Grand Strategy Imperator: Rome - the new grand strategy from Paradox

[Life of the Party]

I mean, Thebes was raised by Alexander

Cassander rebuilt it and invited the exiles.

I don't see their position as being all that different from the positions of the other three, to be honest. Syracuse is another story, of course.

 

[Life of the Party]

Late Bronze Age/Bronze Age Collapse Start Date & Dorian Invasion mechanics

I strongly believe that there should be a 1200BCs starting date showing the Sea Peoples invasions and the collapse of the major Empires. Such a start date would require numerous events weakening the major Bronze Age powers. In the case of Greece, the Proto-Aegean tribes should start off as migratory hordes at war with the Aegean states, and be given buffs to basically ensure that they win. Subsequently there should be a fusion of Proto-Aegean & Aegean cultures to create the Hellenes.

Hey Aust. I'm one of the mod devs, specifically the one who works on this side of the Aegean Sea. I read this and your other comment and I get what you're saying. I understand that there is an urge to play Bronze Age Greeks, and that merely playing the cultures that led to the fusion and creation of Hellenic civilization doesn't exactly scratch that itch. I'd rather not say too much at this point, so all I can say is that I share this sentiment and that there is much to look forward to in upcoming releases for the mod. While it's true that cultural evolution isn't built into vanilla I:R, it's perfectly possible to mod it in, and indeed some have already done it with mods that allow cultural fusion for the Diadochi. That said, I would not go with the scenario you suggest because I think you're mixing up time periods. The period with Proto-Achaean migratory tribes was essentially prior to the Mycenaean period (starting around 1600 BCE), so putting together migrations that happened toward the beginning of the Middle Helladic alongside the Dorian invasion which took place at the end of the Bronze Age would not be historical. (Unless I'm misunderstanding your suggestion, in which case I apologize.)

Anyway, thanks for your feedback. I hope that we are able to address your concerns and keep making the mod better.

 

[AwesomeButton]

I scrolled randomly through the last few pages, and spotted that nobles are "producing" "commerce"... God, this is so depressing.

 

[Theodora]

Really nice to see definite historical competency from one of the mod's devs; although I hope if the LBA collapse is something they eventually plan on implemententing that it's more than just superbuffed 'sea peoplez'. Just as they can't tell whether they're reading that question right, I'm not 100% sure what they're trying to say lol; but maybe I'm just tired.

Cassander rebuilt it and invited the exiles.

My bad! I mixed up some dates with Imperator's start.

I scrolled randomly through the last few pages, and spotted that nobles are "producing" "commerce"... God, this is so depressing.

They've said it's temporary.

 

[Life of the Party]

Theodora, do you use any mods? I vaguely recall using No Stutter and Emendatio Historiae Imperatoris, both of which came out moments after the game's release but aside from The Bronze Age I haven't really been following the modding scene.

Is there anything you'd call essential?

 

[Theodora]

Theodora, do you use any mods? I vaguely recall using No Stutter and Emendatio Historiae Imperatoris, both of which came out moments after the game's release but aside from The Bronze Age I haven't really been following the modding scene.

Is there anything you'd call essential?

Tbh fam, not really. Paradox's weird decision (though probably less a decision and just engine changes) to disable all mods with achievements on comibned with the relatively small userbase puts people off.

Other than the fab Bronze Age mod (linked for others' sake), there's not even any other up to date overhauls worth checking out imo. The most popular other mods are Better UI, which you might prefer though personally I don't bother, and Gladio et Sale, which sells itself as 'Veritas et Fortitudo for I:R' (interestingly (and optionally) adds China and Korea, and a bunch of other things.

Spoiler

Feature List:

* Expansion of the map to include China and Korea with unique mechanics for China's 'Hundred Schools of Thought' religion; for the 'Light' version of the mod which does NOT include the map, find it here: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1940823033

* Adjusted cohort size and manpower for more realistic army sizes and strategic constraints

* Assimilation and conversion are overhauled; they function based on separate probabilities for differing pop types and culture groups meaning multiple pops can convert at once if appropriate

* Rebalance to pop desire to make more realistic pop distributions

* Added military traditions for Chinese, Illyrian/Dacian, and Iberian

* Added trade goods for copper, lead, silver, opium, wax, porcelain, and jade

* Added Illyrian, Anatolian and Caucasian culture groups; cultures added to each culture group to represent foreigners acclimated to but never completely of your culture (E.G. 'Hellenized'). Moved Thracian culture to the Dacian group; added a Hellenic Thraikes culture and split Thracian pops between Thracian and Thraikes.

* Changes to the game setup with new nations added in Italy, Dacia, and Scythia.

* Added country-specific missions for Epirus, Egypt, Armenia, Pontus, Parthia, Macedon, Thrace, Antigonids, and Seleucids

* Rebalanced diplomacy, specifically subjugation willingness and ability to convert tributary subjects to client states over time

* Added a number of new global and unique blessings to spend omens on

* Ability to upgrade ports for increased bonuses to commerce and shipbuilding

* Added two new unit types (javelins and slingers) for more variety in ranged units

* Added baseline terrain values for combat abilities of various units

* Inventions overhauled to no longer require gold but become available over time.

Features of earlier Gladio Et Sale versions incorporated into the vanilla game:
* Overhaul of game function to remove religious and civic power while limiting military power to traditions and mercenaries making oratory power the single power currency
* Addition of numerous city buildings

The latter isn't updated for 1.4 yet.

I guess I don't use any because I'm content enough with the UI and using the achievements as goal posts atm.

There's a bunch of small, niche mods out there but it would depend on what your particular issue(s) is(/are).

 

[Life of the Party]

I still can't get used to Economy being green, Religion yellow, etc. But it's not a huge deal.

I remember coming across these, although it seems like they haven't been updated in a while.

https://steamcommunity.com/workshop/filedetails/?id=1724038114

 

[Theodora]

I find those kinda UI mods out of place, though admittedly I don't understand the camp of people who take issue with the marble white stuff. (Though I don't mind The Bronze Age's shift on it, even if I'm not sure what the new colours are meant to reference of the top of my head. I think a mod like that really benefits from having a visual shift in its identity.)

 

[Life of the Party]

I'm surprised he didn't add some other options. I'd consider switching between different colors depending on who I'm playing, like green for Celts and so on.

Anyway, here's this guy.

 

[fantadomat]

I'm surprised he didn't add some other options. I'd consider switching between different colors depending on who I'm playing, like green for Celts and so on.

Anyway, here's this guy.

Buahahahaha that video killed me,buahahahahahah! LoL

"I am here to review the newest patch and first paid DLC of Imperator,but i will focus only on the patch because i haven't bought the DLC and have no intentions of doing it."

 

[Theodora]

I watch Darren's stuff, but I always take him with a pinch of salt after his drunken fuckup / getting blacklisting by CA, and his NDA mess with Imperator

His production quality is great, so it's a shame that he pivoted so hard to clickbait titles and the constant outrage crowd. Guy should've stuck with working at CA if he wanted to make a difference to games like this, rather than RQ when they don't take the new guy's advice on how to transform the company.

"I am here to review the newest patch and first paid DLC of Imperator,but i will focus only on the patch because i haven't bought the DLC and have no intentions of doing it."

I thoght you didn't 'buy' any DLC?

I'm surprised he didn't add some other options. I'd consider switching between different colors depending on who I'm playing, like green for Celts and so on.

I kinda like this idea, althought to be honest I don't think you even need to resort to different colours of marble alone, given the lost polychromy of the ancient world. Oddly Assassin's Creed has managed to make this more evident than any other game I've noticed:

Spoiler

(Though I admit wanting a somewhat anachronistic porphyry UI... T.T)

 

[fantadomat]

I thoght you didn't 'buy' any DLC?

It is a citation of the guy doing the review video lol. Also i buy only good shit,rpgs or strategies.

 

[Theodora]

It is a citation of the guy doing the review video lol. Also i buy only good shit,rpgs or strategies.

Oh I know, not my comment.

I kinda like the mission trees they're peddling, but I do find it a bit cheeky that they're not giving some more away for free to people who bought it earlly. (Is little relief that the generic/''dynamic'' missions in Imperator are better than their equivalent in EU4 and HoI4.)

 

[Life of the Party]

I don't really follow any gaming channels. Aside from the sports stuff you couldn't care less for, it's mostly just some documentaries and the like. A few history channels like Kings and Generals, History Time, Invicta, maybe BazBattles. Feel free to check them out.

How did you like Odyssey? Were all the thyrsi properly ivied? Was the difference between a Doric chiton and a Ionic chiton made perfectly clear? Was the sea wine-faced rather than wine-dark?

This will be the first and the last time you'll hear this, but to me the only true AC game was the original one. Even the sequel had an aura of milking about it even though it was certainly a better game. Then came Brotherhood and then Revelations with some pro-kebab stuff I couldn't be bothered to pirate.

 

[Theodora]

I don't really follow any gaming channels. Aside from the sports stuff you couldn't care less for, it's mostly just some documentaries and the like. A few history channels like Kings and Generals, History Time, Invicta, maybe BazBattles. Feel free to check them out.

I'm waiting for Invicta to continue their speculative history of 'What If Casear Lived?'

How did you like Odyssey? Were all the thyrsi properly ivied? Was the difference between a Doric chiton and a Ionic chiton made perfectly clear? Was the sea wine-faced rather than wine-dark?

Lmao, glad you're familiar with the original materials; I've not played the AC games properly, just familiar with some of the cool historical recreations Ubisoft have been responsible for.

This will be the first and the last time you'll hear this, but to me the only true AC game was the original one. Even the sequel had an aura of milking about it even though it was certainly a better game. Then came Brotherhood and then Revelations with some pro-kebab stuff I couldn't be bothered to pirate.

Lmao, pro-kebab ... tbh that's the one I wanna play most (to fuck around in Constantinople mostly), but story-wise I'd need to play its two predecessors, and idk if I have the time.

 

[Life of the Party]

I haven't played any of them since Brotherhood. They always sound promising once announced but then over time the whole thing turns into a mess and I lose all interest.

The only one I'd consider playing right now is Origins and even that one mainly for the DLC where some Circassian beauty of yore sends you to go beat-up Ninfertiti and Hulkankhamun. They should've made the whole game revolve around Akhenaten and his family, to be honest.

 

[AgentFransis]

I don't really follow any gaming channels. Aside from the sports stuff you couldn't care less for, it's mostly just some documentaries and the like. A few history channels like Kings and Generals, History Time, Invicta, maybe BazBattles. Feel free to check them out.

Try Historia Civilis, he's very good. Mainly focused on antiquity.

 

[Sranchammer]

Read a damn book, you won't get anything from a youtube video

 

[AgentFransis]

Read a damn book, you won't get anything from shitposting on the Codex

 

[Hace El Oso]

Read a damn book, you won't get anything from a youtube video

Tragically, real literacy is a minority skill now, especially among men.

 

[Casual Hero]

Haven't played this one, and I probably won't- seeing as how most people don't like it.
But dang it, it looks so pretty. I love the UI design.

 

[Raghar]

I watch Darren's stuff, but I always take him with a pinch of salt after his drunken fuckup / getting blacklisting by CA, and his NDA mess with Imperator

I seen his stream live and he didn't seem to be drunk. It was unprepared stream and he'd do better if he prepared stream properly and shown ALL CA flaws with sarcasm so in case they would black list him, he'd be proud of his correct stream.

But, frankly they promised his something if he will do marketing for half year. He did, they lied.
So he said he wanna quit when they will not move him to that shitty position he wanted to be in with likely the same salary or less. They remembered he become quite useful as PR, and offered him rise. He did correct decision and quit.

His production quality is great, so it's a shame that he pivoted so hard to clickbait titles and the constant outrage crowd. Guy should've stuck with working at CA if he wanted to make a difference to games like this, rather than RQ when they don't take the new guy's advice on how to transform the company.

And when they would ignore his game related advice with words you are that PR guy, even 5 years later? What then? That's 5 years he could so something more constructive. He's average in what he wanted, but SEGA CA is so bad company he might push it up. When they will not act like office ladies and saying yea some PR guy what he can know...

They could force him to correct Attila AI, so it would no longer have a problem when defending units are outside of city instead inside protecting the city. (And that would allow him both prove his skills, and learn stuff he wanted.)

Moral of the story is, don't tread your golden pig as a moron, he can learn something (in real programming environment), and he would stay as golden pig useful for company.

 

[AgentFransis]

Read a damn book, you won't get anything from a youtube video

Tragically, real literacy is a minority skill now, especially among men.

Reading is always best but a good video has it's own value. Animation on top of a map helps better comprehend the relevant geography and movements of armies and people. A good narrator that's conversant with the sources is able to deliver the narrative in a more interesting way and add potentially valuable commentary. With animation there's room to inject some humor and make the history more alive.

 

[Life of the Party]

Spoiler

Disclaimer: the first bit of this DD talks about the internal nuts and bolts operation of a dev team itself, not game features. If that doesn't interest you, you can safely skip to the second portion with the gameplay screenshots.

Hi all. Jamor here with this week's Imperator dev diary. Some of you may be wondering, "who's this dude, he's not Arheo or Trin Tragula?". Well, I could never step in to those inimitable shoes, but I am in fact the producer of Imperator: Rome.

Now what does that mean, exactly? Often I see people mixing up the roles of Game Director,Technical Lead,and Producer when talking about our teams. This is entirely understandable since in the old days, when PDS was a lot smaller, the roles were often combined in one person. However, when a game and the company as a whole gets to a certain size and complexity, it pays to get specialization of effort. Here's what Arheo (GD), Egladil (Tech Lead), and I do:

Game Director: the owner of the creative vision for the project. Head of Design. Decides 'what' we are going to try to do.

Tech Lead: runs the technical implementation of the game, all its features and under the hood systems. Leads and organizes the work of the programmers. Master of the innumerable builds and branches we maintain, figuring out when to merge branches in to the main trunk, all that stuff. Figures out the 'how' part of carrying out the goals set by the GD.

Producer: in charge of time and budget. Making sure we put all the pieces of the puzzle together, programming, design, art, writing, script, localization, audio, backend and store pages for all the various places our game is sold, so we can get a video game product out the door and in to your hands. The slave of time, the one resource that once spent, can never be got back. Decides on the 'how much, and when'.

We have a lot of autonomy within the dev teams at PDS compared to other parts of the industry. This triumvirate makes most of the tactical decisions about the project, where we settle on a scope that's deliverable with the time and resources we have. My colleague Shams Jorjani likes to say that "ideas are cheap", and he's 100% right: good ideas are the absolute easiest part. Everyone has them. The mind freed from any practical constraints and operating purely in the realm of unfettered imagination is an incredibly creative thing. When we get back to reality though, we have to have the self-discipline to temper our exuberant dreams in to something that is shippable with the team and time slots we actually have, in the real world where deadlines and interdependencies and team bandwidth exist. If we said “yes” to everything, we might ship a perfect, world-changing video game in 2058, but the lights would be off a lot sooner than that. That's where I come in.

So what does all this mean and why is this guy taking up a DD slot?

First answer is, Arheo, Egladil and the rest of the team are working on finishing up 1.5 Menander, and I want them to have maximum focus on that right now. But also -

The big reason:

Subject progression, the system of evolving relationships between overlord and subject that we announced in the first overview of Menander, is cut from 1.5.

In my role, I have to keep on top of project scope. What that means is, do we have the people, time, and capacity from our supporting teams (like DevOps, Product Launch, QA, Art, Audio, Localization), and general ability to ship this update with this feature set? Can we hit a date that has to be agreed with external partners like the digital stores we're on, months in advance?

If upon digging in to implementation and finding out that we were too ambitious with our desired content for the release, the answer becomes plainly "no", I have to step in and reduce scope. Sometimes, sadly, that means cutting a feature. We always try to do this before it is announced to you, the fans, but there's a constant conflict between wanting to avoid building false expectations versus wanting to meet the demand for news about future content. In this case, we announced the feature, then when we got in to implementation found out the 1.5 update was going to be heavier than we thought. So, unfortunately, something had to come out. That's when duty obliges me to put on the black hat and get the chopping hatchet out. It's disappointing for us as much as you, but now at least you know who to be cranky at. It's not my game director, tech lead, or anyone else on the dev team, nor on the biz side of the company. Odd fate decreed it would be me, an old QA guy and fan of more than a decade. But as we say, "it is what it is".

As a long time Paradox fan who moved halfway around the world after playing our games since HOI2, I gotta tell you, cutting sucks. I'm a gamer too, and I want the cool thing in as much as anyone. But if that cool thing puts us over capacity, to the point where I'd have to ship it with terrible quality or at too harsh a cost on my team's well being, I gotta cut it. There's a saying in the games industry, that you have to be ready to kill your babies: what they mean by that is, working in this creative field that is ruled by practical limitations of time and resources, you have to be prepared to delay, shrink, or cut your features sometimes. It's just like any other thing in life where hopes meet reality.

What does this mean? Is subject progression gone forever? Probably not, in fact. As you might know, Imperator is trying out a new mode of releases for PDS. We aim to do smaller but more frequent updates compared to the massive once or twice a year things our other games have traditionally done. I'll tell you the same thing I told my guys, when I ran the numbers and things didn't fit: this feature is very cool, and it deserves better than to be rushed out with poor quality. We'll pause it for now, and come back to it in a future release when we have the time and resources to do it justice, and make something the fans deserve. With this new style of more frequent updates, that might not be too far off in the future, wherever we can make it fit. For now, our focus will be on getting 1.5 fun, stable, and playable by all of you in time for the summer vacation period.

So. I know this has been a bit of a departure from the normal DD, but I hope this glimpse in to the reality of production has been illuminating for you. I'll try to answer the questions I can in the thread.

If you want to hear more about my mindset and techniques in production, the delicate art of balancing creativity and reality, here’s a talk I did at PDXCon 2018:



Also, to soften the blow a bit, here's a message from our Game Director about some cool stuff that is going in to 1.5 Menander:

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This week will not be lacking any feature reveal however, as I show you a small project I’ve been working on in response to many of the comments about pops and pop-classes, that I read following the reveal of the nobles poptype and cultural integration.

The trade module of the game is something that I believe has the potential to augment the pops system considerably, and should be vital to a functioning empire. In its current form, however, trade can be hard to get into, difficult to rationalize, and fails to accurately portray the sheer economic power behind goods such as dyes and spices.

What this is -not-, however, is a full trade rework. Though there may be a time to cover trade in such a manner, the purpose of this small redesign is to both integrate trade to the pops system in a more rational way, and to add some variety to tradegoods while culling some of the modifier duplication.

As you can see here, nobles (and citizens) will now be responsible for flexing their buying power, contributing to the number of trade routes present in a province. This value will directly correlate to the number of citizens and nobles, and will not take pop happiness into account.

Commerce generation has been removed from pops, with the aim being to use trade routes to generate wealth and to keep pops happy. Nobles currently produce a significant amount of research, and play an important part in the tech system; with a moderate number of nobles doing the lion’s share of the work in contributing to state research. Their happiness however, will still be a significant hurdle to overcome.

Old buildings have been slightly repurposed to augment the number of trade routes that you’ll get from pops in a city, and work is ongoing to redefine how provincial investments will apply to the trade module.

Is that it? Certainly not.

What about trade goods themselves? Well, most goods will now contribute a small amount to the happiness of a poptype, and will be categorized as such:

This ‘local’ bonus will now stack in the entire province, effectively rolling the provincial capital bonus and the province bonus that used to be present, into one.

Capital surplus has remained untouched, as this was always a pretty cool way of contributing to the uniqueness of your nation, choosing which goods to ‘spec’ your country with.

Export bonus has been entirely removed, as this was something that was the hardest for me personally to rationalize, and added another layer of decision-making to every trade offer or deal with a foreign nation.

What the eagle-eyed amongst you will notice, is that it has been replaced with a Base Value. This base value is related to the value of the good itself - Papyrus commands a hefty price of 0.4 gold per month, whereas Leather is valued at 0.15 gold per month.

Importing a tradegood will earn you only 35% of the value of the good, and internal trade even less. Exporting is where the true value lies, with 100% of the trade taxes flowing directly to your coffers. It’s important to remember here, that as the government of your nation, you aren’t purchasing the import of a trade good; you’re encouraging the creation of private trade in that material from A to B. There is no reason you’d be paying to import material, although the taxes you earn will be less to simulate the amount being spent to keep the route running at your behest.

That’s about the extents of the tradegood rework I had planned. Let me know what you think in the comments below, and as usual, everything you see is WIP; especially numbers!

/Arheo

 

[Theodora]

Read a damn book, you won't get anything from a youtube video

Lol, I can (and do) read Caesar in Latin. Doesn't mean one can't appreciate efforts at public education, or a bit of fun speculation.