Imperator: Rome Developer Diary - 9th of November 2020

[Bovrick]

I am not sure I like this mix of CK-style (levies) and Victoria-style (units tied to pops) mechanics. In a game focused on warfare it's important for players to have control over their army composition, not make do with some random chariots and LI. Levies remove this ability and force the player to use useless units and it seems that professional legions are gated by some reforms/laws.

I hope that Tech/Military Reforms/Government Laws/Cultural Laws all have their role to play in shaping the relationship between Culture-Class and their resulting Levies, to allow us to shape those compositions indirectly over the course of a game, but if definitely does force you into a corner when you're a less cosmopolitan nation. It's nice to have both scenarios, rather than a standard meta army template dominating almost every playthrough. There are also the Legions to help specialise.

I think the reduction of choice often can make games like these more strategic. Add in some more unit/tactic affinities to Terrains and things like that and you'll pull out a much more interesting game imo; all those small aspects like Terrain can be mostly ignored in most of PDXs GSGs when too much flexibility is offered.

I also don't like making governors into generals. There's already too few characters who are good at both military and administration skills, this would make the choice of governors extremely difficult

I see that difficulty as a positive rather than a negative. What are strategy games if not a series of interesting and tough tradeoffs in your decisions.

 

[toegut]

I think the reduction of choice often can make games like these more strategic. Add in some more unit/tactic affinities to Terrains and things like that and you'll pull out a much more interesting game imo; all those small aspects like Terrain can be mostly ignored in most of PDXs GSGs when too much flexibility is offered.

I think the choice is good, nobody's forcing a player to follow the meta, everybody can play as they want. I do not use war elephants or horse archers as Rome at early stage (before conquering Africa or Asia) for example even though I could recruit them. I also use a small amount of cavalry because the Romans did not have much cavalry in their armies. If somebody else wants to play Rome with fast horse archer armies, let them, it doesn't affect me (unless it's MP).

 

[TheMind]

Incredible update! Keep up the good work!

 

[Libertine Angel]

I am not sure I like this mix of CK-style (levies) and Victoria-style (units tied to pops) mechanics. In a game focused on warfare it's important for players to have control over their army composition, not make do with some random chariots and LI. Levies remove this ability and force the player to use useless units and it seems that professional legions are gated by some reforms/laws. I also don't like making governors into generals. There's already too few characters who are good at both military and administration skills, this would make the choice of governors extremely difficult

I think it makes a lot of historical sense, and I see the added composition issues as a good thing too as a means of preventing the current ability to steamroll with doomstacks.

 

[Ketchup & friends]

These changes overall are awesome!

Thanks to the devs for listening to player demands.

A few things that need to improved:

I. Armies levied in a big region seem extremely large. This could be problematic in many cases, a big army would be too unwieldy for

• multy-front wars vs small enemies
• low supply areas
• areas with many chokepoints (e.g in the Alps)

And raising a mega-levy would remove all revenue in a region, which might be excessive.

• Since you’ll make it possible to merge levies, it should be possible to split them and possibly disband some of the split levies.
• Allow raising only a part of all possible levies in a region

II. As already stated, pops dying due to stackwipes makes no sense and could have some gamebreaking consequences:

• a border region causes it to become depopulted and uncolonized. Therefore, the claimed area becomes uncoinquerable.
• A city-state’s levy is stackwhiped, the whole tag dies out and disappears.

In practice. pop death is a rare occurrence. Stackwipes themselves are rare, and only a proportion of units destroyed will result in a pop death. At the moment, it happens too rarely - I'd advise caution before jumping to conclusions.

Let’s see how this will play out after the patch.

Somewhat important Question: Are the screenshots in this DD and the previous DD from the same version of the game?

 

[toegut]

I see that difficulty as a positive rather than a negative. What are strategy games if not a series of interesting and tough tradeoffs in your decisions.

I agree that tradeoffs are good but not when the devs pile on modifiers which matter little in the end but make the micromanaging a nightmare. Do I want a governor with extra finesse or extra martial? Better extra martial because he'll be better at assaulting forts but his levies are horses anyway so better extra in finesse for more pop output but his levy will reduce pop output anyway so better extra in martial for more enslavement efficiency but he needs to build up his statesmanship so extra in finesse is better.... it's a micromanaging nightmare.

 

[Kinkness]

Since pops are tied to levies now, will you lose the pops if the unit is destroyed in battle? For example if one of your armies is completely wiped out would you lose the pops called up and thus take a hit in your economic output and everything related to pops?

They explained that in the post. Yes you do lose those pops economically.

 

[DmUa]

Good good good good good! Levies system should be a staple for all Pdx games with exception of ones that cover WWI and WWII.

 

[Nerdman3000]

@Trin Tragula

I really love the update, but I want to ask if there will be a way to determine how many pops are tied to levys and legions? Looking at the UI, I can’t see where that information is displayed.

 

[maurot12]

Great news HOWEVER...

I am worried about balancing issues, specially the army size. In the pics you provided the levy size is too big for rome, even with the 500 cohorts change. I am worried how late game ww2 size of armies will get worse, and even earlier it seems. We need mechanics that increase pop death across the board. Maybe make raise levies also affect food production, making it so that people starve during prolonged wars.

Also i noticed you didn't mention anything about manpower, maybe that's reserved for legions? I believe that manpower should be deleted from the game either way. Make it so that 1pop= X cohorts, so when you recruit a standing army you spend pops. Also when levies die they should 100% kill pops instead of manpower, not only in the case of stackwipe.

 

[Herennius]

I see that difficulty as a positive rather than a negative. What are strategy games if not a series of interesting and tough tradeoffs in your decisions.

Fully agree. I never liked that governors currently have become fairly one-dimensional compared to 1.1 (back in those times even Charisma and Zeal had an effect) - IMO, they should be a kind of "minor ruler" for their region, so every stat should matter.

 

[Bovrick]

I agree that tradeoffs are good but not when the devs pile on modifiers which matter little in the end but make the micromanaging a nightmare. Do I want a governor with extra finesse or extra martial? Better extra martial because he'll be better at assaulting forts but his levies are horses anyway so better extra in finesse for more pop output but his levy will reduce pop output anyway so better extra in martial for more enslavement efficiency but he needs to build up his statesmanship so extra in finesse is better.... it's a micromanaging nightmare.

It can't be both surely? Either the modifiers dont matter and there's barely a decision to be made, or they do matter and that's why you need to get into the weeds to make the best call?

Havent played it of course, but governors are scarce enough to make their selections an interesting decision for me.

 

[MohawkWolfo98]

We are not, and will never, be adding individual pop modifiers to the game

In practice. pop death is a rare occurrence. Stackwipes themselves are rare, and only a proportion of units destroyed will result in a pop death. At the moment, it happens too rarely - I'd advise caution before jumping to conclusions.

I would urge to not make it too rare. Whilst I of course do not want all my citizens and freemans to die after just 1 battle loss, please not make to too rare such that it is inconsequential so it becomes too meh and it then becomes a numbers game again. I would like there to be consequences

From a personal standpoint, being an ex-soldier previously myself, I like the fact that your previous games such as Vic II did have pop losses, rather than just a number decreasing. It does teach indirectly the lessons of war and how terrible war can be as well for the province, without going into the gory details which none of us want to see

I understand from a gameplay perspective seeing all ur pops die from just 1 war would be devastating and rage quit inducing, so hopefully u could provide a balance between pop losses and gameplay

 

[LSF]

I just hope it is not a step forward being closer to CK series.

If I want to play CK, I either play CK2 or CK3.

I want I:R to feel different, to be special in its own way.

If the next step is adopting characters in CK-style, making me a babysitter of dozens of characters, I'll give up I:R, for it will have turned into a kind of CK mod.

CK2 and CK3 are great games and I love to play CK2 when I want to laugh with crazy stuff. But I bought I:R looking for something different than previous titles.

Having said that, I loved the change!

I think it is the feature I liked the most in VIC2. This way a very warmongering tag can have economical problems because of permanent war. And a more peaceful approach can be achievable for those players who want a run in this way. Also dying pops is a great way to reduce performance problems in late game.

 

[Libertine Angel]

I just hope it is not a step forward being closer to CK series.

If I want to play CK, I either play CK2 or CK3.

I want I:R to feel different, to be special in its own way.

If the next step is adopting characters in CK-style, making me a babysitter of dozens of characters, I'll give up I:R, for it will have turned into a kind of CK mod.

I disagree, one of the things that drew me to the initial premise of the game was seeing it described as a hybrid of CK's character politics with more conventional nation management, so I'd love more depth to the former.

 

[HighChanceOfRai]

I just hope it is not a step forward being closer to CK series.

If I want to play CK, I either play CK2 or CK3.

I want I:R to feel different, to be special in its own way.

If the next step is adopting characters in CK-style, making me a babysitter of dozens of characters, I'll give up I:R, for it will have turned into a kind of CK mod.

CK2 and CK3 are great games and I love to play CK2 when I want to laugh with crazy stuff. But I bought I:R looking for something different than previous titles.

Having said that, I loved the change!

I think it is the feature I liked the most in VIC2. This way a very warmongering tag can have economical problems because of permanent war. And a more peaceful approach can be achievable for those players who want a run in this way. Also dying pops is a great way to reduce performance problems in late game.

Yeah I don't think there's anything here to indicate its trending towards being a ck2 clone, I'd say you're safe!

 

[Kill_off1004]

I love that it givers another reason to integrate cultures

 

[Praetorian44]

@Trin Tragula For modders, can we change which levy types are produced by a culture throughout the course of a campaign? For example, can we have a culture produce light infantry in the early game, but then change them to producing riflemen later in the game?
EDIT: An additional modding question, will we be able to adjust the percentage of each type of troops a pop provides throughout a game? Such as having a cultural policy that results in pops of that culture producing more cavalry units?

 

[master_kong]

I disagree, one of the things that drew me to the initial premise of the game was seeing it described as a hybrid of CK's character politics with more conventional nation management, so I'd love more depth to the former.

If we were to choose two Pdx GSGs to merge as a one-game like a dream come true, I would choose Victoria 2 and CK. I:R is that game and this is awesome!

 

[LSF]

...
II. As already stated, pops dying due to stackwipes makes no sense and could have some gamebreaking consequences:

• a border region causes it to become depopulted and uncolonized. Therefore, the claimed area becomes uncoinquerable.
• A city-state’s levy is stackwhiped, the whole tag dies out and disappears.

...

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

I guess only a portion of POPs will be part of the cohorts. I suppose the chosen laws will tell how many POPs will be part of the raised levies.

And since slaves will never be part of the levies there is no risk of complete depopulating of border provinces due to wars.