Imperator: Rome Developer Diary - 2nd of December

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Trin Tragula

Design Lead - Crusader Kings 3
Paradox Staff
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Aug 1, 2003
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Hello and welcome to this week's development diary.
Today we will be sharing the patchnotes for the Livy update which you will get access to tomorrow.

Enjoy! :)

###################
# New Features
###################

- New Mission System. The player can at any time pick one out of up to 3 missions. Each mission is a tree that is composed by a number of tasks. Tasks can be timed or instant and some branches of the tree can be exclusive to one another.
- Added Dynamic and Procedural Missions for conquest for all countries in the game.
- Added Dynamic Mission for developing a Governorship for all countries in the game.
- Added mission to reform out of tribalism for Tribes.
- Great Families: Each country will now have a limited set of Major families that expect to hold a certain influence in the state. By making sure their members have the amount of jobs they expect the families will support your rule, but failing to do so will make them rebel.
- Minor Characters: Characters that are not part of Great Families will appear during the campaign and will wield influence and power, but will not be able to call on their kin to get them jobs and positions.
- A Great Family’s Prestige rating will now determine their share of a national pool of Power Base, meaning Families that have held many important jobs will be more dangerous over time.
- Families can now adopt minor characters, the player can adopt characters to their ruling families in monarchies. Adoption reduces the prestige of the family that adopts and will present the choice of whether to change the last name of the newly adopted person or not.
- Map Mode Manager: You can now select yourself which map modes that should be shown in the bar above the Minimap by dragging and dropping.
- Armies now Consume and Carry Food: All units can now carry food with them on campaigns and will consume that food if they are in a situation where they would normally take attrition, instead of losing men. Armies in friendly territory will stock up on Food from the Provincial stores.
- Reworked Reinforcement rules: Armies will now only reinforce if they are not currently taking attrition. Consequently sieges can now be lost by the attacker if they run out of food but armies can also operate far deeper into enemy territory without taking attrition, as long as they bring enough food.
- Added Supply Train unit with greater food carrying capacity for long campaigns and sieges.
- Updated Map in Greece, Anatolia, Ireland and the Baltic region. Adding new territories, impassables and countries, as well as more navigable rivers.
- Statesmanship now governs how well your characters perform in administrative government jobs. Statesmanship is built up by a character over time and acts as a multiplier on their skill, meaning inexperienced characters will not perform to their full potential.
- Line System: Lines will now mark ongoing migration and trade routes on the map, more clearly illustrating these features when you are looking at their respective interfaces.
- Subject Interactions: Subjects can now be asked to abandon an ungrateful overlord, and can themselves seek out a new overlord if they are displeased with their current one.
- Added Minor Event Category: Minor events will not open automatically on your screen but will instead be placed in queue before they take effect. Minor events will primarily be those that are of low impact and connected with characters.

###################
# DLC - The Punic Wars
###################
- Added 9 unique mission trees for Rome.
- Added 10 unique mission trees for Carthage or other Punic countries.
- Added unique unit model for North African armies.
- Added unique unit model for Punic Ships.
- Added unique city set for Punic countries.

###################
# Gamebalance
###################

# Economy
- Destroying a building now gives you 25% of its buildcost restored.
- Road building now available from Civic tech 4.

# Governments
- Upped legitimacy boost from Strengthen Legitimacy to 0.05 from 0.02, and increased cost to 10 Political Influence from 5.

# Characters
- Pretenders now receive scaling loyalty penalty based on the powerbase of their supporters.

# Units
- Tweaked starting army and navy sizes. Starting armies and Navies will now be somewhat lower than they were in previous versions.
- Increased national Maintenance for loyal troops slightly.
- Disbanding units now restore 25% of their manpower.
- Unit build costs increased by 20-30% across the board.
- Horse Archers and Light cavalry now have higher attrition weight.
- Added roughly 25% base unit movement speed to infantry types, cavalry retain speed bonus. Added 10% Morale damage taken to war elephants.
- War Elephants now take more morale damage.
- Added Supply Trains and a Support Units category, which will be deployed last on the battlefield and cannot be part of retinues.

# War & Peace
- The maximum manpower is now 20 years of Manpower gain rather than 25. Overall Manpower will now be lower as a result of this.
- Base Manpower reduced by 50%.
- Enslavement efficiency reduced across the board, by 25-50%
- Raze and Pillage can now be used regardless of whether you're at war with the province owner. It will add a stacking opinion debuff each time the action is performed. If opinion goes below -180, a war will be declared, treating the pillaging country as attacker.
- Slave revolts will now be rarer in low population territories.

# Diplomacy
- Doubled claim fabrication speed.
- Average truce length decreased by roughly 40%
- Tyranny now reduces War Score costs in peace treaties.
- Reduced effect on War Score for the Bellicose stance.
- Reduced effect of inventions on War Score cost.
- Reduced effect of Ruler Traits on War Score cost.
- High tributes now only reduces subject opinions by 50.

# Technology
- No Inventions affect Omen Duration.

# Heritages
- Added heritage for Heraclea Pontica
- Thrace’s Heritage is now -5% War Score cost instead of 10%.
- Seafaring Heritage no longer reduces movement speed on land, instead it reduces manpower.
- Added Corinthian Heritage for Mission created Corinth.
- Added Theocratic Heritage for mission created Religious Enclave.
- Added Epikratea Heritage for Carthaginian mission created country in Sicily.
- Added Heritage for Pontus.
- Added Heritage for Iberia.

# Mercenaries
- Mercenary maintenance increased from 125% of normal unit maintenance to 200%.
- Larger Mercenary armies now get supply trains.

# Tradegoods
- Local Bonus for Leather is now increased Slave Output.
- Local bonus for Base Metals is now Freeman Output.

#Buildings
- Increased Research Points from Academies.
- Foundry no longer impacts unit build speed, but instead increases output of territory by 1%.
- Destroying a building now refunds part of its cost.

###################
# AI
###################

# Economy
- Improved AI budgeting for all resources.
- AI more likely to build farms to counteract being low on Food.
- AI can now try to not keep as many unit leaders around during peace to cut down wage costs.
- Governors should no longer pick a governor policy that would negatively impact food unless there is a lot of stored food in a province.

# Diplomacy
- Made AI a bit more mindful about keeping at least one route open for expansion when allying neighbors.
- Fixed some logic related to offering alliances and then breaking them due to low opinion.
- Alliances will become harder to attain for each current alliance the proposer possesses.
- AI will now make more informed choices on Diplomatic Stances based on its current Aggressive Expansion.
- AI now considers its income rate and how much money it has saved up before sending gifts beyond "is it currently possible"?
- AI now knows that they can enforce demands having fully captured the war goal (and will do so if situation isn't improving).
- AI should no longer build forts over their intended maintenance limit.
- Fixed over-zealeous optimization causing AI to immediately give up if they could not have their most preferred peace deal, that in turn lead to white peaces where gains could have been made.
- Fixed some logic related to offering alliances and then breaking them due to low opinion.

# Military
- Tweaked size of AI sea regions to make selection a bit easier.
- AI desired war exhaustion is now less than 5 instead of 0.
- AI will now spread out their forces a bit more while at peace rather than leaving them all packed in one area, enabling quicker responses to internal and external threats.
- Improved AI retinue handling.
- AI will now pick Military Traditions in a way that makes it prioritize filling out a full path a bit more.
- AI countries will be a bit more inclined to pick Military Traditions that fit them culturally (Dahae will go for Horse Archers), or situationally (Ship paths are only interesting if you have ports).
- AI armies will no longer drill when at war or when there are threats nearby
- Pathfinding should now path around storms n' deserts when possible.
- AI may try to assault if its troop is unavoidably attriting away due to lack of food and there is nothing else for it to do.
- AI should be a bit better at attacking low morale units defeated in a battle (they were frequently waiting due to having lost some morale of their own).
- AI should be slightly more interested in pursuing the war goal as well as state capitals.
- AI should consider if they really have food prior to besieging non-wargoal forts (imperfect heuristic).
- AI splits up it fleets depending on perceived strength of enemy fleets now to cover more tasks.
- AI will no longer recruit mercenaries unless they have a path to friendly capital area or otherwise have access (alleviating need for sea transport).
- Fixed an issue that made AI forget their army at sea for thousands of years if the original departure port had become inaccessible.
- It is now possible to restrict the region of operations for an army by clicking on the map when the Select Objective dialog is open.
- Made AI a bit better at not peacing out when it's got more interesting sieges to pursue in war.
- Made AI units less likely to chase much smaller forces than them (define IGNORE_STRENGTH_RATIO).

# Misc
- Will consider building forts on provinces with Ports.
- AI absolutely won't pick ship idea without ports now.
- AI now won't disband forts as a revolter against the player (so your forts won't get deleted by troll AI).
- AI units now dynamically increase search range in case they find too few options or fail to reach their current destination pathed to. Should result in less indecisiveness and staying in poor locations.
- Added ai_will_do script weights for inventions, ideas, trade goods, omens. AI modifier weights in ai_plan_goals have a default impact, so it may not be necessary to use these.
- Made AI less likely to build forts neighboring existing ones.
- Tweaked how the AI values characters for ransom purposes. Generally it should now be cheaper to ransom back your characters.

###################
# Interface
###################

# Alerts
- Added Alert for when a Mission can be Completed.
- Added Alert for when an army is taking attrition due to lack of food.
- Scorned Families now list their power base in the alert.

# Map
- Desecrating a holy site now puts the city on fire.
- Cities that are looted will now sometimes visible burn on the map.


# Misc
- Expanded on the tooltip for Civilization value in provinces.
- Ruler titles are now also displayed at the character lists.
- Clicking on a nation flag in the multiplayer lobby will now pan your camera to that location. You can no longer click through some of the GUI elements in the multiplayer lobby.

##############################

# User Modding

##############################

- Extensive support for making missions has been added, the game will attempt to draw any tree you make. A guide can be found here: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-make-a-mission-in-imperator.1286456/
- Add effects to rename provinces, set military traditions and heritage for new coutries, and allow speciffying type of cohort in new units.
- Add trigger for number of buildings of type.
- Changed create_country from being an assignment effect to instead require a province scope and then scope to the newly created country. Also add a special name field so that the name can show up correctly in tooltips
- The death effect can now take the argument: silent = yes|no to suppress the death dialogue.

###################
# Setup & Script
###################

# Decisions
- Lowered party support requirement to declare dictatorship to 70.
- The Pharos Lighthouse now gives extra Building Slots instead of Trade Routes.
- Added decision to form Hibernia.
- Forming Persia now requires being of a persian culture.

# Events
- Events relating to fires will now use fires on the map.
- Added event for Heraclea Pontica where they can choose to go Persian or Greek in the early game.
- Existing events updated to account for changes to families and minor characters.
- Added new Events related to Piracy.
- Added Flavor Events relating to Antigonus coronation.
- Added new Flavor Events for Armenia.
- Added new Flavor Events for Thrace.
- The event Grand temple collapses can now only happen to small countries.
- Added a number of new Flavor Events tied to Roman Missions.
- Added a number of new Flavor Events tied to Carthaginian Missions.
- Added new Flavor Events for Massalia.
- Added new Flavor Events for Caucasian Iberia.
- Added New Flavor Events for Pontus and Paphlagonia.
- Reworked Annexation event to allow taking in fewer people. Anyone accepted will be a Minor Character in their new homeland.

# Setup
- Some countries with recent historical conflicts will now have a negative opinion modifier at start to reflect this.
- Samnium is no longer allied with Lucania at start, instead Lucania is guaranteeing Samnium.
- Corinth now has a special modifier for their famous fortress.
- Reduced the effect of the Rhodian Fortification modifier by half.
- Added a number of new characters to the starting setup.
- Changed the Diadochi starting diplomacy to use alliances, these alliances break when the Epigoni event fires.
- Etruria is now an Oligarchic Republic at start.
- Scripted a number of historical starting families and characters for various countries.
- Added founders and main disciples of main philosophical schools (Peripatetic, Pyrrhonic, Stoic, Epicurean, Platonic, Eretrian, Cyrenaic).
Changed Latin culture group to Italic culture group.

# Map
- Added a number of new territories and countries in the Baltic area.
- Added new countries in Hibernia.
- Added new territories to Caledonia.
- Added new territories to Greece.
- Added new countries and territories in Sicily.
- The Ganges now has additional arms to the Ganges Delta and its tributary, Brahmaputra, is navigable up to Balipura.
- The Rhone/Rhodanus is now navigable up to Arelatis.
- The Garonne/Garumna is now navigable to Praemiacum.
- The Seine/Sequana is now navigable up to Avalocum.
- The Loire/Liger is now navigable up to Turonorum.
- The Elbe/Albis is now navigable to Aregellia.
- The Dniestr/Tyras is now navigable up to Clepidava.
- The Dniepr/Borysthenes is now navigable in the entirety of the portion before it enters impassable land.
- The Danube is now navigable up to the iron gates.

# Misc
- Various character interactions updated with prestige effects.
- Added Poseidon Omen for countries with capitals in: Corinth, Chalcis
- Added Herakles Omen for countries with capitals in: Acragas, Kos, Thasos
- Added Hephaeustus Omen for countries with capitals in: Acragas, Athens, Lemnos
- Added Asclepius Omen for countries with capitals in: Acragas, Epidauros
- Added Aphrodite Omen for countries with capitals in: Athens, Aphrodisias, Corinth, Paphos
- Added Eros Omen for countries with capitals in: Thespiai
- Added Hera Omen for countries with capitals in: Argos, Samos, Olympia, Elis, Ionia
- Added Artemis Omen for countries with capitals in: Ephesos, Delos, Ionia, the Nesiotic League
- Added Helios Omen for countries with capitals in: Corinth, Rhodes
- Added Persephone Omen for countries with capitals in: Locri
- Added Dionysus Omen for countries with capitals in: Amphipolis, Orchomenos, Naxos, Thebes, Boeotia, Nesiotic League
- Added Pan Omen for countries with capitals in: Arcadia
- Added the following Omens for Cretan countries: Diktynna, Eleuthya, Velchanos, Rhea, Diktean Zeus, Ariadne, Amaya, Karmanor
- Added the following Omens for Pontus: Herakles, Zeus Stratios, Selene, Cybele, Mithra, Men, Aphrodite, Dionysus.
- Added Colony Subject type, for now only used in Missions.
- Added more special flags for formable countries.

#######################
# Bugfixes
######################

# Stability & Performance
- Added more checking for invalid objects to prevent potential crashes

# Multiplayer & Out of Syncs
- Various fixes to Out of Syncs, especially related to hotjoining.

# Script and Events
- Fixed a number of issues with Food Events.
- Annexation Event should now work properly in Multiplayer.
- Made some changes to Slave Raid to clarify when there are no viable ports nearby, and when they have simply been recently raided.
- Fixed problem with event that turns tribal vassals into tributaries when they civilize.
- Stopped blind and one_eyed traits being held at same time.
- Fixed wrong province id in Babylon formation decision.
- Slave revolts that end in unowned territory will now still count as ended in the origin country.
- Added `has_siege = no` trigger to `city.20` which gives a free fort level
- Added divorce effects to monarchy affair events
- Added divorce effects to affair event options
- Mercenaries can no longer trigger the Military Restructuring even.
- Fixed Attalid triggers, not taking families with them, and reset_scoring scope.
- Fixed inordinate amounts of food being destroyed in Granary Fire.
- Fixes for city_events.2 scope and food_events context switch errors.
- Made sure Ambrakia becomes provincial as well as country capital when Pyrrhus returns.
- Stopped Friends Across Borders firing between countries fighting a war.
- Arsaces now creates the Arsacid family when he is spawned.

# Game Mechanic Bugs
- Slaves should no longer be added above the maximum population capacity of a territory.
- Slaves that are taken are now somewhat less likely to end up in the country capital.
- Fixed case where incoming migrating pops had a broken progress bar.
- Fixed right flanking units attack the left most unit instead of right most unit
- Navy combat now respects flanks and properly uses flanking units
- Local commerce modifiers now apply to monthly earnings.
- Succession laws now apply properly on events.
- River presence in provinces now properly calculated.
- Twins will now inherit relevant bloodline traits.
- Children of successor women will now inherit their families
- Firstborn rulers from bookmarks have their popularity set.
- Split army now doesn't care for unit loyalty, it only tries to create even stacks.
- A city is that is created with ongoing constructions that will produce invalid buildings will be interrupted.
- Fixed bug that could in rare cases generate empty retinues.
- Added the effect for reducing city rank to the harshest option of the city fall events.

# Text & UX
- Academies now show final research value improvement
- Fixed some UI flags not highlighting country
- Commerce income tooltip now counts bonuses granted by trade
- Centralization tooltip now shows information about active modifiers and changes.
- Consul now considered employed by character view filters
- Fixed event option for "Accident in X" being a bit too liberal with it's grammatical structure.
- Added gender neutral description for Olympics.
- All duplicate province names fixed.
- Improved presentation of Research Progress tooltip.
- The last event option for "Accident in [city]" event should now follow a more traditional notion of grammar.

# Misc
- AI will now better respect subject's overlord in finding war targets.
- Barbarians now stay for a couple of days after their last conquest.
- Fixed case where you could still declare war on a subject of a country you are fighting a war together with.
- Fixed rare crash when revolts failed.
- Fixed ship selection circle sometimes remaining on the map after the ship had been moved to a port.
- Changed trade goods in Laus and Stylacium to fish to give Calabria some food
- Fixed Lake Copais texture.
- Fixed Salamis port location
- Fixed the strait between Epidauros & Kythera going through the incorrect sea zone, causing faulty naval blockades
- Improved accuracy of Grand Trunk Road route and removed minor connecting routes.
- Empty families now get removed from play.
- add_{attribute} effect now properly adds value to attribute
- Fixed roof and wall flickering bug with tribal forts
- Gave movement arrows an outline to contrast better with terrain.
- Increased Stonehenge size from 1.0 to 1.7
- Made the Baltics more habitable-looking and opened up the forests for potential cities.
- A correct co-ruler will now be assigned.
- Build ships to navy now will build using naval distance for prioritization.
- Added a few wastelands around the map that didnt get colored when surrounded to the list of those that are colored.
- Added valid animation states for unit ability. If current animation state is listed in available animations than animation state won't change.
- Will now cancel movement if there is no access in target province anymore.
- Fixed the problem of State Improvements saying they'll take 2 years, and only actually taking 1.
- You can no longer abort assaults by retreating and then aborting the retreat.
- Mercenaries are no longer caught in an endless loop between two cities after employment.
 
I can't wait ;)
 
@Trin Tragula

I asked that for ages and have received no answer so far, but does the line: "Scripted a number of historical starting families and characters for various countries" mean that we finally get the Aemilii family for Rome? I am asking for this since ages and it seems still strange to me that the most important family of the 3. and 2. century BC is not in the game, especially since they have several consuls in the starting years of the game.
 
"- Line System: Lines will now mark ongoing migration and trade routes on the map, more clearly illustrating these features when you are looking at their respective interfaces."

Only knew about this for the trade interface which was nice but very welcome for immigration / migration as that's always been a cool mechanic that was just hard to visualize.

Also in general seems like there's just a lot of good QoL we didn't know about. A bit surprised about academies getting a buff as my impression has been that people mostly spam temple / theaters in all culturally contested areas while spamming academies in the main cities but maybe the big nerf to manpower might make freemen something worth fighting for with buildings?

Overall can't wait to play this tomorrow!
 
Wow that is a massiv patch. Thanks for that hard work. Looks like there will be more dynamic trouble in greek and persian area on start. Don't give up I:R, its near to the state to be one of my favorite games. Some important alerts on war ending seems to be still missing, hope for future patches to solve that. But it is all in the right direction from my perspective.
 
- Unit build costs increased by 20-30% across the board.

- The maximum manpower is now 20 years of Manpower gain rather than 25. Overall Manpower will now be lower as a result of this.
- Base Manpower reduced by 50%.
- Enslavement efficiency reduced across the board, by 25-50%

- Mercenary maintenance increased from 125% of normal unit maintenance to 200%.
[/spoiler]

Massive thank you for this changes, i really disliked the massive armies and gold in mid-late game, and this changes will definitely improve on this.
 
Can't wait, Cicero was a massive step in the right direction and I'm hoping Livy proves to be as well, the mission system looks solid, the character changes look smart, I'm more apprehensive about these supply trains, but that's mostly because I worry they will be balanced poorly and the AI to be awful with them, but those are issued worked out over time.

Can't wait to start up my first Rome campaign on this patch.
 
Massive thank you for this changes, i really disliked the massive armies and gold in mid-late game, and this changes will definitely improve on this.
I would go further and lower the maximum manpower by 1,000 for each cohort in the field, preventing countries from having large armies and large reserves of manpower.
 
I would go further and lower the maximum manpower by 1,000 for each cohort in the field, preventing countries from having large armies and large reserves of manpower.
I am not sure what you mean.

I believe the ultimate fix is setting a "maximum cohort cap" based on the combined martial of your military offices and/or generals in the field. And if the player were to surpass the cap then it would trigger a debuff to all cohorts something like "Too many cohorts to command effectively".
 
I didn't see anything mentionet in the notes about console. Will the console be back in the game with the patch?