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

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Johan

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Hi and welcome to the fifth development diary for Imperator! This time we delve into the population mechanics.

The population in the game is divided into population units, or “pop” for short, just like Vicky or Rome1.

Each individual pop has its own religion, culture and happiness . So yes, there are minorities in Imperator!

While there are ways to increase happiness of pops, including ideas, inventions and access to trade-goods, they tend to be less happy if they are not of the same culture-group, or if they belong to a different religion. Happiness impacts two thing on the pop, first of all, a pops happiness directly affects how productive they are. Secondly, low happiness increases unrest in a city.

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.
  • Tribesmen - These provide a tiny amount of manpower and tax income. These are the barbarians or uncivilized parts of your areas.
  • Slaves - These provide tax income
So how do you get a more pops in a city?

First of all, there is always a single pop either in growth or decline, depending on the population growth of the city. 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.

Terrain, Civilization value, amount of pops in the city and access to trade-goods impact the growth in a city.

growth.png


Secondly, you can also gain pops through warfare. As you sack cities you will take some of their pops back to your main capital, and your provincial capitals as slaves.

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


If you need more citizens or freemen of your pops, you can always promote pops to a higher class of society, where promoting a slave or tribesmen to freemen currently have a base price of 10 religious power, and promoting a freemen to citizen costs 10 oratory power.

If you permanently want to increase a pops happiness, you can always spend some religious power to convert them to the state religion.

We’ll talk a fair bit more about pops in the development diary about colonisation and internal movement later on.

Of course, any modder can define how many pop-types they want and what they are used for freely. Here is an example of the freemen poptype.

Code:
freemen = {
    local_manpower = 0.05
    can_promote_to = citizen
    demotes_to = slaves
}

Another cool modding aspect is that everything that costs power, manpower or money use the same “price”-mechanic internally, so you can base everything on money if you so desire. Here is a few scripts from the price database.

Code:
freemen_promotion = {
    religious = 10
}

assault = {
    manpower = 2
    military = 20
}

send_gift = {
    scaled_gold = 0.2
}


Next week, we’ll be back looking at the economy system.
 
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There are four different types of pops in the game.
  • Citizens - They provide research and commerce income.
  • Freemen - They provide manpower.
  • Tribesmen - These provide a tiny amount of manpower and tax income.
  • Slaves - These provide tax income

But this doesn't really makes sense to me.
Obviously the pop types are based on the history of the Roman Republic, so I'm talking abou it here.
Firstly, citizens of the republic were not really the taxpayers, especially the plebs. They were a drain on Roman economy but they are required for military services until Marian's reform. So in the game they should provide most manpower for the military.
Also, it's true that freed men were used in the military, but they also served as businessmen, bureaucrats and educators, which is a complicated role in the republic, but in my opinion they should be paying taxes and making research points, and maybe some other kind of benefits.
Slaves aren't really paying taxes as well, they just produce agricultural or mining products, which this game represents as trade goods. We will see how it works next week though.
This system doesn't really fit the Greek city states too, but I'm on the phone so I will cut it here.

Manually upgrading pops also sounds like a lot of left-clicking which is painful.
 
But this doesn't really makes sense to me.
Obviously the pop types are based on the history of the Roman Republic, so I'm talking abou it here.
Firstly, citizens of the republic were not really the taxpayers, especially the plebs. They were a drain on Roman economy but they are required for military services until Marian's reform. So in the game they should provide most manpower for the military.
Also, it's true that freed men were used in the military, but they also served as businessmen, bureaucrats and educators, which is a complicated role in the republic, but in my opinion they should be paying taxes and making research points, and maybe some other kind of benefits.
Slaves aren't really paying taxes as well, they just produce agricultural or mining products, which this game represents as trade goods. We will see how it works next week though.
This system doesn't really fit the Greek city states too, but I'm on the phone so I will cut it here.

Manually upgrading pops also sounds like a lot of left-clicking which is painful.

Citizens = Patricians/Nobles/etc
Freemen = Plebs/Freemen
 
Why do i come here at 6.32 to check whether there is a new DD? This time posted at 5 am.

I already knew Swedes had a high work morale but Johan must be a special case even among them.
 
Do pops slowly promote to higher classes like they had in EU:Rome?
Do pops slowly assimilate into state religion and/or culture?
Can we convert culture by spending some mana?
 
Happyness makes me think to stellaris. Is it possibile (or planned) to set specific living conditions for certain pops/cultures ?

Will the "name" of the pops change according to culture ? That is will be "citizens" really called "patricians" in Rome ( or there will be a txt file where we can rename them in this way)?
 
Do pops slowly promote to higher classes like they had in EU:Rome?
Do pops slowly assimilate into state religion and/or culture?
Can we convert culture by spending some mana?

no
no
no
 
@Johan Is "Civilization value" the top-left value near the Temple (61 in the posted img) ?
 
How are dying or growing pops chosen? Is it completely random or does the player have some influence on it?
Do we add and remove cultures by moving entire populations around? Sounds tedious and not very immersive.