Never Second in Rome News

[h3]Changes[/h3]

• Two new special orders have been added to formation combat.
  
• The Direct commission background comes with an additional 5,000 sestertii to your starting money. The initial Sword/Shield/Javelin Skills are now 47/47/33 instead of 43/43/29.
  
• Two new mini-events have been added.
  
• Mini-events are more frequent.
  
• Most of the mini-events that regard the tesserarius now also affect the Other Duties score.
  
• Your companion in the fight for the first Civic Crown should behave more carefully.
  
• It is a lot more difficult to grab the Initiative with a Cautious or Very Cautious Commitment.
  
• If you reduce the enemy's Cohesion to 0 ahead of time*, each unused Melee phase makes torques easier to win.
  
• The minimum Goal for the first battle is now 1350 instead of 1200.
  
• No more than 3 combats can trigger in the same battle turn.
  
• Disruptive Commitment Shift now lasts for an entire round instead of just one turn.
  
• Clarified in the tutorial that an aggressive Commitment of either side, not just the defender, can cause more individual conflicts.
  

* Remember that this is difficult to do. Your main objective during battles is the minimum goal, or failing that, to hold the line and survive.

[h3]Fixes[/h3]

• Fixed a potential crash when leaving the Trade screen.
  
• Fixed a few errors in the text.
  

I have also updated the free demo.

[h3]Changes[/h3]

• When your Formation Attack Support is negative, you are now allowed to skip the individual fights of your legionaries during battles. These fights will be auto-resolved.
  This comes at a cost: you will miss the opportunity to gain Valor and other advantages that an interactive combat might have yielded, and your fighter will suffer wounds according to his stats, those of the enemy, and other applicable conditions like the ground. Only the fights of your subordinates can be skipped, not those of your own character.
  
• Several small changes have been made to the formation combat UI, to make it clearer who is acting, which formation the numbers belong to and how the Momentum value is determined. Also, the colors of the arrows indicating the direction of the "Gain Momentum" and "Advantage Opportunity" rolls have been changed. The previous colors were too similar to those of the standards above and could easily confuse the player.
  
• Low Supervision is now a lot less penalizing when picking a staff member or a notable legionary, especially when selecting their "best" and "superior" Abilities, but also for their untagged (or average, if you prefer) and weak Abilities.
  Supervision is still very important, as it affects your century's training, but at least the individuals generated with a low Supervision score should not be useless.
  
• The penalty to Troop's Opinion when asking the optio for advice has been reduced, since the effect has become smaller.
  
• Rolls in individual combat are slightly faster. Also, remember that you can increase the speed of combat in the gameplay options.
  
• The speed of Threat/Kill rolls has also been increased a bit.
  
• The Versatile bonus feature now gives +2 to Intellect, Endurance and Quickness, +1 to the rest.
  
• The Athletic bonus feature now gives +3 to Strength, Quickness and Coordination, +2 to Endurance and Constitution, -1 to Intellect.
  
• Skill levels from 23 to 29 now require 800 advancement points instead of 1000.
  
• During the Camp phase, you can raise the troops' Morale for a much cheaper price than before.
  
• The battle in Part 4 has been shortened from 10 to 8 Melee phases.
  

[h3]Fixes[/h3]

• You shouldn't be allowed to change your equipment in the middle of the last battle.
  
• You shouldn't be able to select a second Bonus Feature involving a penalty that would deny the requirements of the first.
  
• A few spelling mistakes have been corrected. My personal thanks to the players who have reported them in the dedicated thread.
  

In preparation for the Early Access release, I have implemented several small changes and improvements.

[h3]Changes[/h3]

• In addition to its previous effects, a positive Supervision score offers a small bonus to the efficiency of your century's training. This bonus improves as the score increases and is applied both to the unit as a whole and to the individual soldiers. Similarly, a negative score makes the training less efficient.
  
• Each Melee (i.e. Sword or Shield) training will cause a little Strain for every turn in which more than 3 Training Points are allocated.
  
• Other Duties offers a larger bonus to Discipline than before when more than 3 Training Points are allocated.
  
• Endurance training by Workload alone has been reduced. The contribution of Physical Attributes and Drill training has been changed so that a single Training Point (the minimum) gives no bonus at all to Endurance, while 3 or more points give a higher bonus than before.
  
• The Specialization bonus has been reduced from 25% to 20%.
  
• The amount of advancement points required for some levels of Traits and Opinions has been changed. It has been reduced for some of the low levels and increased for the high levels.
  
• The amount of Valor assigned for defeating enemies in combat has been reduced. The requirements for some decorations assigned after a battle have also been reduced.
  
• The Strength Divisor of all weapons except clubs has been reduced, which means Strength will generally have a larger impact on damage than before.
  
• The Kill Bonus of all weapons has been increased.
  
• The Defense formula for shieldless fighters has been changed to AVG(Melee Skills) - 12 (the old formula was: Weapon Skill - 12).
  
• When Strikes result in a Graze, the Health Damage is reduced to 1/3 of its full value instead of 1/6.
  
• Morale loss due to Health damage has been tweaked.
  
• Morale moves towards its Stability value at three times the normal rate if the difference is above 20.
  
• Fatigue damage for attacks on arms and legs is now based on the percentage of Health damage inflicted instead of the raw Health points. This makes the victim's Constitution more relevant. Successful attacks on legs inflict 3 points of Fatigue for every percentage point of Health damage inflicted. For attacks on arms, the coefficient is 2.
  
• The Fatigue cost of most individual combat actions has been increased by 1.
  
• Health damage for attacks on legs has been reduced from 70% to 60% of Base Damage. For attacks on arms it has been reduced from 60% to 50%.
  
• You can now view your legionaries' stats by clicking on them on the Battle screen.
  
• The optio's contribution to the Recompact action has been reduced.
  
• The "Act In Advance" option during the initial javelin throw uses the units' Javelin Skill as well as their leaders' stats.
  
• The penalty of the "Wrong Timing" effect is now -25 instead of -20.
  
• The modifier based on a leader's mental Attributes for the "Act In Advance" option has been halved.
  
• The modifier based on a leader's mental Attributes for the Initiative roll at the beginning of a Melee phase has also been halved.
  
• The effect of Intellect on Administration has been slightly decreased.
  
• Skill levels from 23 to 29 now require 1000 advancement points.
  
• Skill levels from 30 to 36 now require 1500 advancement points.
  
• The optional building work in Part III should be a little more difficult than before.
  
• Notable Individuals have been renamed to Notable Legionaries.
  
• The maximum number of Notable Legionaries has been reduced from 5 to 4.
  
• After the second battle, one new Notable Legionary will become available instead of two.
  
• The number of times an Ability can be selected as "best" when generating a new character in the century has been reduced.
  
• The bonus to the Ability selected as "best" has been reduced. The bonus to the Abilities selected as "superior" has been increased.
  
• The player's initial Potential Discipline has been reduced from 71 to 64 and its Current value from 43 to 39.
  
• The Iron-willed bonus feature now increases Potential Discipline by 14 and the Current value by 7.
  
• The INT bonus for the rank of Librarius has been reduced to 1.
  
• The stats of the candidates to become your first optio have been reduced a little.
  
• The requirements for some checks have been slightly modified.
  
• Added a button to view the current Attributes and Skills from the Training section.
  
• Added a tooltip to the Rank panel of the Player Overview screen to explain that promotions depend on Valor, Caesar's Opinion and the Century Valor Score, and that they are available only at specific times.
  

[h3]Fixes[/h3]

• Skill and Attribute improvements assigned to the century as a whole at the end of a chapter are now also assigned to the individual legionaries.
  
• Fixed potential crash when losing a legionary during a battle under specific circumstances.
  
• Fixed crash when changing Attitude and showing the available Hotkeys at the same time.
  
• The button labeled "More Hints" should no longer stay hidden when it is supposed to be visible.
  
• Several more minor fixes and changes.
  

I'm thrilled to announce that Never Second in Rome is entering Early Access on February 18 at 17:00 CET (08:00 PST).

The initial version will contain 10 fully playable chapters extending from the beginning of Caesar's Gallic campaign to the siege of Alesia.

The free demo will remain available even after the official release, so that you can try the game before you buy it. However, I have been making a lot of small changes and tweaks since the last demo version (0.5.1) was published. I'm going to release an up-to-date build on the day Early Access launches.

I expect Never Second in Rome to stay in Early Access for longer than A Legionary's Life, possibly for about a year, but it's difficult to predict with certainty at this stage.

Whether you decide to jump on board as soon as possible or prefer to wait until the full release, please remember to wishlist the game if you haven't already done so!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3169580/

This is a small update dealing with a couple of bugs.

• Fix: Strain for extra workload should be calculated correctly when an old game is abandoned and a new one is created.
  
• Fix: the Valor level of fallen legionaries should be saved correctly.
  
• Fix: typo in the character creation screen.