Imperator - Sunday Morning Design Corner - May 5th 2019

[Johan]

Ok thanks for the response but the game over for civil war is moddable or it's hardcoded?

It works the same as losing you last city in any other war.

 

[Johan]

Once you've turned your desired empire into a cultural and religious hegemon, there is no more threat of disruption. Once you know the tricks to stabilizing your empire, that is pretty much it. You have a fascinating system for tearing empires apart, but not everyone is going to grind through the game as it is to experience that..

Thats the main problem.

 

[Johan]

You're not implying that CK II has bad/worse AI I hope.

CK2 does have the same need for an AI.

 

[Johan]

I'd say that one of my biggest issues in the game is the lack of events to entertain me during peace time. Right now, there are what... 10 ? 15 different events ? When you compare to CKII, which has hundreds of different events, it hurts. I know that CKII is the product of years and years of work, and that multiple DLCs have refined the game slowly over the time, adding each time 50-60 events to the game... But the base game of I : P should at least contains a hundred of events. Like, 30 to 40 generic events that everyone can have, then 5-6 events related to a particular form of government, then a few events that are related to your culture, and then again, something like 20 events that are character-related (character traits). I think it should be a decent number for the base game.

Imperator has about 1050+ events currently.

 

[Johan]

Look, it's very unfortunate for you, because you released a game that a lot of people are unhappy with. There's not really much of anything you can do to prevent this. There's no like, magic fix that will make people happy, which again, is very unfortunate. It's not that you didn't make the game deeper in every way than EU:Rome, it's that you made EU:Rome 2 and didn't make a game anyone likes. In 18 months the game might be good, but it's not very good now.

be careful about the word "anyone"..

 

[Johan]

That's not really true, though. Even in EU3, Catholics had access to the unique Papacy mechanics. Moreover, Sword of Islam came out for CK2 in 2012. You're effectively saying "Imperator: Rome has a feature set equivalent to a 2012 release"; but we're now in 2019 and you're a much bigger developer than you were back then.

EDIT: That said, the fact you are responding to us is really appreciated. A lot of people have taken it much too far with the criticism and when I am making any replies I am trying to be quite careful to make sure it is focused points and not general complaining; I hope that comes across. Thanks for engaging with us.

True.

The original vision for Imperator was that religion should not be as important, so we did not design features for it to make the different religions unique.

 

[Johan]

I have just a question for @Johan . Is there any plans to add visualy diferent armies on map based on their composition in the near future? (like ck2 or eu4)

Like cavalry? or elephants?

I want to, but art is reluctant.

 

[Johan]

2. I can manually convert pops to my culture or to my religion. I can also do this via governor policies. I can also manually move pops, however I cannot move them through governor policies. Have you considered adding governor policies for that? Personally I would consider an "urbanization" policy (whereby the governor would slowly move pops to the capital city of a province so that the majority of the province lives in that city) and a "ruralization" policy (whereby the governor would slowly spread pops out across the province to ensure every city is about as populated as every other city). Especially the latter policy is something that I would appreciate given the influx of slaves your capital province can experience.

Interesting. could definitely be done.

 

[Johan]

I've just had an idea: naming the levels might make it feel more flavourful for the people who are complaining about the buildings. So instead of having x granaries, you go storehouse > granary > aqueduct, or whatever.
Obviously feel free to ignore me utterly, just trying to be helpful. Thanks for the great game

thats one nice suggestion.

 

[Johan]

I hope you are not implying what it sounds like you are implying. The CK2 team worked hard on their AI, and on their game rules, and said AI has to deal with a great many game systems; as did the HoI4 team in their game rules. Gotta say you have kinda lost me in this comment, and i hope i'm just reading it wrong somehow.

And having rules makes it LOT harder for their AI developers, as they need to consider all rules, and test lots of permutations.

hoi4 rules are easier in that it is basically balance boosts.

 

[Johan]

Are there any plans for an interface to re-map hotkeys? I'm having trouble using the WASD map movement system after ~2,500 hours of EU4 (these keys have been drilled into my memory as political mapmode, board ships, split stack in half, and detach siege, respectively). And the macro-builder not being assigned to the 'B' key is rather annoying.

sadly not prioritised.

i personally dislike wasd for mapmovement as well.

 

[Johan]

I'll try to give it a shot.

• Aragon has dozens of special events, including several DHE's like the Iberian Wedding
• Aragon has a mission tree, and in the base game, it had special Old Missions.
• Saxony is an elector of the Holy Roman Empire, with all the diplomatic effects it brings. It starts in the middle of the HRE, making expansion a complex affair.
• Aragon and Saxony have unique national idea sets, different from their neighbours and themselves.
• Aragon and Saxony both share Papal religious mechanics, yes, but those mechanics are different than any other religion. They also can convert to two other deonominations of christendom, further expanding their options. Saxony frequently goes protestant.
• Aragon and Saxony have massive economical differences, and as such Aragon can afford better advisors and get a bigger monarch power output, while Saxony has to make do with what they have.
• Aragon starts with a personal union over far off Naples, forcing the player to take on the ''naval'' game. EU4 always had had 4 ship types, IR has one.
• Both have unique flags, instead of RNG patterns. I know handcrafted flags for so many tags as in I:R is a tall order, but the system makes tags feel ''samey'' and often during wars i couldnt tell who's who, and i had to install a flag mod.

thank you.

 

[Johan]

But, why though? Let's take Egpyt for example. A Greek Hellenic power (Alexander) conquered lots and lots of land that is Egyptian and Kemetic. Understandably, they get the option to either stay hellenic and greek, do syncretism, or convert to their culture and religion.
It makes sense, they suddenly had lots of people following a different religion, practising different customs.

So, if I play a druidic tribe, and I decide to migrate to Egypt for whatever reason, I end up with the same problem. I suddenly have lots of people under my rule that don't worship my gods, that don't pracise my customs.
Why do I not get the ability to adopt their customs and religion?
Why is it that a nation like Parthia, which starts greek hellenic can not adopt zoroastrianism and persian culture?

This honestly makes no sense, this is soemthing that should have been in the base game, and that there aren't even plans to add this honenstly baffles me.

Religion changes will be talked about tomorrow.

 

[Johan]

ver hear the same 3 songs. None of the many others in the soundtrack get played, and I've played and watched a lot. This is completely regardless of deluxe/base/soundtrack dlc, makes no difference. Could you please take a look to see what's causing this?

Thats not how it should be.

 

[Johan]

"I have said before launch that this is the best game I’ve made, and I stand by it still. 1.0 of Imperator is the best 1.0 we have ever made of a game."

Which one was better at 1.0?

 

[Johan]

If you're building on an 11 year old codebase and design instead of learning from everything that's come after, it's no wonder you're in this mess. And you did not make EU: Rome 2, you made Imperator: Rome, which comes with different player expectations..

the codebase is the newest around.. its just that we copied features 1 by 1 to have a great base.

 

[Johan]

Art is reluctant? What kind of special privileges do you give your artists that they can reject doing their work?

because of the size of the units, and how combat animations work, the RoI is kinda bad compared to what else they could do.

 

[Trin Tragula]

The thing that makes or breaks history games is accuracy. Most people aren't so much bothered by how the mechanic works, but rather by the lack of regional differentiation. You could've made it so much better if edited texts/tooltips of these omens to be tied to the religion the country you're playing as. Even a semblance of depth is lacking here. Flavour tex shouldn't be that hard to write, should it?

While I would argue that researching the deities of the ancient world is indeed a bit of work what you ask for here is in the game already and has been since the day of release.