Imperator: Rome Developer Diary - 9th of November 2020

[Paghalay]

POPS die in battle, whenever you loot a territory 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 civilian 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 levies or legions raised there. After that time, manpower will be the same, function of the POP's.

I do get what you're saying, but that man power still ultimately comes from the pops, and not representing huge losses in a very visual and impactful way feels very empty to me, and does run the danger of the game sticking to that "a game just full of modifiers to things" it has been lambasted for in the past. Having pops die in battle I think makes you think twice about engaging in massive battles against the levy of the province you want to conquer as there will be then less people for you to govern as a result.

 

[IsaacCAT]

The deterrent should be more POPS dying because looting. It makes war more costly and you more afraid of your enemies to attack your loved and developed lands. On the other hand, you are far more lethal to your enemy if you directly kill/take their POPs by looting and slaving every territory, than killing a percentage of POPs via their legions. And much more rewarding, every time I see that line popping from the territories is like scoring a goal for my team.

I am all in to increase the dead of POPS this way. On the other hand, soldiers dead is directly a hit to manpower for that province. Anything else, is not realistic and will be more detrimental to the game as you were stating.

 

[WARenie]

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.

In case of levies, civilians are soldiers. I agree that better way would be lowering fertility of pop, but game does not have modifiers on specific pops and you need to have a distinction between killed macedonian noble and sirian slave. There could even be different conscription rates between pop types and if 70% of your male nobles had died in battles (not a surreal scenario since low amount of nobles in general) then it should be represented like a major hit to your noble pops.

 

[Marcus Pica]

Arheo stated he doesnt want modifiers on pops. I agree that a pop represent a certan number (from a few hundred to a few thousand) of men, women, children, elderly etc. and drafted levies should mostly be men (in most societies) , however the death of men in battle could be represented by pops dying - taking into account the fraction of a pop that represent men who were levied. So if 10 Achaean Hellenic Citizens were levied and then slauthered in battle, then lets say (levy laws or percentage of mobilised should be taken into account besides the fractions representing levied men) 2 pops disapear. Fractions of a pop belonging to different ages or gender doesnt matter at this stage, what matters is the fact that the community lost a certain number of people. Modifiers on pops only complicate things and are less intuitive for players. Seing pops vanishing after defeats is more alarming than pops getting negative midifiers.

 

[IsaacCAT]

In case of levies, civilians are soldiers. I agree that better way would be lowering fertility of pop, but game does not have modifiers on specific pops and you need to have a distinction between killed macedonian noble and sirian slave. There could even be different conscription rates between pop types and if 70% of your male nobles had died in battles (not a surreal scenario since low amount of nobles in general) then it should be represented like a major hit to your noble pops.

Arheo stated he doesnt want modifiers on pops. I agree that a pop represent a certan number (from a few hundred to a few thousand) of men, women, children, elderly
etc. and drafted levies should mostly be men (in most societies) , however the death of men in battle could be represented by pops dying - taking into account the fraction of a pop that represent men who were levied. So if 10 Achaean Hellenic Citizens were levied and then slauthered in battle, then lets say (levy laws or percentage of mobilised should be taken into account besides the fractions representing levied men) 2 pops disapear. Fractions of a pop belonging to different ages or gender doesnt matter at this stage, what matters is the fact that the community lost a certain number of people. Modifiers on pops only complicate things and are less intuitive for players. Seing pops vanishing after defeats is more alarming than pops getting negative midifiers.

An elegant solution without POP modifiers is the following:

(1) Maximum Manpower for each province = a x X number of Freemen + b x Y number of Tribesmen + c x Z number of Citizens + d x Y number of Nobles

You can draw as much levies and legions from a province based on the total manpower but limited for each type of unit for their number of POPS class. For example, Cavalry only takes into account d x Y number of Nobles manpower.

The available manpower for a province is:

*Available manpower = maximum manpower - levies/legion raised - casualties

* this is a different number for each class of POP (Freeman, Tribesman, Citizen and Noble). You can add it up but you always have separate numbers for each class.

Thus, the available manpower for noblemen is 5 if you have risen 10 cavalry men, your maximum manpower d x Y number of Nobles = 25 and another 10 cavalry just died in a battle. 5 = 25 - 10 - 10.

The casualties manpower will replenish like it is now, speed = (maximum - casualties) / 20 years

(1) a, b, c and d, are constants to take into account laws, culture, happiness, and other factors that can affect class maximum manpower for each province POP.

 

[WARenie]

You forgot to take cultures into your calculations. When you readjust your amount of different manpowers and variables to this, just killing a very small amount of pops in case of stackwipe is so much easier and does the same job while being a lot easier to describe in interface and could lead to interesting results like exhaust of your elite military class poptype-culture combination in case if you are abusing it a lot in conquests.

 

[IsaacCAT]

You forgot to take cultures into your calculations. When you readjust your amount of different manpowers and variables to this, just killing a very small amount of pops in case of stackwipe is so much easier and does the same job while being a lot easier to describe in interface and could lead to interesting results like exhaust of your elite military class poptype-culture combination in case if you are abusing it a lot in conquests.

a, b, c and d takes into account culture as well as other factors besides number of POPS for each class.

Depleting the nobles available manpower does the same without the unrealistic and game breaking punishment of killing of all POPs from that class.

I am specially in favour of using happiness to decrease maximum manpower for happy POPS as they do not want to go to the army as unhappy POPS.

That will make a trade-off between unrest and manpower. Making the player to have provinces unhappy to draw more legions/levies. With the risk of a rebellion with the same augmented manpower.

 

[WARenie]

a, b, c and d takes into account culture as well as other factors besides number of POPS for each class.

Depleting the nobles available manpower does the same without the unrealistic and game breaking punishment of killing of all POPs from that class.

I am specially in favour of using happiness to decrease maximum manpower for happy POPS as they do not want to go to the army as unhappy POPS.

That will make a trade-off between unrest and manpower. Making the player to have provinces unhappy to draw more legions/levies. With the risk of a rebellion with the same augmented manpower.

You will need AMOUNT_OF_CULTURES of these sets of a, b, c, d.
Problem with manpower is that you can sit at zero for a hundred years and it will have zero effect at your population/economy/anything. Your conscripts will be in a state of constant extinction and it should lead to decrease of population in effect.
It's only punishing heavy warmongers with small accepted culture base. To kill all pops from a class they will need to wage wars nonstop because otherwise same pops will grow/upgrade again given some time emulating your 20 years to restore manpower by simulating regrowth of population.
It will be barely noticeable to lose freeman/slaves and really bad to lose best of your nation like it should be because it takes 20 years to regain manpower from zero only in assumption that your previous generations were not killed in constant wars for centuries and your "conscription rate" is low which could not be a case with heavily militarized classes/cultures. And it seems, that if your society is not a militarized one, losing pop will be an extremely rare occurrence.

 

[IsaacCAT]

You will need AMOUNT_OF_CULTURES of these sets of a, b, c, d.
Problem with manpower is that you can sit at zero for a hundred years and it will have zero effect at your population/economy/anything. Your conscripts will be in a state of constant extinction and it should lead to decrease of population in effect.
It's only punishing heavy warmongers with small accepted culture base. To kill all pops from a class they will need to wage wars nonstop because otherwise same pops will grow/upgrade again given some time emulating your 20 years to restore manpower by simulating regrowth of population.
It will be barely noticeable to lose freeman/slaves and really bad to lose best of your nation like it should be because it takes 20 years to regain manpower from zero only in assumption that your previous generations were not killed in constant wars for centuries and your "conscription rate" is low which could not be a case with heavily militarized classes/cultures. And it seems, that if your society is not a militarized one, losing pop will be an extremely rare occurrence.

no need to have separated manpower numbers for culture, only a modifier. For example, If you have persian nobles POPs in the province you can draw legions/levies from that culture from the nobles manpower pool. We do not want our CPU’s to get as crazy as in Stellaris.

The penalty on the military is clear with manpower. You want also to penalize economy and population.

For population as previously said, while the available manpower is below the mainpower maximum the fertility rate or growing pop shall be halted or diminished.

On the economy side, we can have the same effect. While available manpower is below the mainpower maximum, taxes are diminished by the same percentage.

All this shall be done for each province. Like that you can shield some core provinces from the penalties of war, while using borderlands population to wage your dirty wars. I love that idea. Whole areas would be raged and underdeveloped with minimum supply limits, full of forts like trenches. Their population very unhappy and diminished. Who will be their liberator?

 

[WARenie]

no need to have separated manpower numbers for culture, only a modifier. For example, If you have persian nobles POPs in the province you can draw legions/levies from that culture from the nobles manpower pool. We do not want our CPU’s to get as crazy as in Stellaris.

The penalty on the military is clear with manpower. You want also to penalize economy and population.

For population as previously said, while the available manpower is below the mainpower maximum the fertility rate or growing pop shall be halted or diminished.

On the economy side, we can have the same effect. While available manpower is below the mainpower maximum, taxes are diminished by the same percentage.

All this shall be done for each province. Like that you can shield some core provinces from the penalties of war, while using borderlands population to wage your dirty wars. I love that idea. Whole areas would be raged and underdeveloped with minimum supply limits, full of forts like trenches. Their population very unhappy and diminished. Who will be their liberator?

Making cultures matter is a very large selling point of system introduced in this dev diary. Imo cultures that are distinct in their rosters are more preferable to nonexisting gains from abstract manpower system that is a step back from pop-levy ties.

 

[IsaacCAT]

Making cultures matter is a very large selling point of system introduced in this dev diary. Imo cultures that are distinct in their rosters are more preferable to nonexisting gains from abstract manpower system that is a step back from pop-levy ties.

This means that levied troops will vary greatly depending on where in the world you are raising them, and dependent on what cultures you have integrated. An Etruscan levy is going to be different from a Roman one, and a Macedonian levy will be different from a Carthaginian one.

Culture is used to determine levy composition.

IMHO is a check not a 1:1 correspondence with POPS.

Think about the mind-blowing calculations needed for your proposed system. I am already afraid about manpower calculations if we go from a single no matter what manpower pool to a class and province manpower pool.

 

[Paghalay]

no need to have separated manpower numbers for culture, only a modifier. For example, If you have persian nobles POPs in the province you can draw legions/levies from that culture from the nobles manpower pool. We do not want our CPU’s to get as crazy as in Stellaris.

The penalty on the military is clear with manpower. You want also to penalize economy and population.

For population as previously said, while the available manpower is below the mainpower maximum the fertility rate or growing pop shall be halted or diminished.

On the economy side, we can have the same effect. While available manpower is below the mainpower maximum, taxes are diminished by the same percentage.

All this shall be done for each province. Like that you can shield some core provinces from the penalties of war, while using borderlands population to wage your dirty wars. I love that idea. Whole areas would be raged and underdeveloped with minimum supply limits, full of forts like trenches. Their population very unhappy and diminished. Who will be their liberator?

Modifiers alone in my view do not make for a fun gameplay experience, it is the issue HOI4 has where you start with massive modifiers that you just have to wait until they get removed. Modifiers don't give a feeling of impact and just feels like it keeps pop separate from warfare rather than integrates them. Removing pops removes the need for modifiers layered on modifiers.

 

[WARenie]

Culture is used to determine levy composition.

IMHO is a check not a 1:1 correspondence with POPS.

Think about the mind-blowing calculations needed for your proposed system. I am already afraid about manpower calculations if we go from a single no matter what class or province manpower pool to a class and province manpower pool.

I'm not proposing any system. I just said that in your calculations either all your cultures have same roster either you need different manpower coefficient for each culture.

 

[IsaacCAT]

Modifiers alone in my view do not make for a fun gameplay experience, it is the issue HOI4 has where you start with massive modifiers that you just have to wait until they get removed. Modifiers don't give a feeling of impact and just feels like it keeps pop separate from warfare rather than integrates them. Removing pops removes the need for modifiers layered on modifiers.

But again the falacy of POP=cohort. POPs are population and cohorts are soldiers part of that population.

But I agree with you that whenever possible modifiers shall be replaced with actual objects.

 

[Paghalay]

But again the falacy of POP=cohort. POPs are population and cohorts are soldierts part of that population.

But I agree with you that whenever possible modifiers shall be replaced with actual objects.

I'm not saying pops = cohorts, but part of a pop does, which is why if you lose 10 cohorts you've probably lost enough people in your nation to justify removing a whole pop, because if we don't then the game isn't representing the massive drop in population in a very meaningful way. One pop is not one cohort I agree, it isn't one to one.

 

[IsaacCAT]

I'm not saying pops = cohorts, but part of a pop does, which is why if you lose 10 cohorts you've probably lost enough people in your nation to justify removing a whole pop, because if we don't then the game isn't representing the massive drop in population in a very meaningful way. One pop is not one cohort I agree, it isn't one to one.

if ten men loose all their legs, how many men have we left?

(and POPS can grow new legs in this sad analogy)

 

[WARenie]

if ten men loose all their legs, how many men have we left?

(and POPS can grow new legs in this sad analogy)

What do you think about killing a pop but increasing local pop growth for some time representing "growing of legs"?

 

[IsaacCAT]

What do you think about killing a pop but increasing local pop growth for some time representing "growing of legs"?

Rocambolesque

 

[Ketchup & friends]

You are wrong.

That is true only for the standing army.

When you mobilize the country for war, all craftsmen, clerks, farmers, labourers, artisans, they all contribute to the conscripted army.

But in vic2 mobilized troops are not the default army you use, professional troops are. Here, it’s going to be the reversed situation, most countries won’t even get legions until later and tribes won’t be able to get them at all.

IMHO I:R should go this way, true numbers for population. Then it can throw the very idea of manpower into the waste bin.

It’s sad that I:R pops are simplified and don’t include actual numbers. Adding them would have solved the problem completely.

But since it’s not going to happen (at least not in 2.0) this needs to be balanced otherwise.

Currently, a plurality of the group prefers this suggestion madeby @Yems

1. Turn 1 pop to 1000 pops. This allows for more elaborate and sub-unit counting that is simply not possible in the current system (e.g. instead of 8 or 9 pops there could be 853 or 927).
All pops are converted in this manner and their value now becomes 1000 times lower than it used to be to keep things simple and consistent (e.g 556 new pops have the value of 0.556 current pops).
All modifiers and calculations are scaled to fit the new system.
The pitfall is that it might make the game too heavy hence idea number two:
2. Keep the old system but add decimal units to it (e.g 0.8/4.6/8.2 pops). The reasons are the same as the above. More precise and elaborate calculations that would more accurately simulate the social situation in the game.
The pitfall is that this system would feel wacky and probably just plain wrong but would probably not be as heavy as idea number one.

And if they have 5,000 casualties, e.g., the POPs lose 5,000 people.

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.

Option B would be better. Killing random pops makes no sense and could have unintentional consequences.

 

[IsaacCAT]

But in vic2 mobilized troops are not the default army you use, professional troops are. Here, it’s going to be the reversed situation, most countries won’t even get legions until later and tribes won’t be able to get them at all.

This is something VIC system is much better than I:R and Stellaris, there are real population numbers related to POPs.

IMHO I:R should go this way, true numbers for population. Then it can throw the very idea of manpower into the waste bin.


It’s sad that I:R pops are simplified and don’t include actual numbers. Adding them would have solved the problem completely.

But since it’s not going to happen (at least not in 2.0) this needs to be balanced otherwise.

Currently, a plurality of the group prefers this suggestion madeby @Yems

We need abstractions for computational’s sake.

I understand where you want to go, but I want to avoid Stellaris type of late game stall.