Some thoughts on QoL changes, interface enhancements, and other things to improve the player experience

[Gatkramp]

I've been slowly building a list of things that I've thought would help improve the overall player experience with Imperator. I meant to write separate suggestions for these but I'm just not getting the time for it, so I'm doing a bit of a compilation instead (I haven't played the latest hotfix, but none of this touches on bugs so should still be relevant).

Quality of Life & Interface suggestions or issues

• Clickable top bar: all the information in the top bar (money, experience, stability, etc.) should be clickable to go to the most relevant window related to that information.
• More family info in character screen: Character windows should have more information about the families they belong to.
• Easier identification of where fort limits are exceeded: The fort map view should have a different colour for provinces that are over the fort limit, to quickly identify the potential money sinks.
• Alert for empty jobs in legions: An alert should exist for empty subleader positions in legions.
• Character promotion: When choosing someone to employ in a job, you should be able to toggle to see already employed people so you can "promote" them, with obvious blocks for disloyal governors, etc.
• There should be an easier/quicker way to identify which subjects you can integrate or need to improve relations with. The information is all very hidden behind lots of clicks at the moment.

Other suggestions

• Multiple active missions: a country should be allowed to have multiple mission trees (2 or 3 max) active at once, or at least switch between the without losing progress, as at the moment you either spend a long time on one tree (waiting on one thing) and then when you finally get to the next tree its all been completed/bypassed already, or you just complete objectives before you get to the specific mission tree. It just feels like good content being wasted/bypassed at the moment.
• Save progress of abandoned missions: if you abandon a mission tree, you should have the progress saved if you go back to it later (when whatever obstacle has been overcome).
• Basic family trees: basic family trees should be implemented, as characters just feel randomly generated atm. The trees only need to go 3 or 4 generations deep, to avoid excessive processing, but it would make characters feel more real/organic than they do atm.
• Return of minor families: alongside the major families, minor families should exist without the job requirements, etc. When one family falls from greatness, the next minor should take its place and the great family should transition to a minor family. This would add longevity to families and also improve the issue of most characters being nobodies (essentially lowborns from CK).
• Civil wars and Roman colonia: civil wars between Romans should not destroy their colonia and then require ridiculous fees to recreate them when the provinces are recaptured. It's an insane punishment when the war is already bad enough, and it isn't realistic that the other civil war faction would suddenly stop Roman colonisation in a civil war.
• More powerful/active governors: governors should play a more active role in running your country/empire. This includes actively changing and considering correct policies, and building buildings and running trade in their regioons, unless prevented by the player from doing so. They should also be able to, if given the right, raise levies and declare wars on their neighbours. At lower loyalty levels, they should do this regardless of whether they were permitted to.
• Better assimilation: pops should prefer to assimilate into integrated cultures in their group in the first instance, the largest integrated culture in the province/territory if no culture in their group is integrated, and to the primary culture otherwise. This would result in more diverse empires, and would also ensure integration matters long term (and create more realistic cultural distribution).
• More generic missions: there should be a greater range of generic mission trees that cover things like uniting cultural groups, reforming militaries (towards legions, but also maybe to introduce more unit types to legions?), doing things appropriate to given culture groups, etc. Some missions could also be appropriate to geographic regions, rather than empire, such as infrastructure projects (building irrigation, draining lakes, etc.)
• Historical characters: more historical characters should emerge over the course of the game, in the right areas or countries if certain triggers are met. Character examples could include Julius Caesar, Gaius Marius, Hannibal, etc.

 

[Hannibal_theCannibal]

I've been slowly building a list of things that I've thought would help improve the overall player experience with Imperator. I meant to write separate suggestions for these but I'm just not getting the time for it, so I'm doing a bit of a compilation instead (I haven't played the latest hotfix, but none of this touches on bugs so should still be relevant).

Quality of Life & Interface suggestions or issues

• Clickable top bar: all the information in the top bar (money, experience, stability, etc.) should be clickable to go to the most relevant window related to that information.
• More family info in character screen: Character windows should have more information about the families they belong to.
• Easier identification of where fort limits are exceeded: The fort map view should have a different colour for provinces that are over the fort limit, to quickly identify the potential money sinks.

Agree!

• Alert for empty jobs in legions: An alert should exist for empty subleader positions in legions.

Disagree! I rarely staff all four positions per legion. This can be quite taxing when you have 10+ legions. Honestly, I feel like once you take a government form that has 4 national ideas (Empire, Dictatorship, Imperial Cult), I'd like less control and more AI autonomy. I wish some positions would automatically be filled so I'd have less to micro-manage.

• Character promotion: When choosing someone to employ in a job, you should be able to toggle to see already employed people so you can "promote" them, with obvious blocks for disloyal governors, etc.
• There should be an easier/quicker way to identify which subjects you can integrate or need to improve relations with. The information is all very hidden behind lots of clicks at the moment.

More agreement!

Other suggestions

• Multiple active missions: a country should be allowed to have multiple mission trees (2 or 3 max) active at once, or at least switch between the without losing progress, as at the moment you either spend a long time on one tree (waiting on one thing) and then when you finally get to the next tree its all been completed/bypassed already, or you just complete objectives before you get to the specific mission tree. It just feels like good content being wasted/bypassed at the moment.
• Save progress of abandoned missions: if you abandon a mission tree, you should have the progress saved if you go back to it later (when whatever obstacle has been overcome).
• Basic family trees: basic family trees should be implemented, as characters just feel randomly generated atm. The trees only need to go 3 or 4 generations deep, to avoid excessive processing, but it would make characters feel more real/organic than they do atm.
• Return of minor families: alongside the major families, minor families should exist without the job requirements, etc. When one family falls from greatness, the next minor should take its place and the great family should transition to a minor family. This would add longevity to families and also improve the issue of most characters being nobodies (essentially lowborns from CK).
• Civil wars and Roman colonia: civil wars between Romans should destroy their colonia and then require ridiculous fees to recreate them when the provinces are recaptured. It's an insane punishment when the war is already bad enough, and it isn't realistic that the other civil war faction would suddenly stop Roman colonisation in a civil war.
• More powerful/active governors: governors should play a more active role in running your country/empire. This includes actively changing and considering correct policies, and building buildings and running trade in their regioons, unless prevented by the player from doing so. They should also be able to, if given the right, raise levies and declare wars on their neighbours. At lower loyalty levels, they should do this regardless of whether they were permitted to.
• Better assimilation: pops should prefer to assimilate into integrated cultures in their group in the first instance, the largest integrated culture in the province/territory if no culture in their group is integrated, and to the primary culture otherwise. This would result in more diverse empires, and would also ensure integration matters long term (and create more realistic cultural distribution).
• More generic missions: there should be a greater range of generic mission trees that cover things like uniting cultural groups, reforming militaries (towards legions, but also maybe to introduce more unit types to legions?), doing things appropriate to given culture groups, etc. Some missions could also be appropriate to geographic regions, rather than empire, such as infrastructure projects (building irrigation, draining lakes, etc.)
• Historical characters: more historical characters should emerge over the course of the game, in the right areas or countries if certain triggers are met. Character examples could include Julius Caesar, Gaius Marius, Hannibal, etc.

Fantastic ideas save for the multiple active mission trees. The mission trees serve as a series of objectives for the player and the AI to focus on. Watering down the focus of the missions by having multiple active trees defeats the original intent. I do like your idea of 'saving progress' when aborting a mission. It's as if to say one ruler had this fantastic goal in mind, but the next ruler comes along and says "okay, that's a nice idea, but we have more pressing concerns right now. We'll come back to this after". And you wouldn't be starting from scratch, as you already switched. If that was implemented, I'd love a PI cost to abort/switch missions, to represent the bartering and convincing you'd need to make to the great families/senate.

More generic missions and more historical characters are REALLY REALLY good ideas that I'd love to see implemented.

 

[Gatkramp]

Disagree! I rarely staff all four positions per legion. This can be quite taxing when you have 10+ legions. Honestly, I feel like once you take a government form that has 4 national ideas (Empire, Dictatorship, Imperial Cult), I'd like less control and more AI autonomy. I wish some positions would automatically be filled so I'd have less to micro-manage.

Couldn't you just dismiss/disable the alert if you don't want to use it?

Agreed on more AI autonomy as your empire grows though. Would definitely bring characters more to life, particularly if their traits and stats influence their actions.

Fantastic ideas save for the multiple active mission trees. The mission trees serve as a series of objectives for the player and the AI to focus on. Watering down the focus of the missions by having multiple active trees defeats the original intent. I do like your idea of 'saving progress' when aborting a mission. It's as if to say one ruler had this fantastic goal in mind, but the next ruler comes along and says "okay, that's a nice idea, but we have more pressing concerns right now. We'll come back to this after". And you wouldn't be starting from scratch, as you already switched. If that was implemented, I'd love a PI cost to abort/switch missions, to represent the bartering and convincing you'd need to make to the great families/senate.

My main concern at the moment is that content is being missed/skipped in a way that reduces fun & player engagement. Whatever they go with, it would need to address that core issue. Though I get your concern about watering down the objectives by having too many.

 

[Saladin87]

• More powerful/active governors: governors should play a more active role in running your country/empire. This includes actively changing and considering correct policies, and building buildings and running trade in their regioons, unless prevented by the player from doing so. They should also be able to, if given the right, raise levies and declare wars on their neighbours. At lower loyalty levels, they should do this regardless of whether they were permitted to.

Agree with everything except for the last point above. Yes governors choosing the right policies would be fantastic, which they don't at the moment. Every new governor you choose has a tendency to select the worst possible policy for a given province, the AI just can't get them right. Governors and commanders already have the ability to declare civil wars, and provinces can revolt for independence. It doesn't make sense for them to declare war on neighbours before they win a war of independence or overthrow the existing government.

Fantastic ideas save for the multiple active mission trees. The mission trees serve as a series of objectives for the player and the AI to focus on. Watering down the focus of the missions by having multiple active trees defeats the original intent. I do like your idea of 'saving progress' when aborting a mission. It's as if to say one ruler had this fantastic goal in mind, but the next ruler comes along and says "okay, that's a nice idea, but we have more pressing concerns right now. We'll come back to this after". And you wouldn't be starting from scratch, as you already switched. If that was implemented, I'd love a PI cost to abort/switch missions, to represent the bartering and convincing you'd need to make to the great families/senate.

Have to disagree there. The mission trees as they are at the moment can be very frustrating. Firstly you can only see the introductory text for 4 missions, the rest are hidden and you do not know what you may be bypassing with simple actions like building stuff or expanding into territory. So following a single mission means you will be expaning in a particular frontier for many decades or be improving provinces on a certian area. During this period however, if you make any province improvements duing the expansion from the mission or carry out expansion elsewhere while province improvement for missions, you often end up with future missions being bypassed and eventually miss out on the bonuses and events which make the missions interesting and worth following in the first place. Also if mission is conquest, you spend a lot of time between truces to get all the territory you need to complete the mission and if it's improving provinces you wait a long time before you can expand because the next mission tree may be bypassed already, that makes things really boring. Why can't a nation focus on multiple objectives at a given time? If the historical Roman empire followed this mission tree system, they would spend an eternity achieving what they actually did. Its realistic that a nation will have multiple ambitions and objectives at the same time and work on each side whenever the opportunity arises. I propose an open mission tree system that at least lets you see the available missions so you can plan ahead and also the ability to choose multiple missions that allow you to expand on multiple fronts and improve internally at the same time.

 

[Gatkramp]

Agree with everything except for the last point above. Yes governors choosing the right policies would be fantastic, which they don't at the moment. Every new governor you choose has a tendency to select the worst possible policy for a given province, the AI just can't get them right. Governors and commanders already have the ability to declare civil wars, and provinces can revolt for independence. It doesn't make sense for them to declare war on neighbours before they win a war of independence or overthrow the existing government.

I think there are a fair few historical examples of governors acting off their own back to conquer territory or start wars, largely to improve their own prestige, wealth and influence. I do see how that may make them a little less fun, but I do feel governors need a bit more personality and interaction, so perhaps it could be an event chain interaction between the player/country and particularly ambitious governors that sees them demanding a war, which they could then use their own resources (money, loyal cohorts, local levies, etc) to help wage, possibly in return for "spoils of war" (holdings in conquered areas, money from sieges, slaves to their territories, and perhaps new areas given to their allies/family).

What is very much lacking at the moment is a feel that these characters are real with personalities and agency, rather than just numbers you're looking to influence. Traits and ambitions exist, they just need to be used more and influence the actions of characters and countries more (and particularly their interactions with players and each other).

The mission trees as they are at the moment can be very frustrating. Firstly you can only see the introductory text for 4 missions, the rest are hidden and you do not know what you may be bypassing with simple actions like building stuff or expanding into territory. So following a single mission means you will be expaning in a particular frontier for many decades or be improving provinces on a certian area. During this period however, if you make any province improvements duing the expansion from the mission or carry out expansion elsewhere while province improvement for missions, you often end up with future missions being bypassed and eventually miss out on the bonuses and events which make the missions interesting and worth following in the first place. Also if mission is conquest, you spend a lot of time between truces to get all the territory you need to complete the mission and if it's improving provinces you wait a long time before you can expand because the next mission tree may be bypassed already, that makes things really boring. Why can't a nation focus on multiple objectives at a given time? If the historical Roman empire followed this mission tree system, they would spend an eternity achieving what they actually did. Its realistic that a nation will have multiple ambitions and objectives at the same time and work on each side whenever the opportunity arises. I propose an open mission tree system that at least lets you see the available missions so you can plan ahead and also the ability to choose multiple missions that allow you to expand on multiple fronts and improve internally at the same time.

This is exactly my concern with the mission trees atm too. They are really fun content, but so much of it is being bypassed with the current implementation and countries spend silly amounts of time waiting to be able to do the next thing, simply because we're forced to only focus on one thing at a time. Perhaps there is another way to remedy it, but it really does need more flexibility.

 

[Karalis123]

Multiple active missions: a country should be allowed to have multiple mission trees (2 or 3 max) active at once, or at least switch between the without losing progress, as at the moment you either spend a long time on one tree (waiting on one thing) and then when you finally get to the next tree its all been completed/bypassed already, or you just complete objectives before you get to the specific mission tree. It just feels like good content being wasted/bypassed at the moment.

I think there should be like an invention to be able to do this

 

[Karalis123]

Save progress of abandoned missions: if you abandon a mission tree, you should have the progress saved if you go back to it later (when whatever obstacle has been overcome).

I totally agree

 

[Gatkramp]

I think there should be like an invention to be able to do this

I generally like being able to unlock things through the invention trees. But this would almost be a must have that forces everyone to prioritise it, which removes player choice under the guise of adding it.
Perhaps having multiple ways of increasing the limit would work. Maybe a base 1 mission active, 1 unlockable through inventions, and 1 unlockable based on country size.

I totally agree

The ability to save progress must already be in the game's code, as Pyrrhos of Epirus has a similar feature that saves progress across two of the mission trees during his life. I would really love to see those features used more widely.