Imperator - Development Diary - 20th of May 2019

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Hello and welcome to another development diary for the free Pompey update! This time we’ll talk about new benefits to playing tall, and also discuss changes to barbarians, slaves and much more.

Trade Changes
We have done some changes to trade that may not seem that impactful to you at a glance, but gives us more tools in making the game deeper and more flavorful.

We removed the sources of easy extra trade routes in all provinces, as it was too powerful, and was a no-brainer to always go for those, and they also made for a huge snowball of trade.
We also made trade entirely handled as a province activity, and not a city activity. While each city provides some commerce from its citizens, the income from commerce is handled at a province level, so you can see the income from a trade-route at the one place it happens.


We removed the hardcoded benefits on a trade that were going to be exported, and instead we have 2 unique modifiers increases the value of your foreign imports and your foreign exports. The economic policy for commerce is now used for whether you want to strength your benefits from exports or your benefits from imports.


Improving your Provinces
One problem we identified was the lack of options at times when playing tall, and that you had too much resources that you had no use for when you were not busy conquering. Now he have added 4 new province level abilities, that each cost 400 power of its given type, and starts a process that 2 years later will give you a permanent bonus to that province. These can then be repeated as much as you like, but you can only have one process going on in a province at the time.
  • Install Provincial Procurators - Military Power for 2% Population Output and 0.01 Monthly Province Loyalty
  • Promote Infrastructure Spending - Civic Power for +1 Building Slot.
  • Entice Business Investments - Oratory Power for +1 Import Routes
  • Make Religious Endowments - Religious Power for +3% State Religion Happyness in Province
There are also other ways to do these State Investments, other than spending lots of power. There are events and decisions, like country-forming, that will give you an amount of free state investments, which is then used instead of the power cost.

Also, there are three different abilities you can do in each city.
  • Move Capital - First of all, you can move your capital to that city, for a large cost of civic power cost, where it becomes cheaper to move to a bigger city, and more expensive to move to a smaller city.
  • Relocate Provincial Capital - You can change which city is the capital city of a province for 50 civic power . Province Capital will be set at start of the game, and only change otherwise if conquered by another nation.
  • Coordinate Urban Development - Pay 100 Civic Power to start a process that at the end of 2 years time, you will get +1 local civilization in that city until the end of the game. This can be repeated as much as you want, but you can’t do it more than once in a city at the same time.
2019_05_20_1.png


Buildings have changed with the population rework mentioned earlier, and by the trade rework mentioned today.
  • Marketplaces : +10% Tax Income from City
  • Training Camp: +10% Manpower
  • Fortress: +1 Fort Level
  • Granary: +5 Population Capacity

Now some of these may make you go “wtf?”, I like to point out that granaries just dont give +5 pop capacity in most cases.. As there are modifiers like Grain giving +10%, Adjacent to Major River +50%, Warm Climate +90% etc...



Barbarian Rework
A lot of things regarding Barbarians work similar to have they did in the original EU: Rome, and that was just not good enough anymore. In Pompey you will now see the following changes to barbarians.

  • Paid off barbarians will no longer loot your territory.
  • Barbarians that have not fought in a battle will never accept to surrender.
  • Barbarians will no longer care about “potential strength” when you negotiate with them, only about armies in the same general area.
  • Barbarians are no longer clever enough to use zone of control propagation, even if they do take a fort.
  • Barbarian have no longer any attrition in unowned provinces.
  • Barbarians reinforce twice as quick when not sieging.
  • Barbarians will now grow in size as they take over provinces containing tribesmen.
Zone of Control Changes
There have also been two major advantages to friendly zone of control in Pompey. First of all, they now protect against all the nasty things barbarians do on your territory, but most importantly, friendly zone of control now protects against the attrition you get from bad climate. This makes is so that you don’t lose half your army because you live in a desert, nor will you take a huge hit every single winter as a german tribesman.

Slaves Distribution
We did some changes to slave distribution in Pompey, in that each time you take a city, the amount of possible cities getting slaves are far larger, and not weighted towards 50% reaching your capital. Now it will consider more provinces the bigger your nation is, and also add in ports, and not just provincial capitals, and cities where the commander has holdings etc, to get a better spread.

Heritages
One of the biggest complaints we had with the release was that nations felt the same. While we had a wide variety of countries, with different populations and governments, there needed to be a bit more of identity to them. Even if any city state on Crete would have a great number of similarities with other City states on the same island, there were also differences. This is why we are adding Heritages to the Pompey Update.


A Heritage has 2 benefits and 1 drawback, so give a sort of identity to your country. There is a dozen different generic heritages that depends on your geographical position, for instance you would get Seafaring Heritage if you start with a port, and Desert Heritage if your capital has desert terrain.


Over 20 countries will have unique Heritages in Pompey, and we will keep adding more in future patches. Some are for powers that have their glory days behind them while others are for countries that would rise to become influential in the future. As an example here are some that we have added for Egypt, Carthage, Syracuse and Athens:

EgyptianHeritage.PNG

CarthageHeretige.PNG

SyracusanHeritage.PNG


athens.png
 
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Does anyone know if Paradox has said anything about a release date for 1.1 yet?
 
Does anyone know if Paradox has said anything about a release date for 1.1 yet?
For now we can only tell you it is in June, more information on that later :)
 
Now if moving population was cheaper as that would help tall alot.

The improve province seems a bit weak for 400 power, that is 2 claims, 4 inventions, 4 reduce war exhaustion or 4 stability increases.

100 power for 1 civilization value cap in one city is way too expensive as that is one invention and you need to grow the civilization value which make it even worse.

That is simply alot of global buffs you give up to affect 10-15 cities and without pop movement being good it is even worse.
 
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Great improvements! But I didn't understand the changes to exporting, could you elaborate more? Will we no longer gain the resource bonus but instead we will get more money?
 
I dont know how making trade on a province level instead of city level encourage city building and tall gameplay, to be honest. I liked having it on a city level and see how that city rose above the rest in massive income. Also youve removed trade income modifier from market, while keeping the tax income. So playing as a small tall trading republic based on your exports seems even less possible than before.

And those province abilities, unless youve massively rebealanced income and spendings, I dont see how it encourage tall gameplay as you can also do it as a huge empire and get even more money and resources and even more snowballed.

The changes to slaves are nice but what it really needs is a rework of how they move to remove micromanagement and the cost which is still huge giving how important slaves are to play tall or even wide and have a strong economy.
 
Great improvements! But I didn't understand the changes to exporting, could you elaborate more? Will we no longer gain the resource bonus but instead we will get more money?
As I read it you no longer get bonus income from exporting but a bonus income to either import or export depending on commerce setting.
 
So i cant set my empire with all internal trade routes. Nooooo
But move capital is nice, and so is larger spread of slaves upon provinces.
Can we move slaves in packages? Like 15 or 17 or to another province?
 
Great improvements! But I didn't understand the changes to exporting, could you elaborate more? Will we no longer gain the resource bonus but instead we will get more money?

No, trade is now made on a province levels, and extra province trade routes are no longer earned with nationwide bonuses like economic policy or inventions, but through province investments. Also, import and export values are split now, so they can modify depending on whether you are an importing country or exporting one.
 
I dont know how making trade on a province level instead of city level encourage city building and tall gameplay, to be honest. I liked having it on a city level and see how that city rose above the rest in massive income. Also youve removed trade income modifier from market, while keeping the tax income. So playing as a small tall trading republic based on your exports seems even less possible than before.

And those province abilities, unless youve massively rebealanced income and spendings, I dont see how it encourage tall gameplay as you can also do it as a huge empire and get even more money and resources and even more snowballed.

The changes to slaves are nice but what it really needs is a rework of how they move to remove micromanagement and the cost which is still huge giving how important slaves are to play tall or even wide and have a strong economy.
A large empire will not have enough power points to do it that often, but even tall empires won't use most of the abilities.
  • 400 religious power for 3% same religion happiness is excessive. If you play tall, most of your people will have your culture and religion, i.e. their happiness will be close to 100% regardless of this.
  • 400 military power is 50% of a military tradition, something you will want to keep up as a small nation (especially because you can reduce the cost through your higher technology speed)
  • 400 civic power is something you cannot afford at all, as you'll race through those inventions so fast that you can barely keep up. The cost is equivalent to 4(!) inventions.
  • 400 oratory power for increasing the amount of trade routes is probably the only one you can do more often, as you don't spend the oratory on claims. The bonus is also not too bad.
I fail to see how this is fun or even encourages tall gameplay.
 
First, let me start by saying that I think most changes are great and it is really awesome to see the commitment and the quickness in addressing some issues raised by us (the fans).
The change in slave distribution is very welcome, as it is quite boring having hundreds of slaves on the capital and having to move then one by one... maybe some room for improvement there?

Regarding the Move Capital mechanic - maybe the cost should also scale with the distance to current capital?
 
Trade Changes
Didn't really understand these. Hopefully it adds to money strategy and not just the modifiers.

  • Install Provincial Procurators - Military Power for 2% Population Output and 0.01 Monthly Province Loyalty
  • Promote Infrastructure Spending - Civic Power for +1 Building Slot.
  • Entice Business Investments - Oratory Power for +1 Import Routes
  • Make Religious Endowments - Religious Power for +3% State Religion Happyness in Province

They seem really weak. I admit I don't intend to just play tall so no complaints from there.
However, the "Entice Business Investments - Oratory Power for +1 Import Routes" seems strong in capital provinces, but not OP.

  • Move Capital - First of all, you can move your capital to that city, for a large cost of civic power cost, where it becomes cheaper to move to a bigger city, and more expensive to move to a smaller city.
  • Relocate Provincial Capital - You can change which city is the capital city of a province for 50 civic power . Province Capital will be set at start of the game, and only change otherwise if conquered by another nation.
  • Coordinate Urban Development - Pay 100 Civic Power to start a process that at the end of 2 years time, you will get +1 local civilization in that city until the end of the game. This can be repeated as much as you want, but you can’t do it more than once in a city at the same time.

Nice changes. The "coordinate urban development" seems just too weak on the city level, though.

  • Marketplaces : +10% Tax Income from City
  • Training Camp: +10% Manpower
  • Fortress: +1 Fort Level
  • Granary: +5 Population Capacity

Buildings are even more useless now, no? Can't really judge the Granary, but marketplaces were decent for civ value. Now they're worthless.

Barbarian Rework

Zone of Control Changes


Slaves Distribution

Nice changes!
 
Instead of paying monarch points why not use governor policies such as encourage commerce give extra permanent trade routes overtime, that way you could balance the governor policies more and nerf culture and religious conversion as it leaves the province underdevelop.

Civilization effort could increase civilization cap overtime.
 
A large empire will not have enough power points to do it that often, but even tall empires won't use most of the abilities.
  • 400 religious power for 3% same religion happiness is excessive. If you play tall, most of your people will have your culture and religion, i.e. their happiness will be close to 100% regardless of this.
  • 400 military power is 50% of a military tradition, something you will want to keep up as a small nation (especially because you can reduce the cost through your higher technology speed)
  • 400 civic power is something you cannot afford at all, as you'll race through those inventions so fast that you can barely keep up. The cost is equivalent to 4(!) inventions.
  • 400 oratory power for increasing the amount of trade routes is probably the only one you can do more often, as you don't spend the oratory on claims. The bonus is also not too bad.
I fail to see how this is fun or even encourages tall gameplay.

Yea agreed the bonuses do not match the cost of doing it. So its not really worth it. The only one which is the civ one, as you pointed out, inventions are much more beneficial since they are also nationwide.

Also, as with any mana mechanic, it doesnt even really make playing tall fun. They are falling into the same faults as EU4. Spending mana to play tall does not make playing tall a fun alternative of gameplay. *Shrug*
 
I dont know how making trade on a province level instead of city level encourage city building and tall gameplay, to be honest. I liked having it on a city level and see how that city rose above the rest in massive income.

except that it didn't. the trade income was split between every city in the province..
 
Barbarians will now grow in size as they take over provinces containing tribesmen.

Might I suggest limiting this to same culture group pops? Seems odd that eg. Roman tribesmen would help an invading Gallic tribe. It's not like slavery where pretty much every slave wanted freedom.