Imperator Development Diary - 8th of April

[Chaingun]

Will the transport AI be smart enough to land at friendly docks instead of taking the time for armies to “march” to the ships in a sea tile? That’s still something that plagues EU4 for the auto transports

There is no load to transports button as far as I know, so it's not suboptimal to march army into sea tile.

Awesome! Great job!
Does "Fight the rebels" work like HoI4's partisans suppression other than what you mentioned?

I have no idea how HoI4 works in this area.

I am looking forward to a completly AI controlled army playtrough of Imperator. Hopefulyl the AI is smart enough, so I only have to create stacks and work in economy and pop adminstration.

I won't play every game like this, but having different playstyles avaible sounds cool.

Depends. Some beta testers were able to do this. Their main complaint is AI may end up marching elsewhere than they want, so this is something we might have to add a way to control in the future.

I remember reading somewhere that we can assign armies to governors. Is that still a thing? Or has it been replaced with this automation system? Abit confused

It's not an objective. You can basically assign an army to a province and add any objective to it, and it's forced to stay in the province. Maybe it would have been clearer as an objective, but it was implemented before I got started on AI objective system.

Is AI automation affected by how good the general leading that army is? (please say yes).

Not yet. Modders can add it but beyond loyalty this is not a factor currently, mostly because focus is on improving the AI in general still.

Will the AI assigned armies be clever enough to combine to fight a larger force, or will they just “ignore” other AI assigned armies?

They can coordinate if there are more of the same objective around. AI objective armies have been forbidden from regrouping into different stacks because I felt player needs to retain control over that to avoid chaos.

I dont think it will be possible, but I'll ask just in case. Is the AI capable of shipping and landing your own armies as the enemy AI does? For instance, Im at war with carthage. Can a stack controlled by the AI get on a ship controlled by the AI and ship it to Mallorca to take it?

Having to take islands is one of the biggest pains of EU4. If only the AI controlled armies could do it on their own accord, that would save so much time, pauses, and micromanagment.... It would be amazing if you guys managed to go that far, although I dont think its possible. But hey, maybe in the future.

You only have autotransport (Naval Landing). However, it's basically enough to just click your army where you want it to go as long as there is a pool of ships allocated to naval transport (have the objective set), and game will if there is no land path automatically assign the objective and order your troops to go to destination (which doesn't have to be adjacent to sea) without popup.

 

[passengerpigeon]

There is no load to transports button as far as I know, so it's not suboptimal to march army into sea tile.



I have no idea how HoI4 works in this area.



Depends. Some beta testers were able to do this. Their main complaint is AI may end up marching elsewhere than they want, so this is something we might have to add a way to control in the future.



It's not an objective. You can basically assign an army to a province and add any objective to it, and it's forced to stay in the province. Maybe it would have been clearer as an objective, but it was implemented before I got started on AI objective system.



Not yet. Modders can add it but beyond loyalty this is not a factor currently, mostly because focus is on improving the AI in general still.



They can coordinate if there are more of the same objective around. AI objective armies have been forbidden from regrouping into different stacks because I felt player needs to retain control over that to avoid chaos.



You only have autotransport (Naval Landing). However, it's basically enough to just click your army where you want it to go as long as there is a pool of ships allocated to naval transport (have the objective set), and game will if there is no land path automatically assign the objective and order your troops to go to destination (which doesn't have to be adjacent to sea) without popup.

Is there any way to specify that you want to do an automatic naval transport even though a land route exists? This is a pain point for me in EU4 since it is relatively common with large empires to have inefficient land routes accessible but still want to use naval transport for speed, and there is no automatic way to do this.

 

[Chipmunk216]

There are still people and pops in this provinces. They are just not organized into a state or organized tribe.

Sure, but it looks odd for them to have settlements that look like real cities, not just tribal villages.

 

[Chaingun]

Is there any way to specify that you want to do an automatic naval transport even though a land route exists? This is a pain point for me in EU4 since it is relatively common with large empires to have inefficient land routes accessible but still want to use naval transport for speed, and there is no automatic way to do this.

Unsure if it still works but I put this on Shift key like 6 months back. Could have disappeared in some control scheme redesign though.

If it doesn't work I'll find a way to re-add it.

 

[exenter]

Those areas had sparse population and lacked significant settlements, even in medieval times.
Heck, I can show you some areas in modern day Serbia that are dotted only by villages and very few 10k towns.
Even those are only existing due to deforestation. Proper roads and tunnels certainly helped.

So, I'd say this decision makes sense.

No it doesn't make sense. Seriously, the Balkans looks like the Alps or the Himayalas. Most of those ares are not mountainous in real life, it's mostly flat or hilly. Most of Europe was covered in forests at this time but I hardly see any unpassable areas in rest of Europa, so I don't understand why you are talking about forests here.

There is also a problem with population density. Look at the population maps (from the twitch streams), it looks like the entire Illyrian region has much less population than some small Greek states. I think paradox only looked at where the the Romans built towns in the Balkans and presumed the rest of Balkans were completely uninhabited.

 

[Thure]

No it doesn't make sense. Seriously, the Balkans looks like the Alps or the Himayalas. Most of those ares are not mountainous in real life, it's mostly flat or hilly. Most of Europe was covered in forests at this time but I hardly see any unpassable areas in rest of Europa, so I don't understand why you are talking about forests here.

So the Dinaric Mountains didn't exist? They were a big problem during the Roman era, since you couldn't move armies that well there. To say the Balkans are flat and there are no mountains is a big fat lie. Just look at this map, most of the mountains on this map were big problems for the people of the ancient era as we know from ancient texts,

 

[sreckom92]

@exenter
Here is a trip I made last year, driving with my car:

Hopefully, you can see how this map relate to the one from this dev diary.
It roughly covers up at least one "wasteland" from the map, and touches others. (Or, at least places from the images I will post below certainly do)

I began my trip from the city of Čačak. Overlooking the city, and the plains ahead, stands the Jelica mountain. On the slopes of that mountain, lies a ruined Byzantine fort, which we call ''Gradina''. No idea if it has any relations with the Gradus province, probably not.
From this point, I'm entering the Ovčar-Kablar gorge, and from this point, I'm only seeing steep hills and mountains and forests as far as the eye can see. And this was far from the last gorge...
(Images are in the spoilers)

Spoiler

Leaving this area, and passing near the mountain of Golija, and heading into Sandzak. Barren and cold high plateau of Pešter on one side, and beautiful Uvac meanders on the other.

Spoiler

Old Serbia begins somewhere around here, with many medieval ruined cities, and monasteries. Old Serbian capital of Ras stands here. The area called Arsa in the game.
Passing through towns of Sjenica and Novi Pazar, I head north, and through the area of Rashka, alongside the river Ibar.
Mountain of Troglav is there, as well as a medieval fort of Maglič.
Just past that fort, I am entering the city of Kraljevo, and there is Čačak nearby, point from where I started.

Spoiler

Southern areas were a heartland of the medieval Serbia.
Singindunum (Belgrade) lies far to the north. Romans had their settlements near Danube river. River Morava flows in the eastern part of Serbia, running south towards Naisos (Niš). Via Militaris is there, a Roman....military road.

Barring the areas settled by Romans, and later on, the medieval Serbs....terrain was (and believe me, still is) very hard to pass through. Let alone settle in.
Even today, not many people live here. Roads and tunnels are what connects these areas to the urbanized Serbia.