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Imperator Dev Diary - Heirs of Alexander

Greetings all,

While there is yet more to come regarding Marian military matters, today I’m here to announce that the content pack, ‘Heirs of Alexander’, will be released in conjunction with the Marius update.

As befits our 2.0 statement, the Heirs of Alexander content pack will be the largest yet; encompassing mission trees and flavor events for all the Diadochi nations, as well as the ability to customize and build a large variety of Great Wonders as detailed in the Vitruvius dev diary.

Included alongside this will be a variety of additional content that you have grown to expect from content packs, including new event pictures, music tracks, and more.

As time goes on, we will introduce more specifics surrounding the content you will receive in the HoA pack, however, as a small addendum to last week’s diary, I would like to clarify that the Legion Honors that you encountered in the Legions feature reveal will be part of the HoA pack.

With this announcement out of the way, I’ll detail a few more changes you can expect in the Marius update!

Legacy of Alexander

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.

Every territory that changes hands this way will add a small amount of war exhaustion to the war leader that gains the territory, resulting in wars in which large amounts of territory can change hands, whilst also reaching an organic ‘end’ point, at which both sides are weary enough to make peace.

We are also looking at making a similar wargoal available in other circumstances, particularly for situations in which it makes historical sense to do so, for example, the expansion of the Parthian state.

Legion/Levy Indicators

As hinted at last week, there will be a visual distinction between Levied units and Legionary units. The 3D unit models used to display levies and legions will use light and heavy infantry, respectively.

This distinction is a highly important gameplay factor, and as such, the large variety of new unit models will be included as part of the Marius update. @Katzura, as someone with a greater aesthetic eye than myself, has prepared a variety of screenshots to give you a preview of some of the unit models coming in 2.0!

We’ve included a side-by-side of the Levy and Legion models; some will be familiar to you, and some may be new. While we’ve tried to respect the period in which Imperator is set, in some cases we’ve had to use a little imagination, particularly for graphical cultures in which the distinction between levy and legion is not always clear.

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Legion:Levy - Arabian group

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Levy:Legion - Celtic Group

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Levy:Legion - Greek Group

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Levy:Legion - Roman

Next week we’ll have more legion/levy 3d models from other graphical culture groups to show you.

And now on to Snow Crystal’s Seleukid missions!
 
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The last thing needed now for the diadochi is the vassal rework to depict the myriads of local tyrant/satraps and autocrats and their fluctuating loyalties/independance yearnings. Especially for seleukids in the anatolian, armenian and eastern satrapies regions. But that would probably do for a great content pack for baktria, india or even armenia so future is bright :)
 
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Hopefully there will be more content other than missions and events in the future. Like the Legions Honours or thigns like different slightly governmetns or laws and things like that, dunno.


Is the new civil war conquest mechanic paywalled though? That seens a bit naughty. I havent tried it yet but sounds like it could be a good replacement to the current system. Although we'd have to try it first of course. But Iike the idea. Rome should definitely have it for the Punic Wars, or most wars really.
 
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Hyped for Heirs of Alexander. I really liked the previous content packs so if this is even bigger then that's win win.
 
Sounds very interesting, I think we all expected something like this to come along with the announced changes ;) I atleast am verry happy with a diadochi focused expansion, cause they are definitely some of my favourite factions!

The encouraging immigration mechanic interests me particularly:
I hope that encouraging immigration from the greek mainland and islands is an option for other diadochi as well, in one form or another. At least for the Ptolemys of Egypt it was always an important objective, not sure about the Antigonids because they didnt last as long but if they had they would surely have intended the same thing, even though they ofc had readier acces to greek due to their position.

I think this is an aspect that could be very interesting for the Successors, I always thought that it would be great to have events, that maybe allow them to compete for greek settlers by offering them different incentives (money, autonomy, maybe their own semi-independent state like with the "municipial self-governance" that you can do for cultures).

Another interesting option imo would be to have some additional effects (temporary or permanent, but most likely regional depending on where they settle) depending on where the immigrants come from. E. G. Immigrants from Crete give some sort of Archery bonus while Makedonians give a heavy infantry bonus, Thessalians give a cavalry bonus and Korinthians give an economic bonus.
 
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I assume you didn't want to sell a DLC that just contains the Great Wonders feature but even though I am always interested in content for Diadochi states, I am pretty skeptical about paying twice for the same kind of content since I paid for the Deluxe version before which includes Hellenistic World Flavor Pack. I don't want this game to become a DLC mess like every other Pdx game but sadly seems like it will happen again. Therefore I have mixed feelings about this, however, I am still very excited for the Marius update.
 
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Well that's disappointing.
With how big 2.0 is, they need to recoup the costs somewhere. Locking some flavour behind a pay wall is significantly less obstructive than locking core mechanics behind a pay wall (like EU4's province development buttons).
 
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A bit of nitpicking, i think that a model of a hastati would have fit better than a velites. Was there a reason you choose one over the other?

Presumably visual distinction is the main goal here. I do agree with the person who said that the celtic levies should have spears rather than swords though.
 
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Banger diary, love the civil war mechanics for Diadochi. Judging by how they're rationing the missions (one successor per week?) I'm afraid 2.0 won't be under anyone's christmas tree though!
 
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Could someone kindly clarify?

On Legion Honor, are we talking about the whole Honor and Dishonor system, being only accessible for those with the content pack or the particular Legion Honors shown in the previous dev diary will only be available for the content pack owners (meaning the system is still available for those without the pack)?
 
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Nice! The Successor states desperately needed something more than just those generic missions.

That civil-war-like wargoal is a really good idea, too.

One question that comes to my mind; by heirs of Alexander you don't mean Bactria, by any chance, right?

I would love to see more content for that faction, as well, though I guess that will come along with some eastern focused content pack, probably together with Parthia and maybe the Mauryans.
 
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Greetings all,

While there is yet more to come regarding Marian military matters, today I’m here to announce that the content pack, ‘Heirs of Alexander’, will be released in conjunction with the Marius update.

As befits our 2.0 statement, the Heirs of Alexander content pack will be the largest yet; encompassing mission trees and flavor events for all the Diadochi nations, as well as the ability to customize and build a large variety of Great Wonders as detailed in the Vitruvius dev diary.

Included alongside this will be a variety of additional content that you have grown to expect from content packs, including new event pictures, music tracks, and more.

As time goes on, we will introduce more specifics surrounding the content you will receive in the HoA pack, however, as a small addendum to last week’s diary, I would like to clarify that the Legion Honors that you encountered in the Legions feature reveal will be part of the HoA pack.

With this announcement out of the way, I’ll detail a few more changes you can expect in the Marius update!

Legacy of Alexander

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.

Every territory that changes hands this way will add a small amount of war exhaustion to the war leader that gains the territory, resulting in wars in which large amounts of territory can change hands, whilst also reaching an organic ‘end’ point, at which both sides are weary enough to make peace.

We are also looking at making a similar wargoal available in other circumstances, particularly for situations in which it makes historical sense to do so, for example, the expansion of the Parthian state.

Legion/Levy Indicators

As hinted at last week, there will be a visual distinction between Levied units and Legionary units. The 3D unit models used to display levies and legions will use light and heavy infantry, respectively.

This distinction is a highly important gameplay factor, and as such, the large variety of new unit models will be included as part of the Marius update. @Katzura, as someone with a greater aesthetic eye than myself, has prepared a variety of screenshots to give you a preview of some of the unit models coming in 2.0!

We’ve included a side-by-side of the Levy and Legion models; some will be familiar to you, and some may be new. While we’ve tried to respect the period in which Imperator is set, in some cases we’ve had to use a little imagination, particularly for graphical cultures in which the distinction between levy and legion is not always clear.

View attachment 654990
Legion:Levy - Arabian group

View attachment 654987
Levy:Legion - Celtic Group

View attachment 654988
Levy:Legion - Greek Group

View attachment 654989
Levy:Legion - Roman

Next week we’ll have more legion/levy 3d models from other graphical culture groups to show you.

And now on to Snow Crystal’s Seleukid missions!

a velites, am i hallucinating, am i hallucinating, is this is a sign of god, prdx might suddenly imrpoves its game?
 
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I really like the look of this and enjoy seeing all the team's hard work on the game! However I will admit I am a little tired of the constant focus on Greek states. This is what, the third update focused on the Greek world? I hope regions like Persia (specifically Parthia and Atropatene), India, Arabia and the Celtic world etc will get some in-depth love eventually. Regardless I am looking forward to the update!
 
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