Imperator: Rome Developer Diary - 16th of November 2020

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Amazing. One of my favorite parts of Roman history are the legions and their legacies. I always felt bad endlessly splitting my Legio I Italia into a dozen Legii to carpet siege Etruia.

I assume standard Roman levy armies will have new default names? Will Hellenistic legions have their own naming scheme, say "Stratos"?

Will fleets have a similar more permanent form, I can see Carthage or Athens getting into that.

Finally, can legions be destroyed or reformed? You mentioned Cannae and Tuetoborg Forest, so can they be utterly destroyed? Maybe the victors can take their standards, but they can be reformed with their past honors and dishonors if the city they are being held in is sacked by your avenging armies.

All in all, this DD has gotten me suddenly very interested in Imperator again. I see it (possibly) having a bright future if this keeps up.
 
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Manpower is fighting manpower, supply and care is abstracted. The 1000 or right now the 500 men will fight when there is a battle and have the same values between them.

If they ever gonna change the balance and the number of men in an elephant cohort I'm not against it, but this is a very small issue in my eyes.
 
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A lot more goes into battle than just fighting - you need to feed the elephants, give them water, clear away their waste, scour the landscape to make sure they can cross it, etc. Just envision those extra men in the cohort as the caretakers
Then cohorts should be 600 men strong. ;)
 
Love the changes.

But I have one wish! That a Legion should have its supplies/costs calculated from its home base. When I get to be an Empire, I should have some incentive to use my Britannian Legions in Britannia, and maybe in Gaul. But it should be a rare exception that I'd ever transfer a Legion off the Rhine for a campaign against the Persians. I could do it, but I may not want to.

This might also help in preventing a massive Empire from steamrolling everything nearby, as an Empire might be unable or unwilling to bring every Legionary to every single fight on the other side of the Empire.
 
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But it should be a rare exception that I'd ever transfer a Legion off the Rhine for a campaign against the Persians.

I get your point, but this happened with some regularity, albeit under the Principate
 
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I don't like the fact that all standing armies should to be romanized (legions and consules) or named after the place armies were raised from, which in many cases just seems repugnant. In the same manner it lacks diversity and seems too simpleminded for the beginning.
 
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I just felt the need to state it. This 2.0 update feels more of a passion project than any update there has been before. The sheer amount of changes and the style of some of them (such as adding cohort history, which adds nothing gameplay wise but adds A LOT in character and just feel of the game) is for me so greatly appreciated . It doesn't feel like an update out of necessity but more because the team actually want to and have a passion for the game.
 
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I look forward to see how PDS will handle the Auxillia, that is the part I'm most interested in. Well mercenaries are an interesting part too...
 
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Would it be possible to have a system (similar to the one being made for monuments) that we could use to customize what a legions unit model looks like? For example colors, shield patterns, maybe even the insignia, and helmets/armor? Would tie nicely into having legions with history :)
 
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Awesome changes, waiting to see more about Tribes military changes. Oath sworn Warriors and chiefs. How this changes affects Migratory Tribes and Settled Tribes.

Its important to talk about legion, but the main enemy of Rome was the barbarian, primary the Germanic tribes.
 
Everything here makes me happy!

EVERYTHING

Maybe just to change the names for legions for different cultures. But this is what we all wanted, and finally, we are getting it.
 
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Maybe just to change the names for legions for different cultures. But this is what we all wanted, and finally, we are getting it.
Yea, that little detail is a small thorn in my side for an otherwise stellar DD.

I would even go further and say that it would be great if one day, in the far future, they made stylistically diverse UIs for the major cultures. So that barbarian UI looks different from a Roman one, and different from Indian one etc. But that is something I'm pretty sure will never happen, because it would require a ton of artistic work for relatively little gain from business point of view.
 
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Looks fantastic but I do have a small concern regarding the tribunes. There are 3 of them per legion. So if I have just 3 legions, that is 12 (3 legates and 9 tribunes) new jobs to fill. If these people will die and need to be replaced in regular intervals that is a LOT of new busywork for the player that does not sound particularly fun. Also potentially game breaking as there are barely enough people born to fill the existing offices not to mention new one. Would it not be possible to have the game generate the tribunes - young men with some talent for warfare who can, through the years of service develop their skills and potentially become generals/admirals one day or even enter the realm of politics/be adopted by a great family? That might be fun for role playing too.
 
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Looks fantastic but I do have a small concern regarding the tribunes. There are 3 of them per legion. So if I have just 3 legions, that is 12 (3 legates and 9 tribunes) new jobs to fill. If these people will die and need to be replaced in regular intervals that is a LOT of new busywork for the player that does not sound particularly fun. Also potentially game breaking as there are barely enough people born to fill the existing offices not to mention new one. Would it not be possible to have the game generate the tribunes - young men with some talent for warfare who can, through the years of service develop their skills and potentially become generals/admirals one day or even enter the realm of politics/be adopted by a great family? That might be fun for role playing too.

I'd be skeptical of having too many characters just created out of thin air, but I imagine that they'll balance things like birth rates to compensate. You're absolutely right on tediousness, however; perhaps they could make it that you as the player assign the legate, and then the legate selects three tribunes to act as a patron towards? Could even then tie it into a mechanic to help the tribunes improve their military ability, thus adding an extra means of education to the game.

Of course, I'd much prefer elections and a proconsular mechanic to be integrated into the feature, but one step at a time.
 
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Looks fantastic but I do have a small concern regarding the tribunes. There are 3 of them per legion. So if I have just 3 legions, that is 12 (3 legates and 9 tribunes) new jobs to fill. If these people will die and need to be replaced in regular intervals that is a LOT of new busywork for the player that does not sound particularly fun. Also potentially game breaking as there are barely enough people born to fill the existing offices not to mention new one. Would it not be possible to have the game generate the tribunes - young men with some talent for warfare who can, through the years of service develop their skills and potentially become generals/admirals one day or even enter the realm of politics/be adopted by a great family? That might be fun for role playing too.
It looks like Tribunes are entirely optional appointments to me.
 
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