Imperator: Rome Developer Diary - 9th of November 2020
- Thread starter Trin Tragula
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Finally. This was a major design issue. Really glad it's based as much as possible on pops, from type of unit recruited to size, traditions, etc. If you're gonna have a pop system, maximize its use! Glad to see more use of governors too.
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- In principle POPS shoud not dissapear if a cohort get destroyed.
First a POP is a represesntation of the Population ( thus the name
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A POP is a conglomerate of women, men, children and eldery people. Half that POP should be children, and 10% eldery ( back then wasn´t like today), thus 40% were adults and half of this 20% were male adults ready to fight. ( many of them did´t went to fight and the casualty rate were far below 50% in most time)
Thus even if 100% of the male were fighting and all of them dies, still the pop prevails.
- NOW, when can we consider to allow pop to dissapear because cohort get obliterated?
We can use a massive estadistical tool... if for example 10 cohorts belonging to Freemen class get destroyed, perhaps we can dissolve a single freemen, as an estadistical chance.... but even in this scenario, this freemen, of wich region, province or territory would it be?
Another alternative is to chain a cohort to a pop, thus if that cohort ger destroyed there is a 10% chance the associated pop would be as well
First a POP is a represesntation of the Population ( thus the name
)A POP is a conglomerate of women, men, children and eldery people. Half that POP should be children, and 10% eldery ( back then wasn´t like today), thus 40% were adults and half of this 20% were male adults ready to fight. ( many of them did´t went to fight and the casualty rate were far below 50% in most time)
Thus even if 100% of the male were fighting and all of them dies, still the pop prevails.
- NOW, when can we consider to allow pop to dissapear because cohort get obliterated?
We can use a massive estadistical tool... if for example 10 cohorts belonging to Freemen class get destroyed, perhaps we can dissolve a single freemen, as an estadistical chance.... but even in this scenario, this freemen, of wich region, province or territory would it be?
Another alternative is to chain a cohort to a pop, thus if that cohort ger destroyed there is a 10% chance the associated pop would be as well
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@Trin Tragula @Arheo
A bit of a late reply, but how do Levies interact with Trade Goods? Do you need to have the required good present in the province to get Levies of that type? Say you own the Lower Egypt region, can no Heavy/Light Cav levies spawn there because it lacks Horses? And if thats the case does this then mean you get less Levies, or will you get more of the other Levies to compensate?
And in turn, does having access to Elephants/Camels/Steppe Horses suddenly allow Elephant/Camel Cavalry/Horse Archer Levies even though your culture has no historical tradition for such troops?
A bit of a late reply, but how do Levies interact with Trade Goods? Do you need to have the required good present in the province to get Levies of that type? Say you own the Lower Egypt region, can no Heavy/Light Cav levies spawn there because it lacks Horses? And if thats the case does this then mean you get less Levies, or will you get more of the other Levies to compensate?
And in turn, does having access to Elephants/Camels/Steppe Horses suddenly allow Elephant/Camel Cavalry/Horse Archer Levies even though your culture has no historical tradition for such troops?
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10% is too low though. Stack wipes do not happend too often though. Even when playing against the AI. I don't stack wipe them often enough.
I get that doing it 1:1 is immersion breaking. But making the pop losses too low would mean that it will not be part of the player's decision process and would just be ignored.
I would suggest a middle ground. To make it happen more often but at the same time prevent it from being immersion breaking for some people.
I have two ideas how to do this:
A) a random associated pop will die for every 4,000 casualties.
Or B) a growth debuff to the source province whose length is proportionate to the casualties lost. Something like -1% growth for 1 month for every 100 casualties.
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Holy christ... you've outdone yourself. First removing carpet sieging, now introducing levies... this is all going in the right direction.
For the future update after that one, i hope you focus on economy, buildings, and empire management. The game will then be awesome...
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that is not all true and you have misconceptions there, every time a governor is appointed behind them was a corp of clerks and officials to keep the order and authority of Rome, they deal with the differences among the Native people and conquered cities, so they have the function of being a diplomatic-admin-military force to integrate them. In a time of warfare not all the Consuls were the main to lead a Roman Army, the Senate appointed to General with experience to do tasks too. How another way Octavian will be Emperor in a future if he barely had military experience and dislike the army life?? Agrippa and Mark Antony (in the civil war) did all that job for him. We can expect that greedy and overconfident generals/governors with Martial law, refuse to quit his task as the maximum leader on an army, but the common norm was that a lot of them delegate those task in subordinates. Scipion wasn't Consul/Governor when he was fighting the Carthaginians, neither Marius before his reform when he was with Sulla fighting against Rebels in North Africa.
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This! Pops actually being tied to military is so this, which has been lacking everywhere except for Vic2. That's what M&T are trying to do in 3.0 as well and it is so needed for a living integral pop system that I applaud standing.
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@Trin Tragula
WOW... That's see a nice rework for more immersive Rome and the old Govenerments style. Congrats!
Now, I hope yur teams also rework the Elections, Offices and Governorship on Rome. FOr the times of the Republic and the beggining of the Empire in later dates.
Also, hope for rework on the Families system
WOW... That's see a nice rework for more immersive Rome and the old Govenerments style. Congrats!
Now, I hope yur teams also rework the Elections, Offices and Governorship on Rome. FOr the times of the Republic and the beggining of the Empire in later dates.
Also, hope for rework on the Families system
While a Republican governor/consul would certainly have various legates and junior officers under his command (as you'd expect for any large military force), they were both absolutely primarily military commands and seen as such. His legates answered to him, and he was the commander of the army; even someone like Cicero (more at home in the courtroom than the battlefield) found it necessary to personally lead his troops against various enemies during his governship of Cilicia. It's also worth distinguishing between the role of a governor/consul in the Empire (or even the very late, on perpetual verge of civil war, Republic) from the period that I:R mostly covers (especially as the levy system, vs. the legion system to be revealed next week, is meant for the earlier, pre-Marian period).
The idea of a "Roman Province" as a land to be ruled over doesn't exist in 304 BC, when the game starts. The term "provincia" was used to describe the task assigned to each of the two consuls. It was almost always military in nature (so, a consul might have been assigned the provincia of Gaul, in the event that a war with Gaulish tribes was expected, or possibly even a specific Gaulish tribe like the Boii; they would lead their army to fight said Gaulish tribe, hopefully beat them, and win a triumph). The consuls were specifically invested with military authority by the senate assigned to a provincia (which, again, might not be a specific geographic region) and put in command of the army. They had other duties, but those were secondary and much less prestigious. Consuls who failed to achieve military success (ideally a triumph) were seen as failures, and as a result there was heavy lobbying/political maneuvering to be granted triumphs.
This explicit grant of military authority was limited to a few officeholders, of which consuls and praetors are the most significant. During the emergencies of the Second Punic War, we see a couple of innovations: the expanded use of proconsuls (originally consuls whose term has expired but are extended by the Senate, nominally in order to complete their task but also to provide a few additional commanders where needed, later other folks given acting consul powers), and a few non-officeholders granted extraordinary military authority (of whom Scipio Africanus in Spain was the most famous, and he was mainly chosen because no one else wanted what they thought would be a suicidal task). But in all of these cases, they are explicitly vested with military authority by the Senate.
It's not until the conquest of Sicily after the First Punic War that Rome starts using the term "provincia" to also refer to a specific area for administrative purposes. Even then, the older meaning of "provincia" as a task remains in use; Pompey was famously granted the "provincia" of subjugating the Mediterranean pirates, and Cicero later proposed to grant him the "provincia" of organizing improved grain distribution to the Roman poor. But we also see a newer meaning of more or less permanent geographic provinces spring up as well (starting with Sicily, then Sardinia, then Near and Far Spain, and so on), which were generally given to lower officers (such as praetors) rather than consuls, who initially still kept "provincia" in the older sense, as wars to fight/enemies to defeat and thus honor/glory/triumphs to win (although often now expressed in geographic terms; for instance Scipio in his consulship was granted the provincia of Sicily, with explicit permission to invade Africa if it seemed necessary, leading to the Battle of Zama).
In all of these cases, governors are granted military authority by the Senate (whether as praetors, consuls, proconsuls) and expected to use it where necessary. As Rome expanded, interior provinces (such as Sicily after the defeat of Carthage/Syracuse after the Second Punic War) became less likely to experience military action, and thus less prestigious, however border or rebellious provinces such as the Spains or Sardinia remained potential grounds for winning new glory. But that very paucity of opportunities means that the governors need to keep a tighter grip on the army, so that they can take advantage of any opportunities that do come up. Remember, there are many praetors governing provinces, but only two consuls at a time, so if you want to move up, you need to distinguish yourself somehow, and the best way to distinguish yourself as a good Roman aristocrat was to win a war somewhere. Indeed, it eventually became necessary, in the very late 2nd century, to pass a law prohibiting governors from taking their armies outside of their provinces without authorization (although this doesn't seem to have affected consuls), in direct response to various governors using their provincial armies to invade and conquer neighboring territories on their own initiative.
One of the Gracchi reforms in the late 2nd century had been to require the Senate to designate the consular provincias before the election of consuls; this meant they had to be chosen well in advance, which tended to favor the use of geographic provinces for consuls as well (since you might not know who exactly you would be fighting, but you'd know that a border region was more likely to give you opportunities for military glory), and also made them less likely to lead to military glory (since you might get unlucky and end up with a suddenly peaceful border and no opportunity to escalate). In addition, the decaying political situation in Rome (which led to things like Marius as consul using popular vote to usurp the command of the Jugurthine War from Metellus, not to mention more extreme things like proscriptions) meant that being absent from Rome was increasingly dangerous for consuls and ex-consuls. But by now we are moving out of the period that the levy system is meant to represent.
I am not a historian, but am basing my arguments largely on Drogula, Fred K. Commanders and Command in the Roman Republic and Early Empire. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2015
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A nice read Rubidium. We need more Roman scholars like you to hit these forums. I refuse to speak with Grecophiles and barbarians
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I'd prefer a temporary debuff on the POP too. Also I am unsure if it should be growth debuff. None of the childbearing population is killed in battle. This of course heavily depends on social and cultural norms, but killing males does not necessarily change the reproduction rate of a population that much.
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I actually prefer loosing pops for every x casualties sustained. hahaha
Productivity debuff would be bad as it doesnt lower the pops of the one who sustained casualties. An empire who looses 100,000 men in the field not loosing a single pop, thats very unimmersive as well.
I dunno about the time frame, but in the modern era birthrates would go down after major conflict.
Plus this is simply lowers future pops so that the owner would have the equivalent effect of loosing them.
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Women are more important, they have always been and will be. That's why men are expendable.
Im not saying men are more important, I'm simply saying birthrates go down after wars with a lot of casualties.
@Rubidium glad to read you and the source you are based in some in my wishlist of amazon kindler, but even if historically accurate, I don't see how this could be managed to be implemented in the already mechanics in-game and next update, we already know there are static provinces and regions (in these last is where governors have their levies) and that for the next update we will have a levy system and a standing army model, all of them can be switched by-laws and technologies, but how we do the governors?? In-game they should fabricate claims against Barbarian nations (civilized empires not because that will make a mess for the AI and player), governors and characters, in general, should own their own agenda, not possible currently in the game, and their stats (martial, oratory etc) is stuck and won't increase/decrease unless but events, so even if governors are the one to get famous and the main profits of conquest, I am still thinking they should delegate such task to lesser but capable martial officers, like some kind of "adoption" or client that big aristocrats have with capable and maybe prominent men in the Republic, like a character in governor offices have two slots to pick capable characters of minor families and autogenerate them because I hate when a few character and families hold nearly all the power in the country and barely any prominent minor family would rise to power against odds and by merits.
Again, let governor rule, to influent in the levis composition and quantity, let them get the fame and main revenues, but they should have two or one capable generals to lead or to help to lead the troops.
Again, let governor rule, to influent in the levis composition and quantity, let them get the fame and main revenues, but they should have two or one capable generals to lead or to help to lead the troops.
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Then let's stop the fertility during wars, that is more realistic according to these studies:
On a demographic consequence of the First World War
During the First World War the fertility rates of European countries collapsed dramatically. The deficit of births that resulted was, for some countries, as large as military casualties. This column presents a quantitative theory to explain this phenomenon.
voxeu.org
Instead of killing pops due to cohorts being killed at war, we stop POPS growing during war time. At the same time, notice that whole POPS are killed when armies loot territories. Next time you play the game, count how many POPs die this way.
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Pops should die in battle. Lets say each pop represents 1000 people, men women and children. If 10,000 men die in battle you have to reduce the amount of pops, not by 10 but by say 3 to represent that massive loss, and view the pops left over as a consolidation of the women and children that have not just died in battle.Then let's stop the fertility during wars, that is more realistic according to these studies:
On a demographic consequence of the First World War
During the First World War the fertility rates of European countries collapsed dramatically. The deficit of births that resulted was, for some countries, as large as military casualties. This column presents a quantitative theory to explain this phenomenon.
Instead of killing pops due to cohorts being killed at war, we stop POPS growing during war time. At the same time, notice that whole POPS are killed when armies loot territories. Next time you play the game, count how many POPs die this way.
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POPS die in battle, whenever you loot a territory there a chance that POPS die. If you actually read those papers, the fertility rate recover after the war and sometimes even compensates for the loses.
I think there is a misconception between POPS and soldiers. Soldiers die in a war, Population dies if civilians are targeted. Population fertility rate decays when there is war, to quickly recover after it.
If you want to take into account the death of soldiers referred to POPs, best way would be to decrease temporarily province's manpower to account for the loses of that province raised levies or legions. After that time, manpower will be the same, function of the POP's quantity.
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