Expeditions: Rome - the final Expeditions game from Logic Artists

[Darth Roxor]

Checked out the demo today, didn't finish it but I guess I have only one fight left (siege after becoming legatus). It's pretty big for a current_year demo.

Seems enjoyable, if railroaded. I like the morale mechanics in wombat.

However, the voice acting makes my ears bleed. Anglo voiceovers trying to do fake classical latingo with TYPICAL ANGLO LATIN SPEAKING HABITS are just too much to bear. Salway, legatay! I am Kayeysar, the kenturiyoh of this legioh, noooooooooooooo make it stop

 

[Lacrymas]

They are pronouncing lasagne like champagne and it's very distracting, yes.

 

[Darth Roxor]

Also, I was puzzled yesterday as to why the protagonist doesn't even bat an eye when upon meeting Julius Calidus it turns out he's a woman.

It was only later that I realised it's a reverse trap and a woman pretending to be a man, and everyone keeps falling for it.

Which you know could have worked if it wasn't so PATENTLY OBVIOUS from the very first moment that this is a woman.

 

[Harthwain]

Also, I was puzzled yesterday as to why the protagonist doesn't even bat an eye when upon meeting Julius Calidus it turns out he's a woman.

It was only later that I realised it's a reverse trap and a woman pretending to be a man, and everyone keeps falling for it.

Which you know could have worked if it wasn't so PATENTLY OBVIOUS from the very first moment that this is a woman.

I have the impression it is supposed to be obvious to the players, while the characters are written to be oblivious for story reasons, because it will give the developers a way to create a setup involving the role of women in the ancient society or something like that.

 

[Alienman]

"Darthius Roxorius, why do you have such unusual large pectus?"

 

[Darth Roxor]

who are you calling fat

 

[Brancaleone]

Also, I was puzzled yesterday as to why the protagonist doesn't even bat an eye when upon meeting Julius Calidus it turns out he's a woman.

It was only later that I realised it's a reverse trap and a woman pretending to be a man, and everyone keeps falling for it.

Which you know could have worked if it wasn't so PATENTLY OBVIOUS from the very first moment that this is a woman.

Next thing you'll be criticizing the premise of the "White Chicks" movie

 

[Beggar]

Lol, looks like iphone game for kids

 

[Darth Roxor]

Oh, another thing I wanted to mention that I found funny. Since your character is an upper-class twit, he never goes off to loot chests and corpses by himself (unless alone) - there's always a lackey to do it for him. Logic Artists have always been great at such otherwise insignificant details, so I'm happy that they're keeping up their game.

 

[CaesarCzech]

The Persuation choice is shit im cheating as soon as i get chance its stupid character decision and removal of stats also removing stats just means you are incapable of making interesting choice, Archer doesnt have to be max perception it can be divert into speed to have skirmisher rather than sniper it can be dexterity mix leading to archer that can last for while before you can divert units to its aid. Viking had it handled well its not my fault mainstream is unable to make interesting builds such as mixing Archer/Spearman because if you have two of them you suddenly have archers that can defend themselves or create chokepoint using one while the other keeps firing etc.

Can we go join that one Gaulish village instead?

Don't you need resistance against fish for that?

Why? The fish are long dead. Like very long ago.

Thats it Im Breaking Alessia Conventions and Untying the Bard.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Thats it Im Breaking Alessia Conventions and Untying the Bard.

He's not gonna make them fresh either

 

[cyborgboy95]

https://community.expeditionsseries.com/index/dev-diaries/devdiary-14-combat-ai-r21/

DevDiary 14 - Combat AI​

Ave and happy new year! Although the Logic Artists office has been closed between Christmas and the new year, several members of the team have enjoyed hanging out on our Discord server to chat with all of you who are eagerly awaiting our fast approaching release date. We’ve also been monitoring the Steam forum to see what you guys thought of the demo, and the reception has been heartwarming. It’s truly wonderful to see how much you loved what we showed you of the game, and if possible, we’re now even more hyped about releasing Expeditions: Rome to the world on the 20th of January (this month!) so you can all get to experience it for yourselves.

Today’s dev diary follows up on our diary from just before Christmas, which laid out how we go about designing a good combat encounter. This week we’re going to talk about how the AI has been designed.

Spoiler

Every game is a unique challenge when it comes to AI, and turn-based tactics offer a particularly exciting type of challenge. On the plus side, enemies don’t have to make split-second decisions because of the nature of a turn-based combat system, which means the AI can make more involved or complex calculations. On the other hand, the player has unlimited time to consider their actions and attempt to predict what the AI will do on its turn, so the AI must be quite clever and somewhat predictable without being fully deterministic.

The most important rule when designing AI for games is that the enemies shouldn’t play optimally all the time, but rather they should behave in a way that creates fun gameplay. It’s very easy for us to make the AI never make any mistakes – never step on your caltrops, never walk into your fire, never shoot your shield with their archers, never provoke attack of opportunity, never let themselves be flanked, etc. That won’t make for a fun game though: if you surround an archer with melee enemies, the smart play for the enemy might be to simply skip that archer’s turn, but that will just seem like a glitch. Having that enemy archer try to shoot you, only to get spectacularly skewered from three different sides is much more satisfying.

To this end we have a “mistake probability” value baked into our AI, which is tied to our “AI Difficulty” slider in the options. On higher difficulties, AI will be much less likely to make mistakes, which can feel unsatisfying as certain tactics or skills become more about denying options to the AI rather than provoking and exploiting its mistakes, but does make the game significantly more challenging.



The AI Difficulty setting also has more subtle effects, such as determining how good the AI is at maneuvering past your front line to reach your healer or your archer, or how often they’ll choose to focus their attacks on one specific unit on your team rather than spread out their damage. On the maximum setting, all bets are off as the AI does its level best to kill you, and we even give it a few extra advantages on this level such as extra movement for its melee units so they can maneuver more freely, or a small bump to enemy resistance stats to make flanking more important.

Movement in general is the foundation of good AI in a turn-based game – especially one that takes place on a grid. If the AI can’t reach you, they won’t be able to use their clever tactics. To this end, we have fixed a few of the big problems with the AI in Expeditions: Viking. First off, if you create a bottleneck by blocking off a choke point on the map, the AI would naturally attempt to find a different path which could potentially send it all the way around the level to get you. Now, this only happens if the AI can tell that it’ll be able to reach its target within a few turns. Otherwise it’ll find cover near the chokepoint and wait its turn, or even withdraw its own unit blocking the way, so another unit with higher damage potential can reach its target.



Once the AI is where it wants to be, the question is what it should do. Our combat designer has carefully designed which skills each enemy unit has, in order to create maximum tactical variation over the course of the game as you encounter different cultures and the complexity of the game ramps up. Some enemies have skills that are not even available to the player, which makes them much more interesting to fight. Every single ability that the AI has access to is associated with its own AI tactic that defines when, where, and how that ability should be unleashed. On top of this, there are general tactics available to the AI that help it coordinate between its multiple units, to ensure that the units move in the right sequence and get out of each other’s way.

To help you understand what the AI is up to, we’ve added a lot of combat one-liners. Most are related to specific events, such as morale failure, group movement, or flanking maneuvers. Some communicate the state of the AI, such as “defensive strategy” one-liners where enemy leaders order their subordinates to seek cover and stay put, forcing you to advance upon their position if that’s what the mission calls for. Some one-liners are even specific to a particular skill, such as when enemy heavy infantry uses Hunker Down to make themselves impervious to attacks from the front, or when enemy archers use Interrupt to nock an arrow and shoot the first of your units that enters their field of view. Not only does this help you understand the AI’s behavior, but it also adds a lot of personality and intensity to combat.



We’re very proud of how much the AI in Expeditions: Rome has improved compared to Viking. Our AI programmer has been hard at working over the holiday, polishing and improving the AI based on your demo feedback, but since the demo is limited to the prologue of the game, where the AI has access to very few tools in order to ease you into the gameplay, you’ve only seen a small fraction of what the AI can do once the training wheels are off. We can barely wait for you to get your hands on the full game and see for yourselves.

There you have it! Short but sweet. Please join our DevStream on Twitch this Wednesday, January 5th on http://twitch.tv/thqnordic at 1:00 PM Eastern / 6:00 PM GMTfor more discussion about the AI in Expeditions: Rome and how it was designed. Senior Producer Brad Logston will be joined by Combat Designer Hans Emil Hoppe Rauer, we’ll show off some more gameplay, and we’ll answer any questions you might have.

Until then, Valete!

 

[Sensuki]

...im cheating as soon as i get chance its stupid character decision and removal of stats also removing stats just means you are incapable of making interesting choice, Archer doesnt have to be max perception it can be divert into speed to have skirmisher rather than sniper it can be dexterity mix leading to archer that can last for while before you can divert units to its aid. Viking had it handled well its not my fault mainstream is unable to make interesting builds such as mixing Archer/Spearman because if you have two of them you suddenly have archers that can defend themselves or create chokepoint using one while the other keeps firing etc.

I disagree regarding the removal of stats meaning you aren't capable of making an interesting choice. The attribute system in Expeditions Viking has two main functions in regards to character building.

The first being that some skills and feats have a minimum stat requirement (such as Strength 4). The second being the increase or decrease of secondary attributes (such as Health, Base Melee Damage, Melee DR etc) depending on your attribute score.

The result of this being that your attribute selection restricts your choice based on your selection - eg Strength 3 so can't spec Unarmed, can't Throw Rocks and mostly determines what weapons your character can be good at. The standard spread is 5 on everything, which is probably the worst build there is as to be 'good' at a lot of things you need 6 in something. You can min-max it to make the game 'easier', although it's not necessary on any difficulty, something like 3 attributes with 6 points and 3 with 4 would be perfectly fine.

Apart from the fact that you kind of need 6 in a few attributes, what they actually give you (except for maybe Perception's Ranged Accuracy, which is an outlier here) gets outshadowed by bonuses from skill points and items. The difference between a character with 8 strength and 6 strength or 8 endurance and 6 endurance is very minimal later on.

Removing attributes in this instance only does two things - it means the skills that you chose (as feats and skills are now part of the same skill system) aren't governed by an attribute choice, and the skills that you choose now decide your secondary attribute bonuses. If you wanted to make a tanky character in Expeditions Viking the main thing to facilitate that is that they use a shield (which has a min endurance requirement from memory), and then pick skills and feats that assist in tankiness. The difference between a character with 6 endurance and 10 endurance is 16 hit points, which might not even make any difference when you're receiving hits of 40, 60, 80, 100+ damage. Speccing them with skills, items and feats to improve their tankiness makes *way* more difference than what bonuses from attributes they get.

The bigger difference between Rome and Viking is Class system vs Classless that makes way more difference in character building choice than attributes does. It remains to be seen how choosing different skills in Rome makes a character with the same class play differently.

 

[S.H.O.D.A.N.]

I have the impression it is supposed to be obvious to the players, while the characters are written to be oblivious for story reasons, because it will give the developers a way to create a setup involving the role of women in the ancient society or something like that.

I mean, it could still be ye olde Shakespearean "I'm so glad this man I was inexplicably attracted to for two thirds of the plot turned out to be a woman. I knew this ass couldn't lie!"

Which would be preferable to a sermon on the evils of gender roles in late republic Roman society.

 

[CaesarCzech]

...im cheating as soon as i get chance its stupid character decision and removal of stats also removing stats just means you are incapable of making interesting choice, Archer doesnt have to be max perception it can be divert into speed to have skirmisher rather than sniper it can be dexterity mix leading to archer that can last for while before you can divert units to its aid. Viking had it handled well its not my fault mainstream is unable to make interesting builds such as mixing Archer/Spearman because if you have two of them you suddenly have archers that can defend themselves or create chokepoint using one while the other keeps firing etc.

I disagree regarding the removal of stats meaning you aren't capable of making an interesting choice. The attribute system in Expeditions Viking has two main functions in regards to character building.

The first being that some skills and feats have a minimum stat requirement (such as Strength 4). The second being the increase or decrease of secondary attributes (such as Health, Base Melee Damage, Melee DR etc) depending on your attribute score.

The result of this being that your attribute selection restricts your choice based on your selection - eg Strength 3 so can't spec Unarmed, can't Throw Rocks and mostly determines what weapons your character can be good at. The standard spread is 5 on everything, which is probably the worst build there is as to be 'good' at a lot of things you need 6 in something. You can min-max it to make the game 'easier', although it's not necessary on any difficulty, something like 3 attributes with 6 points and 3 with 4 would be perfectly fine.

Apart from the fact that you kind of need 6 in a few attributes, what they actually give you (except for maybe Perception's Ranged Accuracy, which is an outlier here) gets outshadowed by bonuses from skill points and items. The difference between a character with 8 strength and 6 strength or 8 endurance and 6 endurance is very minimal later on.

Removing attributes in this instance only does two things - it means the skills that you chose (as feats and skills are now part of the same skill system) aren't governed by an attribute choice, and the skills that you choose now decide your secondary attribute bonuses. If you wanted to make a tanky character in Expeditions Viking the main thing to facilitate that is that they use a shield (which has a min endurance requirement from memory), and then pick skills and feats that assist in tankiness. The difference between a character with 6 endurance and 10 endurance is 16 hit points, which might not even make any difference when you're receiving hits of 40, 60, 80, 100+ damage. Speccing them with skills, items and feats to improve their tankiness makes *way* more difference than what bonuses from attributes they get.

The bigger difference between Rome and Viking is Class system vs Classless that makes way more difference in character building choice than attributes does. It remains to be seen how choosing different skills in Rome makes a character with the same class play differently.

You have point there throught you are exagerating a bit, but im still disagreeing with Class instead of going Classless thought.

 

[Infinitron]

Devstream #14:

 

[deuxhero]

Also, I was puzzled yesterday as to why the protagonist doesn't even bat an eye when upon meeting Julius Calidus it turns out he's a woman.

It was only later that I realised it's a reverse trap and a woman pretending to be a man, and everyone keeps falling for it.

Which you know could have worked if it wasn't so PATENTLY OBVIOUS from the very first moment that this is a woman.

I have the impression it is supposed to be obvious to the players, while the characters are written to be oblivious for story reasons, because it will give the developers a way to create a setup involving the role of women in the ancient society or something like that.

Agree. We can recognize it because to us a woman crossdressing to do (for lack of a better term) male things in a (comparatively) primitive society is a stock character. To a Roman, let alone a high born one, the concept is so antithetical to their culture they'd never consider it a possibility. Even in myth, Atalanta (the sole female Argonaut) and the amazons were clearly women while depicting Minerva as armored is an idea that began much later (and was a "costume" even then).

 

[Hellion]

Also, I was puzzled yesterday as to why the protagonist doesn't even bat an eye when upon meeting Julius Calidus it turns out he's a woman.

It was only later that I realised it's a reverse trap and a woman pretending to be a man, and everyone keeps falling for it.

Which you know could have worked if it wasn't so PATENTLY OBVIOUS from the very first moment that this is a woman.

I'm currently playing the review version and further down the Asia Minor chapter "Julius" reveals her true identity, and the player does have the dialogue option to say "I knew it from the first moment I saw you" or something like that.

But the game does sometimes attempt to get subconsciously preachy regarding the whole "the status of women in antiquity" issue. Nothing too heavy-handed, but there are occasional NPC comments that bring up "how difficult being a woman in Rome is" or "I was forced to do 'XYZ thing' because I am a woman" etc.

 

[Infinitron]

https://community.expeditionsseries.com/index/dev-diaries/devdiary-15-companions-r22/

DevDiary 15 - Companions

Ave! Welcome to DevDiary 15, and boy do we have a doozy for you this week. It’s companion week! Every day starting today, we’ll be releasing a new video about one of our five companion characters, introducing the role they play in the story as well as in combat, and hinting at the personal problems they’re saddled with, which you will hopefully help them deal with throughout your adventures together.

We have a lot to get through today, so let’s get started. Companions are a staple of the roleplaying genre. Originally an attempt to emulate the dynamics of a tabletop RPG group, they have become one of the most beloved and distinct aspects of the genre, and we daresay its greatest storytelling asset. With a sufficiently compelling set of main characters, a story can really tug on the player’s heartstrings – and one of the keys to making a group of characters appealing is to give them enough screen time for the player to get to know them. RPG-style companion characters are perfectly suited for this, as they typically follow the protagonist everywhere, participating in every scene and every crisis.



We’d love to say that we wanted to place our companions front and center in Expeditions: Rome right from the start, but that would be untrue. In fact, we originally envisioned something much more like Conquistador: a large pool of bare-bones praetorians who were mostly just a collection of names, portraits, and stats. The player would be able to assemble their team from these praetorians, and as they were all able to die permanently or be kicked out of the group at any time, none would be integral to the plot. Four of these praetorians did have a slightly special status as the starting party that we would use to tutorialize the four character classes, but once the tutorial was finished, they would be treated the same as any expendable praetorian.

But soon we ran into a problem: if we couldn’t count on the player to have at least 4 people on their team at any time, certain content in the game simply didn’t work. We decided to promote our four starting characters to “companion” status, making them functionally immortal in that their deaths would result in a game over, and then we added a fifth character to the group to ensure that you could fill a whole 6-person team with companions only. Once we had made this decision, we found ourselves investing more and more personality and agency in these four – after all, if we know these characters are always around, we can use them in dialogue and make them important parts of quests.

But let’s take a step back. Having decided that 5 is the number of companions the game will have, how do you decide who they should be? Well, a game – even a heavily story-based RPG – is first and foremost a mechanical thing, and since Expeditions: Rome offers 4 base character classes in combat, of course all classes must be represented among the companions. This spread of combat roles was the seed upon which we built the player’s tight knit second family. A good short-hand that we like to use to steer our creativity when designing characters is to assign a single title or nickname to each of them that hints at an archetype. Then each companion is fleshed out with details that either support that archetype or counter it, until you have a well-rounded character. Let’s go over them now:

Spoiler

The Centurion: Caeso Quinctius Aquilinus

Every Expeditions game is set in a particular culture at a particular time, and in our view that culture must be properly represented within the companion group. In Viking, we invented Asleifr as the stereotypical ruthless macho viking warrior. In Expeditions: Rome, Caeso represents the archetypical Roman centurion – a dutiful and disciplined veteran soldier who loves the Republic and will happily die to defend it.

But Caeso isn’t a stiff professional, he’s a bon vivant who likes wine, women, and for that matter men when the mood takes him. When you meet Caeso, he is well set in his ways, but eventually the consequences of his easy living will catch up to him, and his sense of duty and loyalty will be tested in equal measure.

In combat, Caeso is a Princeps (heavy infantryman). He wades into battle wielding the gladius and scutum of the Roman legionarius, his polished breastplate and his pristine helmet plume providing a fixed point in the chaotic skirmish for his friends to rally around.




The Spy: Julia Calida

Ancient Rome was a sternly patriarchal society with strict gender roles inherited from the Greek culture that they admired and condescended on in equal measure. What then is a young woman of the patrician class to do if she cannot and will not fit into the role that society has thrust upon her? Calida’s answer was to disguise herself as a man and join the legions. Her deception did not hold up for long, but fortunately, those who discovered her were impressed by her talents. She was given a role away from the front lines where she could work independently and without constant risk of discovery: the role of an occulta speculatrix, a military spy.

When you meet Calida, she is still attempting to hide her gender from you and your men, but her disguise is flimsy, and she is soon forced to drop her act. However, discontentment with Roman society was not the only reason Calida left Rome, and when she eventually returns to the heart of the Republic as part of your praetorian guard, her past will once again threaten to assert its control over the direction of her life.

Calida is a highly skilled Sagittarius (archer) and assassin, and as part of your praetorian guard, she is most comfortable hanging back or seeking out high ground to pick off your enemies at a distance with her deadly shortbow.



The Gladiator: Bestia Tabat

The ruling class of Rome knew the importance of providing two things to their population: bread and entertainment. Whenever Bestia Tabat would enter the amphitheatre, entertainment would never be in short supply. With a flair for the dramatic and a singleminded pragmatism to keep him alive, he fought as a “bestiarius” (a gladiator who specializes in fighting against beasts) for many years until he earned his freedom. Then, incapable of imagining a life without violence, he left Rome to join the legions.

When you meet Bestia, he is in search of a new purpose, but his growth as a person is held back by the brutality of his upbringing and his career. Hopefully through his acquaintance with you and the rest of your praetorian guard, he will broaden his horizons and develop a more well-rounded personality.

As a gladiator, Bestia excels in the skirmish. He is a fast and quick-witted Veles (light infantryman) who moves far and makes many attacks each turn. He favours dual-wielding and is capable of devastating burst-damage, but his brash and bold style often puts him in great danger.



The Mentor: Syneros

Slavery was a fact of life in ancient Rome, from the kingdom through the republic and to the days of the empire. The life of a servus could be brutal, but those who were well-educated, especially Greeks who the Romans considered nearly their equals, benefited from many legal protections and could achieve a status that was indistinguishable from a salaried employee.

Old Syneros has been your house servant and teacher since you were a child, and it was only natural that he would come with you when you were forced to flee Rome for your own safety. He is a wise and caring mentor, yet when you find yourself in combat, he is shockingly cool-headed and deadly with his staff or even a pike. How did Syneros learn to fight so well? The secret past of the old philosopher will not remain hidden for long.

Though he is not a soldier, Syneros navigates the field of battle remarkably well, where he fits into the role of a Triarius (a support unit of sorts). He is a most natural fit for the role of a medicus, which is underlined by his perks that allow him to treat injured friends after a fight.



The Amazon: Deianeira

In the steppes beyond the easternmost of Rome’s provinces lay the territory of Scythia, inhabited by nomadic horse-people which were infamous for letting their women fight and hunt alongside the men. To the patriarchal Greeks, this was a scandalous idea that gave rise to the legends of the Amazon warriors. Though these legends were often fanciful and greatly exaggerated, Deianeira does not ill suit the stories. Her name means “man-destroyer”, and it was given to her by a Greek lanista who bought her for his gladiator school after she was taken as a slave.

Deianeira is hesitant to talk about the events that led to her capture, but despite her seemingly kind and curious demeanour, it is clear that the warrior woman harbors a deep vengeful anger. May all the gods help those who stand in her way when she eventually choose to act on it.

When you meet her, Deianeira has been trained as a gladiator. While her people are famous for their horseback archery, she now favours the spear and shield of a Princeps.




When you begin the sprawling 70+ hour story of Expeditions: Rome, you will have a chance to delve much more deeply into the personality and background of each of these characters. In addition to the problems that haunt them, they all have important parts to play in your personal quest for justice. Together, you will eventually determine the fate of the republic.

A mere DevDiary cannot do justice to the depth and breadth of these characters. Be sure to keep an eye on our social media to catch all of our companion trailers, and remember to join us on the THQ Nordic Twitch Channel this Wednesday January 12th at 1:00 PM Eastern / 6:00 PM GMT on http://twitch.tv/thqnordic. Once again, Senior Producer Brad Logston will host Creative Director Jonas Wæver and Lead Narrative Designer Fasih Sayin to talk about the companion characters of Expeditions: Rome, and everything that went into bringing them to life. We know you have questions about romancing them, and since we didn’t have time to write about that in this diary, the stream is your chance to get answers!

Until then, Valete!

 

[Infinitron]

Meet Caeso Quinctius Aquilinus, the Centurion.

A veteran of many wars, Caeso is the consummate Roman legionary and loyal to a fault. He will hold off an army of barbarians alone if his Legatus commands it.

It's time to write your own history. Expeditions: Rome is coming January 20, 2022.

 

[Hellion]

Apparently they've listened to the criticism regarding the time limit in Expeditions: Viking.

 

[The Wall]

They have casualized every aspect of RPG design and adopted soft-SJW theme. Welcome to THQ Nordic, others are shit, we are shit with perfume.

Now, eat it! Bon Appetite!

 

[The Wall]

So Caesar was a woman? That explains Conquest of Gaul, and numerous genocides of Celts. Julia Caesar was on her 7-years-long period, UwU

 

[The_Mask]

They have casualized every aspect of RPG design and adopted soft-SJW theme. Welcome to THQ Nordic, others are shit, we are shit with perfume.

Now, eat it! Bon Appetite!

The first one had almost no time constraints, and it even had a woman sleeping around. As well as many "progressive ideas". It is still a far better RPG than its sequel.

Calm down.

 

[The Wall]

You're right. We should be thankful Legions aren't 100% female and Germanic tribes aren't 100% 7 feet tall naked Tyronixes led by general LeBron James. Can't wait for Teutoburg Forest DLC! Gonna be better porn game then Subverse. Conservacuck gonna conservacuck