Man that art is gorgeous.
So that’s what the Night King’s been up to.
I’m really liking the 1.2 Cicero update. I was a little nervous about them changing direction due to the mob, but in all honesty they really haven’t. Mana is there still, it’s just derived from things other than (primarily) your ruler stats. It feels better and more organic, while still having a resource that constrains and limits you so that you have to strategize on how and where to spend it. And because it’s not “Monarch Power” anymore. Basically, it’s just the refinement to the monarch power system I was hoping for: it’s still there, you just have more agency as a player in terms of how you generate it instead of being at the mercy of RNG.
The other changes all feel great, too. Having pops assimilate and convert over time instead of at a click of a button / expenditure of MP is a lot better and feels more organic. I really like what they’ve done in terms of province development and pop growth as well.
All in all, it just seems like a ton of refinement and some pretty solid steps forward. It feels a little more like a… I don’t know if I want to say simulation but that’s all I can think of. It feels more like a simulation instead of a game, if that makes any sense. No instant pop converts, no instant stability increases, and deriving monarch power (Political Influence) from the loyalty of the important characters instead of being directly tied to your monarch stats is good.
I have mixed feelings about this. My feeling on firing up the new version was that I have fewer things to do now. Maybe, over time, I’ll find that I have fewer but more interesting things to do?
I certainly do like the new UI changes. I also like the new building features.
I just dove back in and started a new game as Judea. Where my province list should have been were three buttons that just said “words”, with nothing available to them. The sort of thingyou would find in Early Access.
I can’t find a reference to this anywhere. Is it just me? I’m going to uninstall and reinstall from scratch to see if that makes a difference.
Heh. That’s a pretty awesome bug. I’m pretty sure there’s a developer right now who’s mentally flogging himself for letting that one through.
That’s really good, you should post it on their forums.
Obvious question: Any chance you’re still in the opt-in beta?
For you, maybe :)
Already have. I saw a massive download the other day that I assume was the release build of 1.2, so that should have over-written any bets.
No. I have no idea what’s going on there!
Any mods running? And I’m assuming this is a new game, not a loaded save? That’s about all I’ve got, other than to make sure the install folder and the folder in Documents get deleted when you uninstalled.
I remembered that I also have the game installed on my wife’s computer, so decided to fire it up there for shits and giggles. I expected the bug to be gone, but I ran into the same thing - and our systems have very little in common other than WIn 10
I didn’t delete those folders. Maybe I’ll uninstall one more time and try that. Couldn’t hurt.
[edit] Fixed it. Thank you, KevinC
Woohoo, happy to hear it did the trick! What a pain.
I gave this try last night to see if Cicero helped to address my many issues. It did! Instead of quitting after a couple hours of boredom, I stayed up way too late playing a game as Massalia(they are much more survivable than in FOG:E). Seems far less micro-managey and way more interesting during peacetime. City vs settlement is a huge step forward and I think the monarch power rework is a positive. Still lots of rooms for improvement. UX/UI still feels like a big step back from other games. But mechanics-wise this seems like a much better foundation to build off.
I’m on my third cup of coffee this morning due to the game as well. I’m playing as a Tribe (Trevaria) with the long-term goal of forming Gaul. I still love the Tribe gameplay, I get a lot of satisfaction in the early struggles of battling your neighboring tribes while trying to settle and centralize so you can eventually become a Monarchy or Republic. That was my goal last night and what kept me up way too late playing, but I finally got it. Feels great to finally have all that work come together and see my society change and my tech progress bar finally moving along. I’m a ways behind Rome in tech but I’m significantly ahead than any of the other tribes. My capital is also almost ready to be turned into a Metropolis, I have 78 of the 80 required Pops. Now of course I’m having to learn how to manage my court in a Monarchy, which has different issues than dealing with rival clan chiefs as a Tribe. Stupid pretender brother of mine is giving me a headache.
One of the improvements I noticed is that laws were more interesting to me. There was a lot more decision making on part on what laws I wanted to go with and how I wanted to structure things whereas before it seemed like a lot of them had “no brainer” choices for me that I took every time.
One of the biggest improvements for me has to be the economy, though. I really like the dynamic of settlements vs cities and how well you can develop and customize your cities. While Settlements can only construct one building, they’re very impactful. Cities have a ton of options (maybe 14 or so buildings?) and there’s a lot of opportunity to sink money and Political Influence to expand your City’s capabilities. I’ve invested a lot of PI into adding more trade routes and building slots for my capital and it’s really paying off now, especially as the population has boomed and I am beginning to rely more and more heavily on imported food to keep the people fed. I’m assuming this is going to become even more so as I convert it into a Metropolis. Should be interesting to see what happens if those trade routes I’m relying on disappear. I might have to start concentrating Slaves in my own food-producing provinces to make sure I am better able to support myself.
Bah, that’s what my people get for not remembering the old ways. I didn’t handle the first Succession crisis very well as I’m brand new to playing monarchies, after converting from my tribal form of government. Looks like Treveria is going to be one of those kingdoms that falls apart as soon as the initial ruler dies and his sons squabble for territory.
The main problem I have is my second son, Bolgios Punicus. I knew he was going to be a problem for a while so I removed him as a general of my main army a long time ago – the last thing I wanted to do was give him a bunch of loyal cohorts. This hurt, as he is a military genius, but I felt I didn’t have a choice.
A lot of money and effort was spent on trying to get him to stop plotting against his brothers, but I wasn’t able to get it to stick and unfortunately the King died as he was cooking up yet another plot. At the death of the King, he’s raised a host of 30,000 well-armed men. His younger brother has also fielded a similar army but that is less of a concern. You see, about six years prior Bolgios succeeded in a plot to poison his brother, Caltraim. While Caltraim lived, he was severely brain damaged and as a result now has a military score of 0. I’m not seeing Caltraim’s army being much of a threat, despite their numbers.
Bolgios on the other hand… that guy is a military genius. He has a military stat of 17. Seventeen! When a good general often has about 7 (which is what the heir and now current King, Crixus, has). I have no idea how I’m going to stop 30,000 elite troops led by Boglios, he’s going to run circles around me and while I have him outnumbered about 2:1, I do have external threats to worry about as well as a couple disloyal governors…
In any case, if this is the end, it wasn’t a bad run for a little hinterland tribe called Treveria. I did get to see the capital Augusta Treverorum grow into a metropolis and become a center of learning and culture without peer in its region.
Still having a lot of fun with the Cicero patch. Assimilating provinces is much better than just clicking on all kinds of individual pops, however, it is starting to feel a bit samey to do. If the province doesn’t have any cities I build one. Use that to build temples to convert the populace and bring in as many slaves as needed to increase the building cap and provide pops to convert. From there I start to switch over to the buildings that integrate the culture. From there it’s specialize the cities to whatever degree. Still haven’t figured out ideal city builds.
The metropolis of Massilia has over 200 pops now and the whole province(4 cities total) is starting to strain under the pressure. I’ve started having to use precious capital import routes to bring in extra surplus of grain/fish/vegetables to boost my food. The province level boosts are nice with 4 cities but that’s certainly countered by even less food. My research efficiency has struggled all game as well since all of my conquests have been of undeveloped tribal provinces. Building up the citizens in my coastal core has been a focus but until recently that led to major manpower struggles.
Speaking of manpower, with a pretty small pool until recently, I relied very heavily on my solid income to let me buy as many mercenary armies as needed to win wars.At this point I’m not sure which way I want to expand. I’ve been working through northern Italy, but I’m afraid of running afoul of my current ally Rome before I’m ready to really take them on. They’ve got ~3500 pops to my 2000. Hopefully they stay distracted across the Adriatic. Going further north isn’t super appealing right now, but I also wouldn’t really run into much threat up there. Aeduia used to be double the size, declared war on me, and was a total pushover. That leaves me with expanding further into Iberia. If I can get Rome to join me against Carthage I might be able to grab a lot of territory easily. There also is a fairly prosperous Greek colony down there I’d like to take since Hellenic territories are a rare treat around here.
I started a game as… I don’t remember the name of the tribe, but they basically start in the Alps. Small tribe, maybe 20 pops. I was just messing around my gameplan was to not expand and just see how quickly I could civilize my tribe and get research going.
It was actually pretty cool, but I ran into one major problem: turns out there’s not a lot of food in the Alps. At 0 tech my diplomatic range wasn’t very far either, so I had very few opportunities to import food. I was building quite a nice city way up there in the mountains but it turns out that that’s not very sustainable without conquering some fertile farmlands. :) Anyway, I’m really liking the food/pop growth mechanics. So much better than what they were in 1.0!
I’m really having a good time with the 1.2 update. I feel like the game has found it’s footing now and really hope that Paradox continues to add to it for a while. I think it’d be a real shame if early reviews cut the game’s lifespan short, because I really like what’s there.
Yeah, I could see that being a major hurdle to try to build up your capital in a fully mountainous province.
My low food notification in my screenshot is for one of my provinces in the Alps. Not sure what to do for food with mountainous terrain that only produces stone/marble/metal. Probably not worth building up trade routes for that minor province in my instance. I have much nicer places those pops can migrate to if they get hungry enough. I’ve quit trying to conquer the mountain provinces and am just making the mountain tribal states my vassals.
Totally agree that it’s found its footing and I’m looking forward to it starting to get the Paradox treatment rather than just scrambling to fix it. I assume they’ll start by doing some pretty heavy tweaking of the new things they added in Cicero, but I’m looking forward to when they start to get to things like region-specific enhancements and flavor. I find the military traditions pretty boring as-is. Same with the inventions.
Yeah game is good now! I actually want PDX to announce some paid DLC for this at PDXCON!