Imperiums: Greek Wars News

Civilization brings new ideas, technological progress and cultural development. To make the most of these growth opportunities you need a solid foundation to build upon, the more robust and efficient your economic infrastructure, the more potential for progress.




Most ancient economies produced their own food, timber and ore and as their societies developed and grew, so did their requirements increased. New houses to improve urban infrastructure, a growing population, these and many other demands lead to obvious pressures on resources. The introduction of improvements to all aspects of resource management are key for growth of the state.

One goal of the game is to imitate this evolution of society and state growth, making increasing needs lead to heavier demands on resources. Another is to force the player into making critical strategic decisions about their economic infrastructure to meet these requirements. These decisions will influence the player’s plans and the general situation in their state for many game years.

The extraction of mineral resources and the harvesting of timber are expensive processes, added to this are difficulties in transportation. Moving large quantities of wood or heavy stone slabs over land is difficult and slow, probably the most important improvement that can be made to your economic infrastructure is the building of critical link roads.

Further improvements can be made to your economic infrastructure with the addition of specialized facilities for the processing of resources in cities and blacksmiths, in essence the provision of skilled labor, artisans and special equipment. Take for example Gold, to maximize production the gold mine should be linked by roads to a blacksmith with a Gold Refinery improvement and also a city with the Goldsmith improvement.

Priorities, time, costs and locations must be considered strategically with any economic infrastructure improvements. What is your current need - gold, wood? What resource may become a bottleneck down the line - food, stone? If you invest in these improvements can you protect them from your enemies?

While roads can be used for the transportation of any resources, the specialized facilities for processing are unique for each resource, being built and paid for individually. A single city or blacksmith fully enhanced for every resource type is possible, but it would be costly and could constitute a serious single point of failure. Strategically it may be better to distribute your resource production and economic infrastructure throughout your State.

Now, let’s hear from Pavel, our game designer, who will explain the economic enhancements from the designer's point of view.

Originally posted by Pavel

We sometimes hear from players that there is not enough "building" in the game. Our general approach could be summed up as "idle cities produce maximum resources". It is not only more realistic and historical than never ending construction works, but also more fun. This way you keep tedious micromanagement to a minimum while you enjoy the more "variable" aspects of the game.

But don't get me wrong, I do enjoy building and developing infrastructure but it has to provide a bit of a "challenge" in terms of strategic thinking and planning. There is no fun in just building every possible facility in every city you have. Just a lot of brainless clicking without satisfaction.

So, what enhancements can you expect?

There are altogether four resources produced in mines or quarries. In Imperiums: Greek Wars, you need to connect each of these mines with roads to a city and blacksmith to maximize the resource production. This basic mechanic stays the same but some enhancements have been added:

• Cities and blacksmiths get four new improvements. For simplicity let's talk about cities. If you want to increase the production of a nearby mine, for gold you need to build a Goldsmith, for stone a Stonemason, for coal a Coalyard and for iron a Smelter.
  
  
• Production of mines increase when a city and/or blacksmith is nearby but maximum production can only be achieved by building these new improvements.
  
  
• As improvements are added to a city/blacksmith the improvement costs increase, each new improvement is more expensive than the last.
  
  
• The production of a particular mine is tied to a single city. Multiple cities cannot gain from the same improvement (e.g. Goldsmith) for the same mine.

Although this is not a big modification, it has a significant impact on a number of things:

1. The production increase will be more granular. In Imperiums: Greek Wars, the production of a mine suddenly doubles when you build a blacksmith nearby, now production will incrementally increase with each new improvement.
   
   
2. The fact that every additional improvement built in a particular city/blacksmith will cost more than the previous one will naturally force players to plan ahead. Where and how they build their economic infrastructure becomes more of a challenge.
   
   
3. Ideally, there should be only one such improvement per city (the cheapest possible option). This fits very nicely with history, whereby different cities specialized in mining and processing the resources in their vicinity. Thus, dependant on resources you may create a stone producing center in one city while another will specialize in gold production.
   
   
4. Blacksmiths on the other hand are placed on the map using different logic. Because they consume resources, the player's goal is to have as few blacksmiths as possible and placing them to cover as many mines as possible makes sense. With the new improvements, the player will have to pay additional costs to maximize production to create a multi resource industrial center. This extra investment in blacksmiths makes them more important strategic assets, losing such a key economic nexus (with all those expensive facilities) will be a major setback.
   
   
5. This mechanic will allow us to create interesting map/scenario setups where even a small country can be economically very strong if its cities and blacksmiths are extended with these improvements from the start. It would give it a great advantage over other countries that will need to build them. A great example of such "playing-tall" is the ancient city of Constantinople.

Apart from mines, there are two other major resources, food and wood. These are enhanced by two new improvements for cities, the Granary and the Lumber Mill.

The Granary decreases the amount of food wasted every turn, it stores food when there is excess production and it releases reserves automatically when there is a shortage. It is a sort of "safety pillow" against famine.

Lumber Mills increase the amount of wood harvested within a city range.

It might look like we have taken certain steps towards a Civ way of facility building, but that would be the wrong impression. We continue with the approach we have been pushing from the beginning, building should be something you have to think about and plan. You will not just start building these new improvements in every city/blacksmith, instead the approach reinforces the need for strategic thinking, and that is why we all are here, right?:)

We are very proud to announce that Imperiums' language family has a new member!

We can finally say that as from today Polish has been added to the officially supported languages. It is all thanks to Dawid, who translated the whole game by himself.
It might not seem it, but the amount of game texts are huge. For one person to translate it all requires great dedication, lots of time and loads of testing. It is a huge achievement and we would like to use this communication to thank Dawid and show our admiration and gratitude for his hard work and passion for the game.



The Polish language has always been one of our top priority localizations. When Dawid Szarek came on board as a volunteer translator, we hoped that we would find more people to help him as we knew how big the task was. Often people leave such projects midway through simply due to lack of time or differing life priorities. However, Dawid stayed at the task alone and thanks to his resolve we can now make this big announcement. :)

We hope that this localization brings the game closer to Polish players and that those who were hesitating to play the game in English can now join our growing player base. The ancient battlefields are waiting for you now! As Dawid said himself: "Just enjoy the game and have fun". What else to say?

If you find a mistake in the texts or you want to suggest a way to improve them, feel free to share your ideas and opinions on the Steam forum or our dedicated Polish Discord channel.

If you like the game and the quality of the translation, please do write a review in Polish. Dawid will surely appreciate the feedback and he rightly deserves any praise.

Yours,
Kube Games team.

As the release of the Age of Alexander DLC is getting closer (more below), we would like to tease you a little with a series of "Faction Highlights", short videos for different areas of the map connected historically or geographically, showing overviews of the situation in the period when the game starts. Hopefully they will whet your appetite and encourage you to wishlist it, so you won't miss out on the release discount:)

Let's start with a part of the world many of you will certainly try in your first run, the Roman-Punic domain.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

While implementing new features and preparing the map, we realized that the Age of Alexander is way bigger than game expansions that you might be used to. Usually expansions contain smaller maps alongside minor changes or updates, Age of Alexander is much more. It is a huge map, practically a whole new campaign, it covers most of the Mediterranean and extends all the way to the Persian Gulf. It also contains several new unit types and most importantly, it has a number of significant new mechanics that will change the way you play the game.

Considering all of this now, we have enough for a new game, rather than an expansion, not something we realized at the beginning. Nevertheless, we have decided to keep things as they were announced, Age of Alexander will be released as a big DLC for Imperiums: Greek Wars, it is still a greek war after all.

Work on the DLC has proved to be more time consuming than we estimated. We could make a Spring delivery but it would be rushed and the game would not be perfectly balanced and bug free. For these reasons we have decided to postpone the DLC release to the Summer. This will ensure that the delivered game is of the highest quality. We honestly hope that this will not disappoint you too much. In compensation we will introduce another new feature that will be also added to the vanilla game. More details will be revealed in one of our next articles, so stay tuned:)

Enjoy the Spring, because the Summer may be very busy as you follow in the footsteps of the great Alexander.

Yours,
Kube Games team.

Hello everyone.

This release is a little later than usual, it has been almost seven weeks since update 1.1.3.
It also comes with our apologies, as unfortunately, we are not able to include the diplomacy improvement you voted for in the last poll. The "transparency in diplomacy" turned out to be much more time consuming than we anticipated, this fact, along with some personal issues and the parallel development of the Age of Alexander DLC, means that the "transparency in diplomacy" will now be delivered in a later release. Nevertheless, we didn't want to hold off this update because there are still a number of changes that you will surely appreciate.

We've made significant progress on the Age of Alexander DLC and the first tests look great. The map itself is really interesting and fun to discover. Not all the new features are implemented yet but those that are really make the game play a totally different and captivating gaming experience. Please help us spread the word, WISHLIST IT and tell your friends about it too. This way you won’t miss the time-limited discount at launch 😉.



But let's get back to update 1.1.4. There are a few important changes and many small improvements and fixes.

New features and improvements added:

• A new game setting called "AI Actions Filter" was added. It allows you to filter the AI actions that you see during Opponents' turns based on their relevance. It can significantly reduce the presentation time of AI actions and can be set to the level you prefer.
  
  
• "Your rivals are scheming" animation improved.
  
  
• Experimental Polish language support added. If you want to be among the first players to try and test Polish language, please contact us on our Discord.
  
  
• Highlight of a location of a particular event was added to the Minimap when you go through a loop of new turn events to clearly indicate where it took place.
  
  
• Cities cannot be built on swamps from now on.
  
  
• Self-heal action was added to the list of default actions, making it easier to execute it without clicking on the action button.
  
  
• Destroy and Sell actions can be now cancelled the same way as unit movement. This applies to both mobile and static map items.
  
  
• A unit cannot be encouraged by two different generals in the same turn.
  
  
• Rules for new neutral (tribal) cities founded within player's territory were improved.
  
  
• The detection of a 3D item you clicked on was further improved. Unit selection should now be easier.
  
  
• Ironman mode was further improved. If the player breaks the ironman mode, the game is automatically backed up on the local machine (as a local save file). Furthermore, if the game crashes when the Ironman mode is active, the server is automatically notified and the game can be re-loaded without violating the "one time load only" rule.
  
  
• Unofficial Proton support was further improved. The game should be fully playable in Proton but without sound, asynchronous multiplayer (PBEM) and Ironman games. This is the furthest we can go. The way sound, PBEM and Ironman games are handled in the Windows system unfortunately is not supported by the Proton framework. That's why Proton support will never be official. Yet, if you are happy to play the game with this limited support, all the rest should now work without issues.
  
  
• Issue with disappearing tooltip (when a tile is hovered) was fixed.
  
  
• Issue with building a mausoleum for dead generals was fixed.
  
  
• Incorrectly calculated population in buildings (in Troy scenario) was fixed.
  
  
• Several rare CTDs fixed.
  
  
• Text changes in English, German, French, Japanese, Russian, Spanish and Czech.

Due to the fact that we are still working on the diplomacy improvement from the previous poll, we are not going to announce a new poll this time, but we will continue these regular updates with new polls in the future.

We wish you all happy Easter!

Yours,
Kube Games team.

Maintaining a healthy balance between a functioning state economy and strong standing army is a tricky task. On one hand, you need your soldiers trained and ready to defend your country, as well as being ready for your expansion plans. On the other hand, the maintenance costs of an army are huge and represent a substantial burden on the state coffers.




A good solution could be to send your units to the reserves. Let them leave the barracks and go back to their ordinary lives, this will relieve you of the duty to pay and feed them. As farmers, craftsmen or merchants they will be of more value to the state, supporting the economy through their work and trade.

Of course, every coin has two sides and leaving your soldiers inactive for a long period of time will take its toll on their battle readiness. Their armor and weapons will deteriorate and their training will be forgotten. The longer the time they spend on leave, the more their skills and experience deteriorate. Eventually the unit will be entirely disbanded, the armor and weapons sold with the men returning to their lives as ordinary citizens.

To keep the units serviceable, you can recall them from the reserves back to active duty, however they will need some additional training to get back in shape. This training takes place in the military barracks which can be built in cities, it takes several turns to complete.

The main advantage is that you don’t need to pay for the recruitment and training of brand new units, as the retraining of reserves is much cheaper and faster. However, it is important to keep in mind that calling the men back to active duty takes several turns. It is always wise to keep some units on standby in case your country is faced with an unexpected attack. A good commander always thinks two steps ahead!

Pavel, our game designer, considers this to be the most important new mechanic to be added to the game for the upcoming DLC. Let’s go over to him for some backstage insights.

Originally posted by Pavel

The military reserves mechanic will considerably change gameplay as it modifies some of the existing rules:

• Recruitment of new units will take longer and be more costly. It will naturally reduce the overall number of units on the map, which in turn will make players more attached to their existing units, whilst reducing the micromanagement related to large numbers of units.
  
  
• Unit maintenance costs (i.e. soldiers’ pay) will increase, which again will work towards lowering the number of units on the map. It should also enhance the strategic decision making, with more importance attached to the use and positioning of fewer military units.
  
  
• The Unit Experience range will be extended to include negative numbers. Until now, Experience spanned from 0 – 100 points, where 0 was a default value for newly recruited units. As part of this new feature, the Experience scale will be extended to -100 which means your reserves could have lower Experience and fighting abilities than new units.
  It might sound strange at first, but imagine a unit which has just completed military training. Those are fresh soldiers in a good shape, but with zero battle experience. If they are left in the reserves with no training for two years, they would just become lazy and fat :). What would their experience be compared to their state before? Negative.

How does it all tie together?

Players can execute two new actions “Return to reserves” and “Recall to active service” for units in cities. “Return to reserves” essentially orders the soldiers to keep all their gear and weapons and to settle down in that particular city. Technically, this increases number of Citizens (and hence increases the economic production) and cuts maintenance costs. The soldiers will stop being a burden to the state and become contributors.

On the other hand, the unit is no longer operational even when the city is attacked. With every turn it is in reserves, its Experience decreases. When it hits a critical level of -100 Experience points, the unit is entirely disbanded, its gear and weapons sold (the player gets back some resources) and the unit is officially removed from the game. The player will however be notified in advance of any scheduled disbanding, so that he can recall the men back to active service if he wants to. This will mean that the unit is reactivated, it can defend the city, but it still takes several turns to make it fully operational again. The negative Experience will slowly increase over time. The retraining process can be accelerated if the city has a “Barracks” improvement.

This feature has several interesting consequences:

1. Players will need to decide between an active army, available for defense or conquest, or economic growth. Having both will be very difficult and demanding on resources.
   
   
2. Unexpected attacks will be more damaging, because units in reserves will need several turns to be called back to active service. This will force players to maintain good relationships with nearby factions, with whom they want to remain on peaceful terms.
   
   
3. Units in reserves can be considered “national wealth“. They are basically stored resources which can be reused at any time (by selling these units).
   
   
4. Reserves can be also considered a “hidden“ power. It takes some time to fully mobilize them, but it is faster and cheaper than recruiting new units.
   
   
5. Importantly, when these units are returned to active service, they retain all of the improvements that they had at the time they were placed in reserve.

The best part is, that we are not just making an artificial new feature, but we are bringing the gameplay another bit closer to historical reality with the way the Greeks maintained their armies!

So, what do you think? Are you ready for the new challenge?