Imperator: Rome Developer Diary - 16th of November 2020

[Bovrick]

Should an army be split from the main army in the Legion the default commander will be one of the Tribunes, and a Tribune will also automatically take the place of the Legate if he or she should fall in battle or otherwise die while serving.

Could you say a bit more on splitting armies? Will we only be allowed to divide a Legion if we have already specified a Tribune, or can they be split regardless? Can Levies be split out, or is this going to become a special train of Legions?

Are there any limits on movement for Levies/Legions? For example, would I be able to send a Tribune off to one side of the Med even through their Legate is on the other, or do they have to be in close proximity? Are there any restrictions (soft or hard) on Governors with Levies heading off away from their administrative sphere?

 

[Rhaegar1]

Looks pretty good. It's nice to see legions getting some character. The ability to add tribunes is great.

Now with that out of the way, can you please get rid of researchers? Designating tribunes to armies (and preferable to governourships as well) is a much better first step in the cursus honorum then the completey idiotic researcher job.

More importantly though it's nice to see you using this new setup to add some differentiation between monarchies, republics and tribes. If we still get some rework of tributaries somewhere down the road and you manage to include some sensible differentiation there as well we really are getting somewhere.

 

[Álvaro Núñez de Lara]

This is amazing.

Question: Do tribunes do anything? Its not clear from the dev diary, other than replace legates. Do their stats influence battle on top of the general ones (legate now)? Or they are just there as a replacement and as a new office holder to give away jobs? It would be cool if like in CK2 they were assigned flaks and their stats actually mattered in combat.

Another question that isnt clear in the DD: Do levies keep their military experience for when you rise them again or does it just count towars traditions? It would be cool if it was kept, representing the superior roman levies from centuries of experience before legions came around. You know, the army veterans that were called upon in every campaign before becoming a permanent standing army before Marius.

I love the elegant solution you have found for the manpower problem. Without getting rid of it, youre limited by the actual number of pops in a region, so you can no longer unrealistically rise 50k cohorts in some unpopulated area.

I wouldve still got rid of national manpower but this is a good compromise.

 

[Bovrick]

I wouldve still got rid of national manpower but this is a good compromise.

It does feel like the idea is being played with, manpower is getting close to becoming redudant.

Another minor note: War Exhaustion is back on the top menu again too.

 

[Zylathas]

This system is really cool

 

[nikkythegreat]

Great Dev Diary, but im a bit concerned that Legions would be too expensive compared to Levies since Levies do not cost any upkeep. In the previous dev diary 68 cohorts cost 2.74 gold while a Legion of 11 cohorts cost 7.3 gold. I know numbers are not final but you could reconsider Levies costing upkeep as well.

 

[Samitte]

Very good, I like it! Nice to see Mopsouestia with a port, hopefully Tarsos gets one as well? I'm not too sold on the new icons however (Port, Pass, City, etc) They are quite hard to see and distinguish, perhaps they can get a more popping colour scheme and more obvious borders?

And as with Levies, how does the resource system tie into this?

 

[Cassilda]

I'm positively impressed by this diary

 

[maurot12]

I can't find words to describe how great 2.0 is looking without it being an understatement.

That being said, i am worried about balancing issues regarding levies and i have made a post about it. IMO we need some serious balances in the economy . Slaves currently produce 85%+ of all gold (both tax & trade goods) and their output is always 100%. And slaves aren't levied, so the impact to the economy is tiny.

firstly, by decoupling military service from membership in the class of property-owning citizens, the pool of potentially recruitable manpower was greatly increased. Having a corps of professional soldiers meant the state could be defended without permanently mobilizing its most economically productive citizens at ruinous cost to the tax base

This will not be true unless you make Nobles/citizens/freeman produce significantly more taxes & make them necessary for making trade goods surpluses, as well as negative impacting food production.

Also will manpower be nerfed? levies+legions will significantly increase army size potential to even higher unihistorical level.

 

[IsaacCAT]

This means that as long as a unit type can be levied anywhere in your nation you can also recruit these units for your Legions.

Now it depends on goods being existing on the province. If we have iron in one Province of the same Region will we be able to recruit Heavy Infantry in that Region or in any Region?

Should an army be split from the main army in the Legion the default commander will be one of the Tribunes, and a Tribune will also automatically take the place of the Legate if he or she should fall in battle or otherwise die while serving

Without Tribunes Would we be able to split? Is maximum split four? (Legate + 3 Tribunes?)

 

[TheStrategicMonster]

I really like specialized history for some legions(like the Antigonids army defeating Eumenes at Gabiene being portraied), but I must ask:will there be any specialized legion names for Rome? Like, having legions be named Legio XIII Gemina, instead of just lame Legion XIII? Also, will you fix that weird thing in the pictures where it says that Syria or Lower Egypt have won a battle? It's pretty weird and might be flavorbreaking.Overall, great Diary!

 

[WillemDeZwijger]

Wow!
So if I want two equal-sized legions from the region of Italia I have to split the legion in two and a legate will command the second one? Overall a great system, I half expected a simple retinue system but this is way cooler!

 

[Ffc]

Since the number of Legions is tied to Levies, there is now a hard limit to the number of cohorts you can have?

I'm not sure if I really like it

Overall, it sounds good !

 

[Jiben]

will we be able to clense dishonors in some way? say a legion have a crushing defeat if they avenge their fallen borthers will the dishonor disapear or is it permanent?

 

[dannazgui]

OMG

This is so a bit wrong, isn't?

@Trin Tragula The Punic Reform is the same as the Marian Reforms?

The Standing armies/Legions only begun with the Marian Reforms

The citiziens without property, the proletarii, only joined the Eagles after the Marian (107 BC), not after the Punic Wars

 

[trjacobin]

Behold, the legions of Rome:

 

[Te. Kenzo]

Totally a new game, nice
Seems also a very solid base for an imperial age expansion in the future.

There are many historical direction how this model could be expanded, but before that is better to see how the base system will work and when it will be solid we could talk also about things like Auxilia, cultures, etc...

P.S: What about the researcher of technologies? They have now flavour names like in Europa Universalis: Rome? Also with the new mechanics of Legate and Tribunes, if you give us in future a new cursus honorum system they could be perfect to expand it.

 

[nachinus]

Really nice.

It seems that permanent armies will be scarce until midgame. A question comes to my mind... what happens with provincial armies? Will we use legions for that (when available)? Or will the figure of provincial armies as we currently know it disappear?.

 

[Adrized]

and a Tribune will also automatically take the place of the Legate if he or she should fall in battle

will commanders finally sometimes die in battle? great news!

 

[Inspecta]

This is great. Though I do have a question. Will they be called legions for all nations or would there be different localization for different culture groups?

On a screenshot you see ,that Seleukid legion is called "Stratos". That answers your question. But as for the interface button, i belive it doesnt need to be localized, cuz it would be quite confusing for newcomers.