Imperator - Development Diary - 27th of May 2019

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Trin Tragula

Design Lead - Crusader Kings 3
Paradox Staff
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Hello and welcome to another Development Diary for Imperator: Rome!

One of the things that we want to address in Pompey Patch is that we want to make the internal life of your country more visible. Today I will be talking about that, together with a number of improvements to internal management in the patch. :)

Preferred Clan Retinue Units

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While Clan retinues are a tool for your Clan Chiefs to assert their own authority, as well as a resource for your tribe when at war, it can at times be a problem that the Chiefs get to pick what unit types they recruit themselves. Since unit types are so important to the general balance of warfare tribes will in the Pompey Patch be able to specify which units that your Clan Chiefs are allowed to recruit to their armies (as well as how they deploy them) in their government view.
Overall Clan Retinues have also been adjusted to be smaller than they currently are in release.

Holdings Rework

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One thing we were looking to improve in the 1.1 Pompey Patch is Holdings. In release Holdings are currently things you hardly interact with. While they provide income for your characters you have little control over how they acquire them and you have little reason to get invested in where someone currently owns holdings.

In Pompey we want holdings to be more relevant. They should be the base of power for many of your characters, and they should be the means by which those with no government employment get their income. They are intended as a way to reward characters or harm them, should you take them away. They will also tie a character more to the cities on the map in your empire.

A Holding in Imperator is an estate in a city, with associated slaves, and a holding is always owned by a character. This provides the character with both income and increases their power base ( as described in this diary ).

For it to be possible for a character to have a Holding in a city, the city needs to have at least 10 slaves. An additional Holding in the same location can be added with every additional 10 slaves.

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Once a holding exist the 10 slaves associated with it cannot be moved, or promoted. But they can still starve.

Characters will over time use their wealth to purchase holdings themselves, but you can also grant them directly to characters for a large loyalty boost. The number of holdings each character own at the same time is limited by their finesse skills, and when they die their children will inherit it.

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Privately held holdings can be confiscated using the existing Proscription interaction, if you have imprisoned a character.

Events, civil wars and other content will make use of a character's holding going forward.


New Governor Policies
In order to make it easier to redistribute your population, Pompey update will add two new governor policies, which will let you impact your population in your province in a way you prefer.

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Centralize Population
This Policy reduces output from the province by 10%, as it will move one pop every 3rd month from a random city in the province, and put that pop in the capital city of the province, if the capital is below the population cap.

Decentralize Population
This also reduces the output from the province by 10%, and it moves one pop every 3 months from a higher populated city in the province to a lower populated city in the province, evening out the population in the province over time.

Trials
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A big change in the Pompey patch is that Disloyal Employed characters such as office holders and commanders can no longer be dismissed. Instead there is a new character interaction to bring someone to Trial. The starting chance of success will be dependent on a number of things, among them how corrupt the character is, or how large their power base is.

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The actual trial itself however is an event chain in which your actions will affect the outcome. Bringing someone to Trial may also misfire and a failed trial may lead to the accused character using their power base to ignite a Civil War.

Create Mercenary
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In a monarchy you can at any point send away a loyal member of the Royal Family to be a mercenary in foreign service. This potentially gets rid of family members that could be troublesome in the future, but it is not a permanent fix. The mercenary prince may well return one day with expectations on their new home life after their foreign adventures.

With that I will leave the word to @Arheo to talk about the new Schemes system:

Schemes

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Character events in Imperator have been a great source of fun from the inception of the character system. A surprising amount of events occur for characters in a court or country, and can have a variety of effects from murder to jailbreaks.

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This said, it became clear from feedback after launch, that these events were rarely being experienced, and when they were taking place, did not provide enough (if any) feedback to the player. In an effort to make these more visible, as well as to provide a framework for additional and future work on the character system, we have reworked the Ambition system to act as a tool for expressing a variety of character-focused content. You may not have realised, for example, that a number of your more brawny characters engage in underground pit-fighting on an occasional basis; or indeed, that your powerful senators have been stealing from one another behind your back.

Mechanically, schemes are a type of ambition that a character can perform, having a clear goal (for example, to assassinate a political rival, or purchase a holding), and a finite duration. The target and duration of a scheme will be displayed in the character menu, and be visible in the character tooltip.

The outcome of a scheme can vary, and you may find yourself responding to more character events than before, however the frequency of this is being closely monitored by the system to prevent being constantly bothered by popups.

Whilst primarily a vessel for displaying the web of subterfuge that goes on in a court, the player will also be able to interact with certain schemes to assist or interfere, or in some cases, convince a character to drop their scheme altogether.

In addition to this, a player’s Ruler has a selection of schemes available to them, accessed through the character interactions menu. These are designed to address existing issues, and enhance some of the new features coming in 1.1.

Ruler Schemes
Since your ruler is a character more closely tied to your country you are able to pick what schemes they pursue. Including:

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Siphon Funds:
The ruler will attempt to divert state funds to enlarge their personal wealth.

Influence Character:
If there are characters in your country that are more gifted than your current monarch you may attempt to influence them to put their expertise to use.

Assassinate Character
Among the schemes you can adopt for your ruler is one to assassinate someone, either abroad or in your own country.

proveLegitimacy.png

Prove Legitimacy:
In monarchies the ruler can try to improve their legitimacy by researching their lineage. While any type of research will increase the perceived legitimacy of your ruler there is also a small chance of discovering a long lost link to one of the blood lines in the game, if you are Hellenic.
 
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You may not have realised, for example, that a number of your more brawny characters engage in underground pit-fighting on an occasional basis; or indeed, that your powerful senators have been stealing from one another behind your back.

I had no idea. I did notice my ruler engaging in gambling though the prominence rewards from it were useless.

Love the incoming changes btw.
 
This is great news! I like the character focus and event chains very much. It also looks like Ptolemy Keraunos has quite a few siblings of all ages. Hopefully this means that more characters are getting married and having more children, so our native families stop dying out.
 
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I think this is a step in the right direction, for sure. Good.

Events should tell a different "side story" every time they happen. Go much beyond what is described in this dev diary. This story being experienced should provide unique rebellions, conversions, trades, character interactions, stability challenges, cultural clashes, etc.

Obviously one should be careful about jamming the game with events, but I think Paradox has been showing events very timidly. Certainly the increase in their frequency, when warranted to further the plot, will give much more immersion to the game.
 
Well done Paradox!
 
Lots of cool stuff!

Does sending a character off adventuring increase their martial, or give them military traits? I think that could be interesting.

Are you able to scheme to kill your primary heir, send them off adventuring or simply choose another primary heir (as Ptolemy did when he choose Ptolemy II over Keraunos)?

I assume there will be more actions using your ruler's wealth instead of the country's wealth for that siphon funds scheme to be worth it? (Buy estates, influence characters, etc...?)
 
To add spice to holdings, Greek cities inside the Hellenistic kingdoms had their own insitutions. It's interesting to see how to counter the royal foundation myths (which are rooted in actual foundations), some of them reinvented their past to include mythical ancestors from the heroic times, diminishing the impact of royal narrative and possibly freeing themselves from royal influence. Greek cities matter and were the pillars upon which those kindoms had to rely to rule over the native population. They should matter more.

That being said I greatly appreciate the change in course.
 
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You may not have realised, for example, that a number of your more brawny characters engage in underground pit-fighting on an occasional basis; or indeed, that your powerful senators have been stealing from one another behind your back.

No. I did not realize this. This is game design 101. If the player doesn't see it, it doesn't exist. If I had even bothered to track the wealth of individual characters, it seems like I would have just been frustrated and confused by the numbers seemingly changing for some random reason. Thank you for addressing this, but it makes me wonder why you made this all hidden to begin with.

Obviously one should be careful about jamming the game with events, but I think Paradox has been showing events very timidly.

Far too timidly. Events are the heart of Paradox games. They are what fill in the story of the game you are playing between all the waiting and blobbing. Events are not very "streamer friendly" though. But please, focus on the people who actually play the game and not those who just watch other people play it for them.
 
Far too timidly. Events are the heart of Paradox games. They are what fill in the story of the game you are playing between all the waiting and blobbing. Events are not very "streamer friendly" though. But please, focus on the people who actually play the game and not those who just watch other people play it for them.

I cannot have said it better.

Just two points. Please bear in mind that events are not good at all for multiplayer and there has been for a long time a multiplayer fetish in Paradox titles.
To be a better game, blobbing, huge blobbing, should not be the manifest destiny of the player. The manifest destiny of the player should be to experience a complex history full of nuances and intrigue while managing the whole situation - that should most of the time be precarious - within strategic constraints.
 
That's a lot of cool new stuff!
Suggestion: can you display loyalty change for characters too? Either with the arrow or the little pointers like you showed in the new province view?
Because loyalty change is often as important as the current number. You have a person with 40 on the screenshot, but is it growing or declining? I can't tell if I should be worried. And what if all of them are low, so you have to hover over and check it for all 8 of them? Not very convenient.
 
Centralize Population
This Policy reduces output from the province by 10%, as it will move one pop every 3rd month from a random city in the province, and put that pop in the capital city of the province, if the capital is below the population cap.

Decentralize Population
This also reduces the output from the province by 10%, and it moves one pop every 3 months from a higher populated city in the province to a lower populated city in the province, evening out the population in the province over time.
I like that, but can not see the reason for the 10%-penalty
 
Please bear in mind that events are not good at all for multiplayer and there has been for a long time a multiplayer fetish in Paradox titles.
Ugh, don't remind me. That's probably why CK2 never seems to do any wrong, because it's the only one that doesn't seem to give a **** about multiplayer.