Imperator - Development Diary #14 - 27th of August 2018

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Johan

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Hi and welcome back to another development diary for Imperator! This time we’ll talk about the offices and laws in the Republic!

If you haven’t read about the Senate already, then read it here! https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...lopment-diary-13-20th-of-august-2018.1115536/


First of all, we have the current ruler, which in Rome is called the Consul. In a decision to make it more into a fun engaging game, where you care about your characters, you only have one consul in rome, and they serve for five years.

The next consul, which is called ‘candidate’ is usually the most popular and prominent character from the most powerful faction in the senate. Friendship and backing of other parties influences this as well.

There are eight offices in the government, and they all serve until you replace them or they die. There are two offices for each attribute, and the skill in their attribute determines how big their impact is on your country. Each of them give the character prominence and some give other benefits to the character.

  • Censor - Each Charisma gives +0.2 Senate Influence for the Censor’s party.
  • Praetor - Each Charisma gives +1% Commerce Income.
  • Tribunus Militum - Each Martial gives +1% Discipline
  • Praefectus Militaris - Each Martial gives +1% Tax Income
  • Augur - Each Zeal gives +5% Omen Power
  • Pontifex - Each Zeal reduces stability cost by 2%.
  • Tribunus Plebis - Each Finesse increases freemen happyness by 1%
  • Vulnerarius - Each finesse increases health by 0.5.

Appointing someone to an office increases their loyalty, but removing someone deeply hurt their loyalties.


There are eight categories of laws in a republic, and each of them have four different laws, where only one law can be active in each category. Changing a law costs 250 oratory power, and you must also have the backing of the senate for changing that category of laws.

  • Anticorruption Laws : Impacts Corruption & Unrest
  • Religious Laws: Omen Cost & Power, Influence of Religious Party
  • Maritime Laws: Commerce, Wealth, Pirates.
  • Integration Laws: Pop Happyness, Influence of Civic and Populist Parties
  • Citizen Laws: Pop Promotion Costs.
  • Land Reforms: AE Impact, Unrest, Slave Output
  • Military Reforms: Different Military Bonuses
  • Election Reforms: Corruption, Consul Term Duration
2018_08_27_1.png



Please be aware that monarchies and tribes have different offices and laws, and if you like to mod you can have your own unique offices and laws for each nation if you so want.

*** Update: Check out Arheos post below for more background ***
In a game where focus is intended to be equally split between internal and external politics, having a fully in-depth, historically authentic roman senate is way out of scope. Yes, you could manage your 10 Tribunes, 20 Quaestors, and 2 consuls, and it would probably be amazing, as a Roman Senate Simulator.

However, a Roman Senate Simulator is not what Imperator: Rome is. I understand that some of you feel aggrieved, having expected one thing and received another, but a balance has to be struck. As Johan said, it would take a matter of minutes or hours to halfheartedly hack in the coveted 'Second Consul'; but actively providing balance, content, and intrigue to do this justice, not only takes time, but takes away a lot of focus from the other aspects of the game you would be playing. 20 Quaestors would be horrifying to manage.

As you've seen in the previous dev diary, you will need to convince the senate in order to perform certain actions; Rome is not a totalitarian monarchy*, with 1, 2 or 3 consuls.

*Octavius notwithstanding.

Next week we’ll go into military traditions!
 
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This smells of monarchy. :p
 
you only have one consul in rome
*insert generic complaint for having two consuls here*

The next consul, which is called ‘candidate’ is usually the most popular and prominent character from the most powerful faction in the senate.
Hahahaha after all the threads complaining about there being only one Consul, there were two Consuls all along! They just renamed the second Consul:D Well played Johan ;)
 
First of all, we have the current ruler, which in Rome is called the Consul. In a decision to make it more into a fun engaging game, where you care about your characters, you only have one consul in rome, and they serve for five years.
One consul...
Please, will it be moddable ? Will we be able to have 2 consuls in our mods ?
 
I like that laws have positive and negative effect so. Same should be for parties and most things in game

#justice for the populares

There is no admiral? All military bonuses seem to impact land combat only
 
First of all, we have the current ruler, which in Rome is called the Consul. In a decision to make it more into a fun engaging game, where you care about your characters, you only have one consul in rome, and they serve for five years.

Can't say I'm happy about the decision only to have one consul - for my part at least (but I suspect I am not the only one) the main thing that makes paradox-games fun and engaging is is their firm historical grounding. I want to feel like I'm playing as the Roman republic, which famously had two consuls. Why not at least have a "junior" consulship as one of the other government offices? That way we would have two consuls, and you would have a single leader whose stats could matter for game-purposes.

Before this turns into the tired history vs. realism debate, I'll stress that I fully understand and agree that some historical factors do not make for fun game-play (nobody wants to micro-manage latrine-digging), but I struggle to see why the system of two consuls would not make for fun gameplay, and I don't get your reason. I am sure this will make the game less engaging for me. It's not that I don't get that your games have to work as... well games. But the semblance of history - particularly in the set-up - is one of the main things that makes them engaging, at least for me, and one of the things paradox games do SO well, that Civilization do not.* I'll still be looking forward to Imperator, but I am worried that it won't really feel like Rome without the double consulship, at least not for me - and its the feeling of playing the state I expect will make a game like Imperator engaging for me.

*Civ-games are great (excepting of course the abomination CIV6), but in a paradox game like EUIV I get to feel like the British marching on Paris, a feeling I'll never get in CIV; because the random start causes Paris to lie in a Jungle, Britian to lie in a desert, and both to border the Mongols.
 
Thanks for the Dev Diary.

So who's Health is being increased by the Vulnerarius position ? Is Freemen promotion cost the cost of Freemen to Citizen or Tribals to Freemen ? If it is the former (which makes way more sense by all available naming conventions) how come there is a citizen promotion cost ? Which faction has a natural interest in which of the different laws or is it all based on power and favours ?

And last but not least:
In a decision to make it more into a fun engaging game, where you care about your characters, you only have one consul in rome, and they serve for five years.

This getting slightly annoying, while I don't care at all about the two consul system, would you kindly let us choose what is fun and engaging ? Throughout all of your Dev Diaries you put claims like "fun, engaging, in-depth, etc. pp." words without any kind actual meaning as they are very much subjective. A statement like: The reason we choose a single consul system is that we want you to care more about single caracters and not flood you with multiple characters that end up irrelevant." would make the same claim without forcing us to see it as FUN and ENGAGING.
 
There are eight categories of laws in a republic, and each of them have four different laws, where only one law can be active in each category. Changing a law costs 250 oratory power, and you must also have the backing of the senate for changing that category of laws.

I have a question concerning the laws - are they 'progressive' in the sense that you must elect Citizen Law II, before being able to elect Citizen Law III - or can I pick from the start Citizen Law I, II, III or IV?
 
This getting slightly annoying, while I don't care at all about the two consul system, would you kindly let us choose what is fun and engaging ? Throughout all of your Dev Diaries you put claims like "fun, engaging, in-depth, etc. pp." words without any kind actual meaning as they are very much subjective. A statement like: The reason we choose a single consul system is that we want you to care more about single caracters and not flood you with multiple characters that end up irrelevant." would make the same claim without forcing us to see it as FUN and ENGAGING.
It's kinda obvious people are looking for reasons to criticize every possible detail in those dev diaries but I'll bite.

Dev diaries would be boring if they were all overly fully objective. While they are subjective, fun and engaging is a goal of gamedesign so of course that subjective opinion should probably be expressed.
 
First of all, we have the current ruler, which in Rome is called the Consul. In a decision to make it more into a fun engaging game, where you care about your characters, you only have one consul in rome, and they serve for five years.

I too disagree with that decision. I think that we are very well able to care about more than one character and that having two consuls would be even more fun and engaging! :p I mean, there are a lot of possibilities for interaction between both office holders, the political intrigue alone! But I think that lengthening the time of office is ok in that regard.
 
First of all, we have the current ruler, which in Rome is called the Consul. In a decision to make it more into a fun engaging game, where you care about your characters, you only have one consul in rome, and they serve for five years.
Oof, that's disappointing.

I understand the need to make a fun and engaging game, and I get your reasoning, however, this ruins the immersion for me. It's one thing to have 1,000-man military units, for example, but it's another thing entirely to completely change a fundamental aspect of the Roman government.

On the plus side, it looks like this is going to be much more moddable than before, and I very much like that the character's relevant stats are displayed very visibly on the Government screen. I'm going to have a lot of fun modding this game :)
 
Vulnerarius - Each finesse increases health by 0.5.

Could you provide a source for this being a government official? I studied the Roman Republic extensively at university and I have never heard of this. A google search didn't find anything like that either?
 
The law system and the offices sounds good, but I do hope the consul number will be moddable. The restrictions on modding the number of rulers in other titles has always been a limitation for mods.
 
All these great ideas on this forum about making a two-consul system compatible to the current mechanics went ignored.
And now we have a Roman Republic with 5 years term. How immersive.
Without a duarchy government mechanics, we wont see two suffets of Carthage nor two kings of Sparta, which is a vital feature that differs the classical governments from later time, so if one wishes to feel like playing in the classical era not some interchangable times, one wishes to see duarchy in the game. Instead, in order to make a "fun and engaging game", all these elements are just flushed down the toliet.
 
I see a lot of complains for the dual consul, however, I have hard time thinking about the benefit of having 2 in term of gameplay.
For show, yeah, why not but if you think of gameplay with them, shouldn't one be played by the AI and basicaly mess up with what you want to do ? And if not, what is the benefit of having 2 in term of gameplay ?
If I have 2 characters but which only mean that I have to look after 2 guys and nothing else, it won't be usefull. And if he can conteract my action, this will be a Conclave effect on IR, which is horrible.
 
First of all, we have the current ruler, which in Rome is called the Consul. In a decision to make it more into a fun engaging game, where you care about your characters, you only have one consul in rome, and they serve for five years.
That doesn't make any sense. Having one consul for five years is not fun nor engaging. It's an easy solution. Having two consuls from potentially different factions, managing the relation between the two, THAT would be fun and engaging, and I'm not even talking about the historical accuracy.
The funniest part is that I'm pretty sure some DLC overhauling the politics of Rome is probably going to add this later.

Anyway, other than that, it's looking pretty good.
 
I see a lot of complains for the dual consul, however, I have hard time thinking about the benefit of having 2 in term of gameplay.
For show, yeah, why not but if you think of gameplay with them, shouldn't one be played by the AI and basicaly mess up with what you want to do ? And if not, what is the benefit of having 2 in term of gameplay ?
If I have 2 characters but which only mean that I have to look after 2 guys and nothing else, it won't be usefull. And if he can conteract my action, this will be a Conclave effect on IR, which is horrible.
No you are not playing as the consul in this game, so the second consul wouldn't mess with anything. It just means two characters would be consuls. Either both would contribute equally, or one would be considered "minor" and have less of an influence on the country, or with a mechanic to "switch" between them.

You could use consul A in peacetime, then switch to consul B the military genius in wartime, or something like that, at your demand. If you let one consul rule too long, his influence increases making him a nuisance after his reign.