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Imperator Dev Diary: Traditions and more inventions

Hi all!

Today we’ll be covering changes to Military Traditions, as well as showing you some iteration points on the new invention system.

Military traditions will be receiving a similar treatment to inventions, in that they will now exist in a tree-structure, with a modicum of choice, and continuing to be unlocked by their own unique resource, Military Experience.

The military traditions screen currently appears as below; though it’s worth noting that this view is very WIP, and is likely to be entirely changed in the near future.


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As you can see here, there are now twice as many trees as before - we’ve split up the existing trees into two themed parts, such as Greek Kingdom traditions and Greek Poleis traditions.

As a Greek, for example, I would be able to follow either of these trees at the beginning of the game.

The bonuses themselves have received a balance pass, but haven’t changed drastically at this juncture; the military flavor and abilities unlocked from old trees have been preserved and distributed, however, there is one notable exception to this:

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Each of the new trees is now explicitly linked to a geographically adjacent or culturally related set of tradition trees; the Greek Poleis traditions, for example, allow you the ability to unlock Levantine traditions. Likewise, the Roman traditions allow you to opt-in to Greek traditions should you so desire.

The unlock nodes for these particular traditions are usually separated from the rest of the tree - it should remain inefficient to look further afield, though the opportunity to craft your civilization in different ways is a core part of the vision I have for Imperator.

This does of course mean that should you be able to generate enough Military Experience (the sources of which will be discussed in a future dev diary), you will eventually be able to unlock almost any tradition category from anywhere in the world. This is likely to require a campaign’s-worth of experience gathering, however.

We’ve also added instant effect blocks to these traditions, so as per inventions, we’re able to fire arbitrary script effects on adoption of a specific tradition - how exactly we’ll use this is as yet undecided, but gives both us and modders a lot more power over making trees feel unique.

And now we’re back onto inventions!

The technology and inventions dev diary was very well received, but also came with some constructive community feedback.

As we mentioned, we hadn’t quite decided how to deal with invention cost - so based on feedback and balance, we’re dropping the gold cost for inventions. Innovations (as mentioned last week) will be required to unlock inventions, but will now be the sole resource for doing so. These will still be generated through technology levels, but may also be granted in special cases from elsewhere.

This means that unlocking all inventions over the course of a campaign becomes more or less impossible - what becomes important is the path you will take through them. This also added the need for more character and identity for some inventions, in order to be able to craft your civilization into something unique that differs from playthrough to playthrough:

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(Visuals still WIP! The star means nothing, and is debug only ;))

Here, we’ve added another layer of choice-making. You’ll notice above that some inventions have a unique ornament. This indicates a cornerstone invention that has significant or gameplay altering effects.

This can be a significant modifier boost, however it can also be one-shot effects such as raising stats of important characters or rulers, unlocking related aspects to features (for example, Great Wonder building effects), or changing how you interact with characters - I’ll provide a few examples below:


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Another UI solution you may have noticed, is that these tree screenshots have all appeared at different zoom levels. We’re implementing a common zoom-area utility for tree-graphs such as Missions, Inventions and Traditions, which will function similarly to the focus trees of HOI, or the family tree viewer in Crusader Kings III.

That’s all for now - until next week!

/Arheo
 
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This would be amazing. Currently there is little incentive towards integrating a culture besides very few situations and tying it to military traditions would feel like a very organic approach to them.


That's what I was thinking. As a multicultural empire your stability is lower (because you need to manage internal rivalries) but you should be able to benefit from the different expertises of your subjects.
 
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This looks great! You are doing a nice job.
Have you considered the possibility of linking the ability of unlocking foreign tradition to the integration of cultures? For example, as a Diadochi Kingdom which has integrated persian culture, it should be automatically possible to use persian traditions.

I think this idea has been developing and floating around the forums for a while (credit to Yuanshu, and etc?) It's a good one, I think.

Fundamental: In respect to this idea, I propose multiple (cultural) Military Experience pools. For example, if Rome integrates Barbarian culture, they will start generating 'barbarian military experience,' (in addition to Italic Mil-Exp) which they can then use to unlock barbarian ideas.

Elaboration, Examples, Dreams: Now, if, as we are all currently dreaming, manpower is no longer an abstraction, and pulls directly from populations, then the Roman player - if for example they want more barbarian MilExp - can draft cohorts from its barbarian cultural provinces, put them to war, and thus generate corresponding cultural MilExp. (Additionally, these 'cultural' cohorts are unique units, or at least units with distinct names and modifiers.) Multicultural armies could also generate interesting events, loyalties, politicking, etc. For example, a Roman army that consists of 60% Lepontic('barbarian')-culture cohorts would gain some kind of leadership buff from a Lepontic culture general (while the Italic Cohorts in that group might suffer a minor debuff); loyalty chance would also variate depending on the general's culture.

Thanks Arheo/Imperator team!

I wonder what Lambert thinks...?
 
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This has been by far my favourite dev diary, not of the upcoming patch, but just in general. This is the type of stuff I've been waiting for with this game. The culture and religion updates I couldn't care less about, because they didn't really impact what was good or bad about the game (opinion, not fact). Those systems, while there are now more meaningful decisions with them (even if a lot of the new mechanics still aren't actually that fun to me) were never something I was bothered by because they weren't my primary reason for playing.

This however is, getting to shape your country with progress over time feels fantastic, and the warfare and province management were always the most fun parts of the game for me, and anything that makes that part of the game better is a huge win.

This, together with the UI update is probably enough to not just make me start playing extensively again, but to also actually start recommending it to others.
 
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You talked before about reworking armies iirc. Now you talk about being able to opt in to military traditions of other cultures. Does this for example mean that as Rome you'd be able to switch between hoplite, manipular and legionary armies through the course of a campaign? And would there be a difference in how those systems would handle the raising and usage of armies?
 
I am eager to experience gameplay. Looking forward to all these changes.

I was hoping for something more radical, but ain’t country for old men.
 
Really like the new stuff. Keep it up!

I just want to join in with those suggestion that it would make sense to unlock a new tradition to have them integrated or at least give them citizen rights. And have a good portion of that cultures population under your rule.
 
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Maybe just for artistic UI consistency, the arrows in these menus could be 'gold' like those in the missions.

A sense of color uniformity would add to the polished experience of the game. :)
 
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Invention costs were a very big part of the gold economy. My mind boggles at what it will be like without these costs.

Revenue and expenditure will obviously be rebalanced, but still - what is there to use it on? just military, character wages and buildings?
 
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Invention costs were a very big part of the gold economy. My mind boggles at what it will be like without these costs.

Revenue and expenditure will obviously be rebalanced, but still - what is there to use it on? just military, character wages and buildings?
Basically just like other Paradox games I'd assume. just those things. Personally I'd like to see more economy options to increase use of gold.
(and while I am mentioning gold please please can they change the "you're in deficit" to say debt as that's what it is in reality).
 
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Call me a bit weird, perhaps, but I still see gold as a relic of the past.

Currencies, especially for this era, should really be favors and wealth (wealth here as in scale, not hard cash). Building a market, for example, should have you try to gain favors with a specific faction that will then 'build' this at the barter and exchange for something else. Then the 'goods' produced from these markets would only add to the CHARACTER'S standing and political clout.

Games nowadays need to move beyond the influence of the 90s games; they're going the right direction with political influence and innovation systems, so the more you remove gold, the better I think the complexity of the game :)
 
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This looks great! You are doing a nice job.
Have you considered the possibility of linking the ability of unlocking foreign tradition to the integration of cultures? For example, as a Diadochi Kingdom which has integrated persian culture, it should be automatically possible to use persian traditions.

I second that. These changes to the military traditions are very much welcome, but I do agree that Pdx should tie them closer to the cultures and make the selection of foreign military traditions depend on either the cultural decisions or the presence of foreign pops within the realm so that Macedonians that choose to expand west into Italy can embrace the Italic traditions and not Persian ones just because they are hardcoded to do so.

The cultural system that we currently have in the game is really deep and interesting, but I feel like it's biggest flaw is that it's tied too loosely with other game mechanics. Those military traditions would be thus a good opportunity to expand upon it.

Otherwise, a great dev dairy!
 
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This looks great! You are doing a nice job.
Have you considered the possibility of linking the ability of unlocking foreign tradition to the integration of cultures? For example, as a Diadochi Kingdom which has integrated persian culture, it should be automatically possible to use persian traditions.

I'm also very surprised that there are only static links! I mean, sure, it's a massive improvement to the current implementation, but also a bit disappointing.
It's really weird that the recently introduced mix&match multi-culture system has no connection to the military traditions.
 
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I'm also very surprised that there are only static links! I mean, sure, it's a massive improvement to the current implementation, but also a bit disappointing.
It's really weird that the recently introduced mix&match multi-culture system has no connection to the military traditions.
Embracing different military traditions should be dynamic, otherwise it would be just a little improvement over the current system. Maybe via culture decisions when integrated or normal decisions (Controlling at least x territories with majority of culture group, controlling x pops of culture group i.e.). At the end of the day it wouldn't be much different from the announced system, but it would feel more organic, more like a "civilization builder".
 
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Embracing different culture military traditions should be dynamic, otherwise it would be just a little improvement over the current system. Maybe via culture decisions when integrated or normal decisions (Controlling at least x territories with majority of culture group, controlling x pops of culture group i.e.). At the end of the day it wouldn't be much different from the announced system, but it would feel more organic, more like a "civilization builder".

I would go deeper than that: only cohorts from pops of X culture group can implement X culture military traditions. If you assimilate or slave culture X and have no more cohorts from that culture, you loose the edge. That is dynamism.

We will need:
  • cohorts based on pops
  • military traditions implemented individually on armies using military experience or battle events
maybe in I:R 3.0

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Big fan of unlocking inventions only through innovations. Also, I really like how cultures can now borrow military traditions from neighbors - much more realistic. Also, really loving the new artwork/UI we keep seeing.
 
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