Imperator: Rome Developer Diary - 15th of June 2020

[Limbojack]

I:R is looking better and better with every new DD. I'm actually feeling some of the hype I felt before release return. If the next two patches are as huge and good as this one, I'm sure to return to the game. Keep up the great work!

 

[Ares Enyalios]

I scrolled and scrolled all the way down hoping that after so much of the Antigonids you guys will finish with: And now the Antigonids can form Macedon like Epiros does, so that we finnaly can get the Antigonid where they belong.

 

[Doczjan]

Will tribes recive any love? ;-;

 

[Pirarucu]

This is ALL good. But I have questions...
1) How will AI act on these decisions about the new events? Will it be totally random ir will they be more inclined to join the war? (Talking about Thracia ir Egypt). Will they take into consoderation The same things the AI do for "normal" Wars?
2) If I put low cost on fort maintenance, will It still reduce unrest, even for a small valeu? Will it reduce more with high maintenance?

Thanks, it's good to see that the game keeps improving

 

[Lord Lambert]

Fantastic changes, very thicc dev diary!

 

[Will Steel]

These changes look really nice. I love dynamism that this will bring. I hope the patch release date is announced soon, because it has almost been a quarter of a year.

On the negative side, Tyranny will decrease the loyalty of all characters in your entire country, while also increasing the chance that cohorts become loyal to their commanders rather than the state. Tyranny will also decrease the threshold for how much power base disloyal characters need to start a civil war, the effect that was dropped from Stability.

Last but not least the members of a party will now receive or lose loyalty based on how much their party approves of your governance.

If only the game had a civil war system that didn't unnecessarily end the game for no reason, these changes would have been great to play around with. With changing regimes and ambitious generals and so on.

 

[Shadout123]

Will it be possible, for lets say you play rome to assimiliate the greeks pops to macedonian (when you integrated macedonian) instead of roman bc it is faster (same culture group)?

 

[lunelune2413]

"We hope you will enjoy 1.5 Menander!"

Release date soon.tm?

 

[Reman]

It's good that the Diadochi can conquer each other faster now, but better CBs of some form should really be available to everyone. Conquest is way too slow later on in general.

The stability impact of aggressive expansion seems obscenely high. Passively waiting for AE to drop down takes way too long in a game that lasts for less than 300 years, so high AE is practically required if you want to match Rome's historical rate of conquest. That won't be possible if high AE leads to <30 stability, since that disables war declaration.

 

[Yuanshu]

Changes to Integration: Nobles vs Citizens

View attachment 589994​

As described in previous diaries in Menander any culture which has at least citizen rights is considered integrated. Integrated cultures will use the same happiness modifiers as your primary country culture and be immune to assimilation.
Each additional integrated culture also reduces the happiness of all other integrated cultures, as well as your primary culture by 5%.

To further differentiate Nobles and Citizens, which are both civic right statuses that count as giving integrated, there is now an additional penalty of 5% for each culture that is given noble rights. Meaning that every culture granted noble rights will dilute the happiness of all cultures even further than those given Citizen rights. Think carefully about who you ennoble!

All countries that start with integrated cultures now have these at citizen rights, with only their primary culture granted rights of Nobility.

Last but not least, there are now things that affect how long it takes to integrate cultures, beyond how many pops they have.
Each cultural right you have granted a culture will make it quicker to integrate, thereby reducing the stability you will lose in the process.

It also now takes 50% longer to integrate a culture from another culture group, making it costlier to integrate cultures that are more distant from yours.

​

Well I still intend playing with Bactria to grant rights to the people of Bactrian culture to become Nobles ( Let Diodotus come!) and perhaps to the people of Sogdian culture ( In honor of the wife of Alexandre the Great, Roxana )

But my doubt and it has already been said that it will be possible to bring "foreign" families to become major families but it has not been said how this is possible
I really am annoyed that all the major families in Bactria are from Macedonian culture, how exactly will it be possible to make these changes in the major families?

 

[Cagallo]

I have the feeling that STABILITY will at some point be taken out of the game -- it feels a bit redundant as it is "repeating" the effect of some indicators on others. For example, the dev diary says that stability affects happiness and that stability is affected by the integration of cultures. This means that the way you manage culture integration affects happiness directly as well as indirectly (via stability changes).

At the same time, for me it feels that the causality should be the inverse... pop's happiness should be determining stability, not the other way round.

So I feel that, in the next updates, we may find that stability does not fit what it was supposed to be designed for initially... and either dropped or reconceptualized into meaning something different (like a proxy for governing capacity like in EU4?).

 

[nikkythegreat]

Could you also do similar for religion?

Those religions represented in the state pantheon will be treated as primary religion for all intents and purposes but making them not a target for conversions as well.

Also have a map mode that shows where a particular religion is a minority in.

1.4 religions system could really use similar mechanics.

 

[Trin Tragula]

any chance warscore costs will be reduced? Since tyranny won't reduce ws costs anymore i fear (i don't know obviously but i fear) that lategame wars will be even more fruitless.

We are looking to compensate for the war score cost discounts lost in Tyranny

This is ALL good. But I have questions...
1) How will AI act on these decisions about the new events? Will it be totally random ir will they be more inclined to join the war? (Talking about Thracia ir Egypt). Will they take into consoderation The same things the AI do for "normal" Wars?

As in 1.4 it is weighted to go for the war. In real life this war had not really ended and opting out is really mostly meant for human players.
AI Antigonids reaction to the ultimatums of the other countries is however a bit dependent on just how badly affected they already are, there is a chance they will give in and surrender territory to keep one of its tormentors away.

 

[KingBuzzo15]

Looking forward to it. Opt in Beta access?

 

[starchitect]

Will it be possible, for lets say you play rome to assimiliate the greeks pops to macedonian (when you integrated macedonian) instead of roman bc it is faster (same culture group)?

Yes, very much this. It will be very strange to integrate all of Greece except for the one culture in the group you have assimilated. I would love to see a system where all cultures assimilate to whatever the next highest level of rights within the culture group, and only promote to a foreign culture if no culture in their group is integrated by the ruling country. If Epirotes can only be slaves and Athenians at best become Freeman, Epirotes could promote to Athenian, and then Athenian can promote to a fully integrated Macedonians.

 

[Will Steel]

It's good that the Diadochi can conquer each other faster now, but better CBs of some form should really be available to everyone. Conquest is way too slow later on in general.

Completely agreed.

The game needs more types of casus belli in general, including the "unique" periodic CBs that CK2 had for example. They allowed larger conquests and more sensible wars. Things like Punic war CB, tribal conquests, horde invasions (especially in context of Parthian conquest of Persia from Seleucids), and even a "recover the legionary standards" CB if possible.

It takes 7-8 wars for Rome to take over Carthaginian Hispania in the game right now due to generic conquest CB warscore limitations...a feat that Rome accomplished in a single war in real life.

 

[Samitte]

This is something we have added more of in the past, and will continue doing with each patch. Another area that had some work done in this regard in 1.5 is Anatolia and Persia (together with a revamp of majority culture in parts in Persia's case, but I believe I already showed this in an earlier diary).

Judging by how much tedious work it is, I certainly don't expect this to happen to the whole world map in 1 update.

The previous Dev diary only shows the Perians having taken their place in south Persia, which is great since they were sorely missing. Have any more changes been made since then? On that image the Amardians are still shifted east from where they lived. which even has the area named after them in game but is populated by Cadusians. And the Median culture extended much further into southern Armenia. The Soducene, Parkahayk and Parpatunik areas in game at the minimum. The first was part of the larger 'Mardpatakan' to the Armenians, and remained mostly (Armeno-)Median throughout the game. The other two would not even see much of an Armenian presence until about halfway into the game.

Cappadocia changes, religion, primary culture and military Traditions if they embrace thier returning king, but this is also true in the version you are currently playing

I'm aware, but that leaves Cappadocia as a Macedonian state with 0 Macedonian populations if they don't accept, which makes them super weak since all they have is foreign pops with wrong religion. Does the Culture Integration work without any of your own culture present?

 

[Reman]

Oh geez, I didn't see that tyranny lost its warscore reduction.

That obviously needs to be replaced by something, and a lot more needs to be added on top of it too.

Nothing destroys this game more than seeing that you need to do 11 Punic Wars to annex Carthage. This game has lots of smaller problems of course, but nothing is as ruinous as warscore costs are. The tedium is simply unbearable, which is tragic because it'd be such an easy problem to solve. The values on warscore cost are just set 4-5x too high in the late game.

 

[Basileus2]

God damn this is tasty! Great job team!!! Super stoked for Menander.

 

[TheWorstPro]

Great dev diary, but one question: Will the legacy or Alexander CB also reduce AE costs? While it’s definitely nice to be able to demand large chunks of land from the Diodochi now, I’m worried that if it costs too much AE it’ll prevent players from conquering more land after the initial wars are over.

Edit: with the new AE changes reducing stability, demanding something like a 100 or even just a 50 AE peace offer could potentially ruin your country, depending on how it works in 1.5