ship, even with sandal :D
 
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Oh yeah, Magarsa has a port andI really wanted this! Damn dude, it happened!

You can actually transfer the port of Mopsuestia to Aigaiai because of it had an ancient port. In the past Mopsuestia had a port, I searched well and refreshed my knowledge, but current period Mopsuestia both don't have a port and the Ceyhan River can not allow ships to go to that town. ( I edited that sentence. I hate giving false information.)

And also my home town is Adana (Adanos) and I know current Cilician Geography perfectly. Adanos's locaion is near to correct but acceptable.

And I guess, that is Alexadretta's exact location that shows on the pic (According to me).

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The 5 ports are very impressive! This is really crazy and better than the old thema.
 
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