Imperator - Development Diary #6 - 2nd of July 2018

[Johan]

Hi everyone and welcome to another development diary for Imperator. Today we’ll talk about the economy and the buildings in a city.

First of all, we have Tax income. As mentioned in the chapter about pops, the tax income of a city is primarily based on how many slaves you have in that city. Then of course there are several modifiers that affect it, like access to trade-goods, stability, ministers, and some factions when in power may increase your tax income.

Secondly there is Commerce. This is only present if you either import or export trade-goods from a province. Each tradelink provides some income, and then the amount of citizens you have increase it, while marketplaces and other factors can increase it as well.

There are also various economic policies that affects your income and expenses on a country level, but we’ll go through these in a later development diary.

Finally, each city has a few building levels. Each city can have at least 1 building, and each additional 10 pops in that city allows another building level.

Currently these are the effects of the building types, but that may change during development.

• Training Camps : Gives +10% Manpower, and +10% experience to units built in the city.
• Fortress: Each gives +1 fort level.
• Marketplace: Each gives +20% Commerce Income
• Granary: -1 Unrest and +10% Population Growth

Each building type can be built multiple times, and if you have 4 slots in your city, you can fill them all with Granaries if you so desire. Of course you can order the building of multiple buildings in a city at once, and they will be built in a queue.

Next week we’ll delve deep into our characters!

 

[Vonboe]

So, buildings only have one level and can't be upgraded?

 

[mpsdevil]

Can this be taken to mean there will be no precious goods present in this game, or were they just not covered in this diary?

 

[Caine29]

This Era was a known for public works/wonders, will there be such a thing in the game ?

 

[Caine29]

Can this be taken to mean there will be no precious goods present in this game, or were they just not covered in this diary?

Neapolis has 4 trade goods, the 2 goods with +1 indicates surplus and thus exported via the traderoute

 

[Caine29]

I'm guessing road building will also exist but simply in another tab right?

Road building is done by armies ( legions ) i believe.

 

[Zwirbaum]

I'm guessing road building will also exist but simply in another tab right?

Military units build roads. (It's done by the army tab - assuming you have the correct tradition/tech/invention). Roads are visible on map which look great!

(So you can think about roads as city 'modifier' instead of a building)

 

[Zwirbaum]

So, buildings only have one level and can't be upgraded?

You can build multiple buildings of the same type, so whether you think if that means more buildings or upgrading existing infrastructure or mix of both is up to you

 

[Rhaegar1]

On the one hand 4 buildings seem a bit shallow. In the other hand, looking at the other PDS games they had multiple types of buildings but the related gameplay was pretty much non existent. These 4 buildings in general allow you to do just the same.

As others said it would be nice to have wonders it unique buildings worked in the game.

Also, together with the relatively simple approach to what each pop does it is clear that focusing your cities to be good at one thing is the easy to go.

 

[Johan]

So, buildings only have one level and can't be upgraded?

Each building type can be built built multiple times

 

[Zwirbaum]

I just noticed that almost all your income comes from slaves. Shouldn't most of your income be coming from freemen since they are the bread and butter of the nation? Freeman worked on most of the farms and other resources in Rome during this time. It wasn't until slaves became extremely abundant from wars outside Italy that the freemen started losing their jobs to the cheaper labor of slaves.

Two reasons IMO :
Gameplay - so that each civilized class (Slave, Freemen, Citizens) have distinct role - Tax / Manpower / Research and Commerce. It gives you much better overview and decision making when managing pops is about balancing, between those aspects. Do I want tax? Do I want manpower? Instead of do I want tax or tax and manpower?

Second point: freemen as small land holders didn't contribute much to the economy - and they couldn't compete with big rich land owners. (Athens example before their land reforms, later latifundae and slaves etc.)

 

[Johan]

Neapolis has 4 trade goods, the 2 goods with +1 indicates surplus and thus exported via the traderoute

Technically, I am not exporting anything, as I still have +1 there.

I am importing Cloth from Roma just to show off surplus bonus.

 

[Franconian]

Each building type can be built built multiple times

Built built

Can streets really only be build by armies or was that just the Roman tradition?

 

[Vonboe]

Each building type can be built built multiple times

I've always seen buildings in paradox games as an money/resource sinking mechanic.
I believe we had something like 20 different building types in the original eu rome ( I might be wrong on the exact number )

Other than units, what will money/resources be spend on in imperator rome?

 

[cools0812]

Is there no building type related to navy/shipping, aka. harbor, naval base, etc? I cant notice any in the DD and the screenshots. Among the 4 buliding types, we got 2 army-related buildings, but no naval building?
If that's the case then isn't naval gameplay surprisingly shallow in IR, I mean navy is alway badly done in pdox game, but now you cant even have a naval base to repair ships faster? Especially considering naval warfare is quite important in Punic Wars.

 

[Dmitrius]

Will trade be steerable through means other the province ownership?

Edit: or is trade purely internal?

 

[Kliwarrior]

May I suggest to add at least one type of Civic Building, to represent Forum/Thermae ?
I not a fan of dozen of different building, but those four seem the bare minimum to me.
Also, what about Harbour/Shipyard ?

 

[Caesar15]

Looks good! Thanks for the DD as always.

Just a quick question, how exactly does importing/exporting work? If you want to build heavy infantry, for example, does your province need to be importing iron?

 

[Kliwarrior]

Looks good! Thanks for the DD as always.

Just a quick question, how exactly does importing/exporting work? If you want to build heavy infantry, for example, does your province need to be importing iron?

In EU:Rome , yes you have to import Iron. I think here will be the same.

 

[Dalos]

Do you plan to have more building types in the final version? And also some special projects?