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Imperator Dev Diary 07/12/20

Greetings all,

Today, we’ll be covering some additional mechanics coming in the Marius update, before we take a look at further mission trees coming as part of the Heirs of Alexander DLC.

Ports

As the astute amongst you have noticed, we’ve made several references to ‘upgrading’ port infrastructure in recent dev diaries and streams.

Prior to Marius, ports were seeded in numerous historical locations, but could never be altered, removed, or added during gameplay. As Imperator is a game where the ability to build your own civilization is paramount, it seemed natural that this behaviour should be reconsidered.

As part of Marius, shipyards will be a constructible building-type, which along with various local effects, will increase the port level of the territory in which they are built.

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Shipyards can be constructed in any coastally adjacent territory, which will have the graphical effect of creating a culturally appropriate port model in the coastal territory. For technical and design reasons, we’ve chosen not to allow the construction of shipyards in river provinces, unless there was a pre-seeded port already present (Pataliputra or Sais, for example).

The level of port in a territory will primarily dictate which ships it is able to construct; low level ports may only build and repair Light ships, for example.

Mega-polyremes will require a port level of 5, but are still gated behind the corresponding military tradition, though due to the tradition tree rework, this unlock can now be attained by any nation willing to invest into the traditions of the Greek Kingdoms.

You’ll be able to distinguish between port levels by map icon; two such examples at the beginning of the game are the port in Alexandria which begins at a higher level than surrounding territories:

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Lastly, but not least - ports can now be removed or destroyed by removing shipyard buildings in the associated territory.This will evict any mercenary navies currently present, and destroy the port model.

Technology Feedback

Your response to the technology trees coming in 2.0 was overwhelming, and I feel we’re on an good course with these. This said, there was some excellent critique on the system, some of which we’ve had a chance to iterate on.

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One of the most common opinions we saw, was that the tech tree background appeared bland. To address this, our talented artists have added a diagrammatic background (replete with authentic wine stains) to give some identity to the game view.

One additional and enduring piece of feedback we’ve had during testing, was the lack of contextual identification for inventions in the new system - how does the player know what each invention represents, and how can they easily locate what they’re aiming for in our larger tree structures?

We’ve added two ways to mitigate this concern.

Firstly, inventions now display their foremost modifier icon inside the UI element. This gives an at-a-glance indication of what you’re likely to receive once an invention is purchased. As our regular players will know, however, there are a significant number of modifiers and modifier types in Imperator - it can be tricky to mentally map all of these. Which leads us to the second improvement.

The search bar in the top right corner will highlight inventions that correspond to your search terms. This will parse both names and modifier strings:

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(It goes without saying hopefully, that this highlight is WIP!)

In addition to these UI changes, some incidental balance changes have been made to the inventions system. Notably, while we do not wish for it to be possible to unlock all inventions in a single playthrough, the number available vs the number of innovations available were simply too far removed.

To mitigate this, we’ve decreased the expected years per technology from 20 years to 15 years - this reduces the ahead of time penalty accordingly, and should result in more frequent tech advances as time goes on.

Several modifiers previously tied to nation rank (particularly diplomatic relations) have been moved out of their associated rank modifier, and into the tech trees. I’ve never been entirely happy with the number of alliances and relations that were available from the beginning of the game - this addresses that concern, yet retains the ability to focus on this as a valid playstyle for players and AI, should their situation demand it.

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As the above screenshot suggests, we have also added more keystone inventions, particularly those which might alter the playstyle of a nation. The wargoal referred to here is the one mentioned in our previous developer diary. Whilst powerful, it sits relatively far down the Oratory tree, as many of our more game-changing inventions tend to.

Before I hand over to @Bratyn, I'm aware that I promised unit model screenshots a week or two ago - due to some final polish on these, I can't show them off just yet - watch this space!

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So the Imperial Challenge CB will get access to the civil war province flipping mechanic? What is the thought behind this? That it allows nations to very easily swallow up large empires?
Basically yes, considering that curremtly late game expansion is slower than at the start (due to increasing amount of pops needing extra war score).
 
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So the Imperial Challenge CB will get access to the civil war province flipping mechanic? What is the thought behind this? That it allows nations to very easily swallow up large empires?
The warscore system scales poorly for wars between massive powers and it's a lot easier in dev terms to just add a few special case wargoals which circumvent it than to rework the entire system. Not particularly "tidy" in conceptual terms but it certainly works.
 
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Looks like they are continuing to iterate on the province UI as well, so that is good.

I like putting port construction and upgrades at the player's control. As for geography and port size, I assume settlements are still limited to one building, so you can only go past a size 1 port in a city. That means you will probably only have one big port (or perhaps two) in a single province, which seems fine to me.

I also like the tech tree UI improvements. I do have one note here. It was not obvious at all in the first screenshot that the bar in the upper right was a search bar. Please put something here to make it more apparent what this is.

I have not done any of the unique mission trees yet (I don't have any DLC, so I only have access to the few free ones), but these trees for Thrace look cool and kudos to the designer for making this an exciting nation to try.
 
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@Arheo with the ports, does this mean you are going to update this picture of the Cliffsides of Dover to show the Cliffside Ports of Dover since ports can be made anywhere including on cliffs if the dev diary is correct. :p

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I'm usually not interested too much in mission trees, but this one seems awesome! I'll definitely want to play Thrace in the next update, and I can definitely see some hoi4 influence on the mechanics!

Now about ports, it has already been pointed out that in the classical era ports where not something you could building whereever you wanted to, but I can see why people would like to place them however they want, so how about adding a modifier like in eu4 called something like "natural port" and limit the construction of high level ports (maybe 3+) to just those territories?
I really like this idea. It makes much more sense for the game.
 
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Just my suggestions about ports:
Being able to build ports everywhere is kinda weird. it should be possible but maybe price should increase depending on terrain/water type. if the coast is shallow you could build out far until the water is deep enough but it´s way more expensive. If the coast is rocky or a cliff you would need to put in a lot more than a location with a natural habor.

I just hope ports can only be present in cities since nobody would build a huge port in a fishing village, there´s no supporting infrastructure for that. They should be destroyed when the city is razed too.
 
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Would it be possible to condense this into something like "Cost: 1000 Gold"? I feel like this looks a bit weird and unnecessarily complicated. Also, I don't think we really need two decimals here.

Other than that great dev diary! 2.0 looked great from the beginning, but every week it seems to get even better :)
 
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A great developer diary ! Thank you for your hard work ! I agree with the suggestions my collegues suggested :)

Edit : what would you think about a land upgrade ? As you can create ports, it would make sense to me that, for your capital city, the most civilized of your ocuntry, you could remove the trees from a forest or change the plains into farmlands. I woud not touch the hills or mountains, but the idea to remove the forests or upgrade to farmlands some plains for your capital city could be interesting.
 
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Yes please reconsider the decision to locate ports anywhere. I think the game needs to strike a balance between player control and gameplay, and I think currently ports having set locations add to strategic planning and is more important than unrestricted player control.

Is it possible to create fleet templates? And could the fleet be entirely constructed from one Port but could take say 3-5 years to build? Making even better ports all the more important and their scarcity a real reason to control them.

I think ports having set locations could help form the basis for a solid future trade rework too, hopefully where trade routes can only be connected via ports, and overland trade is done through trade caravans to neighboring provinces. The nice looking arrows bypassing in-between nations has to go.

Delenda Est IR Trade Routes

Edit-or else make the ability to construct ports a path on the military ideas group. But only for factions that have chosen a weak infantry path.
 
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Nice to get something else on top of "just another mission tree" (don't get me wrong - I'm fine with them getting added, but as I often play smaller "generic" tags I'm even more thrilled by general new features) :) Still, out of all the Diadochi mission trees it was that one which interested me most - I already played as Thrace once, had a fun game...and now I have good reasons to come back one day :)

For the ports...I like the idea of allowing to expand them, but I share the concerns in regard to (nearly) free placement. Sounds like an invitation to either spam them everywhere or to heavily optimize them based on the local trade good. At least some kind of bonus for choosing geographical suitable locations like other have suggested should be considered (while the base cost for not caring should be steep)

Tying bigger ship sizes to port levels is good, but hopefully we will also get a manpower need for the navy.
 
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The three Thracian missions can be taken in any order, depending on what the player initially wishes to focus on.

Since the 4th War event chain fires early, would the player have time for the Thracian or Greek missions before it's time for fight Antigonos. Similarly, what happens to the navy-building in the Asian mission if the 4th war has already been resolved and Lysimachos has occupied Asia Minor?