Imperator - Development Diary #5 - 25th of June 2018

[Nicolas-]

I dont like the idea of manual promotion neither. It sounds very very micromanagement-heavy, and so non-immersive when you consider the historical scenario.
At least it shouldn't be the only way to promote pop, instead it should be alongside the natural promotion/demotion mechanic of pops.
Think about how social mobility is achieved in the classical era: Slaves could buy their freedom with their saving, this practice was confirmed to exist in Rome and Greece, but banished in Athens. So in terms of the game, a slave pop with wealth can promote itself into the freeman class, this promotion can be a long progress, with the speed affected by laws, pop wealth, etc. Just like the current pop growth mechanics.
We knew a specific way for citizens and freeman to demote into slave historically: debt slavery. It's abolished in rome, but exist in many other classical societies. So a free pop could end up demoted into slavery because of bankruptcy - just like vicky 2 when bankrupt pop always have a sharp demotion rate. Of course you can abolish debt bondage with a law passed in senate.
This is what i hoped for: passing or repealing laws to affect the promotion/demotion rate (Augustus passed law to control the amount of slaves you can free for once, that sounds like what you would want to do late in the game), and control the dynamic pops in a grand scale. Instead we got static pops, with only micromanagement mana the only way to affect their status.

I sort of like the concept you described and it's probably not too late to add something similar. But what determines pops wealth/bankruptcy? In Vicky 2 there was a taxation system. But in Rome I don't think there is (at least not in Vicky 2 fashion). So there needs to be a well conceptualized system behind this mechanic before it's implemented.

 

[Vince75]

Can we have two same pops with different religion ? @Johan

 

[Automorphisme]

One other aspect of conquest is that when a city formally becomes yours, citizens becomes freemen, and freemen becomes slaves.

Meaning that if you take back a city of yours, your former citizens become slaves. Not the way I would expect it to work.

 

[Denkt]

How do tribesmen work for tribes? Is that their main pop?

 

[gfzgfx]

Is there any dynamic change in the pop values, or do they only change via player intervention?

 

[VenueOfDrums]

Population systems can be hard to implement in a interesting way that makes it both engaging while encouraging a unexpected and dynamic result. I like that it gives you more control over your direction, and gives it more of a board game feel. But i wonder how this will work with larger empires, will upgrading population be something that you need to micromanage even when your a large empire? I'm very interested in how it will play out in a game.

 

[Thure]

Stellaris: Rome
My feeling about this diary.

People want: EU4+VIC2+Rome+CK2
Johan gives: EU4+Stellaris+Rome+CK2(?)

It's fine as it is. Make it more like Victoria 2 would absolutelly not fit this era and would shift the focus way to much.

 

[lurkdroid]

I honestly don't feel like writing a long thing here, because I know the devs don't care. They'll do what they think will sell. I don't feel like ranting either, because that's childish. A long, "wtf are you doing, I h8 you paradox" post is pointless and silly. And a little rude.

But my disappointment is immeasurable, and it continues to grow. Mana is a mistake. Endless abstraction is a mistake. This is not good design, it doesn't make for an interesting game, and Paradox's philosophy shift is just fucking unfortunate.

Civ is a fantastic game, but Paradox needs to stop trying to turn their games into it.

 

[Caligula Caesar]

There are four different types of pops in the game.

• Citizens - They provide research and commerce income. These represent the patricians in Rome, and nobility in monarchies
  
• Freemen - They provide manpower. The plebs of Rome is included in this group.

This is quite misleading, for two reasons:
1. "Freemen" is a term I don't think I have ever encountered in the context of Ancient History. If it must be used, it should be "Free Men". "Freemen" has the signficant downside of being easily confused with "Freedmen", which is used a lot in Roman History, and denotes freed slaves! It would be a bit of a bugger to misinterpret the entire Roman pleb class as freed slaves...
2. The plebs were citizens, they also increasingly became an important part of the Roman upper class in the later Republic.


As an additional comment, I hope that lessons have been learnt from Stellaris regarding the tedium of pop micro-management

 

[Abstracted]

How do tribesmen work for tribes? Is that their main pop?

It's not really clear what tribesmen represent, is it? They're "barbarians", but "barbarian" is really a cultural label applied to foreigners, rather than a socio-economic one. A smallholding farmer in Britain doesn't actually look very different from a smallholding farmer in Greece.

What's more, the teaser shows Tribesman pops in Naples and Rome itself at game start, when there were certainly no "barbarians" in the region (who weren't slaves, anyway). I think perhaps what it really means is pastoralists, which would explain the higher numbers in Campania.

 

[The Lone Wolf102]

@Johan
When a revolt starts will it only be an army or are there also some modifiers on perhaps the local economy?
Is this revolt army size based on it’s own developement or on the total developement of a city? And is it still combined with other provinces?
How much does the revolt “event” differ from eu4?

 

[DerGroseKA]

Will it be possible to abolish slavery? There were several ancient societies without slaves.

 

[Sriseru]

Thank you so much for giving us so many modding options and for letting us know about them! <3

 

[Hugus]

Citizens = Patricians/Nobles/etc
Freemen = Plebs/Freemen

@Johan, I get it this is an abstraction, but the names you chose are bad ones, imo. Are these names final?


And honestly, seeing how the game is based in Republican Rome, where the class system was very neatly divided in 5 tiers (Slaves > Freedmen > (citizen) Plebs > (citizen) Equites > (citizen) Patricians), I don't get it why you guys are trying to reinvent the wheel here. And even if for gameplay purposes you need to merge this into 3, then:

• Freedmen + Plebs should not equal ''Freedmen'', but Plebs. The poor citizens os the lower classes and capite sensi would vastly outnumber any freedmen without citizen status.
• Equites + Patricians should not be named ''Citizens'' as these represent only the citizens of the first 2 classes and the vast majority of Roman citizens where not nobles. Why not call them Nobles instead then?

 

[Wagonlitz]

When this pop is fully grown or totally dead, either a current pop is picked for death, or a new random pop is created that will slowly grow.

What happens if the last pop in a city dies?

no
no
no

So there's no way to simulate how e.g. Hispania assimilated to Latin culture?

 

[CMDR_HERNE]

Certainly a very popular dev diary....


I'll get me coat

 

[Perhelion]

What happens if the last pop in a city dies?
So there's no way to simulate how e.g. Hispania assimilated to Latin culture?

I'm sure events will be able to manipulate pops in a way to simulate the example you give. I presume it's just a case of changing the culture tag of the pop (or destroying/creating a pop with new tag).
In any case, based on other games, I'm not particularly worried about that being impossible.

 

[Thure]

I honestly don't feel like writing a long thing here, because I know the devs don't care. They'll do what they think will sell. I don't feel like ranting either, because that's childish. A long, "wtf are you doing, I h8 you paradox" post is pointless and silly. And a little rude.

But my disappointment is immeasurable, and it continues to grow. Mana is a mistake. Endless abstraction is a mistake. This is not good design, it doesn't make for an interesting game, and Paradox's philosophy shift is just fucking unfortunate.

Civ is a fantastic game, but Paradox needs to stop trying to turn their games into it.

Mana per se is not bad. There was mana in older paradox games. The question is: how they use it. And in IR it's already better used than in EU4 where it was even used for technology. Mana per se is not a mistake, only if they use it badly.

 

[Caligula Caesar]

It's not really clear what tribesmen represent, is it? They're "barbarians", but "barbarian" is really a cultural label applied to foreigners, rather than a socio-economic one. A smallholding farmer in Britain doesn't actually look very different from a smallholding farmer in Greece.

What's more, the teaser shows Tribesman pops in Naples and Rome itself at game start, when there were certainly no "barbarians" in the region (who weren't slaves, anyway). I think perhaps what it really means is pastoralists, which would explain the higher numbers in Campania.

To add to the trickiness of the term, Rome's citizens were divided into tribes. I can't remember offhand how many there were at 300 BC (I studied this all a few years ago but am a bit out of it now), but from memory there were 35 in the late Republic. However, there was nothing "tribal" about the tribes by the late Republic, it was mainly just a way of dividing the citizens for administrative purposes (presumably, it was a different matter in the early Republic).

 

[Nyrael]

Mana per se is not bad. There was mana in older paradox games. The question is: how they use it. And in IR it's already better used than in EU4 where it was even used for technology. Mana per se is not a mistake, only if they use it badly.

I agree. The problem is that PDS doesn't always use it well, and sometimes forces use use where it should not be, in this case removal of dynamic assimilations, conversions, and resettlements (just like how assimilation and conversion were removed in EU). This is done to appease fans who want control of EVERYTHING, but people like me who love look as the world gradually changes by itself find this annoying and utterly boring.