Imperator Dev Diary - Heirs of Alexander

[GloryGloryByzantium]

Might I suggest taking this as an opportunity to rename "Thrace" to the Lysimachid Kingdom? Bottom line, nobody really liked the rather arbitrary rule that all countries should use place names and not dynastic names. Especially since no Thracian state existed after Lysimachus' death

This is a perfect reason to leave it as Thrace. I don’t want to be playing in 100 BC and seeing ‘Lysimachid Kingdom’ when I know from history that there was no dynastic state as such.

 

[Paghalay]

This Diadochi-only wargoal has been refactored to use a mechanic similar to that of Civil Wars. What this means, in essence, is that occupying a territory belonging to the target war leader during a Legacy of Alexander war will result in the immediate cession of said territory to the opposing war leader.

I've just thought. How is this going to work with levies? If the region you've raised your levies from gets taken during a war, do your levies just disappear or what? I love the sound of this change however.

 

[Ffc]

I've just thought. How is this going to work with levies? If the region you've raised your levies from gets taken during a war, do your levies just disappear or what? I love the sound of this change however.

I don't think they will disband, it would not even make sense, it's not because your city for captured that you change instantly for who you fight, even in a Civil war

 

[Paghalay]

I don't think they will disband, it would not even make sense, it's not because your city for captured that you change instantly for who you fight, even in a Civil war

Yeah I don't think they will just disappear as you'd still fight for your homeland, but since the pops they are taken from are now owned by someone else, I'm just intrigued to know how the game will deal with it.

 

[N1ghteyes]

I know the legion honours is probably a minor feature so most wont care, but its really disappointing that its dlc locked for me. Adding life to the legions has been THE thing ive been after since before launch. So im super stoked you're finally doing it. Just a bit of a bitter pill that i need to buy a dlc that focuses on a region im never going to play in order to get them. Here's hoping that eventually there are ways to get this unlocked that don't involve me wasting my money.

 

[Don Wing]

The Graphical Levy and Legion are great except for ROME, that velite doesn´t represent the levy infantry of the time, is way too specific ( like my whole levy are javelin shooters with wolf skins), the others are fine, I suggest to put a more republican-levy style

Also as I understood, levies in roman were mostly heavy or medium infantry ( the triarii, princeps nad hastati concepts ) thus Levies should be more that troops.

Other countries in post are fine, and roman legion actually has a centurion helmet but that should be the idea.

CHANGE THE LEVY MODEL so it would be immersive to have the republican Levy as it should ( not that weakling velite)

 

[Gurkhal]

While the Roman levy model may not be representative of the most famous part of the Roman Republican levy, it does stand out from the legionary and so it will be easier to separate the two quickly on the map.

Also while this may be a bit cautious, lets remember that just because the heavy infantry gets the hero-status in the Greece-Roman world, it don't mean that they made up a majority of the force or that light infantry and cavalry were not important to the fighting's outcome.

 

[Gurkhal]

This is a perfect reason to leave it as Thrace. I don’t want to be playing in 100 BC and seeing ‘Lysimachid Kingdom’ when I know from history that there was no dynastic state as such.

Then do as they did when they made the title of West Francia and France in Ck2.

If the original dynasty holds on to power, name is after that dynasty or give it a replacement name, like "Thrace", if the OG dynasty would be replaced. Or even make it so that the name changes to that of the dynasty that takes over.

 

[Hand of Seleukos]

I absolutly love the dedication to the Seleucid cause. One correction and thought should be that the entirety Babylonian population except the priest were settled into Seleukia and so Babylonia as a city ceased to excist. According to this fact I think the Babylonian garden bonus should be changed to something more fitting like religious or cultural happiness, since it would somewhat disappear from the map shortly after the beginning of the game.

 

[Hand of Seleukos]

 

[d4nieI]

I don't mind new features to be added through DLCs, however, I don't like if it gets to major changes being locked behind a paywall in order to get people to buy the DLC.
Apart from this problem, I am looking forward to playing the new version and what you have shown before looks really promising.

 

[Bovrick]

It would make sense that foreign pops should naturally move into our territory. (If you have high stability, large cities, more integrated cultures, and are generally at peace.)

Good ideas, you could probably introduce a mechanic like this relatively easily. Have low Stability drop Migration Attractiveness in all territories really harshly, and High Stability increase it. Maybe the same for Tyranny.

I agree broadly with the call for more migration in general, I just don't know if there's a performance aspect to that, or if it too easily becomes a runaway balancing issue.

 

[Basileus2]

Great Work
But why on earth do greek legion troops (hoplites) carry swords instead of spears? This bothered me since day 1

Amen, the greek troops need to carry spears. Short spears and basic bronze panoply for the hoplites, sarissas for the greek 'legionaries'.

 

[Mr. Wiggles]

At some point, is it possible to update migration mechanics?

Like more international migration.
Tribes and population were constantly moving around in this period. Due to warfare or famine.

This would also allow folks to play tall in different ways.
It would make sense that foreign pops should naturally move into our territory. (If you have high stability, large cities, more integrated cultures, and are generally at peace.)

An update like this would help, since it's hard to play tall for long since other countries focus only on expansion.

Uhhh, not really. Back then people did not move like in modern times. Moving to anotber place was a seruous undertaking, you needed real money and knowledge of what you were doing, where you were going. Most people lived and died in the village they were born until the mid 19th century.
There were entire tribes or populations migrations, but we know for sure romans (and probably all other nations) werent too happy about it and the migration often ended in a bloodbath.

 

[CaptinObvious]

Dear @Arheo , here's an explanation why we've voted to rate your part of the DD with angry and @Snow Crystal 's post with Love:

Some very important things:



The content (as described by @Snow Crystal ) looks Excellent but you’re going got put it into the WRONG DLC which is a very bad idea. Dear @Arheo , we urge you to reconsider this.

The Hellenistic World DLC (upgrade) is already supposed to provide additional content for the main diadochi states and the wars between them (flavour events, unique units models etc.).

Their unique missions should also be part of that DLC (especially, because some of the events and decisions are replaced by new missions, e.g. the Seleukid Mediterranean capital.)

Otherwise the content would be spread across 2 DLC. those players who have only one of them would get an inferior experience. Prepare for a wave of bad reviews after 2.0!

even without these missons the Heirs of Alexander DLC would have a lot of stuff:

• buildable Great wonders
• legion honors and dishonors
• additonal content promised by @Arheo

If you think that the new DLC needs some missions, here are some quickly gathered alternate ideas what you could add:

• a generic regional integration mission? inspired by the Seleukid missions but dynamic for dealing with a new region with other cultures and religions.
• Missions for the minor Diadochi states (e.g. Bactria, Arachosia, Cyrenaica, Ionia, Atropatene) (@Seleukos.I.Nikator @Arch-Heretek and @APC999 have proposed missions for Bactria above)
• A mission to get a conquest wargoal (would be similar to the Legacy of Alexander):

Perhaps you could make a generic mission to get such a Great conquest war goal that works like that but would be available for any nation that completes a special mission (start Great conquest?).

oh dear, how the heck did I forget about the $15 ($18 if you didn't preorder) scam that was the Hellenistic states content pack? like for real, that thing was just swept under the rug; I completely agree here, it should get a touchup, like the Epirus one

wait, did the devs also forget about it?

 

[Jorlem]

Palestine/Phoenicia

Out of curiosity, is there any chance Judea or Samaria might get some unique/new stuff in this DLC, given their positioning geographically and politically at the start of the game? I'm a bit worried that they might not, as going by past patterns of Paradox DLCs, after this DLC it is likely that the next few will focus on different geographical locations.

 

[Palanthis]

As many others have said, the velite choice to represent the roman levies is an odd one.

Don't get me wrong : the model is really well designed, beautiful, historically accurate, and yes, it's really different from the roman legionnary. Also, the velites achieved great success in the Punic Wars, especially against the elephants.

Still, it's not a good way to represent the roman levies for several reasons imho :

- it's a skirmisher, a mobile and auxiliary troop; as such, it's not what people have in mind when they think of a roman army, which is well known through history as a "heavy melee, compact, and not very mobile infantry" because that's what Rome did best indeed
- velites have only been used from 211 to 107 bc. In a regular army levies, they were heavily outnumbered by the regular infantry troops. So much that the velites commander was not a velites, but actually a hastati.
- the hastati is a much more appropriate choice because it's without a doubt "the staple unit after Rome threw off Etruscan rule" as the wikipedia page about hastati says
- if i'm not mistaken, all levies models for other cultures are all melee troops. It's really odd that only Rome, which is known for being melee-heavy, is represented by a skirmisher/missile troop.
- the hastati remains a troop without a real armor and with minimum equipment. It shares the poverty of velites. I'm confident a hastati model couldn't be mistaken with the fully armored legionary of post-marius professional legions.

In conclusion, the velites model is very nice and could be used for other things. But a hastati model would make much more sense to represent the roman levies.

From left to right: velites, hastati, and finally legionnary (post Marius) :

 

[Decius]

I really like the Velites model, but I also think a Hastati would fit more as levy army model.

 

[Palanthis]

Also, this is presumably what a "roman levies army" (before it was professionalized with Marius) looked like :

From left to right : hastati, velites, princeps, triarii

A small number of equites (cavalry) was also added to these core troops.

My point is, velites is a really specific unit of early roman army. Most of the troops were melee infantry, Strictly speaking, only the velites and equites were not (although all of them were equipped with small melee weapons). Velites were a missile, skirmisher unit while the equites was, well, a cavalry designed to skirmish and flank.

From my point of view, the hastati are the best unit to represent the early roman army : it's a melee unit, like most roman troops, but stills shows a rudimentary, non professionalized, low armor quality, visually speaking.

 

[Bovrick]

At least velites and legionnaries are visually distinct, which is my #2 consideration (after being reasonably era appropriate). Not sure the Hastati examples above provide that distinction - though I appear to be in the minority opinion there.