Dev Diary 20: Unit rework + Religion reworks + Germanic content part 2
----------- Vandals -----------------
The last time when we talked about Germania in a DD, we left you a hint for the second part of this region’s rework: the eye of Sauron. Obviously, the dark lord won’t appear in Invictus, but the CoA of Haria is based somewhat on it:
Tacitus noted that the Hari, a sub-tribe of the Lugians, preferred the colour black and that the piercing gaze of their “infernal army” was not easy to behold. Now this also means that there will no longer be Lugia (right side) at the beginning of the game and instead several ‘notable’ Lugian tribes. Although Tacitus mentions that there were way more Lugian tribes, so he concentrated only on the ones that seemed notable to him.
Tribes with the Vandal culture will be able to pursue a new mission tree with two exclusive formables (the tasks are marked blue below). You can either embrace the ‘more advanced’ Celtic religion and society structure and form the Lugian Confederation or refute foreign influence and directly become Vandalia. Vandalia can also be formed after forming Lugia via a decision, but will require you to cut back on the Celtic influence and advance your society further; just like the Lugian Confederation was replaced by Vandalia again in the late 2nd to 3rd century AD.
There are economical tasks dealing with the Amber Road and advancing your economy by using Celtic know-how, religious tasks asking you to establish a holy site and create a face urn artifact, and finally there are tasks dealing with the Suebian minority. We know from archaeology that a sizable Suebian minority migrated to the east in the 4th and 3rd centuries BC and lived a bit separated from the Vandal population. However, this changed in the late 3rd and early 2nd centuries BC, as those Suebians seemingly became the avant garde of the new Celtic influenced culture.
The last row also contains two optional missions to expand in the direction the Vandals did later on.
---------- Southern Baltic Coast -------
Further to the north, we can find Lemovia, Rugia and Guthonia, which are going to get a mission tree specific to them. The bottom left mission tasks require you to get access to the sea and foster your amber production, also called “glesum” by the local population (the English word glass is related to this), as well as your rye production (the name Rugia derives from the word proto-Germanic word for rye). Following the left path will lead your focus towards the north, first to the Cimbrian Peninsula as well as the southern Baltic coast and then finally to Scandia.
Alternatively, you can focus more on the right path, though you will need to also establish relations with the people of the Cimbrian peninsula. This is the historical path that starts with looking to the west and north for role models until you migrate further to the east and decide between the Gothic direction towards the Black Sea or the Rugian direction towards the Alps.
Currently there are no plans to include a mission tree dealing with the Gothic kingdom in Italy in the Germania rework, but this is something we have in mind.
------- Bastarnae and Sciri -----
The final eastern Germanic tree is a very narrow and small tree guiding the player towards migrating with either Bastarnia or Sciria to the Black Sea. First you need to pack your things and then go on the journey. At arrival, the primary tasks are building up your defenses and getting to the favourable position around the Danube Delta. The final task gives you a bonus until the end of the game. Optionally, you can secure an alliance with Makedonia by offering them your mercenary services and expanding into Moesia, or you can bring havoc upon the Greek colonies.
Note from Snowlet: a lot, if not all of these germanic mission trees will most likely not be in the next update.
------- Unit rebalancing -----
Greetings fellow Invictus people, Parcipal here to supply you with the freshest meme… uhm… to reveal some of my latest work!
Today I’ll be introducing you to some balance changes on a rather sensitive topic: “Warfare”.
Warfare is probably the thing in which you’ll be spending a majority of your time within Imperator(closely followed by letting your AE tick down, obviously!).
Thus caution has to be taken, speaking about War, Units and Balance.
But enough of a precarious measure, more of the actual changes:
-I’ve been tinkering with a rather interesting concept of adding a slight “Morale Damage Taken” modifier (and subsequently increasing it on units, which the modifier is already present) across the board to speed up battles. No great Battle should carry on, virtually, forever. This should, in theory, speed up the battleflow, diminish losses *somewhat* and allow a more diverse Unit-composition for the player. (Gone are the days of 2 viable frontline units!)
On the contrary, units with an unusually high “Morale Damage Taken” modifier get their value reduced slightly, so they may inflict a tiny bit more damage before “routing”.
-Maneuver got buffed on most units to allow a broader selection of flanking units. This includes “Light Infantry”, which should allow them to be a rather mediocre unit for anyone without access to Horses or Steppe Horses.
This concludes “across the board” changes to most units, but worry not, many units got their efficiencies adopted to properly reflect their historical use against one-another.
Now onto more specific changes to highlight some of the nearly-forgotten units.
-Camels have, in my eyes, been neglected by PDX for a little bit. Supposedly a good counter against Horses in combat, while also allowing armies to traverse terrain, while having sufficient supply due to their Carry-capacity. To summarize: An overall good addition to any army (which is not consisting of Horses, solely. You wouldn’t want to scare your own horses!). To reflect this ingame, they have been turned into a rather good counter against any type of horse, while also having a hugely increased food-capacity, making them viable as a “budget”-supply train.
-Warelephants tend to dominate the battlefield, however, they’re fairly slow. I took some of their initial strength away, especially their efficiency against Elephants (On the contrary, Archers have an added bonus of +10% efficiency against Elephants, so Frontline battles might turn in favour of Archers, if it’s still a loss, you’ll economically drain your enemy!)
-Chariots are an interesting Unit (and I sometimes question their military presence within the Games’ Timeframe, but then I remember Albion) received a slight buff, to give tribes a bit more punching-power against the more civilized nations!
Here’s a list of the currently changed Unit efficiencies, they are still subject to change, ofcourse!
As you may see, Heavy Infantry didn’t receive any buffs/nerfs in the table, but more on that in the next segment!
If you got any feedback about weird unit-matchups or mismatching things, feel free to supply any concerns about the unit changes, but let’s move onto the most concerning unit!
Concluding my part of the Dev-diary with our most extensive (proposed) change:
Heavy Infantry
Well, I told you, memes are my passion!
However, this meme perfectly portraits the inherent problem with “Heavy Infantry”.
Unifying Spears and Swords into a single unit creates a lot of balance problems, regarding exactly this unit.
Either it’s efficient against everything, making it the absolute unit, thus outperforming everything else. Or you nerf it, while buffing most other units, making it irrelevant!
There’s a very fine line, especially with Heavy Infantry.
We came up with a list of proposals, here’s a quick summary of each one:
A.) Try to balance the unit, without interfering with Vanilla unit-balance too much, revisiting most Heavy-Infantry modifiers, subsequently diminishing those. (Ideal option for the AI and comes with no risks)
B.) Turn Heavy Infantry into a pure “Anchor” unit, severely diminishing their offensive capabilities, while keeping/buffing their defensive values. (However there are concerns that the AI might not be able to handle it properly and it isn’t well explained for new players)
C.) Separate Swordsmen from Spearmen, giving them both their own role and therefore efficiencies. (This would however come at the cost of another unit type most likely so not ideal)
You can vote here:
https://strawpoll.vote/polls/76qfcnc6/vote
I’m well aware that 2 out of the 3 proposals are a rather “radical” change and that they require a decent amount of balance and some proper playtesting, but I’d like to sample your feedback on this one, figuring this will be a stepping stone for some military reworks.
------- Religion Rework -----
Dementive here, I’d like to show off some changes that have been made to the many different religions in the game. In vanilla there is very little difference between religions, whether you are playing as a Jain nation in India or a Druidic nation in Gaul, the experience is nearly the exact same. The only real differences between religions now are events and the modifiers which they give, so in Vanilla each religion gives 1 modifier, except for Judaism which gives 3. To balance this and make a distinction between the different religions each religion now has multiple unique modifiers like Judaism does in vanilla. However, some of the modifiers are good and some are bad so each religion will have unique bonuses and challenges.
Here we can see a few of the new religious modifiers:
***All modifiers shown may be changed later and shouldn’t be taken too seriously***
These changes to modifiers will hopefully make each religion more unique. However, these are not the only changes that are planned. We are also looking into making many more unique religious events and decisions that will further differentiate each religion, more on this in a future dev diary.
Note from Snowlet: these modifiers may at times appear harsh but they are a way for us to represent the vast societal differences between the world and in the case of Hindu to simulate the Caste system, we’ll elaborate on it further and we’ll work heavily on making them interesting and historical.
