Imperator - Development Diary 6th of May 2019

[sr999]

Fabulous @Trin Tragula! Easily the most sophisticated naval system Paradox has developed (edit: in GSG except HOI). Plus navigable rivers alone will transform strategy in some regions, making sense historically (also may assist the survival of the Seleucids). FWIW I fully concur with the Murray approach.

Remember also prior to game start the Rhodians had just developed the Trihemiolia - a special composite multi-use ship functioning equally well as pirate-hunter, blockade-runner, and commerce raider, with the speed of a hemiolia but some of the combat abilities of a trireme. This ship's useful life exactly mirrors the game period. Hope that helps you with ideas for tactics or inventions or something!

I have a few requests, AI plus simple flavor:

• please try to make the AI worthy of it, not necessarily on day 1 but keep at it (not just for combat but also for naval wars / overseas wars etc);
• please give the historical architect of the "Mine's Bigger than Yours" Tradition (and the indirect cause of the Colossus of Rhodes!), Demetrius Poliorketes ("the Besieger") Antigonid, his full pre-game nickname (can do in English if you like, after all you do the nickname thing for others including governors, such as "the Wolf" for bleeding 'em dry etc);
• please give Demetrius either the personal ability to access the tradition from the get-go, or (if that would be OP) give Phrygia a few one-off big ships with siege engines for flavor, or simply give Demetrius a special Besieger trait when commanding a fleet.

 

[Nicolas-]

@Trin Tragula for the next update is there any chance you guys stop the AI from always be low on maintenance?

It creates the perception that AI is bad just because you can force march day 1 of the war and stackwipe them before its maintenance goes up.

It's really unfortunate that players think the AI is bad because of things like these that could be easily fixed. So fixing this kind of things in 1.1 will help with the game appeal as well.

 

[Denkt]

Easily the most sophisticated naval system Paradox has developed

This is not correct but it is better than the current system in place but the issues such as the usage of navy is still an issue. For example there don't seems to be a Connection between naval Power or trade or empire Communication.

 

[Jorlem]

As long as you have at least one character in your country of a foreign religion you will be able to see what it would take to change to that character’s religion. The requirements currently are:

• A majority of the free (non slave) pops in your capital must follow the new faith.
• In a Republic your senate must approve.
• In a Monarchy you must have at least 70 legitimacy.
• In a tribe the clan leaders must approve.
• Your High Priest, Pontifex, or equivalent must follow the new Religion.

Would I be correct in guessing that Theocratic governments are blocked from changing religions?

Also, will the Jewish religion window still have the (rather nonsensical) Sacrifice Pig button? If anything, sacrificing pigs would lower a Jewish country’s stability, not raise it.

 

[Ancillary]

What are the rules for naval transportation under the new system?

 

[Tullaris]

The navies needed a rework and that is great. But i wonder why you have decided to focus here?. Alot of bad reviews are coming from the MANA system. I personally can't bring myself to play this game with its current anti strategy MANA focus.
Im worried the developers will abandon the community who appreciates the lack of abstract currencies for all actions in vic2, hoi4, and eu4.
Even the eu4 mana isnt great but as its mostly for tech, (no magic scroll power replacing your diplomats) its tolerable but this IR: Rome is just like a board game.

I think the complaining about mana is really shallow. Why don't you explain what alternative game systems you would like to have implace to express the limited capacities of nations to address all problems at once?

It's like you can just drop MANA into your sentence and then you are not required to substantiate your criticism in any possible way. It\s just MANA, duh.

 

[Florryworry__]

Very nice DD cool changes and ideas and a very pleasant read!
Flipping religion and having them do something different is amazing there's so many cool possibilities with that. We can go stack certain modifiers and do memey things like make a Hindu Rome! Things like that are always fun for me.

Are there any plans to allow culture flipping aswell? @Trin Tragula

Also a way to 'accept' cultures would be cool. That way you don't need to culture convert everyone. Maybe if you own all the thracians and have them loyal for X amount of years they become 'accepted' or something? Seen as like an integral part of the realm and then you could make it so it's faster for same culture group and only possible if there's no 'home country'.
Would be EVEN cooler if that then gave you a modifier: 'accepted Carthaginians' = -25% shipbuilding time. Or something like that.

Anyway very excited for the future of imperator I see so much potential its insane

 

[Alienatu]

i mean, if the biggest boats can destroy with ease light ships in front of them, why are the light ships favored in narrow rivers?

 

[Sanny]

This is really cool, I'm sure this is what the community had in mind to improve the Naval aspect of the game.

 

[Dunbal]

Hearts of Iron gets Man the Guns and Imperator gets Man the Oars...

 

[kanukki]

Great insights into a very promising re-work of the Naval system, thank you!

On a related note, is there a compelling gameplay reason why the Caspian has no ports (and ports are fixed location)? If we can navigate rivers, it seems antithetical that we cannot have ships on a sea as large as the Caspian.

 

[AUSDread]

Nice work gents, nice work indeed.

 

[Mikebloke]

Nice Naval changes coming, I think a lot of us are quite happy with what we see, and think we worried we'd have a similar blandness that CK2 had when it came to ships.

However these changes look pretty cool, looking forward to taking more advantage of the seas!

The religion/omen stuff is also great to see, one of the main complaints of the game so far is that most countries play too similarly, anything to help diversify how countries play is much needed and appreciated.

I'd like to double up on the suggestion to change pig stabbing for Jews, its not Kosher!

 

[Denkt]

My feeling is that the naval system will not be as good as people think it will be:

• No change of naval use outside of combat, no trade protection or anything else other than hunt pirates
• Combat don't look that much more interesting, if you outnumber the enemy you likely win in the new as well as in the old system
• Navigable rivers are interesting but they are probably few and far between
• The large ship type is locked behind traditions so if you are not a country with these traditions and pick the tradition you are stuck with light and medium if you don't capture Heavy ships which greatly limit your options outside of naval combat.

What is needed is more non war options for navy to exist and probably just like roadbuilding allow all traditions to build atleast the smaller version of the Heavy ship if they have good Tech.

 

[Battlecrab]

How will the ships of a migrating tribe be affected by naval range?

 

[ojediforce]

I really like seeing an effort to make different civilizations feel more unique. One of the fascinating things about this time period is the many different ways people found to organize their societies. Highlighting that has the upside of increasing the games replayability. I'd love to see this approach applied to governments as well. There were a lot of really unique forms of government that aren't very well represented in game. There were multiple countries with diarchies, kings with legislative bodies to appease and decentralized collections of city states prone to civil conflicts. Having more government forms would make the game play experience much more unique for a number of commonly played countries.

 

[Trin Tragula]

Great insights into a very promising re-work of the Naval system, thank you!

On a related note, is there a compelling gameplay reason why the Caspian has no ports (and ports are fixed location)? If we can navigate rivers, it seems antithetical that we cannot have ships on a sea as large as the Caspian.

So believe it or not I recall but we actually have testament from ancient authors that no fleets or bigger ships sailed the caspian
I’ll see if I can find the reference later tonight (or correct myself).

 

[blusarge27]

Easily the most sophisticated naval system Paradox has developed.

Podcat and the HOI4 team would like to have a word with you ...

 

[Todie]

Will you buff omen Power as well. Currently 2.5% omen Power from Tech, 5% from inventions or even the 20% from national idea is not Worth much at all given the low base values of omens. The 20% bonus from invention is only 4% more tax income or 1% more discipline when used for these omens.

Another way would be to make omen Power influence the Power of sacrifice on stability and war exhaustion which would make it more interesting for a multi religious empire.

A topic worth discussing. @Trin Tragula

The inherent value in the ”omen power” modifier ought to be on one hand the flexibility of omens and on another hand their linkage to religious unity. (If dicipline is always your priority, a dicipline invention should always be better than an omen power invention IMO.)

I think its key to make religious unity the base value for omen power, and make sure omen-power modiers have a multiplicative relationship with that base.

Then a devout empire with high unity and effective high priest has additional incentive to empower their omens.

Otherwise omen power is just a flat boon, that can be judged as strictly better or strictly weaker than alternatives

As for the exact numbers, If omen power boons are indeed weak, they can be tweaked a bit, no biggie.

 

[Sparticulous]

please add the quadrireme that the romans and the carthigianians used. They were the main vessels in the battle of economus!