Imperator: Rome Developer Diary - 16th of November 2020

[Stgerlachus]

Really nice.

It seems that permanent armies will be scarce until midgame. A question comes to my mind... what happens with provincial armies? Will we use legions for that (when available)? Or will the figure of provincial armies as we currently know it disappear?.

I had the same question with the last DD. It seems they've been superseded by levies and legions, which are both province based. I'm assuming they're not going to be a major source of unrest reduction in 2.0 if at all. I don't think that's a major issue though, as long as there is some re-balancing to make up for it. Though it would be nice to get some new tools to deal with unrest instead.

 

[Lord Lambert]

Goddamn, 2.0 just keeps getting better and better.

This is truly impressive!

 

[Inspecta]

I must say, these military changes are incredible, very impressive, and seem quite fun to play with.

I do have a question however, apart from raising a legion, what is manpower used for? I might have missed it (maybe it also reinforces your levies?), but it doesn't seem relevant until you can raise permanent armies.

I guess, that reinforcing levies is the thing

 

[LeSingeAffame]

Great Dev Diary, but im a bit concerned that Legions would be too expensive compared to Levies since Levies do not cost any upkeep. In the previous dev diary 68 cohorts cost 2.74 gold while a Legion of 11 cohorts cost 7.3 gold. I know numbers are not final but you could reconsider Levies costing upkeep as well.

Pop being levied don't contribute to your national production, so you lose their income, their production, their research, and so on.

 

[Quantitative Easing]

I'm very excited. Suggestion: Maybe Sparta could start with an appropriate legion reform?

 

[TobiOrNotTobi]

This looks reeeeally good and I can't wait to try it out in-game. Two things came to my mind though:

Will we only get to create one Legion per Region? I know it's a little nitpicky, but I was waiting to create my nice standardized Roman legion and now it seems like there's going to be the need to create one massive legion in your capital region, because that's probably where you have most manpower available (I may not have gotten this right though).

Clearly we still need to know lots of the specifics, but the second thing that concerns me is that it only seems to delay the appearence of way to massive unhistorical army sizes to the late mid-game onwards. At least from what I read so far, you will be able to recruit legions of arbitary composition anywhere in your empire and independent of pop culture there (although you may have just skipped the details on that one as there was so much to tell to begin with). Doesn't this ignore the fact that it took the Romans for instance a pretty good while of Romanization to raise armies (other than auxiliaries) from conquered territories?

 

[aantia]

Wow, this looks really good.
Will this all be in the free update? Some of this (the honours in particular) look like prime material for a paid DLC.

 

[nikkythegreat]

Pop being levied don't contribute to your national production, so you lose their income, their production, their research, and so on.

Yeah but loosing 0.08 tax income from a freeman is nothing compared to the current upkeep of 0.58 of a heavy infantry. Im suggesting they should add upkeep to levy troops as well maybe give them 50% upkeep in addition to the lost income. Otherwise Id simply go for Levies 95% of the time even if I already have Legion tech.

 

[Martocticvs]

Question: will the stats of the Tribunes have any impact on the legion's performance? I can see it would be cool if 'above average' martial stats provided a small boost, and 'below average' stats a slight reduction in performance.

 

[Bovrick]

I guess, that reinforcing levies is the thing

I'd be intrigued to see how the game would play if you dropped manpower, and had the following instead:

Levies: No reinforcement of manpower. You need to disband, wait out the 2 month, then reraise a new Levy.
Legions: Can reinforce inside their home Region, with the "Unit Reorganisation" ability active, so pretty much incapable of fighting while reinforcing. No other limit to the amount of reinforcing they can do though.

Could be a total mess, but I'd like to try it.

 

[LeSingeAffame]

Wow, this looks really good.
Will this all be in the free update? Some of this (the honours in particular) look like prime material for a paid DLC.

Hmm, I think that if it was part of a DLC they would have said it. So hopefully it's part of the free update

 

[Synen]

Yeah but loosing 0.08 tax income from a freeman is nothing compared to the current upkeep of 0.58 of a heavy infantry. Im suggesting they should add upkeep to levy troops as well maybe give them 50% upkeep in addition to the lost income. Otherwise Id simply go for Levies 95% of the time even if I already have Legion tech.

To be honest I think that you'll end up using a mix of both levies and legions. The advantage of legions is quality and the advantage of levy is quantity. Going the full legion route is most likely going to be too expensive to do and going the full levy route means using weaker armies that lose against legions. So most likely you'll end up using both to get their advantages while trying to minimize their disadvantages.

 

[tpapp157]

The last several diaries have all sounded great. Keep up the good work. Looking forward to learning more.

 

[arosenberger14]

Looks like a very interesting system! A few questions:

1) Will characters be able to command multiple legions? Historically you had folks like Caesar and Pompey effectively in control of multiple legions over multiple provinces.

2) How easily can legions be moved to different areas? Once the frontier moves, it should be possible to re-shuffle your legions to go with it.

3) Historically a standing army was a huge source of potential unrest or civil war for ancient societies, not just from ambitious leaders using their troops to seize power, but also from disgruntled troops propping up a figurehead to increase their pay and benefits. Imperial Rome quickly got into a situation were the troops were expecting huge bonuses with each new emperor, and during the 3rd century would routinely depose emperors they didn't like or who didn't pay them enough. Will there be any link between things like legionary pay, looting, and troop "loyalty" to simulate this?

 

[Agnamofica]

So excited. they are definitely listening to feedback because the command idea with the legate is stuff that i have screaming about since launch. good on you pdx.

 

[GloryGloryByzantium]

Will there still be an option for provincial troops to lower unrest? This role seems taken over by governor-held levies but I suppose placing legions in a region could also lower unrest. Perhaps fort unrest will be further boosted since they are getting more work. (Also, fort garrisons could be a source of manpower which could be emptied in times of crisis and filled back again after a war).

 

[Yems]

Honors & Dishonors

Real nice someone had a forum post asking for somethign very simular to this, this together with legion history will feel really good for roleplay.

Rhaegar1 and I had made similar suggestions to the one that is being implemented, with the difference being Rhaegar wanted regional manpower and I wanted manpower to be scrapped completely in favor of pops.

Though I have to say I am a reeeeally big fan of what they doing so far.

 

[Biegeltoren]

This is looking really cool! Will we be able to station legions in different regions or can they only be stationed in their home regions?

 

[Yems]

Okay just a few things off the top of my head.

1. I love the way you guys are treating legions, especially their history, their relationship to levies and Legates/Tribunes. One thing I would want is for Tribunes to have a bigger impact on the army than just sitting around and commanding split armies. You know, to act like minor commanders in the battle, somewhat like in CK.

2. I really, really like how supply wagons are still a thing, as last week's DD had me a bit worried that they would be scrapped.

3. Another suggestion that I would give would be for the type of Republic/Monarchy to have a different impact on the country. E.g. An Aristocratic Republic should have let's say slightly different laws etc. than an Oligarchic one. I believe that this would add immersion, diversity and replayability to the game.

The tech trees are already helping in that department, yet I believe that it can be taken a step further.

Overall I am huge fan of everything that this DD has added!

 

[Todie]

awesome mind-boggling stuff!

I’m quite curious what will happen with the manpower economy in the wake of all these changes.

Adding units to a Legion will come both at an up front cost of Gold and Manpower, as well as a maintenance cost over time.

The maintenance cost... is it purely in gold or also in manpower?

related: do levies and legions both refund 25% of their used manpower when disbanded? (I would expect a near full refund for levies?)
tangentially related:
Are there any changes planned for the relation between army food supply and manpower-attrition ?
Its current implementation leads to binary outcomes where real attrition and its impacts is either high or zero (mostly zero for players)

This contributes to making manpower harder to balance.

(for reference, consider army supply in ck3 where the impact of dwindling supply sets in gradually the closer an army gets to 0 supply, and impacts combat advantage as well as attrition)