Imperator: Rome Developer Diary - 9th of November 2020

[Bovrick]

It would be cool to do something with countries like sparta or Macedon which used levies but these were veteran of other wars. This was thebcase with the roman legions as well. They were landowners and citizens that were called to arms in levies but had fought in previous wars and were very experience.

I hope levies keep experience and keep it for very long when they are not rised, so if you call them again in 5 years it doesnt feel likenits an unprofesional unexpirienced new levy, but a professional veteran one.

Some countries could have a slower decay modifier (sparta).

There's some notion of a Region's Levy being treated as a whole being coded in, given that they are raised an disbanded as a whole, so I could see a route to storing the Experience level at disbandment, and showing it (and any decay) to the player on the Military screen. Would be nice if there were some other Region-level modifiers on the Levies - for example you could have Investments or Buildings contribute to an overall Discipline modifier or something. Or a connection between Happiness and Morale summarised into the Regional level.

 

[Rabid]

Will you be able to raise levies from territories owned by your client states? If yes, who will lead them?

They have quite conspicuously avoided mentioning clients and subjects so far, given that a rework here was previously slated for an earlier patch I would assume that there are going to be a lot of changes with respect to subject states and hopefully we will get an update on that relatively soon

 

[Wenla]

Once again this game is evolving. Fine.

 

[Paghalay]

I actually really love the change to levies, I was sceptical in how it would work when I first saw it suggested, but having it on a governor basis I think adds more to the roleplay of having governors be more important.
Does this mean that when a province/ governor becomes disloyal they will raise the levy immediately or only when they're starting a rebellion or civil war? Also with this new importance to governors, is it more likely that they will get ambitions of their own and aim to take over themselves?

 

[Parzival2211]

This is really great! I love it.

 

[Razmorg]

They have quite conspicuously avoided mentioning clients and subjects so far, given that a rework here was previously slated for an earlier patch I would assume that there are going to be a lot of changes with respect to subject states and hopefully we will get an update on that relatively soon

Oh man I hope we'll get that. With the new system it makes sense to split out certain cultures as subjects so they can help militarily.

 

[HOPPALAAA]

It’s funny we have waited this long for an important stepping stone for imperator. I give 9 out of 10 (-1 is for its sloppy pace)

I think this is the best dev diary so far.

levy system: finally...

Levy Composition: great

Army-pop-culture relation: great— please bear in mind the city-states. Maybe they can be buffed in defensive wars if they already have not. Though enlistment
Shouldn’t be based on a culture’s acceptance or not. Rather it should be related to the drafting laws. We see empires using ‘barbarian’ levies, right? Maybe, legions should be related with a cultures acceptance or not, a long with unlocking that particular countries military tradition, which is also great

governor-commander: great. This gives a great idea. Maybe we should get more governor related event THAT will provide as a chance to add/remove traits from them— this leads to retouch of characters though. Character-traits are currently very dull and non-static

 

[ToToLaFriTe]

I gave up with this game but I will give it another chance. I have to admit that these changes are going to be AWESOME !

Revamp the trade system and the interactions betweens characters and there we go, we have a great game.

 

[DeluxeQuestion]

Is it possible to make the new UI change colour, depending on the played country?

Red is obviously a great fit for rome, but how about blue for the seleucids, green for Thrace and so on...

Is something like that planed?

 

[StrifeXIII]

Is it possible to make the new UI change colour, depending on the played country?

Red is obviously a great fit for rome, but how about blue for the seleucids, green for Thrace and so on...

Is something like that planed?

Arheo hinted at this in the DD #101, though it won't happen in the 2.0 Marius patch, it seems the devs have left the door open to this idea.

Part of the behind-the-scenes advantages of this overhaul is also to support easier modding, color switching, and the potential for culturally thematic UI themes (though with the scope of 2.0, it should be said that we will not be adding any of this in the immediate future).

 

[IsaacCAT]

I want to apologize, this threat is about the DD and I have gone off-topic.

@maurot12 has a great thread to discuss about theorizing after this DD:

Very Important, I am worried about balancing issues in 2.0, suggestions to balance.

Hello, i love the new levies feature, but i believe it will worsen game balance significantly. Since game release late game in I:R was similar to a ww1 scenario with infinite manpower/gold and 1million+ armies (in my opinion this is caused by...

forum.paradoxplaza.com

 

[Ketchup & friends]

Pops die in VIC1 and VIC2 alongside with dying armies and the games arent broken because of that.

In Vic2, only soldier POPS contribute to units and the player doesn't need to recruit them all-or-nothing.

What you can do to affect how many of your pops are raised is change your economic policy for your armies, these can increase or decrease the portion of your integrated population that you call to arms.
Laws also affect the percentage of people levies, with republican laws especially allowing you to levy a larger part of your population, should you so wish. Each tradition tree also contains a 5% levy size buff should you choose to go for it.

What about gender equality?

Lastly Rome rather famously was able to raise quite big armies from its citizens, this is reflected in an additional levy size % boost for the Roman heritage in particular, which is part of the big levy you can see the in the screenshot. It is a bit of a double edged sword as you say

But Rome as also able to recruit new armies after disastrous losses like Trebia or Cannae.
And there should be no need to raise tens of thousands soldiers to fight off a few thousand enemies, crippling the civilian economy.

 

[Álvaro Núñez de Lara]

I actually really love the change to levies, I was sceptical in how it would work when I first saw it suggested, but having it on a governor basis I think adds more to the roleplay of having governors be more important.
Does this mean that when a province/ governor becomes disloyal they will raise the levy immediately or only when they're starting a rebellion or civil war? Also with this new importance to governors, is it more likely that they will get ambitions of their own and aim to take over themselves?

Really good question! It would be interesting to know if rebelious unloyal governors stop you from levying armies on their provinces and if they levy them themselves, increasing their powerbase and makign civil wars a more of a reality!

 

[WARenie]

In Vic2, only soldier POPS contribute to units and the player doesn't need to recruit them all-or-nothing.


What about gender equality?


But Rome as also able to recruit new armies after disastrous losses like Trebia or Cannae.
And there should be no need to raise tens of thousands soldiers to fight off a few thousand enemies, crippling the civilian economy.

1) No, in vic2 during mobilization most of armies are consisting from common folks and soldiers pops are just core army with artillery, engineers and tanks. And levies should be compared with exactly with mobilization, while legions with standing armies.
3) Just raise army in closer territory with lesser amount of mobilized pops - you don't need levies from your overpopulated Campania core lands to fight in Siria. But ability to lower conscription rates in specific territories would be nice.

 

[LSF]

I do not consider VIC1 or VIC2 broken because of that, but I consider wars with high causalities a bit unrealistic due to it. For most of history, countries could regain their complete manpower in about 20 years. In VIC1 or VIC2, not so much.

The unrealism comes not from the game mechanics in VIC games. It comes from the mere fact they are games. In games all wars are total wars, with a level of carnage unlikely to be seen IRL.

 

[LSF]

In Vic2, only soldier POPS contribute to units and the player doesn't need to recruit them all-or-nothing.
...

You are wrong.

That is true only for the standing army.

When you mobilize the country for war, all craftsmen, clerks, farmers, labourers, artisans, they all contribute to the conscripted army.

The proportion of them who is raised depends on the size of mobilization pool (I dont remember if it is the correct name, though).

And if they have 5,000 casualties, e.g., the POPs lose 5,000 people.

This is something VIC system is much better than I:R and Stellaris, there are real population numbers related to POPs.

IMHO I:R should go this way, true numbers for population. Then it can throw the very idea of manpower into the waste bin.

 

[Flavius Anthemius]

Wouldn't this break the balance of battles? How can a nation fight without archers or foot infantry? Are cultures like the Parthians cavalry only? I think the bonus system works better because it lets you have preference for certain kind of troops without neglecting other important combat roles.

You should, at least, be able to copy your neighbors units perhaps with lower quality. More even so if you are losing wars against them. The persians at least hired greek mercenaries.

Don't get me wrong. I'm glad armies are being worked on. I just have reservations on whether this will render most nations too weak.

 

[klopkr]

This might be the coolest dev diary yet.

I really can't wait to see how this feels and see if this will be a good case for other paradox games like ck3.

 

[Vanhal]

Does that means we will need to haul the armies across the world with embarking and all that every single time we go to war?

 

[Syroc]

Will we be able to split up the levies? Like, in order to force-march cavalry units from a further away region in order to bolster an army on the front faster? Because I can see how that would cause problems both ways, with the system described here. If you can, then what's stopping players from just stripping units away from the armies of less martially-inclined governers and rending this change to just an annoyance? And if not, then suddenly army composition is going to be a whole lot more tedious to deal with, and it's going to make some nations downright impossible to play without relying heavily on save-scumming more than they already do. (And it also nerfs my opening strategy of putting my ruler on a horse and just razing every city I can get to, then hiring mercs to pick up the slack. So that's annoying.)

Further, have you guys put any thought to expanding what these new armies actually accomplish? Because while taking slaves is great and all, and stealing artifacts is hilarious when you can manage it, we're still really limited in terms of what war actually accomplishes.