Interesting that you mention this. Let's just say that with recruitment systems being integrated more heavily with the simulation, there are going to be consequences to full-scale war beyond mere fiscal losses.
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Imperator DD #101 - A Most Auspicious Number
- Thread starter Arheo
- Start date
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Interesting that you mention this. Let's just say that with recruitment systems being integrated more heavily with the simulation, there are going to be consequences to full-scale war beyond mere fiscal losses.
Great news overall Three big areas (pacing, warfare, interface) tackled and the "IR is dead"-faction gets their magic "2.0" label
In regard to the UI, I'm first of all glad that we will get better functionality. Visually I don't like everything I see here (I will likely miss the Marble), but a part of that maybe placeholder-/WIP-related, so I will wait for the final result to judge. And if some of my personal visual pleasure is traded in for better functionality and more people flocking to the game...well, I can live with that deal.
I support the idea of beta and hope we will get our hands soon on this...
Three big areas (pacing, warfare, interface) tackled and the "IR is dead"-faction gets their magic "2.0" label In regard to the UI, I'm first of all glad that we will get better functionality. Visually I don't like everything I see here (I will likely miss the Marble), but a part of that maybe placeholder-/WIP-related, so I will wait for the final result to judge. And if some of my personal visual pleasure is traded in for better functionality and more people flocking to the game...well, I can live with that deal.
I support the idea of beta and hope we will get our hands soon on this...
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Going through the various image (#1, #2, #3, #4) with the new unit banners; they all look the same to me? The only difference is that some have a country flag over them, which might be a naval unit or an already activated unit?
What I am guessing is that the new system is going to work as follows:
There are armies on the map like the current mercenaries. Like the current mercenaries you activate the army for an x amount of up front cost, x amount of monthly cost and an x amount of cost to disband. But these are not mercenaries, they are the units you can draft (and thus are only available to you). The composition being based on the POP culture and types in the region. There might be one army per region you can recruit. And going by Arheo's most recent post, getting your army killed will probably get a few POPs killed as well.
I might be complete wrong, but this is how I interpret what I am seeing.
About the tactical tab: I think you are right.
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That's not exactly true. Wars can be quite damaging with regard to the population losses.
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Finally some good news. The ugly marbe UI is gone! The military is getting reworked and we're getting a pacing overhaul!
Now that you built the hype, please deliver! And thank you for your silent efforts. I have renewed hopes for the future of Imperator.
Now that you built the hype, please deliver! And thank you for your silent efforts. I have renewed hopes for the future of Imperator.
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Yeah on another viewing I think you're right, that red I was seeing may just be the Political colour underneath. Interesting that it looks like the banner is currently whited out though.
I recently played quite a few hours of Imperator to check out new updates and whatnot. I had a bit of fun with it. Developing provinces from nothing, growing the chosen family prestige, but if I had to describe my overall feeling about the game it would be: annoyance. I was constantly annoyed at something. UI, war, missions, decisions(or lack of them), character interactions, etc. Unlike other paradox games I don't feel like starting another campaign.
However this dev diary really looks promising. What I am most excited about: UI - feels a lot nicer and new ways for pops to interact with mechanics of the game instead of just giving growing modifiers. I hope the update, like the name suggests, will become savior of Imperator.
However this dev diary really looks promising. What I am most excited about: UI - feels a lot nicer and new ways for pops to interact with mechanics of the game instead of just giving growing modifiers. I hope the update, like the name suggests, will become savior of Imperator.
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Spoken by a supporter of the man who defiled the sanctity of the city of Rome by marching his army into it!
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This is what we were saying when we need an update that prioritizes whats important, great news what a lovely day.
The UI changes are really exciting. I've only played a little Imperator, and I could never quite get the hang of the sea of numbers or what I was meant to be looking at to understand what was going on.
On a first glimpse of these new screens, I feel like I have a much better chance of building a mental model of the situation. For instance the Pops with the background images. The housing behind the people tells me exactly who they are in a way that their costumes did not.
On a first glimpse of these new screens, I feel like I have a much better chance of building a mental model of the situation. For instance the Pops with the background images. The housing behind the people tells me exactly who they are in a way that their costumes did not.
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I agree with most other posters here that the new UI is going in a good direction and the other changes hinted at in 2.0 are exciting.
I have already re-installed and the day this update lands I cannot wait to re-visit this game. It looks like it’s heading in the right direction for my tastes and has lots of depth to it. I am very excited and happy that Paradox have done their utmost to make this work.
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Salvete Omnes!
It’s been a while since you heard from me or the Sthlm team, so I’m here to do a few things today.
Firstly, there’s a few points of confusion to clear up!
The team down at Thalassic began working on Imperator early this year, onboarding and getting accustomed to the game and the codebase - their first feature (Great Wonders) was created in parallel while the Stockholm team produced the 1.5 update which is currently in your hands. This has worked very nicely, however, having two studios working on parallel tracks makes it difficult to produce the kind of interconnected material that makes Imperator unique. Over the last several months, we’ve begun integrating and onboarding the talented folks at Thalassic into our workflow in order to enable the production of more integrated features and content which you’ll discover very shortly.
Our last dev diaries were intended to give Thalassic a platform to show off what they’ve created, without flipping back and forth between the two teams.
Following on from this, I’d like to clarify that the next update you will receive will contain, but not be limited to, the Vitruvius update. Working with a second studio is quite new for us, and we wanted the Great Wonders feature and update to have a unique codename; in this case, it is not tied to a specific and limited release. In this case, it will be released alongside our next major update.
The last point of order I have here comes with a side-note: namely, that you’ll be waiting a little longer than usual for the next content update for Imperator.
‘But WHY?’
Well, this was hinted at a little when the ‘unprecedented’ scope of the upcoming release was mentioned in the last dev diary. The scope and quantity of features coming in the next release is of such gravitas that we are changing the version number to adequately portray what this represents for Imperator.
As such; I can now introduce the 2.0 Marius update.
‘2.0 - is this hubris?’
Well, no. I don’t think so. At this stage I can only commit to a broad overview of some of the things we intend to cover with this update, though I would urge you to make up your own minds after reading the following:
My overarching directives for 2.0 are pacing, warfare, and UX.
Pacing
I want to achieve a more consistent and choice-based progression to the flow of the game. As of right now, much of what the game offers you is available to you from the very beginning, and there are fewer ways to customise your playstyle than I would like. We’ll be looking at overhauling the inventions system and the military traditions system in order to effect a more intuitive system of progression that allows for a sense of advancement and identity to develop over the course of a game.
This doesn’t solely mean gating existing mechanics, however, this will also tie strongly to new features and additions coming in 2.0.
Warfare
This is a pretty big one. I’ve never been happy with the military recruitment and army mechanics being almost entirely divorced from historical reality and being largely set apart from the many other systems in our game. Our main military focus for 2.0 will be on tying the recruitment system(s!) into the rest of our simulation, as well as adding a much larger recognition for the cultural diversity of military forces in different parts of the map.
Several astute forum users have noticed that we’re going to be removing the Raise Levies unit ability. I’ll leave you to ponder over how that might be related.
There are of course many additional improvements coming to the warfare aspect of the game, from forts and sieges, to wargoals and cohorts.
UX
Aaand then there’s this. This is something we’ve been keeping under wraps for a while now, and which has been the sole focus of @jiroro, our UX designer, since she joined the team.
Many of you have expressed a desire for work on the UI, and this is something we’ve heard.
In the Marius update, we’ll be focusing on greatly improving the user experience on an interface level, as well as including a completely new art style. Since it’ll be entirely impossible to avoid showing any features off without teasing at the UI rework, here are some in-progress shots of the state of things on our highly experimental branches.
The bright visual identity of Imperator was tied to too many periphery elements (branding, key art) to change at this stage; it’s something we intend to work with and refine going forwards - we'll be preserving this lighter style, in contrast to some our sister titles such as Crusader Kings, which opted for a darker approach. I wanted a bold style, dropping a lot of the unnecessary cornels and border decorations that took up a significant quantity of screen real estate. You'll notice we still have decoration; this is used more carefully, and serves a purpose of its own - to draw attention or indicate the relative importance of an interface, or to create a feeling of immersion with pictures and scenes.
A significant directive I've pressed home, is to bring out the importance of characters; no more beige backgrounds, more breathing room, additional usability functions (character search, anyone?), and a suite of backgrounds intended to give characters a little more life.
Part of the behind-the-scenes advantages of this overhaul is also to support easier modding, color switching, and the potential for culturally thematic UI themes (though with the scope of 2.0, it should be said that we will not be adding any of this in the immediate future).
It is incredibly important that you are aware that the art and UX overhaul is not complete, and even things which look overhauled or reskinned may well not yet be finished.
Nb: All screenshots are provided at our minimum supported resolution of 1920x1080.
View attachment 632734
The WIP Character Window. This is one of our larger standard windows in the new UI - we wanted to give characters a great deal more space and personality by doing away with the beige backgrounds, and inserting a more immersive background selection system. Here you can also see that the top bar has been moved to the side, to accommodate more usable screen real estate.
Future plans, inspired by some of the popular user mods (such as the Better UI mod by Agamidae) are to include balance indicators on top bar resources, as well as showing additional contextual information in the top bar.
View attachment 632735
While function definitely takes precedence over form, it became apparent that we had much more space to work with in our newer style; including larger set pieces adds a lot to the feeling of immersion when using the UI. The astute amongst you will notice that we have a new tooltip system - the recent release of CK3 has enabled us to make use of much more intuitive nested tooltip technology.
View attachment 632736
I couldn’t resist the opportunity to make the senate feel more alive.
View attachment 632737
As you can see, we’re working a lot to reduce the size and visual clutter of game interfaces.
View attachment 632738
Of course, this is not possible everywhere; the distinction between windows you’re likely to need while using the map, and otherwise, has been accentuated. You may also notice a few additional tidbits here
View attachment 632739
Even the in-game menu has received some attention.
View attachment 632740
Widely regarded as one of our most confusing windows, we’ve done a lot of work on the Territory window to add some breathing room to information.
View attachment 632741
There is, of course, much more to show here. Next week @jiroro will take a long dive into the reasoning and specifics behind the UI rework.
As always, I look forward to hearing your comments.
/Arheo
When will this update come out?
1.) Could the colors be changed depending on the nation. While the bold Red might work for Rome, but not sure for the Mauryans or Celtic Tribes. Let me have Blue for the Athenians, Green for the Celtic Tribes, Saffron for the Mauryans and so on
I saw the posts about indivdiual nation colours not working out for this, but this is a good compromise step. Would they need secondary colours? e.g. Would celts be better represented by emerald and woad? Germans by earthen tones? Phoenecians with Tyrian purple. Generic greeks perhaps with an inverse of what we've been shown? (i.e. Turquoise primary, with red accents instead.)
As far as text goes, as long as the primary colour doesn't contrast with the current text choice it should limit the amount of work needed to test it.
Perhaps as you say, the most notable nations — like Athens, Rome, Egypt — could have something specific? Like a deep blue or navy for Macedonia? I don't mean to suggest excessive work for the team when they've obviously got plenty other things to work on, but it'd be a nice touch to the content packs, even if it's nothing more than a few culture-based skins.
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They won't announce that for another several weeks, unfortunately.
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[QUOTE = "RonBurgundy, publicación: 26963373, miembro: 839674"]
Desafortunadamente, no lo anunciarán hasta dentro de varias semanas.
[/CITAR]
Ok, tiendeOk we'll have to wait
Desafortunadamente, no lo anunciarán hasta dentro de varias semanas.
[/CITAR]
Ok, tiendeOk we'll have to wait
This looks really epic! The last time I seriously played this game was during late 1.2 early 1.3, and I defenetly want to try to get back into the game when this update drops!
And even though I dislike the game's light style (especially on the map, I really wish it wasn't so sunny) I think the UX improvements look so great! The senate interface really does feel like a senate with a lot of people, which I am unsure how that illusion even works. I'm very excited to see how the combat will change.
And even though I dislike the game's light style (especially on the map, I really wish it wasn't so sunny) I think the UX improvements look so great! The senate interface really does feel like a senate with a lot of people, which I am unsure how that illusion even works. I'm very excited to see how the combat will change.