Imperator - Sunday Morning Design Corner - May 5th 2019

[cristofolmc]

Good to hear. I am concerned about you thoughts on mana and how you refues to create more complex and fun systems. From what I see on the forums, is a majority that doesnt like it, not just a few. By the way, I dont understand its porpuse. Its original purpose was to stop snowballing. Well, it certainly doesnt. Once you have enough money, youre unstoppable. Heck, youve even created an achievment for snowballing: to conquer the world. Mana only makes you have to wait for magic power pull to fill, but nothing else. Doesbt make for a fun game at all. You just have to wait for it to refill. I think now that you have pops and specially characters, those should be the very factors that become more problematic as you grow and slower your expansion and prevent snowballing.

This looks good! I agree that the AI isn't bad. It can be improved, but it still puts on a challenge if you play a small country. (of course as Rome you'll find the AI easy).

I think people need to be a little bit patient and wait until 1.1 as well as mods (HOI4 replayability was improved a lot by mods, I believe in ParadoxCon it was mentioned that 50% of players played with mods or something like that?)

While the game needs some improvement like most new games, it absolutely doesn't deserve the negative review bombing that's happening. But it'll eventually disappear as more updates come from the development team and more mods start popping up.

Speaking of feedback, there is some feedback that's reasonable, like moving pops. I feel it can be tedious to micromanage pops. I think you should consider adding a dynamic immigration system.

It's something that's moddable anyway, and I'm personally working on a mod that implements it. But it would be cool if there's some form of dynamic immigration in the vanilla game. Here's an example (it can be something like reducing taxation on a certain pop type to encourage foreign pops to migrate to that province overtime rather than having to move them one by one:

That is awesome! Im definitely gonna use it if you release it as a standalone mod with nothing else. Please please @Johan add this into the game so we can use it in ironman. A good city based mechanic to encourage migration without instantly happening and with use of magic mana and not limited to adjacent cities needs to be into the game!

 

[Trin Tragula]

The bonus for religions will be moddable?

Of course

 

[magriboy0750]

Thanks a lot.

 

[Samitte]

I have said before launch that this is the best game I’ve made, and I stand by it still. 1.0 of Imperator is the best 1.0 we have ever made of a game.

I certainly agree with you, having played Pdox games since CK. I really enjoy the game and some of the new fuctions that were added are great. Road building is surprisingly fun, which will be even better with the upcoming QoL change. And it feels like EU:Rome but more functional and with a much more alive world.

• Ledger, I regret cutting it, but there will be a first version in 1.1

• Macrobuilding functionality: While we hadn’t planned diplomatic or army template macrobuilder for 1.0, we should have focused on having better interface for impact of what you are building.

• Colonisation & Pop Management. It is functional, but not optimal. We definitely need to improve here.

Glad to hear this, those elements right now is a bit frustrating sometimes. I was wondering if that includes plans to show modifiers like local_cohort_recruit_speed/_starting_experience too?

Here is a small peek at a work in progress UI...

Looks good! But I am still unsure what that Barbarian Power icon is doing. I have so far never seen a province with a city where Barbarian Power was growing and it feels kind of useless to me. About the buildings : I'd personally prefer to see a separate side window for buildings like in EUIV or CKII that you actively open and can keep closed otherwise. In both the current version of Imperator and what you're working on it doesn't look very good I think.

I understand that effort and intent is not the same as result, but AI was something we did focus a lot on.

And I do think the AI is a bit better, but there are a few quirks that they keep doing which severely weaken them. Especially how they deal with attrition ends up eating their manpower pool at times, as they leave their forces in terrain with constant or frequent attrition.

The base game will continue to use these currencies, as they make for a better game, but I acknowledge that there is a group of people who dislike them, and prefer another experience, so we will improve the game, to be able to support it.

I dont dislike them personally, but I am really against the instant effect they have on certain aspects of the game. I much prefer the way things seem to be going now with them giving boosts over time (like with stability) which fits better with the abstraction those currencies provide. Instead of Using Currency = Instant change, Using Currency = A concerted effort by part of the state to attempt to convert/assimilate a group of people/calm the populace and increase national stability. On the other side, I do think this is something that could work well with Moving pops too where you spend power to attempt to stimulate people to move from one city/province to another as opposed to them moving instantly.

First of all, we are adding bonuses to each religion, so that different religions have different impacts. That in itself does not make the game suddenly great, but it gives a bit more flavor.

Nice, bit more flavor. Question though: By "impacts" do you also mean the different bonuses from Omens that you have access to? Or will they remain the same across religions?

I was kinda naive, in that I assumed that people would see the game we were selling, and judge it from that. We streamed enormously, and sent it to losts of youtubers, and were honest about what was in it.

I'm surprised by this too on one level: The Dev Diaries literally were a weekly update of what to expect from the game and so were really obvious in what you'd get and how things from previous DD's changed. On the other hand people were making assumptions of what the game was/wasn't going to be constantly all the way through development, despite of the weekly update of how the game was shaping up. So I do think there is a large enough crowd who doesn't read them, or reads them with a lot of wishful thinking and ends up being dissapointed and venting their anger/dissapointment at you (as the public face of the game) which I consider unfair. I think the way Pdox handled it was fine, and I hope you wont change the way you share the development with us. I think it is one of your strongest points as a studio: I feel very much involved in the development of your games with the weekly updates both before and post-release.

 

[IcePenguin]

While the game needs some improvement like most new games, it absolutely doesn't deserve the negative review bombing that's happening. But it'll eventually disappear as more updates come from the development team and more mods start popping up.

It's disrespectful to lump the negative reviews into just being review bombs. It's great that there's people enjoying the game, but there's also people that are not. I personally don't recommend the game due to how empty it feels at the moment. It really needs more flavour. I still keep an eye out for the improvements, since i think the game could be fun if they had only worked some more on the game.

I'm tired of seeing people disregard the complaints people got with the game. There's some people that just makes a complaint without anything to it, but that's the minority. And i highly doubt all these complaints come from new players. We all love Paradox games. We know they can do better than this.

 

[LeSingeAffame]

Omen diversification in 1.1 some cases goes beyond one set per religion. Rome with Hellenic religion will not have the same Omens available to it as a a Greek Hellenic state
Likewise a Ptolemaic Egypt patronizing the Serapis cult will have different Omens than the Native Egyptian Dodokaskoinos to their south.

Could you share an example?
I suppose that for example Jainism would lose their discipline / manpower omen, but what would they get in exchange?

 

[Nicolas-]

That is awesome! Im definitely gonna use it if you release it as a standalone mod with nothing else. Please please @Johan add this into the game so we can use it in ironman. A good city based mechanic to encourage migration without instantly happening and with use of magic mana and not limited to adjacent cities needs to be into the game!

I intend on making an immersion mod that adds among other things some new dynamic mechanics for both immigration and promotion/demotion, conversion etc...

But I could end up seperating them as seperate mods.

I initially wanted to make Vicky 2 style pops (as in they have their own wealth etc), the only obstacle was that set_variable doesn't seem to work with pops. If only you could add it @Johan so that we could mod vicky 3 in I:R

 

[13Foxtrot]

There should not have been any surprises from a gameplay standpoint. Most of this is well documented.....the biggest issue, from what I see, is the world in which the game lives in. While the features will evolve over time like most Paradox games, the world in which Imperator lives in is actually fairly boring. There is a bit of a wash rinse repeat. Because of the small world, and non-globalist aspect, the game needs to be about the journey, ie the characters, families and intrigue. From a feature standpoint it is not there yet.

 

[henzington]

Fairly or unfairly, many are comparing the game to what has been added over several years to ck2 or eu4.

I personally found it annoying I couldn’t just click on an overseas province and have the fleet come and move the troops.

Then, I remembered that this feature was added quite awhile after launch in eu4 and still doesn’t exist in ck2

 

[Trin Tragula]

Could you share an example?
I suppose that for example Jainism would lose their discipline / manpower omen, but what would they get in exchange?

I cannot right now but I might add one to the DD tomorrow

 

[LeSingeAffame]

I cannot right now but I might add one to the DD tomorrow

If you do not, my disappointment will be immeasurable and my day will be ruined

 

[cristofolmc]

I intend on making an immersion mod that adds among other things some new dynamic mechanics for both immigration and promotion/demotion, conversion etc...

But I could end up seperating them as seperate mods.

I initially wanted to make Vicky 2 style pops (as in they have their own wealth etc), the only obstacle was that set_variable doesn't seem to work with pops. If only you could add it @Johan so that we could mod vicky 3 in I:R

I mean you could do both. Have it all in one mod (which im sure Ill play as well if it goes the way of vicky 3), and have some of its best features separate such as this one for people who may not want to play the mod but want to use that very handy feature. Cant wait to play both anyway I hope that gets fixed. Having pop to have their own happiness, culture, religion AND wealth would be awesome.

 

[Borgratz]

Sounds like a good postlaunch plan. Especially the focus on making countries more unique.

I know Imperator isn't EU4, but is there any reason you didnt copy over the new mission system from EU IV? It gives a lot of flavor and direction to playing different nations.

 

[Emre Yigit]

@Johan and @Trin Tragula

Thank you. And Johan, if you feel perplexed by the barebones comments, I'd be more than happy to do this over PM. Until then, remember that not everyone played the first Rome game. Most of us are coming off EU and CK.

 

[Demetrios of M]

It is always good to see the Developers share their thoughts!

I've grown to keep expectations reasonable at game release and this game turned out fine for me. As Johan said, the content was largely transparent by the big amount of streaming, so it was relatively easy to see what you are going to get. Of course I am looking forward to improvements, and have my own wishlist, but the game is already quite enjoyable to me (unlike strategy games from other franchises at release).

I think most people are disappointed because they were expecting lots of features from other games to be imported to I:R, which apparently is not intended, as different games are supposed to have different core features and not just different timelines. Also, as Johan implied when commenting on shallowness, several game feature are not so easy for the player to find and experiment with to enhance his experience (I do not endorse this, but it is quite common for most games released today and even more so for PDS).

 

[Cymsdale]

This all sounds fantastic. I especially love the new province UI. It has exactly what I thought was missing (good call shoving the city list into a side view).

I'm intrigued in the greater visibility of character interactions. There is definitely a principle of game design in that no matter how intricate and well-designed a game system is, if the player doesn't see it, it doesn't exist. It definitely feels like there is something under the surface to all the character stuff, but as it is now it is mostly invisible. Even the ambitions themselves are something I barely remember to ever look at.

 

[gekj]

Could you consider to have a limit on stocking mana ? like on Stellaris where ressources are capped ?

 

[Serenity84]

I understand that there is a part of the community that dislike abstracted currencies like prestige, monarch power, influence or political power, they do make it into games that are possible to balance and

I have no problem with prestige in CK2, influence in Stellaris or political power in HOI4. Some level of abstraction is needed of course. And while they are abstract currencies they still have a clear meaning. And most importantly they aren't at the core of the game the way the abstract currencies are in EU4 and I:R. They have limited uses and there is plenty of things you can do without them. In CK2 for example prestige and piety are a non-issue in large realms (too much maybe, but I like that you aren't constantly restricted by them). In Stellaris, once you've stopped expanding, influence becomes less important. In EU4/I:R however, every decision is about spending mana

I also think the whole thing is more necessary in EU4 than here. I:R has characters that could be used for a lot of this stuff instead. It could have been a nice mix between CK2 and EU4 in that way. When I first heard the game that's why I expected

Then there is the fact that actions are instant. That's just bad. I can see why you don't want to rely purely on random chance for things like culture and religious conversion. But to instantly convert anything is absurd and breaks immersion completely. Especially culture takes a long time to change. You'd think a game about Rome would actually have some mechanics for multi-culturalism and religious syncrenticism

 

[Cymsdale]

Could you consider to have a limit on stocking mana ? like on Stellaris where ressources are capped ?

This will be an unpopular suggestion, but it makes tons of sense. It feels a bit off that the great oratory power of your ruler 4 generations ago can be stockpiled up in order to accomplish a bunch of tasks decades later. Power caps don't solve this issue completely, but they can alleviate it a lot.

 

[EvilKnievel82]

Here is a small peek at a work in progress UI...

View attachment 477928

This looks like a good improvement on some issues I have (not seeing the demographics for culture/religion of a province), BUT the pie charts that are already present in the game are not well done unfortunately. Currently it is very hard to get any information out of them about smaller groups (e.g. the jewish pops in rome at the start vs. the helenic part of the demographic) when you hover over them. Maybe just make the tooltip show all groups at once instead of just the piepiece the mouse hovers over?