Dev Diary 31: MacOS change and Balancing
Salvete! Apologies for being late btw but this will be the second the last Dev Diary this year as we’ll be taking a christmas break lasting until the 10th of January and starting with a final DD and update on the 20th of December.
First off we have a reminder about the threadmark system, then an announcement about map-and MacOS development, then we have some tweaking to Religious conversion and Culture assimilation. Finally we have further work on the spearmen.
Note: I wish to remind people that the forum provides easy navigation through all DD's using the threadmark system on the top-right:
that's it, it's easy to use and indexes all Dev Diaries for us. Now onto the map.
Shocky27 here with an update on how we will proceed with map extensions moving forward:
We have run into a problem with MacOS crashing after adding a certain number of provinces (after number 8258 to be exact). While this can be pushed a little over in rare cases, we will not be able to add any more provinces for people playing on MacOS. Exceptions files show the error to be possibly memory related and inherent to Mac hardware and how it reads game files, and can’t be avoided unless we use a completely different map like some other overhauls do. For now, this means that from the next major update, MacOS will need to subscribe to a separate mod which we will list when the next major update becomes available.
That being said, as a small teaser for the next expansion area (Windows only)…
Now onto the perpetual Balancing task that is a Grand Strategy game as presented by yours truly, Snowlet.
We all agreed in the Invictus team that conversion and assimilation was too quick. Now we have taken steps to remedy this before but the recent AI rework worsened the problems as it made the AI smarter at converting areas leading to huge Hellenic blobs. An easy way to come closer to making it realistic is by adjusting the base pop type percentages to assimilation and conversion. You see each pop type has a percentage modifier being applied to conversion and assimilation and we've been experimenting with changing them. Here is our current iteration pending more testing (these numbers aren't final and not as harsh as they might initially seem).
| Pop Type: | Nobles | Citizens | Freemen | Slaves | Tribesmen |
| Cultural Assimilation | | | | | |
| Invictus: | 0.4 | 0.3 | 0.2 | 0.1 | 0.05 |
| Vanilla: | 0.4 | 0.6 | 0.6 | 0.6 | 0.4 |
| Religious Conversion | | | | | |
| Invictus: | 0.5 | 0.4 | 0.2 | 0.15 | 0.1 |
| Vanilla: | 0.4 | 0.6 | 0.6 | 0.6 | 0.4 |
After initial testing, it slows down conversion a lot to roughly the levels we want it to be but for the Cultural assimilation we'll certainly look further into adjusting them. It is worth noting that we are basing the ratio upon what happened historically and who would convert first, aka mainly the Nobles and Citizens, but the numbers will be based upon what is best for balancing. These changes will come in the Christmas update next monday.
Hello there, Parcipal here with some news regarding Unit Balancing.
First of all, Spearmen had a rather poor launch, due to personal reasons, but for now they’re in a playable state, due to Snowlets’ effort to drop fast Hotfixes for crucial things.
Furthermore, tweaking has not stopped. We’re currently in the process to streamline and especially refine levy templates to accommodate for historical immersion, as well as gameplay fun. While many cultures already enjoy the benefits of spearmen in their roster, their viability is not where I’d like it to be. (This is partially due to the lack of Spearmen-modifier propagation, which, right now, is lackluster.) (*).
You may totally expect more changes to the initial efficiencies of spearmen (or vice versa, other units’ efficiencies against spearmen.)
Yet another unit, which still under performs according to my latest tests (and with the current workshop version), are camels. Their supply-boost proved to be decent, but could still be notched up. However, the AI is having less supply problems with a camel focused levy/legion.
Another part, which was totally out of my brain-scope were tactics. The next hotfix should include a proper integration of spearmen into the different Tactics. (**)
As a last, on the To-Do-List of spearmen is their UI appearance and localization. Spearmen, currently, do not benefit from our culturally distinct naming convention, regarding units, in edge case they share the same Name as culturally-localized infantry. (i.e Rome- Hastati)
I’m looking to alleviate this.(***) Slight visual bugs may have been seen (Misplaced Spearmen-modifier Icons, alongside a weird battle-view of Spearmen (Their Icon is not the Black/Whiter Silhouette), they have been reported and investigated.(****)
Developer Insights:
(*): We’ll most likely utilize the preferred 3-Unit system which favours tactics and the available battle-spots. Furthermore we’d like to turn spearmen into the core of certain cultures, but that’s just a first glance.
(**): Some Parts were toying around with the idea to create completely new Tactics, to make certain cultures more distinct, warfare-related (or at least push a certain “preferred” unit composition.
(***):If you would like to contribute to a list of names, I’d be grateful for any input to receive.
(****): We’ve also looked into a possible recolour of their associated colour. Expect some Icon updates in the near future.
