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Elmaz

Corporal
Community Ambassador
Dec 18, 2019
39
312
Salvete, citizens.
In order to free up some space in the sticky threads section, here is a summary of the most popular suggestions from August and September.

August

From August 3 to 9:

First place: “Province and pop-based levy system" launched by @Rhaegar1, 69 votes.
The way I see it, manpower as it is is just a copy paste of EU4 and not fitting for the age. What we need is a way to more interestingly tie together the different pops with the capability of a state to wage war and raising different types of units, my suggestion would be to:

  • Give every province 3 types of manpower pools which sizes are based on Freeman, Citizens and Nobles.
  • You can recruit the same units as now but the money and recruitment time is limited, they are levies after all.
  • Skirmishers and light infantry come from the freeman manpower, heavy infantry from the citizens and cavalry from the nobles.
  • When you disband a unit, the manpower will flow back into their province of origin, the levy is returning home.
  • Scaling with the portion of a manpower pool in a province that is raised will give negative consequences. For example food production will be lower for Freemen pops, taxes and commerce will be reduced from freemen and citizens en and commerce will be hurt when many nobles are at war. Not to mention that there should be a growing unrest in the population. Just like in reality, waging war should cost you in not being able to bring in full harvests and cost hardship on your population. However even with 100% units raised there should still be some economic activity, there are also women and children to work the fields.
  • When men die in battle the units will be replenished from the province of origin, it might be a good idea to allow in provinces a setting to block replenishment if the manpower pool is less then a certain percentage or so in order to prevent the total collapse of economy in vital provinces
  • For every x amount of men that die from a certain province it would actually result in a pop vanishing so armies that get wiped actually result in a structural and long lasting effect on your provinces. I don't think that 1 unit = 1 pop is necessary, 1 pop after all also consists of woman and children as long as there's a direct relation between pops and manpower it's good.
  • In tribal nations things might be different. For example they might have 1 manpower pool but (much) bigger differences between money costs of unit types. Also steppe tribes might have the ability to raise light cavalry and horse archers from tribal pops and only heavy cavalry from it's nobles, etc. Different variations are possible.
  • My proposal ties in pretty well with the coming changes to cultural integration: no citizens rights means no heavy infantry recruitable from those cultures.
  • ideally for a growing empire like Rome several reforms should be possible that will for example group the manpower pools of freeman and citizens in one pool allowing heavy infantry recruitment (at a higher cost because the government is supplying armor in that mechanic) where ideally the majority of light infantry and cavalry is supplied from subjugated nations and cultures while the true Romans would just be stomping around in heavy armor.
  • In the same vein I could imagine certain reforms that will dampen the effects of having raised a certain portion of your manpower allowing more standing armies like the Romans evolved to. Perhaps also with a mechanic that will have pops slowly transferring from the province of origin towards a province you designate as a settlement area for retiring veterans for long lasting legions.
  • In order to make this work I feel that instead of the current recruitment from army or province mechanic we need something along the lines of the EU4 macrobuilder recruitment. When you select heavy infantry you could instantly see hovering over every province number of manpower left / number of max manpower perhaps in green/yellow/red for >66% / >33% / <33% manpower left. That should definitely make raising new units easier and make this setup easy to use and oversee the consequences.
  • Building and maintaining city walls / fortresses should 'eat up' a continuous portion of manpower because they need to be manned.

Thanks for reading, I hope my thoughts are clear. I feel that this system would help Imperator finding it's own place in the sun a bit more and I feel with the current game it should be an interesting and possible addition to this game making it just that bit deeper. I feel this system is very well possible in a fun and engaging way. At the same time it would make a big step towards a more realistic mechanism in the game. In this way for the Diadochi it will actually make sense to think about how much rights they want to give other cultures or that they rather just keep founding new greek colonies to get a healthy supply of Greek heavy infantry.

I also feel that this system is a nice way to have a levy system but opposed to CK2 it still gives you the agency involved with manually recruiting the units that you want to add in an army.

Second place: "Add Epidemic" by @Tomikek , 59 positive votes.
From what I've read in history books, epidemics and disease outbreaks were quite often in ancient times. Imperator world would be much dynamic if there were disease outbreaks that could be transmitted by ships, army, trade etc. Nd also make a map mode for it like in Ck2 plus make it visible on the map by adding a visual dark fog over the infected territory.

Third place: "A technology overhaul" by @Kantoli , 43 votes.
(I think this is how this forum works)

Some might remember my original thread in suggestions, it goes a lot more in-depth on the topic; and also includes more concrete suggestions, together with some top notch illustrations. It was the most popular of my original batch, so I thought I'd put it here.
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/ideas-for-a-more-dynamic-technology-system.1330297/

The gist of the matter is that the current implementation of technology in I:R, in my opinion, can both fall short of the subject matter's potential, as well as misrepresent some historical relations. It is exceedingly linear and predictable in terms of gameplay impact, and features a multitude of oppurtunities where the player could potentially get more of a say on the matter of how their country develops over the course of the game.

In my suggestion, the technology interface is expanded into an array of 'fields', maybe comparable to EU4 idea groups, as per their further subdivision into individual technologies which give actual boni.

When a country has a specific field active, the number of techs, i.e. boni, they get from it, is decided by an XP-bar, which can gain or lose XP over the course of the game, wherein every field also has its own, unique ways of gaining XP.

Through that, a country with a lot of metal producing tiles is more likely to get boni to heavy troops and commerce, one with a lot of pops might get boni to social structure, and having a number of very skilled generals can advance your military organisation.
Conversely, a landlocked/less developed country won't be very condusive to developing advanced sailing, and since the whole thing isn't really linear anymore, special tribes might still be able to somewhat, sometimes keep up with more advanced empires in military regards, without getting any of the civic boni that those might be involved in.

Every field of technologies also gets a budget slider to finish off the whole *player choice* arc.

Again, the original thread contains a lot more details, and is generally more appealing to read (I hope). I feel like the potential crux of this whole thing might be the 'doable' point, but again, that's thankfully not really my job to worry about now, is it ?:)

From August 10 to 16:

First place: "Strategy without conflict? Introduce a little of (trade) geopolitics in Imperator Rome" by @ashandresash , 45 votes.
Unlike in other Paradox games, there’s almost no conflict in Imperator Rome, which makes really hard the emergence of strategy. Why would you clash with other powers, other than "painting the map" in their direction? I suggest trade as a good candidate to generate "organic" conflict in IR, but it would need to be revamped.

Three are the main problems I think trade mechanics have in Imperator Rome:

- Trade in IR is an internal issue.
As it is now, trade depends on your social structure basically, with higher classes generating trade routes and their subsequent revenues and bonuses, so... little to no interaction with other countries, and it shouldn't be so.

- Map in IR is “flat”.
EU4 cleverly made of trade a matter of dispute, with predetermined trade nodes, fixed flows connecting them and certain provinces greatly increasinge your trade power in the node. In comparison, IR map is “flat”: trade range is indifferent to geography or development/civilization. This is bad both in simulation and gameplay aspects.

- Trade in IR is a matter of luck.
Once a region is in your range you can import any good available. In fact, getting the good you want is a matter of luck, you only need that nobody is already importing it. It doesn’t make any sense in a strategy game, so a less arbitrary system is needed.

Other Paradox games also features trade, like the aforementioned EU4, Victoria 2 and Stellaris. I think that, rather than a “rigid” model, as EU4’s trade nodes, Victoria 2 and Stellaris bring some ideas to a more dynamic system, like diplomacy playing a central role (Vicky2’s spheres of influence) and investments building your trade network (Stellaris’ starbases). My proposal would be:

- Trademap should be rugged.
Trade range should be drastically reduced, and not only distance but infrastructure and geography should affect it. With no ports, other than trade routes to immediate provinces should be hindered. There could be geographic features increasing or reducing range, and civilization should also play its part, making difficult trade with tribal regions, unless some diplomacy or investments are involved.

- Trade should be a matter of power or influence rather than arbitrary
As it’s great that demand depends on your social structure, supply should not be arbitrary as it is now. Trade power/influence should shape the commercial network of a country, allowing access to foreign goods (or to export yours). Trade agreements should be “actionable” for a country with enough trade power/influence, which could have consequences. Trade power/influence should be built thanks to infrastructure, investments, navies, policies, POP features… as well as by diplomacy.

- Trade should be a matter of two… or more, so diplomacy needs to be involved
Once one country have enough trade power/influence over another it may form trade routes with it, and even take more control of its economy. Those trade agreements wouldn’t be set in stone, and depending on their relative trade power/influence, other countries could adopt actions , like cancelling trade agreements, allowing casus belli, etc. The door should be open to “economic” subjects (with their trade routes now controlled by their overlord), peace treaties reducing trade power/influence over certain countries, embargoes, “closing” a country market for just your exports…

In conclusion, Imperator Rome needs more “organic” conflict, otherwise it could seem just a simulation game where your ultimate goal is to paint the map or build peculiar cities. Improving IR trade mechanic making of it something less flat (making geography and civilization matter), less internal (opened to diplomacy and wars) and less arbitrary (with trade power/influence shaping a country trade network) could help to bring more interaction, and conflict, among countries. There could be sources of conflict others than trade, but I think it is a “natural” way to get it, and developed trade mechanics would also help other features, like diverse economic strategies (taxes vs trade incomes), feed internal conflicts (not all social classes benefit from commerce), cultural and techological exchanges, epidemics through trade routes, etc.

Second place: "Add more Graphic Models" by @Marcus Pica , 44 votes.
We want graphic models for:
  • holy sites
  • settlement improvements (farms, mines, provincial legation, barracks)
  • city improvements (temples, forums, aqueducts, granaries etc.)
  • trade routes represented by e.g. ships, carts, dirt roads
  • more culture specific ports, forts, city architecture (like the helenic port and acropolis fort we got with Magna Graecia)
  • city walls surrounding the city after a certain level of fort is built
  • more "wonders" (Cothon of Carthage, Sanctuary at Delphy etc.)
  • natural environment and human activity animations (siege equipment and progression, herds of animals, hustle and bustle in the ports and cities)
  • geographic labels (historic names of mountain ranges, rivers etc)
  • more culture specific units not only of infantry type (e.g. Dahae horsemen)
  • immersive sound design that accompanies the models
  • ... (add suggestions in your comments)
---------------------------------------------------------------

A post by StrifeXIII:
got 41 upvotes (likes, agrees, loves) last week so it just missed being promoted by 2 votes. That is why I urge everyone to vote on it here (only posts created created from August 10 to 16 count).

Original text by StrifeXIII:
I think it would be great if the game had more graphic models on the map to make the world map look more alive, such as:
  • Graphic models for holy sites, so we can feel accomplished when we either create them or even desecrate them(holy sites on fire).
  • Graphic models for settlement improvements since this is a civilization builder ;). I am referring to just settlements where you can only build one type of building not cities, this way we can see on the map if the settlement has a farm, mine, slave estate etc.
  • Graphic models moving through Trade Routes. I really like how this happens in EU4 and I understand there are many trade routes in the world, so if performance is an issue, perhaps limited to just the player or the player's capital trade routes. So we can see tradeships and caravans moving around the world like in EU4.

I really think these kinds of models and animations could bring more life to the world of IR.
Feel free to add more on the map graphical model ideas in the comments.


My reasoning:
I agree with all of these and were imagining them as well. I hope someday we will get them. I thing in the history of Paradox grand strategy games Imperator made an unprecedented leap forward in map design allowing us to immerse in the world almost as if we were playing Civilization. The next logical step is to make the map or now rather the world dynamic as in Civilization so we can make our mark upon the world. Then we can truly have an immersive civilization builder and not just a map panter.

Third place: "Philosophical schools and cultural life" by @Trunting , 27 votes.
My second suggestion in this subforum and the last for today for sure ;)

Im suggesting events regarding the formation of the major philosophical schools of the age. The schools would be something inbetween CK2s societies and Holy orders. They can own certain buildings (such as the academy od Athens) and give bonuses on a provincial level. Each school has its own head but schools can only be allowed to form in very prestigious cities such as Alexandria or Athens. Rulers could let their children tutored in schools and could join schools themselves as lay members. The most prestigious patron of a school would be able to influence the doctrines of a school, which could be something like Stellaris' civics but only with assets redrawing major philosophical developments.

For example:

At the start of the game there are the school of Athens led by Theophrast, the Sophist school led by a randomly generated guy, the Eleates, the Pythagoreers etc.

Each of these schools has one starting doctrine, which is named after their school. Then they have doctrine trees, which the most prestigious ruler can influence. All those doctrines give either intern or extern bonuses, while intern meaning speed of gaining the next doctrine and extern meaning doctrines influencing the outside world.

Every school has up to five philosophers existing as characters. Those can be sent to other provinces/be invited by foreign rulers to found subschools of the original school. For example the Aristotelian academy of Alexandria.

This is just an outlining idea of how to integrate an important part of the antique life into the game. I know that it would take time to program and might not be top priority. But I wanted to share this idea nevertheless.

From August 17 to 23:

First place: "Inventions overhaul - New features (Academy and inventors)" by @Thor8 , 32 votes.
Proposal about inventions

2 main things:
  1. Change the inventions system
  2. Add an "Academy" and a new job (the inventor).
OPTION 1

The new invention system will put all the inventions in order and they will be researched alone just by one. You could pay if you want to research it inmediatly.

For example:

Every area (martial, civic, oratory or religious) has 3 inventions every technology level. The first inventions to reserach will be those 3. At first one of them, when you research it you will have the next tecnology avalaible. When you research the 3 (N) tecnologies you will be able to research the (I) tecnologies (when you reach the same tecnology level) and then the (II), (III), etc.

N Invention 1 > N Invention 2 > N Invention 3 > (f you reach the 1 level tecnology) (I) Invention 1 > (I) Invention 2 > (I) Invention 3 > Next level and so on...

Boost bottom: The investigators will have a botton to boost the inventions research maybe boosting (15%) of the selected area and decreasing the another areas in -5% each one every 5 years.

If you want to focus on martial inventions you will research the martial inventions a 15% faster but you will get the another areas researching slower.

The inventions will be slowly research by time. To research them inmediately you should pay.

Prices: The price to research the invention faster is based on the price of the 100% of the invention. If you research the 56% of the invention you should only pay for the 44% to research it inmediately. In fact the 100% invention price will be the same like the actual system: more reacher you are, more pay for your inventions.

*With this system in the academy (see 2. Academy and inventor character) you will be able to put the inventions you want at the first place of the list wasting some points (political influence or maybe new "research points") using a specific decision called "Choose a specific invention".

OPTION 2

On this proposal: Ideas for a more dynamic Technology system (Kantoli) for a technology overhaul, the technologies are grouped in different areas. Maybe the invents could be similar to this Kantoli system proposal.

On this case we won't need the decision "research this specific invention" because the inventions will be grouped in different "inventions groups" (we can maybe keep the research by time / pay to research inmediately feature). So the inventions will be like the ideas system in EU IV. But the rest of the academy decisions are going to be still very useful.

View attachment 610403

If you have read the 1st point you may ask: "But if you research the inventions 1 by 1 and in the same order... you can't choose which ones do you prefer first?"

Ok, in the actual system sometimes neither. Sometimes I see 3 inventions of the same area I don't want to and I must research one of them to see more.

To solve this I add the Academy and the Inventor character.

A. Academy

The academy will be a new room in the Technologies.

If you guys give me feedback to improve it, write the suggestions below and I can add some ideas to the main post. But for the moment I am going to keep it simple.

As you see in the picture above this, you will see a square for the portrait of the inventor if the country has it. If not the portrait will be on gray.

Having an inventor or not you can always open the academy and choose some decisions. But another specific decisions will be avalaible having an inventor.

B. Inventor

The idea is to add a warning to let you know when an inventor is avalaible for your kingdom.

The base probablity to find out an inventor for your kingdom in early game should be very low. Maybe 5-9% chance every year.

This can increase with civilization, number of citizens, noblemen and the number of academies you have in your kingdom.

Generic or specific inventor or both

Once I began to write this post I though the inventor should be generic, but later I realise the inventor could be an specific job with the 4 skill the game has. I mean the inventor could be an strategist (martial), engineer (civic), orator (oratory) or prophet (religious).

Maybe the developers can add 2 kinds of inventors: An generic one and specific one. If you get the 1st you will have a relative good bonus to boost any area. But if you have an specific one you will boost even more the area the inventor is skilled.

For example: if you have an Engineer you will boost even more the Civic inventions.

*Maybe the Prophets could be just for monoteistic religions and be able to be added later as gods to the pantheon. Maybe every religion should has a different name for this role: Druid for Druidic religion and Scholar or Erudit for hellenistic religion, etc.

Decisions:

The decisions are still to decide which one should we add. But one is for me very important:

- Choose a specific invention (Decision)

If you choose this decision you should choose a knowledge area (in case you have a generic inventor). Imagine you choose the Civic inventions one. Then you will see a list all of the inventions in order and you will be able to choose one of them and put it in the first position using political influence or maybe another thing.

For example you have:

(IV) Civic Invention B (the tech researching right now) > (IV) Civ Invention C > (V) Civic Invention A > (V) Civic Invention B (the tech you want to be first) > (V) Civic Invention C

You could set this one at first to be researched the first:

(V) Civic Invention B (now 1st) > (IV) Civic Invention B (stopped) > (IV) Civic Invention C > (V) Civic Invention A > (V) Civic Invention C

So we can now choose the Invention we want from all the inventions avalaible until the last level of technologies we researched. On this case we can't see (VI) tecnologies because we didn't research it yet.

*I think this decision is very important to keep the inventions you don't need away. For example, if your land has no sea, or if it has it but you are not interested on ships, you should be able to keep the naval inventions for later.

Another decision could be: Create a philosofical school it can engages with another aproved suggestion.

View attachment 610404

Academy UI more developed. 20 august 2020
View attachment 613231

The question now, if you like the proposal, is to decide what will be used to pay those decisions.

Political influence? or maybe a new "coin" you can only see in the academy room.

Maybe developers should add "Research points" to waste them on the decisions. Could be interesting and the political influence can be used in another things.

Wasting these points could slow down the research of the technologies (Lord Lambert suggestion).

View attachment 610402 Research points icon

This period had strategists like Philip II, Alexander the Great, both before the game starts, engineers like Archimedes, great orators like Plutarch and Cicero and prophets like Jesuschrist in Judea.

This proposal would be nice to make the game even more realistic.


___

I updated the post with the feedback of Lord Lambert.

You can visit the link to watch the video and don't forget to subscribe because he is an I:R fan like us.

I realised watching the video I didn't explain the Invention system so good. Sorry for that. My mother language is spanish and I tried to do my best to explain my ideas in a foreign language.

  1. About the final comment about Jesus. Ok of course we won't have Jesus but I mean that just one person can decide a lot in some moments (a strategist, a prophet or whoever). They are just examples on this era or close. They are just examples that some genius can change a lot our world (still today). The christianism changed the world. Sometimes in the hellenistic world one poet wrote something about a God and the people changed their perception of this god (like Ovid and Virgil with Demeter-Ceres) and it could be a reason to improve the bonuses for this god in the hellenistic world. The jewish or zoroastrianism religions could evolve in another religion with a Mesiah (not necessary Jesuschrist and not necesary so late). I think the possibility to improve the inventions system and another things could be great with the help of the academy and inventor features... and the most important: to make the game a bit funnier and interesting like you said.
  2. About the tecnology system of Kantoli (more interesting than this you said). This thread is just to implement an Academy and the Inventor. The point 1 "New inventions system" is just a proposal with 2 options and it is not so important. The most important thing of the proposal is the 2nd part. Anytime, Kantoli system is about technologies, this is about inventions. I think the inventions right now is for me the most boring thing on I:R. I don't want to play more I:R with this system and the point 1 is just a small proposal to improve it a bit. Anyway it needs a big overhaul because right now I find it horrible. In fact the 1st point has a 2nd option to make the inventions system similar to Kantoli's technologies system. So I think the comment just makes no sense.
  3. About the idea of using the research points to select decisions and slow down the technology research I think is a great idea. Thanks for the suggestion.

Second place: "Character family trees", by @Marcus Pica , 26 votes.
I suggest adding family trees to improve player immersion and role-playing with the characters.

Baaileus2 suggested adding character history or marking important events in their lives (e.g. consulships, triumphs, duels etc.)


Manager2525 suggested adding a global character finder

Basileus2 suggested adding a cultural specific random name generator (naming of babies)



I am constantly searching for the ancestors of current rullers and important people to see who preceded them for role-playing purposes. It's very satisfying to discover, for example, that the mighty king of, say, the Illyrian kingdom in 50 BC is a great great... grandson of a tribal chief of a small Illyrian tribe in 304 BC.

Ever since the favourite character star was added, I find myself tracking the descendants of the original ruler or another important character from the early game. I do this by favouring all their children and children's children every few years so that I have an unbroken connexion to the ancestor. In this way, my outliner contains dozens of preferred characters, which would not be necessary if we had family trees of characters.

There are different playing styles, but I am sure that players who come from CK2 and other players who prefer RPG aspects play the character game by helping their favourite characters or families achieve long-term success. I think this niche is quite popular, so character family trees would be a welcome addition to IR

The current problem with implementation I see is that when a major family turns into minor characters, the game does not save their last names, so we have the null_family bug. So that would need to be amended as well.

Third place: "Squalor - A mechanic that dynamically disincentivices and disperses extreme concentration of pops" by @Todie , 25 votes.
(edit: this was submitted on August 20 and was voted on enough to get third place in the SPQR that week)

Background - population efficiency and large cities:

After the changes to the population and trade systems in 1.5 its become clear that the way cities and their efficiency on population output grows has changed - but is still very significant and pretty much uncapped. Big cities are for sure fun, and to an extent, its good gameplay setting up the circumstances that allow them to grow and thrive in size & efficiency. it would probably not be fun to have their size capped in any arbitrary way. However, the lack of restriction s on city and province size beyond how much food you can import and how much you can grow your "population capacity" can end up crowding out other interesting uses of political influence, nation-building and the importance of provinces other than your capital. in 1.5, the limit of food-supply has actually been made more fluid and uncapped than before, since the higher class pops generate import routes that means they can "feed themselves" as long as food is available for import. The scaling of population capacity has become slower as the modifiers available are lower at the start of the game. The modifiers can still grow at a steady rate through province investments, however, and can still reach and exceed the point where the increase to the base pop-cap exceeds the 10 pop needed to unlock another building slot.

Justification / problem

The existing constraints to scaling of city-size and the productivity of these (capital) cities, lacks enough dimensions to make for a compelling balance throughout time and place in the game. countries who cant establish capitals and build cities in favourable locations with access to ports, decent civ value, technology and (ability to build) road networks will struggle to even begin scaling their cities, while civilized nations with access to these things can not only start scaling but reach a point of exponential scaling where other avenues of influence-expenditure and overall attention/investment are not worthwhile when compared to full attention and priority towards the capital city.

A way forward would be to add another dimension to the equation, one that has almost no effect on the smallest cities but a dynamically growing effect on the larger cities. Squalor.

I think adding a new dimension to how we make pops efficient can open more doors than it closes; it can open up more cool ways to rework/improve the trade system, reduce restrictions on the migration system, and more... (with significantly reduced proclivity for such changes to make the largest cities even more "unbalanced" in new ways)

Suggestion:



Large cities in ancient times were prone to get quite messy. I'm not the best informed around here when it comes to historical detail, but enough to find it a reasonable proposition that squalor might be an immersive concept to abstract and model for cities in the game. It seems ok to propose that cities could make room for A LOT people to settle and enable enough production & imports of foods to survive, but that at times, this would be done at a speed and scale that created ripples and problems for these cities and their social/political / economic interactions with their surroundings and overlords.

In terms of game mechanics, I'm sure professional game designers could come up with a neat system that fits with the existing systems in a good way better than I could, I'll just throw out a few rough ideas to tease the reader's mind:

Squalor-growth could be caused by
  • the number of pops
  • food consumed, unrest
  • low stability
  • events
  • more?

Squalor-impact could be
  • Increased food consumption (only slightly, if high food consumption also increases squalor...)
  • Reduced population output,
  • Reduced population capacity, (!)
  • Reduced migration attraction and increased migration speed (!)
  • "Bad" events like fire/disease

Squalor-reduction over time could be caused by
  • A base decay (resulting in low / no squalor for most settlements/cities under a certain size like <100-300 pops?)
  • Granaries and/or other/new buildings
  • Trade goods, reducing squalor produced by certain pop types, etc?
  • A new governor policy? the existing decentralizing policy? certain governor traits? ruler traits?
  • laws? ideas? faction-interactions?
  • schemes for owners of the local holding?
  • "coordinate urban development" or similar city-level influence expenditure, scaling in cost if repeated.

This suggestion was brought to you by a previous discussion I had with @denkt2 on the wider topic.



... as always, I welcome any thoughts on the topic, and place your votes!
Thanks for reading!

From August 24 to 30:

First place: "Demand, Market Control, and War; a Trade Good Overhaul Suggestion" by @ChloePech , 28 votes.
A Preface- Why Am I Informed?:

This is atypical, but I would like to preface this by saying that my recommendations here are informed by my enthusiasm for historical trade, but more importantly, my degree in economics, which I hope has allowed me to make suggestions that are useful abstractions. This is also informed by discussions by other forum users, other suggestions, and particularly the youtube channel by Lord Lambert. I believe this information should help explain why I am making the suggestions I am, and help you make connections on how this impacts other mechanics in the game and how this could better reflect the realities of antiquity.

Regarding Things Now:

As it stands, trade in Imperator succeeds in two major ways; it offers decisions about your state that have substantial impact, and its importance grows as the game progresses, with more trade routes becoming available due to growing citizen and nobility populations and more trade goods becoming available due to ever-more slaves and infrastructure as well as colonization of unsettled lands. However, the trade system fails to deliver a satisfying representation of what trade did in antiquity; how it impacted war, diplomacy, and commerce, and by just how tedious it is.

Issues:

  • Trade fails to be a reason to go to war
  • Demand is totally unrepresented; having 2 in your capital is optimal, no more or less.
  • Goods travel through territories with no benefit or permission from the holder; when ports are critical to enabling trade over distance
  • You can supply an entire army of heavy infantry with 1 iron, have magically superior units with 2, and thereafter, it is irrelevant
  • The AI arbitrarily ends routes, leading to trade being a chore to "fix" every once and a while
  • Non-capital trade goods are left unfilled due to tedium and lack of impact in comparison
  • Goods in the capital are magically more important; they should be important because the capital is the Urban center of your empire, its most populous area, not because it magically affects your whole state.
  • Having a monopoly on a trade good has no impact on your income from it
  • Internal trade routes are bad.
  • Trade is "sticky"; you cant trade away things you buy, even though that was critical to powers like Carthage.

Solutions:
  • Armies limited in size by the amount of strategic resources you have access to
  • The impact of goods is based on demand; exceeding demand has diminishing returns, while not keeping up can cause problems.
  • Goods are limited to be traded to adjacent states or across the sea.
  • Greater automated options for trade.
  • Removal of capital surplus bonus, greater impact of goods by default
  • "Market Control"; being the primary supplier of a good lends to increased prices, modeled as an increase in commerce income for the exporter and a reduced income for the importer.
  • No longer unable to trade goods you've purchased from elsewhere.

Strategic Resources:

Army-related goods should have a greater impact on the composition of your armies, especially with the removal of capital surplus bonuses. Currently, 2 iron is all you need as Rome; the rest, traded away, because your ever-growing swarm of Legionaries is supplied. Sure, you can only build them in areas with Iron, but that's only an issue before you build them.

Instead, you should need enough iron to supply your army. If you intend to double the amount of Heavy Infantry in your ranks, you best double your supply of iron, because you'll need it. The limitation should be lenient; perhaps varying for each resource, but 10 units per resource seems reasonable. This serves to encourage expansion and trade for powers like Rome; if you want to keep your army growing, you need to expand to get more iron. And Syracuse will need to do more than ensure access to 2 iron to match Rome- and perhaps cutting off Rome's supply will dismantle their armies far more effectively than fighting them head-on will.

This will require a re-balancing of units which benefit from the surplus bonus of discipline, of course, but those units already are rather good, even without the bonus. This change also serves to encourage the use of light infantry and archers, even for nations which would otherwise want to rely on cavalry or other elite units (as an aside, heavy cavalry should be re-balanced to be even more superior, but require both iron and horses to produce, meaning a choice between heavy infantry + light cavalry or heavy cavalry armies would be forced).


Happiness Goods:

Goods like precious metals, dyes, olives and woad, should be demanded by your population. In simple terms, at least 1 of each happiness good would be demanded by X amounts of a population, with reduced happiness if this is not met. Meeting this gives the maximum bonus, and exceeding it produces diminishing returns.

Example:

Province A has X slaves, while Province B has 2x slaves. Province A demands a single supply of olives, while Province B will demand 2. Sending A 2 olives will have a reduced effect, while sending B 1 olives won't entirely appease them.

What X is should be determined by the type of pop, of course, and made clear to the player; nobles will have greater weight, as they should, while a city could reasonably have a huge number of slaves who demand relatively little. This has the affect of encouraging thoughtful distributions of goods to /all/ your population centers, and also discouraging massive cities, who will demand more resources than you could supply; encouraging a balance between number of trade routes and your population that should make medium-sized provinces ideal for most of the game. Additionally, this opens up new modifiers for population impact on demand, which could be a powerful reward for missions and buildings/investments. In many ways this system already exists in the game for food, though this is not variable between population types.


Easier Management:

To improve accessibility, reduce decision fatigue, and make it more likely that players fill their trade routes, provinces can be directed to simply purchase X of a good whenever available; and notify the player when that is not true. Provinces will automatically buy from a different state when the previous route becomes unavailable, such as when war is declared.

Additionally, players will be able to pay a moderate amount of money to have a state stop trading with another power and instead trade with them, with a lockout to prevent abuse. This primarily serves to give players a way to stop the AI from arbitrarily locking them out of goods they need, buit can also be used to deprive enemies of goods like Iron. This will of course lead to an opinion penalty from the state who's trade route you subverted, and possibly even a reason for them to declare war.


Market Control:

Rather than having a fixed price for goods, prices should be modified by the forces of suppliers; having an overabundance of a good should modify its value downwards for the exporter, as they have to compete with other states, while being the sole exporter of a rare good should see its value skyrocket. Rather than simply tying this to supply, however, goods that are dominantly traded by a single power will have their price increased as if they only had a few supply; for example, lets say that Rome, Crete, and Sparta were the only suppliers of Iron in the Mediterranean. Sparta and Crete only have 1 iron each available, but Rome has 5. The price would be treated as if only 3 Iron were available, not 7, because Rome is able to fix the prices due to the fact that if you want iron you will have reduced options, and Rome only has to compete with 2 other powers. If Rome were to conquer Sparta and Crete, Rome would be selling Iron as if only 1 supply existed; by monopolizing the good, Rome gains price fixing power.

Mechanically, this would manifest as the exporter gaining increased commerce income from the good, while the importer gets reduced income. Conversely, the supply being high would balance the benefit between importer and exporter. This would drive conflict in two directions; establishing monopolies will grant you increased economic benefits, while countries will have serious motivation to declare war on monopoly holders because of how much less money they make. An example of this would be Rome and Egypt- in the game as is, Rome would only ever conquer Egypt because of the population, because trading that grain is more profitable than internal trade. But, because Egypt has so much more grain, the cost would be higher- and Rome could conquer Egypt so that it benefits more from sending grain up to Rome, or even forces Egypt to collapse into several small states that it can trade with instead.


A Silk Road:

Goods should additionally be able to be traded from province to province, from far off areas- consuming multiple trade routes, and not being beneficial quite yet. This is a steep cost with a great reward- selling even a single rare good like dyes in areas where dyes are unavailable, for example, into inland Iberia or Gaul, will generate massive income. Because powers should only be able to trade with far-off places across the sea, and not land, even if you don't have a monopoly on the good in the Mediterranean, if you have the coastline of Iberia blocked off you can extort the powers there for greater profit. Paying ever-increasing amounts or even bridging goods across your own empire should be a worthwhile decision to make, if done correctly. This is important to model, as this was key to the strategies of Egypt and Carthage, and would continue to be throughout history, most notably with trade powers like the Ottomans and Portugal.

Second place: "Replace tactics with Army Formations" by @Radamanthus , 20 votes.
Replace Tactics with Army Formations

The tactics system with its rock-paper-scissors format seems intended for multiplayer where players can second-guess each other. But in single-player it really just adds micro-management with little strategic gain. I propose replacing the tactics system with a system of defined purposes and compositions for armies called formations.

In the current system, by properly moving around tiny armies with the appropriate tactics you can switch battles to the best tactic every time. If you spend enough effort micro-managing you will always beat the AI at this and gain a bonus. If you choose ignore the system then you'll just randomly have a bonus or malus. It's an example of a system that adds a lot of burden to the AI for little gameplay gain.

However, one of the strategically interesting parts of the tactics system is that it encourages you to have armies with specific compositions. Formations expand on that idea. A formation would have a specific composition or purpose and armies that adhere to that formation gain bonuses and maluses (perhaps proportionally based on how closely they compositionally adhere).

For example, a phalanx army would be a Greek-specific formation centered on heavy infantry and would gain defensive bonuses and perhaps terrain-specific ones, like increased performance in hills and mountains. A formation could also be generic like scouting or siege. A army focused on siege might have reduced supply footprint at the expense of extra morale damage.

Formations could be gated by culture, technology or military traditions (or even events). Perhaps Romans gain an improved legion formation later in the game that is focused on combined arms. Central Asian cultures could have horse archer formations and maybe their neighbors could learn an anti horse archer formation.

The user interface could simply be a button that switches between formations like the tactics button (assuming your army qualifies for the formation). Alternatively, it could be closer to the template system in HOI 4 where you can directly raise an army with a specific composition and purpose. With the multitude of unit types in Imperator, an HOI 4 system could work.

These examples just scratch the surface of an army formation mechanic. It could encourage a wide range of army types in a way that's accessible and transparent to the player with minimal micro-management. It also reduces the burden on the AI, which won't have to try to keep changing tactics to match the player. Formations would also provide an opportunity for technology and military traditions to have a greater effect on how war is waged over the course of the game.

Third place: "Later end-date" by @Zapflod , 19 votes.
This should also come with the possibility of creating an Empire as Rome for instance, and here the challenge would be to keep it stable (@Axis89, thanks for the tip)

September

From August 31 to September 6:

First place: “Better Governor View/Release Subjects" by @Sadday , 31 votes.
View attachment 620124

This's a Before/After some photoshop, I think it looks and feels more practical when you have to manage governors and provinces.

Release Subjects: Right now you can release subjects but you can only do it by province, I believe giving the player the option to choose what territories you be giving away would be best with the option to release big vassals or city states.

Second place: "Toggleable quick-&-auto import" by @Todie , 25 votes.
Edit: this was submitted and voted to second place the first week of september 2020

The trade system in patch 1.5 is arguably in a decent place. There have been many suggestions for deeper and wider reworks to the whole trade system throughout past months, but my goal with this suggestion is rather to make the best of the system that exists now, by honing its implementation, usability and interactions with other existing systems.


As a framing for the general topic of the games trade system, here is some feedback on the state of the trade system in recent patches that seem to be consensus:

  • The removal of the export-bonus and streamlining of the provincial bonuses
    • makes it less gimmicky
    • removes a layer of fun nuance.
    • only two dimensions of local benefits to importing
      • keep people fed
      • keep people happy
      • (importing for local productivity is extremely far-fetched at 1-3% bonus per surplus of resources)
      • (importing for local utility is no longer a thing)
  • Managing imports and exports
    • Managing imports (and potentially exports) manually give the player detailed choice of what resources to trade and with whom, with impact on economy and diplomacy
    • Pops generating trade routes in 1.5 makes urban provinces all over, grow their import capacity in a dynamic way.
      • There isn't enough UI information about how the number of trade routes from pops gets computed in each province
    • Automating export-acceptance
      • Is convenient
      • works ok alongside the ability to forbid the export of certain goods
      • the UI tools for configuring automated exports are quite blunt - you can't configure exceptions on a province or region level and you cant favour or forbid certain trade partners
    • Managing exports manually quickly gets overbearing
    • Automating export-acceptance removes most direct strategic player choice form this aspect of trade
    • Managing imports manually is not optional, and quickly gets overbearing.
  • Ties to other existing systems
    • cities and concentrations of slaves generate growing surpluses
      • terrain, buildings, inventions and laws provide options to make goods production more efficient (fewer slaves per surplus)
      • tools exist to move slaves to create and keep surpluses. these are OK but could use better UI and logic
    • Ties to diplomacy don't come through in gameplay the way they should
    • ties to warfare, blockades and occupation are almost non-existent.
colour coding:

GOOD
OK
BAD
CRITICAL


These two suggestions are focused on addressing the lack of any automation-option for imports - This is clearly the single most requested feature with regard to how trade works in 1.5 - Key for its usability - as soon as a player country starts getting more provinces with more trade routes and routes start getting cancelled regularly, it becomes a chore to keep up with, to the point where players rarely make consistent use of all their trade routes and very rarely make conscious decisions about what to import and from whom.




Toggleable quick-&-auto imports

The matter of combining usability and active choice


Quick-import and auto-import would take the form of adding four buttons in the province UI or import UI
One button for food, one for luxuries one for resources and one for commercial.

The game could use some algorithms to determine some priorities for what to import given from the choice between the three categories (not unlike the algorithms that determine what governor-policies will be enacted when a new governor is put in place of a region)

Enabling one of these quick-trade options would seek to use available unused routes in the province on available goods in this category. If the toggle was left enabled, the quick-trade would stay on auto - continually seek to make new routes using the same algorithm (once per month or however often would be appropriate for performance).

To give an idea about parameters of the algorithm: quick-trading for food would prioritize grain higher if the local food-supply is low or shrinking, and prioritize more valuable foods like livestock and honey if food-supply is plentiful. quick-trade for luxuries would be based on how much unrest is generated by pops of different types throughout the province (and/or on the happiness of non-slave pops). quick-trade for resources would look to first import one of each and then prioritize imports to boost economic output (elephants. Iron for tax, dates for commerce). The "commercial" option for quick-import would prioritize a balanced approach with focus on expensive goods. Enough food for a small surplus & medium food-storage, enough luxuries to stabilize province loyalty if possible and some resources if the others could be fulfilled. (capital provinces would need some additional layer of logic to account for capital surplus bonsues - to the extent auto would be used in capitals at all)

Trade relations favoured trade-partners and embargos

The matter of deliberate choice of trade-partner in an automatable system:


It was very welcome to get an option to automate trade-acceptance back in the 1.3 patches, and to block export of certain goods in 1.4. what gets lost when these systems are automated though, is the flavour and nuance that deliberate trade-relations can give to international relations.

My suggestion to address this, in conjunction with quick-trade, would formalize the numbers for AI willingness to accept an import request into the concept "Trade relations", that would also exist for player-controlled countries

There ought to be a number on trade relations, a number representing the proclivity to accept an import-request AND the choice of importing from one partner over another within the quick-trade system.

AI countries should make their import requests through the quick-trade system outlined above, all trade-requests would be parsed together, on a tick every 1-2 months, linking together trade partners in accordance with a combination of supply, demand and trade relations.

Essentially, any import request would check against every available exporter in range with mutually positive trade relations, and complete the route in cases where trade-relations are better than with other requesting countries. a seller's market of sorts.


As mentioned, trade relations halfway exist already, as represented by AI reasons to agree to an export something to you or not, listed in trade UI on import-goods mouse-over. this willingness is based on a combination of availability, opinion and diplomatic reputation. (however, lacking any automated imports, the player cant systematically interact with trade relations, because goods level of availability is binary - either it's available or not, at the moment of purchase, it doesn't matter who else would want to buy it)

View attachment 615189
the AI already has a kind of consideration for "trade relations"

A dedicated number for trade relations between parties would still be based on opinion - the exporter's opinion of a potential partner.
To add player choice to this, Give players (and AI) the option to favour potential partners by giving them "trade favour" in increments of something like 20 trade-relation, through UI-elements in diplomacy or trade-tab. Give trade-favour three tiers (+20/40/60) and an option for trade-embargo. of course, these options would come with impacts on wider diplomatic relations - especially embargos. diplomatic implications would be smaller and more quickly fading than those from insults. Insults would effectively function like embargos in a lot of situations, but ones that cant quickly be lifted and that have a more instant and lasting impact on opinion. (because trade-relations are based on opinion, and opinion ruined by an insult can usually not recover quickly.)

In summary, these two suggestions would tweak and frame the existing trade-systems in ways that let players and AI countries use trade on a more level playing field, giving more meaning to sustained trade relations, and much more easy access to strategy in choice of what to import and from whom - without committing to completely overbearing micromanagement as presently.

I'm not sure exactly how to best make such a system work in conjunction with existing instant point and click one-by-one trade-route creation any day of the month, but I'm sure it'd be well worth making some concessions on that system to make room for something that works better in larger scale play. (either way I suppose you'd still be able to import manually at any time from the goods that were still available at the last months trade-tick). Another outstanding question would be what to do with domestic trade; if the automated import system would continually cancel some of the domestic routes it made when lacking other options, etc, but that is a technicality.

With auto-trade and trade relations working in tandem I can for example see situations where Egypt and Rome will often have even more reasons to maintain good relations, making Rome get dibs on most of the Egyptian grain, this will make it so that other countries looking to import food may have to settle for fish and vegetables more frequently. an embargo, insult or other diplomatic complication may notably interfere with the trade between two countries in ways that are not as binarily " on/off" as currently; if Egypt starts favouring others and Rome has not improved Egyptian relations, it will get harder to get that grain and papyrus, but they may still get some of it, and they may still get plenty of other lesser goods from Egypt.


Thank you for reading, contributing and voting on the forums!

Third place: "Redoing Tribes" by @HistoryDude , 24 votes.
Okay, so I got a decent amount of support for my suggestion these last two weeks, so here's the improved version for this week.

Tribal mechanics in this game... aren't that realistic. This suggestion seeks to improve this.

For one thing, every time a migratory tribe settles down, the entire tribe settles down. This isn't realistic. Instead, whenever a tribe settles down, its chiefs should consider whether or not they want their clans to settle. Some may wish to continue migrating. As such, I think that it should be an option for them to do so. The AI could decide this based on traits and random chance. This would allow certain tribes to be in different geographical areas, as the Goths - and even, in the distant past, the Indo-Europeans - did. This would ensure that migrating is a very political process, which would aid historical accuracy.

How migrations work isn't that great either. They could be improved by changing a few things. For one thing, there should be a list of areas where tribes can naturally reach and a "migration cool down". The tribes should choose a specific area within their natural reach to migrate to, and that should be where they will migrate. Once they have done so, they should not be able to migrate again for a set period.

The "natural range" will not necessarily be states that border the tribe. However, if you are resettling your pops in the target area but must pass through other states first, there should be a chance that these states mistake you as invaders of their territory, in which case you will have to fight them.

In addition, there should be a "tribal mission tree". This would allow tribes to migrate when it makes logical sense for them to do so, although a player won't need to follow it.

Also, similarly-minded tribes who are living near each other should be allowed to ally and move to new lands as one force - perhaps this alliance would lead to the creation of new tribes, united in pursuit of new lands?

(Thanks to @Thor8, @Jays298, @Marcus Pica, @Rabid, @nachinus, @NoUsernamesHere and @Bovrick for commenting on my first suggestion and providing ideas for the improvement of this suggestion.)

Thoughts on this?

From September 07 to 13:

First place: "Pops and Military rework (refined 2)" by @Yems , 22 votes.
Prologue (skip if you want to get to the juicy parts):

They say third time's the charm and my hope is that this post will follow in kind. After discussing in my previous post about (roughly) the same topic and filtering many insightful ideas I sat down and came up with what I consider a rework that would greatly benefit the game by:
1. Enhancing Imperator's pop system, which is in my opinion the best core mechanic of the game.
2. Directly uniting the pop system with the military system of the game (in my opinion its two core elements)
3. Adding great strategic depth to the game and keeping army management an interesting activity throughout the campaign.
4. Adding more interesting parameters to province management and logistics.
In addition I will be presenting some complimentary ideas that are either directly tied to the rework or simply things that I deem worthy of being added into the game.

So sit tight and hopefully enjoy folks, cause this is going to be a big one!

Part 1: Pops Rework

To start with I would like to say why I am proposing this pop rework in the first place. To put it bluntly, it is because without it I could not find a way to tie the two systems together adequately, without making the mechanics of the game too gamey. This is pretty vague so far but it will make sense as you read.

The ideas are two. The first, which I favor, is more radical while the second one is more conservative:
1. Turn 1 pop to 1000 pops. This allows for more elaborate and sub-unit counting that is simply not possible in the current system (e.g. instead of 8 or 9 pops there could be 853 or 927).
All pops are converted in this manner and their value now becomes 1000 times lower than it used to be to keep things simple and consistent (e.g 556 new pops have the value of 0.556 current pops).
All modifiers and calculations are scaled to fit the new system.
The pitfall is that it might make the game too heavy hence idea number two:
2. Keep the old system but add decimal units to it (e.g 0.8/4.6/8.2 pops). The reasons are the same as the above. More precise and elaborate calculations that would more accurately simulate the social situation in the game.
The pitfall is that this system would feel wacky and probably just plain wrong but would probably not be as heavy as idea number one.

Now the reason why this rework would happen.

Part 2: Military system rework and unification with the pop system

(numbers between two * e.g. *25* are placeholders and suggestions)

And here is the actual meat of the post. As I have mentioned in m previous post, I believe that manpower in a game that contains an actual representation of populations does it a great disservice and cuts its strategic potential at its knees. I also believe that uniting the two most influential systems of the game directly would do wonders to its narrative and strategic immersion. Therefore my proposal is as follows:
1. Armies are recruited directly from pops therefore Manpower is removed.
Instead of manpower the pops themselves fuel the army by converting into either temporary levies or elite, professional standing forces. If levies are not dismissed after *36* months, then their morale and loyalty will start to suffer and their province/s of origin will begin to accumulate unrest up to a cap.
2. Navies are also manned by pops with each ship requiring a different amount of pops, scaling with the size of the ship, from *1/4* that of a cohort to *2/1* and *3/1* for the largest of ships. This would also however require that the ships are balanced so that Octeres and Mega-Polyremes are actually worth it. (will expand on this idea below).
3. Units types are tied to specific pops. There is room for lost of flavor here as this will also be based on Tag, culture, laws, tech, traditions, events and government types. (will expand on this idea below).
4. Garrisons are provided by the local population of a province/territory (or maybe the player/AI can subsidize a province from another one in order to strengthen certain strategic points like border frontiers.
5a. Each pop is converted into a unit/cohort, sailor and garrison troops at a *0.25* base ratio. This ratio can be impacted by a plethora of factors like, again, government type, laws, tech, etc. This represents the diversity between the distribution of recruit-able men (and women?) across the game's multiple tags (e.g. Tag A might have more men than women in its society and recruit 16-50, while Tag B might have roughly equal women and men and recruit 18-45, giving Tag A the ability to recruit at a lower ratio and by extension the ability to recruit more men). Thus *0.25* pops equals 1 unit.
5b. Every territory can recruit as many pops as that ratio allows, since the remaining pops would be either women, young-lings or elderly. For example, a province of 1000 pops would, at base value, only have *250* recruit-able pops keeping in line with the *0.25* ratio. Any impact on the ratio increases the amount of pops that can be recruited proportionately. Hence, if the ratio gets reduced to *0.20* then the recruit-able pops in each territory will increase to 300/1000. Each pop type would be calculated separately, as it would not make sense for a territory of 50 Freemen and 50 Citizens to allow for 25 Freemen to be recruited and then not allow for any citizens because the cap has been reached.
6. A UI which shows available pops for recruitment and allows the player to set limitations to recruitment (and reinforcement, see below), as well as macro their logistics should be added for Quality of Life reasons in order for this system not to become overly microey and tedious.

Now onto further complementary ideas and additional details.

Part 3: More Ideas

Thought the first two parts covered the essence of my suggestion, I believe that the following ideas are connected to my proposed system and thus deserve to be mentioned alongside it.

1. Supply lines, wagons and reserves:

One of the aspects of ancient warfare that were of crucial importance and are only in minor way represented in the game are supply routes which provided the armies with the steam they needed in order to operate for prolonged periods of time (Alexander's excellent logistics are a great example). In my system they would exist as follows: an army would need to be connected with friendly land that can provide it with food and reinforcements.

Reinforcements would be provided to the army from the province of recruitment by default but can be reassigned to one or multiple different provinces either willingly or if the supply route is interrupted at one point.

Occupied land in contrast would also be able to provide food (they army would even prioritize food from enemy territory), but not reinforcements. The enemy province's capital would have to be occupied for army to be able to be supplied by it. If not then the nearest owned province would supply the army.

However, the army would also have a way to function autonomously for a period of time by bringing supply wagons with them. Supply wagons would function much like they do currently (with some number adjustments), but also include reserves. Each wagon would provide *2000* reserves that would reinforce the army if its supply lines are cut off or if the army is performing a naval landing of more than *2* sea tiles away from owned territory, in which case the supply line is automatically cut off (naval supply range could be increased with tech).

Reserves are drawn from the province in which the wagon is created but it can replenish its losses in any owned province.

An alternative system would see supplies being automatically part of the army, with a set number of food and resources proportionate to the size of the army (e.g. 10-15% reserves and 100 food per cohort), though I much prefer the much more dynamic first system.

2. Naval rework:

This would have been a more major point if I had concrete suggestions but alas...: my idea is to make ships relevant outside wartime by adding commercial value to them and re-balance them around the new pop system. Naval damage sustained will now require *50%* of it to be in men (e.g. a ship with 1000 men on it, after sustaining 40% damage would have to receive 200 men as reinforcement, 200 being 50% of the 40% damage).

Alternatively and in a more elaborate fashion, ships will display both the health of their hull as well as the amount of sailors on them (like regular cohorts with extra steps).

3. Army Loyalty and Mutiny!

The army's loyalty will no longer be taken for granted, leaving the commander as the sole determiner of its loyalty. Instead it will be influenced by various factors and fluctuate between 0% and 100% with a base value of *50%/60*. If a cohort's loyalty drops below *25%* they become disloyal whereas loyalty above *80/85* deems the cohort loyal to their commander. Rulers benefit from a significant loyalty boost while leading their armies.

Loyal cohorts receive military boosts, while disloyal ones will suffer penalties.

Disloyal cohorts will seek to mutiny and will lower the overall loyalty of the army. If the overall loyalty of the army reaches lower than *25%* then a timer is set for a mutiny to take place, unless the army's loyalty can be brought back above the threshold.

The mutiny will see the commander of the army removed, with a chance that they are killed by their soldiers (lower for rulers), and replaced by a new, randomly generated character whose loyalty matches that of the army (and maybe cannot be brought back up immediately to avoid bribe abuse). The army will act autonomously until it can be made loyal again.

4. Pops => Units Ideas:

Though I lack any conclusive ideas as to what pops should recruit which units I have a few suggestions to make.

Perhaps certain units can only be recruited by pops of specific cultures/culture groups and made available to the rest of the population after said culture has been integrated and/or been given certain rights through decisions (a bit similar to CK3's cultural innovation system).

Tags and government types should play an active role on determining the type of units that certain pops can recruit through both their type and laws, which are themselves influenced by technology. An Aristocratic Republic should give great attention to its Nobles and their (probably) Heavy Cavalry, while a Democratic one would care more about its Freemen and Citizens, or something like this, sorry peeps I don't really have anything more concrete here so I am at least trying to tease your creative minds.

Finally, there should be Tag specific flavor. Rome and its Marian Reforms are the best example I can provide here, which in game could allow Freemen/Citizens to recruit Heavy Infantry.

5. Buildings, Military Colonies and Standing Forces:

Buildings and Military colonies would provide the player/AI with the ability to modify their territories with far greater specificity than other factors allow.

There could exist a building that allow the player to recruit *3%* more pops in the territory in which they are built, with diminishing effects, alongside other bonuses or another one that reduces the conversion ratio by *0.02%*.

Designating a territory as military colony would see it gain a significant boost in the military resources it can provide to the player, but suffer from a penalty to its economic activity, simulating the alleviated taxes that professional soldiers usually enjoyed.

Any Tag would have the ability to create one or several elite forces. They would be kept permanently in action, much like the current armies are, and would be of far superior quality than any levied army but would be a challenge to maintain. Perhaps their upkeep would be several times bigger than that of regular cohorts and their size limited by the various factors that I have mentioned above. Special unique forces should be available to Tags like the Achaemenid Empire (Immortals), Thebes (Sacred Band) and maybe Rome (Praetorians), provided that it can become an empire. There is certainly much more detail that can be added to the idea of standing, professional armies but I believe this covers the general idea.

Hope you had a pleasant read! Grace me with your suggestions, corrections and discussions if you so desire, it is always very much appreciated.

*Below you can also find my original post with further information

forum.paradoxplaza.com

Tie the Military with the Pop system. (2)
Repost of my previous upload I believe it is evident that the Pop system is the bread and butter of Imperator, with all aspects of the game being tied either directly or indirectly to it and it is my opinion that it is the most engaging aspect...

Second place: "Control- An Integrated Mechanic for Distance, War, and Peace" by @starchitect , 20 votes.
This is a refinement of my post late last week, which proposed a new mechanic inspired by CK3's province control system (also M&T's communication efficiency is very dear to my heart). It is however a new take uniquely suited for Imperator, that can make use of it's unique mix of characters, pops, and a highly granular map.

Why
The Goal here is change how warfare works by making it easier to take vast swaths of poorly controlled land, yet more difficult to take the core heartland of your adversary. It should be easier for Rome to take distant bits of Iberia from Carthage than to conquer Carthage itself. This should encourage historically plausible expansion, while also giving you a new way to build up your empire internally. I also hope it will make playing tall more interesting, and create new incentives to establish client states and satraps along your borders.

What
Control is a new stat present in each territory on the map that ranges from 0 to 100. Each territory will have an "Expected Equilibrium" value that it will trend towards based on distance from your capital as well as infrastructure (roads, ports, buildings). Control can also be modified temporarily by events, your governor, province loyalty, war and occupation.

View attachment 623847

Effects:
0 Control: -100% Local War score Cost, -50% Pop Output (multiplicative)
50 Control: No Modifiers
100 Control: +100% Local War score Cost, +50% Pop Output (multiplicative)

Note, the Pop Output modifier is multiplicative not additive like most modifiers. Meaning that it applies after output modifiers like happiness. This means that output wont go completely to zero if you have low control and unhappy pops (it wont be -75% from happiness, plus an additional -25% from control = -100%). Instead, if you have a province that is producing 1 gold after happiness, a low control value of 25 (-25% output) would then multiply that to 0.75 gold.

A province with low control will be easier to take in a war, however, core provinces that will likely have high control will be harder. This should help create some more sensible borders and make it harder for players and the AI to commit crimes against border gore with snakey land grabs designed to pick the prize provinces over more sensible ones.

The increased output from high control is meant to replace the current output buffs you get from capital state and capital region in a more dynamic way. A small, high control tall play could be an effective strategy, alternatively, client states will be able to have higher control than you will, giving players an incentive to establish them.

How
Control Base Value
Control has a base value equal to distance to capital as a percentage of your diplomatic range. This means your capital will have a base control value of 100, and a territory at the very edge of your diplomatic range would have a base value near 0. However, the travel distance can be modified by roads, ports and terrain, so that if you have a Road from Rome to Cremona, instead of it it having a base control value of 50 for being roughly half of your diplo range away from Rome, it may settle around 65 or so. Note, these are example numbers, and I am suggesting using diplomatic range as a base since it already changes with rank and has inventions that can modify it, but late game diplomatic range can be quite large, so this system would likely want its own balance. But diplomatic range is a good starting point.

Trending towards Equilibrium
Control will always trend towards this base value, but other factors can modify it temporarily. Somewhat like stability, the further away control is from its base, the stronger the monthly pull back towards the base will be. For simplicity's sake, lets imagine that control changes by 0.1 per month for each 10 points away from the base it currently is. So, if you have a territory with a base control value of 60 from distance, but recent war and events have temporarily brought the territory down to control 50, you would gain 0.1 control per month until it levels out at the base control value.

Occupation and Control
The main way that this system interacts with warfare (apart from the base effect on warscore cost) is that Occupation is applies a ticking debuff to control. While occupied, territories start losing control. Example numbers again, but lets say that it is -0.5 control per month while occupied. A long occupation can have a devastating and long last effect on a province by crashing control, plus, the longer you occupy a province in a war, the cheaper it will be to take in a peace deal. Remember, this will still be offset by the distance from equilibrium, so the further away from the natural control level of the province the slower it will decay, and a province with at least 50 control could never decay to 0 because of occupation alone.

View attachment 623872
(This is just a UI mockup, I have not actually managed to do this for real in game)

Instant Ownership Change at Zero Control
Should an occupied territory reach 0 control and it border a territory owned by the occupier, it should instantly switch owners (it has a warscore cost of 0 at that point anyway). This could allow for interesting border wars between two big powers (think Maurya and the Seleucids), it will add a new layer to warfare. The warscore cost change from low control itself adds extra incentive for a defender to accept peace, as prolonging a war just makes it easier for them to lose additional land. At the same time, it does not overly encourage an attacker to sit at full occupation, because they are damaging the control in all land that the occupy the longer they stay there. Potentially there could be some need to make sure war exhaustion increases when you occupy a lot of territory to keep things balanced, but the base incentives make a lot of sense.

Governor Impact
One of the temporary modifiers to control can come from the Governors Loyalty multiplied by their Charisma. Example, a 10 Charisma governor with 60 loyalty will add a 0.06 monthly change to control. Over time, this loyal skilled governor will raise the average control in all territory they govern by 6 (before it equalizes with natural decay). A less skilled (or less loyal) governor will have less impact. Since your capital region always has a governor with 100 loyalty, here you will get the full benefit of your rulers Charisma. Elsewhere, the effect can vary based on skill and loyalty. I choose charisma here because I generally would like to see more impacts from governor skills beyond just civic skill, which can create more interesting trade offs when selecting a governor.

Province Loyalty
The loyalty of a province would also temporarily alter its effective control. The simplest way to do this is to multiply the base control percentage by province loyalty. So, a province with 50 loyalty will see the base control level of all of its territories reduced by half. A fully loyal province will have no control loss, and a completely disloyal province will eventually see control decay to 0, making the land ready to quickly defect should you wind up in a war.

Holding owner Collects what you do not
Province control multiplies pop output, however any income lost this way does not just vanish into the ether, instead it is collected by the holding owner, if it has one. (likely the simplest way to do this would be to just modify the holding income from the province by the inverse of control). This means that characters who own land in areas you do not have good control over will themselves grow more powerful, be more likely to use their money to buy power and influence and demand jobs or even raise an army against you. Areas with low control should also have a chance to spawn more minor characters of the culture and religion of the province, and grant them holdings, giving competition to the major families which usually have more concentrated holdings around the capital.

Events, Schemes, Missions and More
All of this will open up a whole new set of potential flavor events that may temporarily alter control. Buildings like courthouses may also have an impact on control, as would state capitals. Disloyal characters with holdings can have new potential schemes to decrease control in territories they have holdings in, spending their own money to gain a little more autonomy and money for themselves. It is a flexible system integrated into many of the games existing mechanics with the potential to create a lot of compelling game play.

Third place: "Fleshing out the family model with household mechanics" by @WingedLion14 , and "Cultural (military) reform tree" by @crownsteler , 14 votes.
Families have been since the beginning of Imperator one of the most important, yet simultaneously least dynamic, aspects of the political system, with the only important things simply being the loyalty of the family head and making sure that each family has enough posts. I'd like to propose fleshing them out by creating family households.

Every Great Family has a household, led by the head of the family, which includes its family members, their wives, family holdings, and employees. Households employ a variety of characters (giving more opportunities for characters to earn wages and thus amass wealth, as well as statesmanship); these roles include:
1. Family tutor - educates the children in the family
2. Orator - defends family members in trials, increases popularity of family head
3. Steward - manages family estates, gives bonuses to productivity in provinces owned by family head, as well as increased income for family
4. Scribe - in charge of letters, grants Senate seats to party of faction head
5. Household Guard - head of the household guard, decreases assassination chance, has potential loyal cohorts in event of civil war (size depends on wealth of family); cannot be from family

These jobs need not be held by members of the family, and in the case of the Household Guard, cannot be; instead, Great Families can hire members of Minor Families to fill positions in their household, giving more novi homines the opportunity to rise in the ranks of the political system. Furthermore, I would make it that members of Minor Families, when they generate, generate with one male and one female, in order to increase number of potential wives, and that a member of a Minor Family can have children if married to a member of a Great Family (they would have, by default, one living boy and girl at a time, in order to keep the number of characters down but also allow minor families to develop some sort of lineage). Lastly, in order for a member of a Great Family to adopt minor characters, rather than the free-for-all that has existed, it must be somebody who is both within your own household and married to a member of your family; however, because of this, the player can still ask minor characters who are married to divorce their wife, so long as their wife is not a member of another Great Family.

Once a character enters public office, they leave their post in the household, although minor characters that have previously received employment will remember their previous benefactor, considering the head of the household a friend. This should allow for a fairly regular turnover of employed characters, giving wages and statesmanship to younger characters so that they're ready to hold office as soon as possible, especially in a Republic. And of course, I should note that in monarchies, this system would be superfluous (most of this is already handled by the formal political offices), so it only exists for non-ruling families in monarchies.

Overall, this will create a world that feels more "lived in," giving characters a way to have a career before entering the political arena (or afterwards), as well as help the power of families ebb and flow over the course of the game (a family head that is able to consistently fill his staff with high-ranking officials should be a major political threat, but if his heir is an imbecile and unable to make good hires, then it should be able to come crashing down).

There have been some excellent suggestions the last couple of weeks (especially the Demand, Market Control, and War; a Trade Good Overhaul Suggestion), I'd like to add to this. A lot has been written about manpower, unit types and tying POPs to this. I've got my own idea's on that, but I'd like to talk about something else first.

Military traditions
Right now military traditions offer three linear paths to go down, with the only strategic choice really which bonus you want to get first. I'd like to see this system replaced with a different system. I'll start with the simplest option:

Single tradition paths per culture (group)
What I would propose, in its simplest form, is to give each culture (group) access to a single path to go down. Whenever you integrate a culture you gain access to their traditions. This would make the choice for which culture to integrate more strategic. It goes beyond simply 'what makes my empire most stable,' to 'which culture do I want to integrate into my army (to make it better)'. It also immediately comes with a downside in that the more cultures you have integrated, the more options you have, the more diluted your tradition tree becomes.

For example:
In North Africa the Numidians would only have access to the tribal path, allowing them to turn their light cavalry to the best light cavalry in the world.
The Carthaginians would only have access to the naval path.
The Numidians, having no naval experience, could decide to integrate the Carthaginians to get access to their naval expertise.

Or perhaps the Carthaginians would only have access to the military path, but start off with the Phoenicians -who could get access to the naval path- integrated.

It would offer a new layer to integrating cultures.
Which traditions are available could be determined by individual cultures (cool, but a lot of work), by culture groups (less cool, but less work) or by a mix (Rome and Samnites have different traditions, but all Numidians have the same ones).

Tradition Trees
An alternative to the tradition path per culture would be to offer tradition trees. These trees could have mutually exclusive choices, or certain choices opening up more and different options than other paths. This would be fairly cool, but a lot of work. And perhaps the amount of information to create these is not even possible. Which options are available could be dependent on certain factors (for example better cavalry requires access to horses, or certain reform require certain cultures to be integrated).

I made this quick mockup of a partial Roman tree. Don't take it to seriously as it was quickly done and I am not that knowledgable about this subject.

View attachment 621106

The Romans start of with their Etruscan phalanx. It gives their spearmen (I would add that unit type) a strong front with little moral loss, but weak flanks and make it weak on uneven terrain (hills, mountains, swamps, forests). (I know, the Roman had by know switched to the Camillan system, but this would give the player a few more options. Just give Rome a lot of starting military tradition so they could quickly reform).

Rome can choose to go down the Hellenic path with the Sarissa. This would give them a Macedonian phalanx which basicly amplifies the pros and cons of the phalanx (extremely strong front, very weak flank, very weak on uneven terrain).

Or they can go down the manipular path. This makes their spearmen more all round and allows them to incorporate more swordmen into their ranks (gladius, pillum).
This would also open up the Polybian and Marian reforms. This would allow Rome to make better use of their manpower, at the expense of giving lower classes more political weight.
The Polybian reforms could, for example, allow you to use 25% of your freemen as citizens for the purpose of army recruitment, at the expense of slightly less strong citizen units.
The Marian reforms could, for example, amalgemate all manpower into a single pool, at the expense of less manpower from citizens and nobles (and slightly less quality).

I am sure people can come up with a better tree than what I can come up with, but I hope you get the gist.

This would hopefully result in somewhat more strategic thinking concerning the army traditions and composition. It woul hopefully also result in somewhat more unique playthrough with different trees for different cultures.

Applying traditions to singular cultures (groups)
So far I have assumed that all traditions would be applied on the national level. It could perhaps be more interesting to apply them at the unit level. This would require that units be recruited at the cultural level. One would not recruit light cavalry, but Numidian light cavalry. The bonusses from the Numidian tree would only apply to Numidian cultured units.

Option: Reforms at the cultural level.
Rather than having all reforms be national level, let the reform tree be completed a the cultural level. Taking a page from CK3, it would be the cultural leader who gets to choose the reforms which applies to all countries having access to that tree or all units of that culture. If you are vassal leader of that cultural leader you get to choose instead.

For example: Massylia is the strongest Numidian state. Therefore they get to choose the next reform. This reform is applied to all countries having access to the Numidian tree/to all Numidian cultured units.
Now Carthage is vassal leader of Massylia, so it is not Massylia who gets to choose, but Carthage. (unless Massylia is human player and Carthage AI, then the human player could choose).
Culture leader would be whoever has the most integrated (noble) pops of that culture. So one country could be culture leader of multiple cultures.


So these are just my two cents. Hope I made myself clear and people like my suggestions.

From September 14 to 20:

First place: "Parts of the day and Combat downtime at night" by @Ketchup & friends , 38 votes.
This is an extended version of a proposal originally made by @Pilbur in @Nebula21399 's discussion on a 24 hours clock in Imperator as in HoI games.
We brainstormed for the benefits of implementing this.

The idea:

Currently 1 tick in I:R is 1 Day. Change this to either:
  • 4 ticks per day (Morning – Midday – Evening – Night)
  • 5 ticks per day (Morning – Noon – Afternoon – Evening – Night)
  • 6 ticks per day (Dawn – Morning – Midday – Evening – Dusk – Night)
Adjust most times (pop growth, character age, truces etc.) accordingly, except:
  • duration of character schemes
  • Unit movement speed
These two should stay the same in real time (but 4 to 6 times faster in-game time).

This would allow implementing a downtime phase in battles (during the night tick).


Benefits:

I. Game length

It would have the same effect as extending the end date to
  • AUC 1558 (AD 805) if 4 t/d
  • AUC 1835 (AD 1082) if 5 t/d
  • AUC 2112 (AD 1359) if 6 t/d
but without the disadvantages! (Excessive number of pops and characters AND being long after the end of the Roman Empire.)

The success of @Zapflod 's Later end-date idea (3 place, W4), proves that people want to play the game longer. Our proposal would allow that without the need to address Christianity etc.


II. Characters and Immersion

Currently default office terms are 5 years in all republics. This is ahistorical (Rome, Carthage and Greek city-states had 1-year terms) but necessary because schemes take 365 or 730 ticks.

If ticks become parts of the day instead of days, these schemes would take a few months allowing a historical 1 year term.

If the 6-parts-version gets implemented, the 1-year term would even become longer (real-time) than the current 5 year term!

If the Interregnum mechanic suggestion by @PereLachaise also gets voted up, it could use the historical 5 days (20, 25 or 30 ticks in-game time in our proposal)

The lifetimes of characters would be extended 4 to 6 times (real-time). This would give players more time to interact with them and make character management more important.

Characters will be around much longer. But micromanagement would be reduced slightly because most appointments (governors, offices, generals etc.) would be less common (real time).

Certain events and schemes could have more options due to day phases. For example, assassinating a ruler at night would be easier, but doing it in daylight would have a greater impact on their country.

Implementing this would enable @dedd 's proposal of a night/day cycle for Imperator (F, W1). It was criticized and rejected because it makes no sense currently (1 tick per day) Arguably, it would become necessary if this proposal is implemented.

Many people stated that I:R has the most beautiful map among paradox games, even after CK3 released. The visual day and night cycle would enhance this.


III. Troop movement speed

Currently, troop movement speed is too fast. @ABadlyDrawnCoke made a proposal to adress this (Week 1) but it failed to get many votes.

@Chlodio did a good calculation proving this:


But as with terms of office, the slow speed is necessary because of daily ticks, otherwise the players wouldn’t be able to react and reinforce battles fast enough.

Changing ticks to parts of the day would allow realistic movement times. Battles would take the same amount of IRL time to resolve, but it would be much shorter in game-time.


IV. Changes to battles.

Currently, battles are very siplified.
  • Cohorts face the same opponent until one is destroyed
  • Opposing cohorts (ships) become random overtime due to shifts (after previous ones were destroyed).
  • newly arrived general instantly changes formation (DOG exploit)
  • Meta for winning battles (DOG exploit) requires too much micro. (Tedious).
  • battles take many days (hurts immersion)
As a result, a battle is currently won by piling up reinforcements led by best generals in the 2nd. wave.

If the days are subdivided into multiple phases (ticks), the night phase would become a downtime:
  • no ordinary combat during the night (exceptions due to tradition, commander traits, unit types etc.)
  • Units restore morale depending on supply.
  • Both sides use this phase to plan for the next day (changing formation, rotating forces etc.)
  • One or both sides could choose to retreat. (if morale is low)
example I: one side has 50 cohorts after some reinforcements arrived last evening. Next day, they put the new cohorts in the front, replacing the battered ones.

example II: both sides try out new formations. This would be a dynamic rock-paper-scissor game (depending on available formations), with good generals (high martial) having better chance to pick the better formation for the given circumstances (troop composition, terrain etc.).


The leader with the highest martial stat would still be in charge, but the change of command would occur during the night phase. e.g. if an army led by a better general arrives in the morning, it would still have to fight in the formation chosen by the old general for the remaining daylight ticks.

Retreat could be initiated during the night phase (same as now). If an army breaks during the morning or noon phase, the winners would pursuit them for the rest of the day inflicting massive casualties.


Combat during the night phase would be the exception, but possible. (e.g. Battle of the Teutoburg Forest)

It could require some techs (burning arrows?), traditions (barbarians would benefit most). Perhaps a Night fighter trait for generals and admirals?

Only cohorts or ships that didn’t fight during the day phases would be able to fight at night.

They could cause reduced damage and casualties (low visibility) but high morale damage (for both sides) (no sleep)

Optional: make only light infantry eligible for night attacks. This would give them a useful niche (currently there’s almost no reason to build them if better units are available, as discussed here)


This would make combat both more variable and realistic.

EDIT 2: more ideas in the comments below.

If you liked this idea, please vote Like, Agree or Love.

EDIT: please be aware that Helpful is effectively a vote against this suggestion.

Second place: "Improve the trade goods import window (with example UI)" by @htimsnivek , 19 votes.
We desperately need a usable trade window and it can't wait until 1.7. You can witness how frustrating it is when the trade goods import window hides the province info you need watching @Lord Lambert vent in this YouTube video. Being annoyed every time you have to micro-manage your import routes just makes the pain worse. The trade goods import window needs to display the information you need to choose the import route you want. This relatively simple fix to UI misery would massively improve my enjoyment. Here is how I would design a more useful trade goods import window simply reusing existing UI elements:

View attachment 625854

(Note that my mockup is only displaying Roma's population and production but the trade goods window should show stats for the ENTIRE province)
This is the original trade goods window except I moved it to the right so you can see both windows. It pops up directly on top of the shorter city/province window requiring you to move it to see existing trade goods supply. There is currently not a way to see full province population counts, Pop happiness, or research production info when choosing what trade good to import to the province.

View attachment 625855

Here is a description of the changes that I made:

Fix the trade window to support trade import decisions
  • Display the total amount of each trade good that is available (produced + imported - exported)
  • Each row in the trade window should show you all the info for each pop group in the entire province.
  • Each Pop row should show you total province count and Pop happiness reusing existing UI elements.
  • Each Pop row should show the production in Taxes, Research, Manpower, Trade Routes for that pop group.
  • Food row should show you local food production, net import/export and food storage status all reusing existing UI elements.
  • Include a button to switch to the next province.
  • Include a button for the next province with open trade routes.
  • Don't dismiss the trade window for each new import route. It is common to have more than one route to create and clicking the Import button and moving the trade goods windows is annoying.
Improve the settlement display so you can see all trade goods in a consistent grid pattern.
  • Display a grid of all the trade goods so you don't need to mouse over the stacked trade goods when most of the icons and goods counts are hidden.
  • Add the trade routes icon next to the routes counter

Once the developers have implemented a new trade window there might be some time to sneak in a few minor quality of life improvements for trade routes that aren't a complete overhaul. A supply and demand overhaul will be awesome but these tweaks and adjustments would improve the game so much while we wait.
  • Trade routes shouldn't immediately cancel during occupations, civil wars, etc to reduce micro-management (Inspired from @Talib123 's idea thread).
  • Have the governor try to automatically import the same trade good from another location if a route is cancelled to reduce micro-management hell.
  • Have the governor automatically import food if there is an open trade route and a food shortage in the province. A baby step to governor led trade automation.
  • Allow province level export restrictions. I'd love to be able to ban exports to certain nations but the existing export ban down at a province level would be sufficient for now.
  • Add internal trade goods protections so you aren't offered a province's last supply or a capital surplus bonus trade good. Skip the text warning and don't show it as an available route.
  • Consolidate the numerous export request alerts for a single trade good into one alert showing the resource they all want and giving you a list of countries to choose from.
Thank you to @Lord Lambert for posting a video that so clearly illustrated all of our annoyance with the current trade import window.

Third place: "Dynamically Rising and Falling Great Families" by @WhyWhimsy , 12 votes.
The Problem
Your Great Families are almost entirely set in stone practically from the start of the game, with the potential of 1 to 2 new Great Families emerging over the course of the game. While there isn't any direct problem with this, it is not as interesting as the prospect of different families and individuals making an impact on your nation, which could be an interesting narrative to form over the course of a playthrough.

The Goal
Create a system that can dynamically change what families are considered 'Great.'

The Suggestion
I suggest we utilize the system back from where there were more families in each nation, however we should keep the same number of Great Families that we have now, with only those Great families needed jobs to not feel scorned. This could be displayed in the character menu under the families tab with the Great Families keeping their color coded names. I suggest using the prestige of all the families to determine which ones are Great, with the 3-5 most prestigious being Great.

Next we would need to give the player more direct methods of manipulating family prestige so that it feels interactive. I feel a good way to do this would be to tie prestige and prominence together more closely. By default I think prestige should have some decay rate per month, say -1%. Then each month the prestige of a family should increase based on the sum of the prominence of its members. Families with prominent characters (Mostly people with Office positions, governors and generals) could then usurp the status of Great Family over time. I suggest this method where prestige changes slowly so that families are not constantly shuffling, causing you to frequently have to juggle offices to prevent people from being scorned. This system would allow for families who no longer have important figures to slowly fade into the background and new families to rise, which I feel would be a fun an interesting narrative to unfold in play.

Example
Note: These numbers should be tinkered with until a good level of balance is achieved.
Family A has 300 Prestige, and its members have a summed prominence of 350.
Family A would lose -3 (1% of 300) this month and gain +3.5 (1% of summed prominence) for a net of +0.5 prestige this month.

Family B has 400 prestige, and its members have a summed prominence of 250.
Family B would lose -4 (1% of 400) this month and gain +2.5 (1% of summed prominence) for a net of -1.5 prestige this month.

In this example if you wanted to keep Family B as a Great Family you'd need to secure more positions for them to get their prominence up, or take some positions away from the up starts in Family A. You would have a good amount of time before the line up changes to manipulate the system to your liking.

Addition Notes
- To add more flavor to this system events could occur that are based on characters wanting to secure more prestige for their families. A character may offer the ruler a bribe in exchange for giving their mildly inept son or nephew an office position. Your choices would be:
A: Give them the position, giving you some money and you'd be unable to fire them for some time period.
B: Refuse them the position, giving them a loyalty penalty for some time period.
- Other queued events could take place involving character's offering to fund public works in exchange for an instant bump in prestige.

From September 21 to 27:

First place: "Custom Unit 3D Builder Tool." by @htimsnivek , 27 votes.
Would players like a custom unit 3D designer? I think the Great Wonders in Vitruvius will be a fun addition if it is balanced but I think we all want the Autumn of War to arrive. I watched @Lord Lambert's latest dev diary video and I was inspired to reuse some UI elements and imagine what a custom unit builder tool would look like. I've seen some requests for changing the look of units for cultural flavor since they are always marching all over the map. Why not allow the user to edit the look of their units. I just threw this together so it needs some work. You'd have to choose a horse for your footwear to get mounted units for one.

View attachment 630278

View attachment 630279

  • The UI assumes there is a supply and demand system for trade goods but you could simplify it and keep the magic infinite supply from 1 trade good for the major armor and weapon components.
  • This needs a unit class selector (LI, HI, etc) which could change some categories (i.e. Footwear vs Mount, available weapons, etc)
    • I'd also like units linked to a Pop vs the generic manpower we have now.
  • The build cost would need to be balanced for self supplied equipment vs army supply like with the Marian reforms.
    • I'd love to see levied units vs the current standing army which would require the build cost to be adjusted.
  • I think the HOI4 equipment production system would be too complicated for I:R. Thoughts?
  • Would an army designer like HOI4's division designer make sense in the ancient era?
  • Is this too complicated without enough benefit to justify the development and CPU processing resources?
So many things in Imperator are simplified (trade, buildings, unit types, etc.) that this might be way too drastic of a change but I found it interesting and thought I would share it with my fellow Senators. Maybe I:R just needs a few pieces from Stellaris (ship designer for units) and HOI4 (division designer for armies) to combine the full power Paradox Grand Strategy Games and become something better than its parts. There is a funny joke in there somewhere. How feasible would custom units be in Imperator and would enjoy having them in the game?

Second place: "Desperately needed immersive diplomacy." by @The Goldfinch , 25 positive votes.
I am really surprised none of updates featured any meaningfull changes to diplomacy and international politics which in my opinion should be the most important aspect of this game

In my opinion main problems as of now:
1. Meaningless expansion: it does not really matter where you expand; you don't have to worry that some great power might want to contest your claims
2. There is zero flavor in regional rivalry and no fighting for spheres of influence. Great powers just slowly and randomly eating weaker states
3. Casus bellis are boring and they don't match antient reality

I would like to present my ideas in three parts: meaningfull conquests, meaningfull relations, meaningfull rivalry.

I will be very grateful for reactions and any discussion

1. Meaningfull conquests.

It would be based on PROVINCES OF INTEREST mechanic.
Province of interest is something your people (citizens in republic, nobles in monarchy) think you should conquer. ITS NOT UP TO YOU. (If you are very popular ruler perhaps you can influence it to some extent)
Example: Roman citizens think Sicily should be conquered. NOT SWITZERLAND. This should be determined by economical, cultural and political factors. They will highly disapprove if you pay with Roman blood for some villages in SWITZERLAND. You should loose stability and popularity for diverting your nations resources to conquer something your people don't want to have.

2. Meaningfull relations:

Relations is sum of your politics for years. Its not like you click a button and you get +100. It should reflect your provinces of interest, and your policies towards certain nation (and its friends) through many years.
Relations should be crucial for wars. DELETE FABRICATING CLAIMS. If nation has yours provinces of interest and you have abysmal relations - war should be inevitable. Your people will not only support it - they will be upset if you won't use opportunity to wage war. About opportunities in next paragraph.

3. Meaningfull rivalry:

Your rival is who has most provinces of interest with you in common. Its quite simple if they own your provinces of interest or you own theirs. Fun starts when independent nation owns a province of both you and your rivals interest.
Your rival attacks it. Nation - if its weak - has option to call on you to intervene. Just because its you province of interest, nothing more is required. If you are strong enough, and at peace your people will want you to intervene. They will be upset if you won't. If you accept, and are strong enough, you take leadership in war. If you successfully defend them, you have option to limit independence of this nation to some extent.
WEAK INDEPENDENT NATION CAN BE YOUR FRIEND DESPITE HAVING YOUR PROVINCES OF INTEREST. STRONG - not so much. Weak can become sort of protectorate, after years of friendship. You should be able to dictate their foreign policy. With strong nation conflict is rather inevitable.

Those changes in my opinion should make conquests and international politics meaningfull, fun, and historically accurate, and dynamic.

Wars should rather start by you dynamically reacting to your rivals actions - or your rival to yours.

Even attacking easy target should sometimes result in long and unexpected war.


There should be less wars but more impactfull.


You don't have to declare war for every single city state. If they are your provinces of interest, and no great power contests it, they should slowly peacefully accept becoming protectorates.

Thanks so much for reading. I am fully aware its not a detailed plan and more like a set of ideas that I hope can be thought provoking. What do you guys think?

Third place: "Approval-driven Events after elections" by @Todie , 19 votes.
Problem:

The rework of the republic/senate mechanics in 1.5 uses some significantly abstracted concepts that can easily be seen as unintuitive. "Approval" needs and deserves to be framed with more events, particularly around elections.

For example, one might expect approval to quickly recover from a low point after an election, but this is not the case, and the meaning of this is opaque at best.

If the player takes actions that reduce the approval of a party, like arbitrary imprisonment of party-members, the factions approval drops. If the next elected consul is from that same faction, their approval will start increasing, but it will not instantly change. it can get a quick bump if the party tries to force their agenda through and the player chooses to not veto it. However, the timing of this happening is randomized.

... all the while, the reasons/meaning behind low approval that lingers from previous terms is opaque. Is it supposed to symbolize the factions approval of executive action as such? and or to symbolize the perceived legitimacy of the ruling faction..?


Suggestion:


Add a series of dynamic events that consistently trigger after elections, that may take into consideration various factors, but most importantly, the approval and influence of their faction and the overall approval.


colour coding:

From the players point of view

GOOD
MIXED OR NEUTRAL
BAD



If the consul's factions approval is very low:

"Faction embraces the new Consul
- faction and consul abandons previous objections to executive action "


Consuls faction:
+20 approval​
-20% senatorial influence for all faction members (for 5 years)​
+3 corruption for all faction members​
Consul​
-$$$ or holdings
becomes friends with the most powerful faction member​

OR

"
Consul betrays his faction and allies with the opposition
consuls new faction embraces him with open arms - and gleeful smiles"

(can history of ancient republics be interpreted as this ever happening? I have no idea)
The Consul /Archon switches party to the one with the highest influence and approval

For the consul:
-10 prominence​
-20 popularity​
-10% family prestige​
+5 corruption​
+ $$$ or holdings

For the consul's old party:
-10 approval​
-0.15 approval-tick (for 5 years* )​
+10% senatorial influence (for 5 years) for all faction members​

New leader of the consuls old party:
+20% senatorial influence (for 10? years (this guy is mad as hell)​
+10 popularity​
+10 prominence (10 years?)​
+0.2 prominence-tick (10 years?)​
+0.2 popularity-tick (10 years?)​
becomes rival with the consul​

Consuls new party
+5 approval​
+0.1 approval-tick (for 5 years)​
-10% senatorial influence (for 5 years) for all faction members​
+0.05 corruption-tick (for 5 years) for all faction members ("we own you now, where will you go if we turn you our backs? pay up.)​

old leader of the consul's new party (potentially deposed by consul?):
-$$$ or holdings
+10 corruption​
+0.15 corruption-tick (for 5 years)​
-30 popularity​
cant be "moved against" for 5 years


If overall approval is very high:

"A new opposition emerges!
-
eager agitators against the consular agenda gain momentum! "


Least influential / lowest approving faction : ("the oposition"faction)​
- 10 approval​
-0.15 approval-tick (for 5 years)​
All citizen-characters:
+0.2 attraction-tick toward opposition-faction​
-0.2 attraction-tick toward consuls faction​
2 semi-random characters from the opposition faction ("agitators")​
+ 20% senatorial influence​
+ 20 popularity​
+ 20 prominence​
+ 4 base powerbase or senatorial influence​
-15 loyalty​
(if agitators are killed or imprisoned - re-trigger the above or a lesser version of it!)​
* (the duration for these modifiers could be relative to length of the election-term)

Desired outcomes:

Events like these would serve to set the scene after elections occur, dynamically framing the level of approval and balance of power in the Senate after the election, nudging the numbers in directions that make sense, while also taking an opportunity to provide context for the numbers to be less abstract to players and highlighting some characters and relationships to form a potential narrative.

Thank you for reading!
 
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