Imperator DD: Important balance changes and missions

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Additionally, previously tag specific subjects such as Syracuse’ mercenary state subject type can also be unlocked through the innovation tree, provided the Magna Graecia content pack is owned. Syracuse will still start with this subject type unlocked.

While you're at it, please also fix the Mamertine Republic being a Tributary: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...ibutary-instead-of-a-mercenary-state.1448237/

And the issue of them defecting: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/mercenary-states.1448201/#post-27170742 No way to enforce back into a MS.

P. S. In general the Mamertine Republic seems a bit like a missed opportunity. If it doesn't get some touch in 2.0 (it should at least be corrected into a Mercenary State) I really hope for some Italian DLC to expand on there, though hopes are not high since you're already released a Punic Wars FLC.
 
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Ave again, this time we’ll be taking a look at the last mission coming with our expansion Heirs of Alexander, a shared Diadochi mission designed by @Trin Tragula which is available to all five Successors when they complete two specific missions from their unique set (e.g. Egypt must complete Eastern Border and Thalassocracy).

Named Diadochi Empire, this mission provides a late-game challenge and thus expects you to already be a large nation, and directs you in establishing a new kind of realm that will fulfill Alexander’s dream of a lasting empire. It also sets out to draw up what might have been if a historical, lasting, united Hellenistic Empire were to dominate the Mediterrenean instead of Rome. The end goal of the mission, apart from lasting government institutions and a strong dynasty, is a uniting common identity beyond cultural and tribal differences - an alternative to Roman citizenship in real history.

As a result of its end game nature, the tasks of the mission have steep requirements, sometimes providing a place to sink your wealth, but offering unique and powerful rewards.
The resolution of its tasks will also sometimes allow you to decide between alternative ways to shape your universal empire.

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The right hand path will first set you up with claims on Alexander’s entire empire in case they have been lost via the Epigoni event, and then ask you to conquer any core regions of Alexander’s empire which remain independent (Macedon, Mesopotamia, and/or Egypt, depending on which lands you already own) and give you a choice on how to govern them, with direct rule over such a large empire being quite taxing.

Conquering all of Persia and reclaiming the lands west of the Indus are optional objectives later on this side of the tree which will guide you in fulfilling the requirements of the Reunite Alexander’s Empire decision, which as before changes your country’s name and color - although if your ruler does not have the Blood of the Argeads trait it will be named the Macedonian Empire rather than Argead Empire.

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To live up to the empire of old you must ensure your capital has a Great Work (decision-built and starting wonders such as the Pyramids, Pharos, etc. count), ensuring it is a lasting Metropolis.

For this vast empire to function the food supply must also be organized properly; inspired by the Roman bread doles, it will be quite the undertaking to ensure the poor are fed and order is maintained, and your choices in handling this matter will have lasting consequences.

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Parallel to this, the left-hand path demands that you have the Empire government form if you are to manage such a large realm effectively, before inviting you to patronize the gods and asking you to assemble the Anthologia Philosophike - nine unique scholarly treasures scattered across the world which will be combined into one - to prove your dominant position as a center of learning and ensure the survival of the world’s knowledge for posterity.

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Further, you will be tasked to establish a bureaucracy to oversee the empire’s administration, and decide on how its candidates will be picked, as well as to patronize philosophers, inviting skilled characters from across the world to the capital. A royal school will also be established, granting all current and future members of the ruling dynasty by blood extra skills in a chosen category to ensure the empire’s leaders are up to the task.

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You may then prove you are Alexander’s true successor by honoring his memory and collecting his entire panoply - again scattered around the world - creating another combined treasure for your subjects to be inspired by and gawp at. Deification will also improve your ruler’s skills and legitimacy, the authority of the god-king lubricating the spokes of government.

After all that, you may finally achieve Alexander’s dream of a peaceful world-spanning empire, free from the cultural divisions of the past - something which your close-minded subjects will be loath to accept. The game will challenge you with a vast civil war, where you must destroy those who seek to cling to regional identity and unite the empire.

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If you survive that, you will have nothing left to prove to your subjects, or the gods, and Alexander’s ambitions will finally have been realized. A new Hellenistic culture will be adopted by the state and its elite, spreading to the capital and largest cities first, representing the mixing of cultures and the common identity shared by all subjects of the God-Kings of your Hellenistic empire.

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That’s all from me!

What is the status of Great Works that was supposed to come out with Vitruvius?

Will it be an integral part of the DLC with the announced content?
 
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Instead of taking over city view, the holy site graphic should just be moved a little bit left so that BOTH are displayed at once.
The treasure icons in the same window should be moved along with it (and down, rather than up which covers the art) as well. It looks beautiful, just needs that adjustment.

Also, can you please make it so that AI doesn't burn holy sites the moment it has the ability to do so? Especially against their own religion? 90% of the holy sites at the start of the game disappear within first 10-15 years.

Secondly, I really agree with the idea that monthly manpower gain should be kept reasonably slow.
It is an issue with many PDS games that troops regenerate too quickly, where you can have three large armies stackwiped and somehow still rebuild them all within two years, like it was some modern HoI setting. It was ridiculous and made any careful planning and strategy unnecessary.
The pitfall of the previous manpower system was that you had so much of it, manpower stopped mattering 50 years into the game. That will hopefully change with the beautiful new system we are getting now.
A balance between fast and slow regeneration, tied to difficulty levels, would be nice.

Also, can you please, PLEASE add the ability to allow players to rename cohorts and ships? If you are not going to do it in a MILITARY focused patch, when will you ever add such a bare basic feature?
Many have been asking for this feature for over two years now, and yet not a hint from the devs. Why? Not all of us are powergaming meta map-painters you know, many of us play for immersion and yet suggestions for little things like these get completely ignored and shelved.
I am not a fan of "63rd Ostia Trireme" or "25th Pirate Liburnian". Victoria 2 (and even old EU-Rome) suffered from same issue 10 years earlier, and yet nothing was learned it seems. PLEASE allow cohort and ships renaming now.
Can levy and legion armies even be renamed now, since they're tied to provinces ("regions") now?

Other than that, it all looks decent enough so far. I hope the release comes soon, it has been too many months for "faster but shorter updates". :)
 
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About deification. It would be interesting if the the legitimacy of the ruler depended on how successful he is. That is, if for example they are defeated in a big battle, their subjects may conclude that they are not a god after all. If they win an battle against an opponent with similar amount of men, then business as usual. But if they win against a stronger opponent, then their subjects are more convinced that their ruler is a god. Etc...

The idea is that claiming to be a god or a descendant should require to match the expectations (almost all the time).
 
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Instead of taking over city view, the holy site graphic should just be moved a little bit left so that BOTH are displayed at once.
The treasure icons in the same window should be moved along with it (and down, rather than up which covers the art) as well.

Also, can you please make it so that AI doesn't burn holy sites the moment it has the ability to do so? Especially against their own religion? 90% of the holy sites at the start of the game disappear within first 10-15 years.

Secondly, I really agree with the idea that monthly manpower gain should be kept reasonably slow.
It is an issue with many PDS games that troops regenerate too quickly, where you can have three large armies stackwiped and somehow still rebuild them all within two years, like it was some modern HoI setting. It was ridiculous and made any careful planning and strategy unnecessary.
The pitfall of the previous manpower system was that you had so much of it, manpower stopped mattering 50 years into the game. That should change.
A balance between fast and slow regeneration, tied to difficulty levels, would be nice.

Also, can you please, PLEASE add the ability to allow players to rename cohorts and ships? If you are not going to do it in a MILITARY focused patch, when will you ever add such a bare basic feature?
Many have been asking for this feature for over two years now, and yet not a hint from the devs. Why? Not all of us are powergaming meta map-painters you know, many of us play for immersion and yet suggestions for little things like these get completely ignored and shelved.
I am not a fan of "63rd Ostia Trireme" or "25th Pirate Liburnian". Victoria 2 (and even old EU-Rome) suffered from same issue 10 years earlier, and yet nothing was learned it seems. PLEASE allow cohort and ships renaming now.
Can levy and legion armies even be renamed now?

Other than that, it all looks decent enough so far. :)

As far as I know you can change the name of your armies, in the case of the navy I don't know. Click on the name and you can customize it
 
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It would be interesting if the the legitimacy of the ruler depended on how successful he is. That is, if for example they are defeated in a big battle, their subjects may conclude that they are not a god after all. If they win an battle against an opponent with similar amount of men, then business as usual.
This is basically describing the Legitimacy-Leader Popularity link, isn't it? It's already there, though maybe not well tuned.
 
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Other than that, it all looks decent enough so far. I hope the release comes soon, it has been too many months for "faster but shorter updates". :)

Well its still a hell of a lot faster than other PDX titles. 2.0 is three times as big as EU4's 1.3, and its coming in a 1/4th of the time (1.3 took almost 2 years). So its still faster but not even that shorter hehe.
 
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Well its still a hell of a lot faster than other PDX titles. 2.0 is three times as big as EU4's 1.3, and its coming in a 1/4th of the time (1.3 took almost 2 years). So its still faster but not even that shorter hehe.

I guess they have a larger team, because otherwise I wonder how they are so fast with the development.
 
I dip in and out of this title, so sorry if this has been discussed to death. Why do we still need manpower at all? We have a shiny new pop system that is tiered by pop type, which allows to limit recruitment of unit type by population type. This is amazing! Why have a gamey manpower artificially laid over the top of it?

I love that losing men in wars means losing pops, and can have dire economic consequences. Why not just let people recruit from their pops as they see fit? Have some events/popups hinting at problems with having fewer and fewer pops as you lose wars. In the end it should be down to the player to think it would be better to lose land than pops...

Is there a reason to keep the manpower resource value?
 
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I dip in and out of this title, so sorry if this has been discussed to death. Why do we still need manpower at all? We have a shiny new pop system that is tiered by pop type, which allows to limit recruitment of unit type by population type. This is amazing! Why have a gamey manpower artificially laid over the top of it?

I love that losing men in wars means losing pops, and can have dire economic consequences. Why not just let people recruit from their pops as they see fit? Have some events/popups hinting at problems with having fewer and fewer pops as you lose wars. In the end it should be down to the player to think it would be better to lose land than pops...

Is there a reason to keep the manpower resource value?
None other than people love teleportations. I strongly endorse getting rid of manpower. But every single comment that I've made with a reference to getting rid of manpower, I get downvoted to Inferno.
 
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I dip in and out of this title, so sorry if this has been discussed to death. Why do we still need manpower at all? We have a shiny new pop system that is tiered by pop type, which allows to limit recruitment of unit type by population type. This is amazing! Why have a gamey manpower artificially laid over the top of it?

I love that losing men in wars means losing pops, and can have dire economic consequences. Why not just let people recruit from their pops as they see fit? Have some events/popups hinting at problems with having fewer and fewer pops as you lose wars. In the end it should be down to the player to think it would be better to lose land than pops...

Is there a reason to keep the manpower resource value?

I like the idea of manpower going away too. All I can think of as to why the devs stick with it is because maybe they don’t want battle casualties to be 1:1 with pop casualties?
So the manpower pool represents the fraction of a pop value that can be allotted to armies and as manpower is spent on battles the pop count can remain stable.

Though perhaps we rather pops die from battle and make war have higher stakes. Though this could possibly render some nations never to recover from a bad war for centuries at the current pop growth.

Maybe the devs deem this as possibly boring, waiting for pops to grow back up for another 75~100 years. Not sure to be honest, just my speculation.
 
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So the manpower pool represents the fraction of a pop value that can be allotted to armies and as manpower is spent on battles the pop count can remain stable.

Basically, this. POPs are the base of your empire. Rome did not disappear after the battle of Cannae. Killing POPs will do it. Soldiers are drafted from POPs, and if they are killed, families can have more children. Manpower recovers in 1/240 months, that is 20 years, to grow a young male.

I denounced the problems of manpower in this thread, but in 2.0 it seems they have solved It.

 
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but we have a national manpower value, but levies seem to get raised from provinces, with each one having an available levy (think I see a screenshot illustrating this). Seems like a national manpower count no longer has a place.

if manpower was directly tied to pops (say 1/4 or something) it may have more meaning.
 
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I like the idea of manpower going away too. All I can think of as to why the devs stick with it is because maybe they don’t want battle casualties to be 1:1 with pop casualties?
So the manpower pool represents the fraction of a pop value that can be allotted to armies and as manpower is spent on battles the pop count can remain stable.

Though perhaps we rather pops die from battle and make war have higher stakes. Though this could possibly render some nations never to recover from a bad war for centuries at the current pop growth.

Maybe the devs deem this as possibly boring, waiting for pops to grow back up for another 75~100 years. Not sure to be honest, just my speculation.
Since somebody is endorsing, I'll just entertain this idea a bit.

Two routes:
  1. Sacrificing Pops to create Manpower.
    1. Countries have constantly 0 basic manpower.
      1. Or if staffing Forts or Ships require manpower, the country's manpower pool can be used there.
    2. When a Levy is raised, there will be some manpower raised together.
    3. When you've run out of manpower, you can sacrifice a Pop and grind him into manpower juice for teleportation.
  2. Manual reinforcement
    1. Absolutely no manpower and reinforcement. You lose men and you have reduced strength. But merging Cohorts will be more relaxed (Now you can't merge loyal Cohorts).
    2. When you absolutely need to reinforce, you can go back to one of your own territory which has spare men and Pops.
    3. There is a button on your Army. You can click it and it gets reinforced locally by grinding locals Pops into Cohort juice to reinforce.
 
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levies seem to get raised from provinces

I'm pretty sure its each region (=can be many provinces), because the governor is always treated as the general of a levy.

if manpower was directly tied to pops (say 1/4 or something) it may have more meaning.

It already is though..! always has been. each freeman/ citizen /tribesman contributes a certain amount towards the manpower cap, and regenerates towards the max total continuously (provided they are not currently levied)
 
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How would you model partial losses and replenishment? Just a base rate for each unit?

Not really thought it through in great detail, but:
levies are tied to a province region with the governor as the general.
Levy army takes casualties, they are replinished from whatever pop type feeds them from that provinces pops. Heavy infantry from citizens etc etc.
It would need to be balanced out of course so everything is meaningful and not too punishing...

EDIT: Sorry keep mixing up provinces and regions
 
How would you model partial losses and replenishment? Just a base rate for each unit?
Manpower pools for each territory and POP type. With the aggregate number displayed on top for the player to see.

In fact, this is an idea of @Iosue Yu , as much as can surprise you, because he only wants to sacrifice POPs and make juice of them.
 
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Manpower pools for each territory and POP type. With the aggregate number displayed on top for the player to see.

In fact, this is an idea of @Iosue Yu , as much as can surprise you, because he only wants to sacrifice POPs and make juice of them.
The thing is that you can't replenish partial units. If you only have that in place, you will only replenish when you've lost more than what a Pop represents. And then you stop reinforcing until you've lost enough soldiers to be able to fill in with singular Pops.

The only way around is to make Pop juice so you can always reinforce to full and have the remainder wait until your next refill.
 
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forgive my ignorance, but is it confirmed that there is no actual number in the background for pops? the game tracks pops as these integers? I doubt that, and suspect they are probably just rounded down for the UI.
 
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