Imperator: Rome News

Hello and welcome to this developer diary for the Pompey patch! Today I will be talking about more changes coming to the naval part of the game (the general rework of naval combat can be found here), as I will cover Storms and Pirates, as well as some more historical and geographic flavor in the form of added events as well as the new on map Volcanoes.




In Imperator: Rome Pirates spawn and block ports indefinitely, this is a nuisance for the strong, and very disruptive to those who are weak with no navy as they block their ability to “break free” from their home ports. Apart from laws blocking the creation of pirates from your own ports entirely, or permanently placing a fleet outside your ports there is little you can do to stop them. Meaning your options are to withstand constant penalties or turn them off completely. Neither is very engaging.

Nonetheless Pirates were a natural part of maritime life in the period the game covers and should be a natural part for the game.

The aim for Pompey patch has therefore been an implementation of pirates that:

1. Offer something, instead of just being harmful.
   
2. Have a clear way for the player to do something about them, instead of spawning surprisingly.
   
3. Is less bothersome on the whole than the constantly maintained blockade just out of the coast of your land.
   

Contrary to what one might expect Pirates in this era was frequently employed as seaside mercenaries to supplement the regular navy. They were not small individual groups with a ship but would rather often be a group of ships (sometimes a very large group), with a commander and seaside plunder and warfare as their way of life. Usually they would be hired, just like mercenaries, to augment forces in times of war, generally they would have many light ships and the Antigonid (Phrygian) navy at our start the commanders of such forces would even be styled an “Archpirate”. When not hired they would act as brigands and raid around the countryside near and round ports.

In times of peace Pirates were generally not hired as the interest countries had in them was as part of their navies. Their raids during such times would often be seen as quite bothersome by local states who would sometimes embark on entire campaigns with troops as well as ships to pacify them. This was famously the case for Pompey the Great, the namesake of this patch, but there are many other examples such as the recently deceased Eumelos, king of the Bosporan kingdom.




What this means for us is that Pirates will be present around the map at start, much like mercenaries are. They can also be hired, with commander and all by any country within range, to supplement the navy. This may be useful both for when you need to quickly supplement your navy (as ships take some time to build) or if you are playing a country that hasn’t really invested in one yet. Pirates will only ever use Light Ships.

Unlike Mercenaries however the locations where Pirates call home are predetermined. They will exist in Pirate Havens all around the map. These havens provide a small benefit to the owner of the port but they are also the permanent home for a group of Pirates as long as they are not at sea.

If Pirates go unemployed for long enough (this is currently 2 years) they will set out on a raid, leaving their port and turning hostile to other fleets. They will head for a port that is not protected by a fort in another region than their home and raid it, leaving destruction in their path, before returning home and being open to new offers. If a pirate fleet is destroyed it will be recreated at 0 strength in its home port where it will regain strength over time.



Now not everyone likes Pirates. In times of war a unit in a Pirate Haven will be able to cleanse that city of its Haven and remove the Pirates permanently. Every country will also have access to a law to outlaw piracy, which will give them a Casus Belli on all countries that harbor pirates.

Likewise every country will have access to a law to condone Piracy, which will create a new Pirate Haven in one of your ports.



To accommodate these changes the mercenary view has been split into two tabs. One for land units and one for Pirate groups. Pirates, much like mercenaries, can also be hired by clicking on their unit on the map.

The aim of these changes are to make pirates into something you can deal with in more than one way. You can encourage them and strengthen your local economy, and have access to extra ships in times of need, or you can actively go after them and eradicate them from the seas completely.




Apart from pirates another certainty at sea is recurring harsh weather. Storms have ravaged the Mediterrenean, the Baltic, the Indian Ocean and the Atlantic longer than anyone has dared to sail them. WIth the Pompey patch recurring storms can strike at sea (exactly during which part of the year varies depending on the sea in question but they are generally more common in the open sea than near land) and will impose a harsh attrition penalty on the affected sea zones for 2 months, before ebbing away. Storms will be clearly visible as animated rain, wind, clouds and lightning will cover the affected areas during this period.




The harsh effects of weather is not really unique to the sea. In the Pompey patch Desert areas will also run a risk of storms, manifesting themselves in great sandstorms visible in the desert cities themselves, potentially turning an already inhospitable route into a much more taxing affair.




In the parts of the map where snowfall exists the winter may now also bring snow storms, sometimes quite great in size, causing attrition to all units in an area. As with the other two storms Winter storms will be shown clearly on the map and will remain in place for 2 months.



Volcanoes hold a very significant place in Roman history, as the eruption of Vesuvius has given us both a detailed snapshot of what a Roman city looked like just 100 years after our game ends, and the name for a Plinian eruption themselves after the man who left a description of it to the world. In the region covered by our game a large number of Volcanoes were active at the time, and many of them remain active to this day. Just outside the era we cover Volcanic eruptions greatly influenced the course of history, with Mount Aetna even stopping a Carthaginian invasion 100 years prior.

In Pompey patch we will build on and expand the existing Volcanic eruption events, which could occur and ravage the area around a volcano until a nearby power spent the resources to put the area back to use, after which it will benefit from the addition of volcanic soils.

We have now added a large number of new volcanoes, all visible on the map, and searchable in the province finder.

When an eruption occurs you will be prompted by an event, and the volcano in question will visible spew forth fire and lava over the land around it. In a normal play-through there will be 1 - 2 eruptions.

(Mid-eruption screenshot of Mount Aetna)




As is often the case in our patches Pompey will come with a number of new events. In this case the focus has been on additional flavor events for Rome, Carthage and the various states if Italy as well as on events focusing on the relationship between the state and Slavery.

Lastly a number of new events have been added to expand on the relationship between the first and second consul (or, in monarchies the ruler and their consort).



That was all for today on changes that are coming to you soon with the Pompey patch.

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Hello and welcome to another Development Diary for Imperator: Rome! Today we will be talking about a number of Quality of Life improvements that are coming with the Pompey Update.





While Roads are a great way to create highways through your country, allowing your armies to quickly move from one end of your empire to another, they can also be cumbersome to construct due to requiring a new order to be given for every new connected city. In Pompey patch you will be able to select a destination for a road and have the army tasked with the job continue until the road is done.





One of the changes coming in the Pompey patch is the ability to grant autonomy to a local dynasty in a conquered land. This allows you to better handle big areas of foreign culture and it was a modus operandi often chosen by the Romans themselves in their wars of expansion.

Any owned Province can be made into a Client State from the country overview screen and the new country will take the state culture and religion from what is dominant in that province.

The new subject will inherit the government, technology and inventions of its old owner and it will be ruled by a native character.





A number of character interactions (such as subverting enemy governors or, supporting pretenders, assassinations) exist that lets you further your designs on foreign countries but it can often be hard to identify a proper foreign target. In Pompey Patch we have added a button in the diplomacy view where the character lists for another country can be accessed, with the same possibilities for sorting and filtering that you would have in your own country.





One of the things that was sorely missed by many when coming to Imperator: Rome from our older released games was the ability to see what effects buildings, pop promotion, and religious conversion of pops would have when using the Macro Builder.

In the Pompey patch when you click on the Macro Builder tabs for Buildings and Pops a sortable list will be shown of all places where you can take the selected action, with information about what benefits this would bring. By hovering the location itself you will see a full tooltip of all affected values.


Full effects of promoting a pop in Myos Hormos to a Freeman.​





Another often requested quality of life feature has been to have a Ledger, with details on the current happenings in the world, easily organized and sortable. In the Pompey update a ledger has been added with the following pages:

• Overview: This is a page that has comparative information for all countries in the entire game. This is the same information that you would normally find in the Diplomacy view for each individual country, but here it is organized for easy comparisons.
  
• Rulers: This is a page with all the currently living rulers in the entire world at any given time.
  
• Provinces: An overview of all provinces currently under your control, with information about pops, trade routes, loyalty, commerce and tax.
  
• Inventions: A list of all inventions purchased up until now, and their effects.
  
• Our Rulers: A list of all characters who have ruled your country from the start of the game up until the present date.
  

Ledger page for Inventions.​





Apart from adding Alerts on the top of the screen for new features such as being outside of Naval Range we have also added alerts for when you have a decision available and when you have not yet picked National Ideas for all of your possible Idea slots.





The fact that the province interface was covering the center of the screen is something we were never quite happy with. With the addition of new features to the province interface we took the opportunity to address some of these problems.



In Pompey the Province interface is more clearly divided into a city and Province part. With the Province portion of the interface being retractable for when you are only interested in the city itself.

The Province portion of the interface now shows circle diagrams based on the population in the province as a whole as well as the income from tax and commerce for the entire province.



The city list is no longer shown at all times, but can be extended from the side. The reason for this is that we found that while not many used it we still wanted to keep the information for those that did.






One change we have made to office holders in 1.1 Pompey is that the effect of the benefit they provide is now scaled on how loyal they are. This means that we have to show their loyalty in the government view and together with the addition of dual rulers and the government interactions we have had to revamp the government interface. In doing so we have broken it up into 3 tabs:

• Show Government: This screen shows your ruler and co-ruler or Consort. It also contains your clan leaders, heirs and party leaders, depending on government type.
  
• Show Offices: Shows all currently employed officers, what benefit you get from them as well as their loyalty.
  
• Show Laws: Now displays all 8 categories of laws in one window, instead of only 4.
  

Another very minor but hopefully helpful change in Pompey is that characters shown in the event window will now have their full name displayed, rather than just their family name.

That was all for today’s diary on quality of life changes. I will be back next week with a diary on Pirates, Storms and things that go kaboom.

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Join the discussion with our devs on our forum! Click right here!

Ave citizens! We are now ready to share the roadmap of Imperator: Rome for the coming year! Alea iacta est!

Hello and welcome to another Development Diary for Imperator: Rome!

One of the things that we want to address in Pompey Patch is that we want to make the internal life of your country more visible. Today I will be talking about that, together with a number of improvements to internal management in the patch. :)





While Clan retinues are a tool for your Clan Chiefs to assert their own authority, as well as a resource for your tribe when at war, it can at times be a problem that the Chiefs get to pick what unit types they recruit themselves. Since unit types are so important to the general balance of warfare tribes will in the Pompey Patch be able to specify which units that your Clan Chiefs are allowed to recruit to their armies (as well as how they deploy them) in their government view.
Overall Clan Retinues have also been adjusted to be smaller than they currently are in release.





One thing we were looking to improve in the 1.1 Pompey Patch is Holdings. In release Holdings are currently things you hardly interact with. While they provide income for your characters you have little control over how they acquire them and you have little reason to get invested in where someone currently owns holdings.

In Pompey we want holdings to be more relevant. They should be the base of power for many of your characters, and they should be the means by which those with no government employment get their income. They are intended as a way to reward characters or harm them, should you take them away. They will also tie a character more to the cities on the map in your empire.

A Holding in Imperator is an estate in a city, with associated slaves, and a holding is always owned by a character. This provides the character with both income and increases their power base ( as described in this diary ).

For it to be possible for a character to have a Holding in a city, the city needs to have at least 10 slaves. An additional Holding in the same location can be added with every additional 10 slaves.



Once a holding exist the 10 slaves associated with it cannot be moved, or promoted. But they can still starve.

Characters will over time use their wealth to purchase holdings themselves, but you can also grant them directly to characters for a large loyalty boost. The number of holdings each character own at the same time is limited by their finesse skills, and when they die their children will inherit it.



Privately held holdings can be confiscated using the existing Proscription interaction, if you have imprisoned a character.

Events, civil wars and other content will make use of a character's holding going forward.




In order to make it easier to redistribute your population, Pompey update will add two new governor policies, which will let you impact your population in your province in a way you prefer.



Centralize Population
This Policy reduces output from the province by 10%, as it will move one pop every 3rd month from a random city in the province, and put that pop in the capital city of the province, if the capital is below the population cap.

Decentralize Population
This also reduces the output from the province by 10%, and it moves one pop every 3 months from a higher populated city in the province to a lower populated city in the province, evening out the population in the province over time.





A big change in the Pompey patch is that Disloyal Employed characters such as office holders and commanders can no longer be dismissed. Instead there is a new character interaction to bring someone to Trial. The starting chance of success will be dependent on a number of things, among them how corrupt the character is, or how large their power base is.



The actual trial itself however is an event chain in which your actions will affect the outcome. Bringing someone to Trial may also misfire and a failed trial may lead to the accused character using their power base to ignite a Civil War.


In a monarchy you can at any point send away a loyal member of the Royal Family to be a mercenary in foreign service. This potentially gets rid of family members that could be troublesome in the future, but it is not a permanent fix. The mercenary prince may well return one day with expectations on their new home life after their foreign adventures.

With that I will leave the word to @Arheo to talk about the new Schemes system:





Character events in Imperator have been a great source of fun from the inception of the character system. A surprising amount of events occur for characters in a court or country, and can have a variety of effects from murder to jailbreaks.



This said, it became clear from feedback after launch, that these events were rarely being experienced, and when they were taking place, did not provide enough (if any) feedback to the player. In an effort to make these more visible, as well as to provide a framework for additional and future work on the character system, we have reworked the Ambition system to act as a tool for expressing a variety of character-focused content. You may not have realised, for example, that a number of your more brawny characters engage in underground pit-fighting on an occasional basis; or indeed, that your powerful senators have been stealing from one another behind your back.

Mechanically, schemes are a type of ambition that a character can perform, having a clear goal (for example, to assassinate a political rival, or purchase a holding), and a finite duration. The target and duration of a scheme will be displayed in the character menu, and be visible in the character tooltip.

The outcome of a scheme can vary, and you may find yourself responding to more character events than before, however the frequency of this is being closely monitored by the system to prevent being constantly bothered by popups.

Whilst primarily a vessel for displaying the web of subterfuge that goes on in a court, the player will also be able to interact with certain schemes to assist or interfere, or in some cases, convince a character to drop their scheme altogether.

In addition to this, a player’s Ruler has a selection of schemes available to them, accessed through the character interactions menu. These are designed to address existing issues, and enhance some of the new features coming in 1.1.

Ruler Schemes
Since your ruler is a character more closely tied to your country you are able to pick what schemes they pursue. Including:



Siphon Funds:
The ruler will attempt to divert state funds to enlarge their personal wealth.

Influence Character:
If there are characters in your country that are more gifted than your current monarch you may attempt to influence them to put their expertise to use.

Assassinate Character
Among the schemes you can adopt for your ruler is one to assassinate someone, either abroad or in your own country.


​
Prove Legitimacy:
In monarchies the ruler can try to improve their legitimacy by researching their lineage. While any type of research will increase the perceived legitimacy of your ruler there is also a small chance of discovering a long lost link to one of the blood lines in the game, if you are Hellenic.

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