Imperiums: Greek Wars News

Diplomacy is not a straightforward, easy to master skill. It has many levels on which you can try to influence world events in your favor. Diplomacy is a quiver full of a variety of arrows; drawing the right one at the right time allows you to build stable relations or force smaller and weaker partners to follow your will regarding third parties.




An Emissary is your extended set of ears and eyes at foreign courts. If you want to keep on top of the constantly changing political situation, you need to know who is allied to whom or who is currently plotting against you or your enemies and friends.

The Emissary can express your highest esteem for one ruler or spread rumors and besmirch another. Every now and then, a few dropped words of praise about his own people can show you in the best light. And sometimes the right word in the right ear can do much more to further your political and military plans than open war or bribes.

However, even the most loyal servant can forget his own place if he is too far from your direct control. If you see his affection for his place of residence is outweighing his loyalty to you, recall him home before he decides to accept a new master!

Now we’ll let Pavel explain the mechanic from the developer’s perspective:

Originally posted by Pavel

Emissaries were one of the first mechanics we wanted to implement in the Age of Alexander DLC. It offered a smooth and logical way to enhance not only the existing diplomacy system but other features as well. It is an extension standing above the regular diplomacy options available to all factions in the Diplomacy window. It requires a different approach to diplomacy, less straightforward and more “personal”. And as an intentional side effect it makes the Influence resource much more important.

The whole mechanic was discussed at length. It is quite an important and complex new feature, and half-baked it could create exploits. Basically, there is a new unit type that can help you shape relations of other factions toward each other – the Emissary.

An Emissary is an “extension” of a Hero. Unlike Heroes they do not arise from battles, but can be appointed using a State Decision when particular conditions are met, such as the number of your cities compared to a number of Emissaries in your service, number of live factions in the game, etc. Every additional Emissary will cost more than the previous one.

Heroes can freely travel through friendly countries; they are not considered an enemy by other factions as long as the countries are not in open war. They can take up quests (in the vanilla campaign) and visit foreign capital cities, and by doing so they gain experience. Once they reach 100 experience points, they can be promoted to Generals in their capitals.
So far this is just a description of what Heroes can do in the vanilla mod. Emissaries in addition can be used as diplomats in foreign friendly cities, using three new actions to praise or slander other factions or insinuate their own nation. The effect of such actions is hopefully self-explanatory. When you want to improve relations between two factions, you commend one to another, and the opposite if you want their relations to deteriorate. And of course, you can lobby for yourself.

It is important to note that these actions improve relationships one way only. It means that when you praise a faction A to faction B, it changes the attitude of B towards A but it has no impact on what A thinks of B. Usually, A is not even aware that any such activity is taking place (but see later on).

The impact of these actions depends on number of factors:

• Experience of the Emissary (higher experience leads to greater impact).
  
• Size of the city where the Emissary dwells (the bigger the city, the higher the impact).
  
• Type of city, i.e. capital, regional capital, or a regular town (regional capitals receive extra impact bonus and capitals even higher).
  
• Affinity of the Emissary to a particular faction (more below).
  
• Power of the foreign faction compared to the Emissary's owner.

All three actions use Influence and a limited amount of Knowledge. This now makes Influence rather an important resource. Even when you are short of these resources, the Emissary could be still quite useful as his simple presence in a foreign city improves the relations between you and this faction (it automatically performs the Insinuate action in small scale, without any costs). On the other hand, every time you use the Emissary it has a minor negative impact on the relations with the faction you’re trying to persuade. Well, who would like to have an active lobbyist at his court, right?

The factions who are the target of the “slander” and “praise” actions are usually unaware of this. However, no secrets can be held forever and there is a chance, increasing with the positive attitude the persuaded faction feels toward the target faction, that this covert activity is revealed. This impacts the relations between the Emissary’s owner and the target faction either positively (if “praise” action is used) or negatively (for “slander”).

The Emissary can develop an affinity to other factions. Countries in which he has never spent a day are of no importance to him. However, the longer he lives in one country, the greater his affinity for the place of residence, which can have its benefits but also its pitfalls. If you want to insinuate yourself to a faction to which he feels great affinity or you praise this faction at another court, the impact of these actions will be much higher. On the other hand, the impact of slandering of such a faction would be lower. You should watch the growing affinity of your Emissary with extra care for yet another reason: The more attached he becomes, the more he is repelled by the idea of leaving his place of residence to the point when he’ll refuse to relocate and leaves your service.

We hope that you find the Emissaries to be yet another useful tool for your diplomatic efforts. By influencing relations of other factions towards each other, they can shift the odds of political success in your favor so don’t underestimate their power!

Yours,
Kube Games team.

We are only two weeks away from the release of the Imperiums: Age of Alexander DLC. Previous Spotlights have covered most of the new features and mechanics that will be introduced, however we also realize how important it is to have all of this information in one place.



Alexander made the unimaginable possible, with his courage, invention, strategic genius and a little luck he came to be known as the Great. You too, will need these attributes to challenge mighty Persia or indeed to take any faction to victory. Plan your campaign carefully, brace yourself, use your determination and persistence to try and emulate Alexander. Fortune favors the bold, you don’t need to rely on favors from the gods to conquer.

Here is a comprehensive manual for this extension. All of the enhanced and new mechanics are included to help you on the path to glory. Don’t forget, this is a world where every decision matters!

Yours,
Kube Games team.

Today we will travel through the eastern Mediterranean and the powerful state of the Achaemenid Empire.

Persia was always considered the main enemy of Philip II of Macedon, his son Alexander was raised against this backdrop. When Alexander took the throne, Persia was a huge and blooming empire, very wealthy, including many nations and religions all living side by side in relative harmony. The reins of power were firmly in the hands of the emperor, Dareios III, who was a surprisingly strong ruler. However, like other large empires it faced many internal threats, from the growing unrest in Egypt to the more remote parts of the empire where the new economic reforms were proving unpopular.

The Age of Alexander DLC allows you to lead Alexander's Macedon and any other state on the map, including the so called satrapies, the provinces of the Persian Empire. These satrapies were more or less autonomous and are represented in the game as a confederacy of states.
If you choose to play as one of the satrapies you will control the economy and army of your state but will have no power over foreign affairs. Diplomacy is completely in the hands of your master, the Persian Emperor, your only option for influencing politics will be the use of Emissaries (we will cover Emissaries in more detail in one of the future Spotlights).
Maybe, you think you should break away from the Empire’s protective embrace and stand alone against the world? Or will you keep the status quo and stay subservient but safe?

So let’s take a walk through the Achaemenid Empire and if you haven't done so yet, add the DLC to your wishlist or you can pre-order it right now.

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Do you feel strong enough to stop Alexander as he makes his way to the heart of Persia? Do you balance your loyalty to the Emperor and use pragmatic politics to stay safe until the clash of the great powers is concluded before making your move?
Every country within the Persian Empire has a unique role in the game and this is reflected in the different strategies of the individual provinces. So, do you want to be the one to bring Persia to its knees or you would rather be its savior? Soon, you will be able to put your political skills to the test and see how history unfolds with you in charge.

Yours,
Kube Games team.

Hello everyone.

We can finally announce the release date of the long-awaited DLC Imperiums: Age of Alexander. It was quite a ride and we have done our best to prepare it to the highest standards we could.

The release date is 7th October and you'll need a few days off :)

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The expansion brings a big new campaign map, new unit types and also several new interesting game mechanics. You can read more about them in our spotlight articles (there is one more to follow).

• Regional capitals
• Economic specialization
• Military reserves

You can wishlist the DLC to get the launch discount or you can pre-order it now and get an even better price.

We will stream the "dev-play" of the new campaign map on Twitch. Please subscribe to our channel, we cannot wait to show you all the new stuff in this expansion!

Yours,
Kube Games team.

The Black Sea could be perceived as a remote and unimportant region in antiquity, the opposite is true. Pontos Euxinos, as it was called back then, was criss crossed with trade routes, control of the sea and its trading posts conferred a great advantage to its masters.
When Alexander ascended to the throne in Macedon, Pontos Euxinos and its ports were controlled by just a small number of kingdoms, in particular Anatolia and the kingdoms of Colchis and Bosporan (originally a Greek colony). Macedon itself was one of the smaller players on the scene, but their cities at the strait of the Bosporus guarded the entrance to the sea and gave Macedon definitely a strategic advantage. The Thracians occupied the western shores but focused their political and military energies towards land wars with no ambitions to rule the sea. The nomadic Scythians who lived along the northern coast also took the same approach.

Pontos Euxinos in the Age of Alexander becomes one of the main battlegrounds of the game.
Anatolia lies in the centre of the map, washed by the waves of the Black Sea in the north and those of the Mediterranean to its south and west.
In comparison with Imperiums: Greek Wars the map of the new DLC has multiple new dimensions. In Greek Wars it was relatively easy to travel from one end of the map to the other, however in the Age of Alexander DLC, the conquest or blockade of the Bosporan Strait divides the map into distinct battlefields centred around Pontos Euxinos, the Mediterranean and the Caspian Sea.
As a player, you need not worry that the game will break into several independent conflicts, everything is interlinked, you will soon realize that your relationships to factions on the other side of the map can have a huge impact on nearby upcoming events.

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Do you feel ready to stand as the threatened Bosporan Kingdom? Might you, as the Thracian King challenge Alexander himself? What about the wind in your hair riding the wild horses of the Scythian tribes, can you reform society and build a lasting kingdom?
Whatever your first choice we are sure that you will want to swap shoes and try your luck again and again. We always have a hard time choosing which nation to play in test runs. The Age of Alexander is a tough world and every testing round has brought us surprises.

If you use Steam, could we please ask that you wishlist the Imperiums: Age of Alexander DLC. Steam uses the wishlist numbers in their algorithms to flag up new offerings to players of the genre. This method makes our standing against the big titles even more difficult for us, but we will persevere.

Yours,
Kube Games team.