Never Second in Rome News

[p]It is impossible not to notice that most of the negative feedback that Never Second in Rome is getting comes from players who enjoyed my first game, A Legionary's Life, and who are let down by the differences between the two.[/p][p]I want to be as clear as possible: Never Second in Rome is *not* A Legionary's Life 2, it was never meant to be, and it certainly has never been advertised as such. Even if you liked A Legionary's Life a lot, do not assume that you will automatically like Never Second in Rome. There is a free demo available, please try it before you buy the full game. It is here for exactly this reason, so that anyone can evaluate the game for free, at a comfortable pace, and decide whether it's worth spending their money on. The demo saves are compatible with the full game, by the way.[/p][p]Thank you for reading.[/p]

[p]I have decided to release a handful of minor changes I made as I worked on parts 11 to 15, mostly because there was a mistake in the text that bothered me. I won't hazard a guess on the release date of the five new chapters, but it's still a matter of a few months.[/p][p][/p]

• [p]Tweaked some decisional parameters of enemy formations related to Disruptive Commitment Shift.[/p]

• [p]The amount of money soldiers are willing to spend to bribe their way out of duty is now dependent on their basic pay. The final result is the same as before in the current chapters, but it will become more relevant later.[/p]
• [p]Fixed an oversight in the text that wrongly attributed the Fifteenth legion to Pompey in the winter of 54-53 BC.[/p]

• [p]Changed the text that accompanies the rewarding of torques.[/p]
• [p]Added a tooltip to the Century Info panel of the Century Summary.[/p]
• [p]Fixed a few typos.
  [/p]

I have made several changes to the building mini-game, in order to make it less simplistic and somewhat more challenging.
I have also added a couple of unrelated options that some of you should like, especially the first.

[h3]Changes[/h3]

• Added an option to skip the animated rolls in individual combat.
  
• Added an option to hide the exact numerical difficulty of checks in text events.
  
• In the building mini-game, warning icons are shown in the last turn if the current selection is insufficient to complete the work, or if completion is possible only with a successful Bonus Production Roll.
  
• The way Superior Quality production works has been changed: now it is more efficient in the first quadrant of the work progression. In the second quadrant it is still slightly better than it was in the previous version of the game. In the third and fourth quadrants it gets worse and worse.
  
• The option to "push your men to work faster" can be used at full efficiency only a limited number of times. If your century has good Endurance, more uses are available. When they are all used up, the production increment becomes less and less beneficial.
  
• The Troop's Opinion cost of the "push your men to work faster" option has been changed. The first use costs 2 points, a little less than before, but the price increases with each further use up to a maximum of 6 points.
  
• Tooltips have been added to the panels showing Attributes and Skills in the character/century summaries. Another unrelated tooltip has ben added to the cohort status panel of the battle UI.
  
• A hint panel has been added to the Combat UI.
  
• Other small UI changes and improvements.
  

[h2]About the future[/h2]

After the release of version 0.9.1 at the beginning of April, I started working on the continuation of the story in parallel with the changes I made for the two most recent updates, but there is still a long way to go. For now, I have implemented the transition to the new legion and century in my local copy, with all the particulars that had to be handled, and I have began building the details of part 11.

I can tell you with certainty that the next chapters won't be released one by one, that would be way too disruptive of the player's experience. At the moment, the idea I am most keen on is to release them in two installments made of several chapters each, when they are ready. It is difficult to make an accurate estimate, but it is safe to assume it should take at least several months before the first of such installments is published.

Today's minor update is mainly about a couple of fixes.

• Counters related to a specific type of mini-event should not be carried over when abandoning the current game and starting a new one. Fortunately, this did not affect any positive mini-events in the current version of the game, only a negative one, but it would definitely have affected future content.
  
• The list of recently used events should be properly cleared when abandoning a game and immediately starting a new one.
  
• At the end of the seventh chapter you can move up two ranks instead of just one if you meet the requirements. The ranks that can be attained do not include that of Pilus Prior, which, just as before, becomes available at the end of the following chapter.
  
• Fixed a spelling error in the tenth chapter.
  

Before diving into the details of this update, I'd like to take the chance to thank all those of you who have been supporting me. The resources of a solo developer are very limited, and this activity is possible only with the backing and encouragement of the players.

[h3]Changes[/h3]

• You can give nicknames to your staff and notable legionaries.
  
• The complex tooltips of some battle stats have been divided into two sections, a summary with a concise description and the details. This way, a new user should be able to learn the basics without having to get into the complex technicalities.
  
• Same as above for the tooltips of Recompact and Encourage, available during Lulls, and for most individual combat actions.
  
• The tutorial page that explains the battle stats (Cohesion, Front, etc.) has been simplified.
  
• A few more hints have been added to help the players gain their bearings and get the gist of the game.
  
• The Minimum Goal for battles has been renamed to Primary Goal.
  
• Successfully evading the battle in the eighth chapter is no longer counted as a failed Primary Goal.
  
• If you don't save and exit during a battle when you have the opportunity, the game is autosaved now. The save and exit function is there in case you have to stop playing in the middle of a battle, since they can be long. The new autosave is there to provide a backup just in case of technical problems and similar issues before the battle is over.
  
• In the building mini-game, successful bonus production rolls are highlighted in green.
  
• In the foraging mini-game, the messages informing you that additional supplies were found by a specific individual are also highlighted.
  
• When a special Order is selected, but the overall Commitment of both formations is too low for a clash to happen, an icon warns that player that the Order will be ignored.
  

[h3]Fixes[/h3]

• A scripted event in the eighth chapter should not be repeated when the game is reloaded in turn 2 or later.