What’s hilarious is that Johan originally had designed the game without the co-consul and made consul terms ahistorically long, and there was so much complaining everywhere that he ceded and this is the result.
Maybe some abstraction would have helped? Consul families?
Consuls can and do belong to powerful families.
OK right so, they could have abstracted over those consul families. So direct consul elections wouldn’t be tracked, but consul families losing power in elections would. This would effectively give the long timeline that is desired for these things to be more meaningful.
Interesting dev diary from Arheo (previously a lead designer, now game director) about their plans for 2020 and how things will differ a bit from other Paradox titles. It also sounds like the Imperator team has grown.
The next couple updates will focus on:
They also pointed out that they are looking to stick to paid content packs and make the feature changes core/free to avoid the issues they’ve had with DLC in past titles.
And that is good decision. Not because I’m greedy but because it’s sad to see devs trying to implement fundamental features that can be turned on and off without breaking the rest of the game. In EU4 it led to most features not being fundamental at all. In CK2 it lead to many DLC features feeling like cheats on top of the real game.
Yeah, one of the biggest issues in EU4 was the fact that it was very difficult to expand on a feature unique to an expansion, because they didn’t want to require people to own previous expansions. So you had things like Estates that could never be expanded upon or fleshed out in a later expansion because it required an earlier one.
From a game design point of view it’s a clear win. I hope it ends up being palatable to the numbers people too. :)
It’s more complicated to do, but I guess that might be why they have been restructuring job roles. And by complicated I mean no one having the job of noticing that the design is going to have performance problems, like a certain space game.
Playing the new update. I really like the warfare changes with food and supply. It feels really good at simulating going on a campaign season during summer then retreating back to your lands during winter to resupply. The religion updates are alright. I changed worship of Ceres to Diana because I had a Diana holy site. It will be interesting once I start conquering non Hellenic lands.
I’m playing the newest update as well and trying my hand in Greece for the first time(as Sparta). My first ended in a rage quit due to some of the stupid notification misses that really hit you hard in Greece. I still haven’t figured out how to get the game to notify me when a great power intervenes in one of my wars. I’ve had several instances where I’m in a manageable conflict, when suddenly a bunch of giant Macedon or Phrygia stacks show up. Check the war screen and I’m now at war with a dozen nations.
By default the game doesn’t give you a pop-up for peace when you aren’t the war leader. So I just randomly discovered fun things like Athens being my vassal. Also I figure I must have been gifted a vassal on Crete because I found myself at war against one of my allies in defense of a country I had never interacted with.
After that game I calmed down and took a pass through all of the notification settings in the game to make the pop-ups better. I’ve also been trying to make sure I keep one of the big successor states as an ally at all times. But it still really sucks that by default such major things can happen in the game without it bothering to inform you of it.
As far as figuring out how to play in Greece, it seems ideal to ally someone like Macedon early and use all of their wars to pick on other city-states. The AI for those states sends their armies off to die elsewhere leaving lots of cities open for pillaging. Great way to make money and get slaves.
New religion stuff is certainly better, but I don’t find myself engaging with it that frequently. Might need to try a less religiously homogeneous area next.
Are you playing with the Magna Graecia DLC installed?
I re-installed the game yesterday and picked up the DLC. I’m thinking it makes the most sense to try a Greek state again, probably Sparta as well. I got humbled as them in my very first game at initial release.
Yes, I did. I hadn’t played Sparta before, so I don’t have a good feel for what their new content does for them.
Ah, got it, makes sense, thanks anyways.
I’m looking forward to revisiting this. From the sounds of it, it’s substantially different than it was at release. And I even enjoyed it quite a bit at release.
I’m not usually a backlog kind of guy, I tend to have one game I’m really interested in, binge, and then pick up the next game.
But holy crap, I’m backlogged hardcore right now. It didn’t help that Paradox dropped expansions for HOI4, Stellaris, and Imperator within a month of each other. I played one game as France in HOI4 but lost, haven’t really had a chance to really try Stellaris or Imperator expansions yet. So many games I want to play right now…
Finally had a successful Sparta -> Peloponnesian League. Once they got going their bonuses made them pretty much unstoppable. I had ridiculous amounts of manpower and as well as military quality bonuses.
Now I’m on to my first ever Judea game. They are similarly powerful with all of their prophet bonuses. Moses gives a free province investment every time you choose his omen so I’ve been able to crank up the capital import routes fast. Got unlucky at the start with nobody going after Phrygia. Used the only Phrygia civil war(so far) to safely declare my independence, but otherwise haven’t been able to touch them. However, big stroke of luck has been the perpetual civil war in Egypt that has allowed me to work my way into the delta with very little resistance. As soon as it looks like one of the sides is close to winning I’ve declared war on that side and knocked them back.
AI is still dumb. No other countries have touched Egypt during this civil war. Phrygia has declared war on me several times and could absolutely crush me, but just doesn’t go after their war goal allowing me to force white peace.
I wish I had your focus.
My backlog is overwhelming- I have ADGD - Attention deficit gaming disorder…
Nice job!
As planned, with Religion expanded upon, next up is Culture. Arheo breaks down the Menander features.
Lots of info, but here are the bullet points of what they are expanding on:
- Cultural Integration
- Reworked Rebellions
- Senate and Factions Rework
- Subjects