Imperator - Development Diary #7 - 9th of July 2018

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Hello everyone and welcome to the seventh developer diary for Imperator. This time we take a look at our characters!

The characters in Imperator are deeply detailed, and together with the pops and the politics are part of what makes a vibrant living world.

They have portraits that age gradually, with lots of different ethnicities covering the world.

There are four attributes that characters have.
  • Martial represents a character's ability to fight and lead troops. Characters with high martial skills make excellent generals.
  • Charisma is a character’s ability to charm and persuade others.
  • Zeal is a character's ability to inspire faith in other characters, and also in calling upon the favour of the gods.
  • Finesse represents a character's skill in disciplines requiring a high attention to detail. High finesse characters make excellent researchers and governors.

For those of you that played the original Rome or the Crusader Kings series will not be surprised to hear that our characters have traits. Traits on a character can be gained or lost.


Traits can be categorized in the following categories.
  • Personality - This includes being Brave or Coward, Cruel or Merciful. These impacts the character attributes and stats directly, as well as….. :)
  • Military - Usually a character has a maximum of one of those, that may give a bonus or penalty
  • Health - Stressed, Maimed, Lunatic etc. Not beneficial to the character in most cases.
  • Status - Some exceptional traits that can be given from actions, like Conqueror
Traits can also unlock a variety of unique event options, each tailored to the specific trait in question. Those of you familiar with CKII will be (dis)pleased to see the return of the Lunatic trait.

A Character also has his or her personal wealth, and four primary stats.
  • Popularity - Popularity is a measure of how the people see the character. In republics high popularity characters are more likely to elected leader of the republic. However even monarchies cannot ignore popular people.
  • Loyalty - Loyalty is a measure of a character's loyalty to the state. Disloyal characters are more likely to cause problems to a ruler than loyal ones. However even the most loyal of characters has their limit.
  • Prominence - Prominence represents the fame of the character. Jobs and titles help bring characters to public attention.
  • Corruption - Corruption is a measurement of this character’s willingness to engage in underhanded practices. Greed, bribery and the bending of rules come hand-in-hand with high corruption.

Characters have parents, will be able to marry and get children, just as you’d expect. They can also have friends and rivals.

Characters can be given various roles. Besides being ruler of a country, they could be assigned to govern a province, command an army, handle research or be given a role in the government. Some countries allow women to be given offices, and some do not.


There are lots of different interactions you can do with and on your characters, including arranging marriages, bribe them, loan from them, or even sacrifice them if your religions so permit and desire. There will be a deep development diary on those later in development.

2018_07_09_2.png


We’ll also talk about the factions characters can be in, what holdings are, and other character related things in future development diaries, but next week we’ll go into trade.
 
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Looks nice! How are attributes and traits decided? Are they inherited similar to CK or are they more randomly assigned?

Some traits are inherited.

Attributes are not inherited, they are not in ck2 either.

Which traits characters get as they grow older is not random though.
 
Hello everyone and welcome to the seventh developer diary for Imperator. This time we take a look at our characters!

The characters in Imperator are deeply detailed, and together with the pops and the politics are part of what makes a vibrant living world.

They have portraits that age gradually, with lots of different ethnicities covering the world.

There are four attributes that characters have.
  • Martial represents a character's ability to fight and lead troops. Characters with high martial skills make excellent generals.
  • Charisma is a character’s ability to charm and persuade others.
  • Zeal is a character's ability to inspire faith in other characters, and also in calling upon the favour of the gods.
  • Finesse represents a character's skill in disciplines requiring a high attention to detail. High finesse characters make excellent researchers and governors.

For those of you that played the original Rome or the Crusader Kings series will not be surprised to hear that our characters have traits. Traits on a character can be gained or lost.


Traits can be categorized in the following categories.
  • Personality - This includes being Brave or Coward, Cruel or Merciful. These impacts the character attributes and stats directly, as well as….. :)
  • Military - Usually a character has a maximum of one of those, that may give a bonus or penalty
  • Health - Stressed, Maimed, Lunatic etc. Not beneficial to the character in most cases.
  • Status - Some exceptional traits that can be given from actions, like Conqueror
Traits can also unlock a variety of unique event options, each tailored to the specific trait in question. Those of you familiar with CKII will be (dis)pleased to see the return of the Lunatic trait.

A Character also has his or her personal wealth, and four primary stats.
  • Popularity - Popularity is a measure of how the people see the character. In republics high popularity characters are more likely to elected leader of the republic. However even monarchies cannot ignore popular people.
  • Loyalty - Loyalty is a measure of a character's loyalty to the state. Disloyal characters are more likely to cause problems to a ruler than loyal ones. However even the most loyal of characters has their limit.
  • Prominence - Prominence represents the fame of the character. Jobs and titles help bring characters to public attention.
  • Corruption - Corruption is a measurement of this character’s willingness to engage in underhanded practices. Greed, bribery and the bending of rules come hand-in-hand with high corruption.

Characters have parents, will be able to marry and get children, just as you’d expect. They can also have friends and rivals.

Characters can be given various roles. Besides being ruler of a country, they could be assigned to govern a province, command an army, handle research or be given a role in the government. Some countries allow women to be given offices, and some do not.


There are lots of different interactions you can do with and on your characters, including arranging marriages, bribe them, loan from them, or even sacrifice them if your religions so permit and desire. There will be a deep development diary on those later in development.

View attachment 387337

We’ll also talk about the factions characters can be in, what holdings are, and other character related things in future development diaries, but next week we’ll go into trade.
Interesting. What about a specific roman thing such as clientela https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patronage_in_ancient_Rome ?

EDIT
At the end of the day this is not CK but Rome
 
Sweet! Will there be a way to attempt to groom younger characters for certain positions?

Also, seeing the city of Naxos in Sicily in the screenshot, as opposed to Naxos in the Aegean, does this mean we can now have multiple cities with the same name?
 
This looks really interesting - there is a lot of potential for interesting gameplay there. Dealing with both troublesome and also useful characters in CK2 is always good fun.

Sometimes the most interesting things in these games arise as a result of the interplay between different game systems. You don't need every system to be super-complex in order to create deep and engaging gameplay. I can see a lot of interesting potential based on these characters and the ways they could interact with the other game systems.

I really like that a character's traits will evolve non-randomly as well.
 
Also, seeing the city of Naxos in Sicily in the screenshot, as opposed to Naxos in the Aegean, does this mean we can now have multiple cities with the same name?

That's already possible. I do it a lot in my CK2 map mod. You just have to differencate them in the files with naxos_1 and naxos_2 for exemple.
 
Some traits are inherited.

Attributes are not inherited, they are not in ck2 either.

Which traits characters get as they grow older is not random though.

Thanks! Since you are not playning as that the characters directly Im not expecting much in the form of eugenicsgrooming gameplay, but will the player have any controll over how a character's stats develope?
 
This should stop the whining. :D Great dev diary, Johan!
 
There are lots of different interactions you can do with and on your characters, including arranging marriages, bribe them, loan from them, or even sacrifice them if your religions so permit and desire. There will be a deep development diary on those later in development.

It will be the "current ruler" who would eventually bribe or take loans or try to kill a given characters ? Or these action can be performed by any other character in game ?

CK2's characters do a lot stuff on their own (e.g plan plots , have ambitions etc.. ) Can be expected a similar level of complexity or these aspects will be a little tone down ?
 
This is all i have wanted in terms of characters but 2 questions remains:

1: Will there be a character-view for family/relation similar to ck2s?

2: As you mentioned the Lunatic Traits, will we be able to get a certain Horse?
 
Hello everyone and welcome to the seventh developer diary for Imperator. This time we take a look at our characters!

The characters in Imperator are deeply detailed, and together with the pops and the politics are part of what makes a vibrant living world.

They have portraits that age gradually, with lots of different ethnicities covering the world.

There are four attributes that characters have.
  • Martial represents a character's ability to fight and lead troops. Characters with high martial skills make excellent generals.
  • Charisma is a character’s ability to charm and persuade others.
  • Zeal is a character's ability to inspire faith in other characters, and also in calling upon the favour of the gods.
  • Finesse represents a character's skill in disciplines requiring a high attention to detail. High finesse characters make excellent researchers and governors.

For those of you that played the original Rome or the Crusader Kings series will not be surprised to hear that our characters have traits. Traits on a character can be gained or lost.


Traits can be categorized in the following categories.
  • Personality - This includes being Brave or Coward, Cruel or Merciful. These impacts the character attributes and stats directly, as well as….. :)
  • Military - Usually a character has a maximum of one of those, that may give a bonus or penalty
  • Health - Stressed, Maimed, Lunatic etc. Not beneficial to the character in most cases.
  • Status - Some exceptional traits that can be given from actions, like Conqueror
Traits can also unlock a variety of unique event options, each tailored to the specific trait in question. Those of you familiar with CKII will be (dis)pleased to see the return of the Lunatic trait.

A Character also has his or her personal wealth, and four primary stats.
  • Popularity - Popularity is a measure of how the people see the character. In republics high popularity characters are more likely to elected leader of the republic. However even monarchies cannot ignore popular people.
  • Loyalty - Loyalty is a measure of a character's loyalty to the state. Disloyal characters are more likely to cause problems to a ruler than loyal ones. However even the most loyal of characters has their limit.
  • Prominence - Prominence represents the fame of the character. Jobs and titles help bring characters to public attention.
  • Corruption - Corruption is a measurement of this character’s willingness to engage in underhanded practices. Greed, bribery and the bending of rules come hand-in-hand with high corruption.

Characters have parents, will be able to marry and get children, just as you’d expect. They can also have friends and rivals.

Characters can be given various roles. Besides being ruler of a country, they could be assigned to govern a province, command an army, handle research or be given a role in the government. Some countries allow women to be given offices, and some do not.


There are lots of different interactions you can do with and on your characters, including arranging marriages, bribe them, loan from them, or even sacrifice them if your religions so permit and desire. There will be a deep development diary on those later in development.

View attachment 387337

We’ll also talk about the factions characters can be in, what holdings are, and other character related things in future development diaries, but next week we’ll go into trade.

Got to ask the important question, Do we get to keep Platypus Maximus?
 
Also, seeing the city of Naxos in Sicily in the screenshot, as opposed to Naxos in the Aegean, does this mean we can now have multiple cities with the same name?

That was always possible. But that said it is something we would like to avoid so as to not confuse people so it might change to something else (Tauromenium?) :)

Just like today the world in the past was full of some less than original naming for cities. So many Alexandrias, Aphroditopolises, Neapolises, etc... ;)
 
Another great update.

However how about the technical aspect of the client? Will this time support Freesync, because is written with the Clausewitz engine and already Stellaris, EUIV, CK2, HOI IV are suffering with flickering when the game is running. (when paused isn't issue)
 
That was always possible. But that said it is something we would like to avoid so as to not confuse people so it might change to something else (Tauromenium?) :)

Just like today the world in the past was full of some less than original naming for cities. So many Alexandrias, Aphroditopolises, Neapolises, etc... ;)

And many Tripolis too... Many Seleucias...