Imperiums: Greek Wars

A number of challenges and new possibilities appeared when we introduced the new time scale into the Rise of Caesar DLC. We could implement the Weather and Seasons mechanic and we had to create an alternative to the classical tech tree by implementing the 'Politics in Rome'. So, what else has changed?

Let's start with citizens. The population growth mechanic did not convert sensibly to a weekly time scale, because one year in the new DLC could see the population double or even triple. Balancing this mechanic led to an interesting outcome, the population was hardly growing between turns. The natural consequence of this has made citizens the most important resource, more so than even gold, iron or stones.

Military strategy is affected, armies are made of soldiers and they in turn are recruited from citizens. With soldiers so precious, the more costly and lengthy ways of maintaining armies, such as their healing in cities, need to be planned very carefully as losing soldiers can become a real problem.

Settlers are also affected by the slowed population growth. The "execution time" of certain actions has been modified to the new time scale, e.g. building a road, constructing a bridge, building a farm and chopping wood. With these actions now taking longer, alongside the fact that settlers cannot be "created" so easily any more, means that the whole development of the map slows down significantly. Careful consideration will be required for construction projects as well as supply lines, essential for any military advances.

You as Caesar are not the absolute leader of Rome, you are a consul in one of the Roman provinces and obedient to the Senate and the will of the people. You cannot build legions yourself, if you need another legion to boost the four you have, you will have to navigate through a labyrinth of political intrigues. It is possible for you to train inferior units to supplement your battle hardened legionaries and use these troops to somehow get by. After all, part of Caesar's military genius was turning lost battles into victories.

The changes to the time scale have made the new DLC much more tactical and the Roman Republic a very specific and interesting faction. This DLC will really push your strategic and tactical thinking to the limits, the action has not slowed, you will have to be on your toes and alert from the moment you step into Gallic territory all the way to the Scottish highlands.

As mentioned in the previous Spotlight, the biggest challenge we faced with this new expansion was the different time scale, we now operate in weeks instead of months and years. This allowed us to incorporate a new set of mechanics which had to be carefully designed and planned.

During the design phase it became clear that we could not keep the Research mechanic and Invention tree in their current form because they simply did not fit the new time scale. The first option, to remove the mechanics entirely was just out of the question. The second option, to increase the research time dramatically (say fivefold) would mean that only the first few technologies would ever be explored in the game. When considering alternatives one interesting idea popped up that would allow us to retain the mechanics but have them work in an entirely new way. We called this new approach, Politics in Rome.

So what is this new mechanic?
It is all about decisions that have to be taken at significant crossroads in life, decisions that are irreversible and have a great impact on future events. During his lifetime Caesar had to make many crucial decisions and the Politics in Rome mechanic tries to simulate this.

These decision events are visualised like the Invention tree, each appearing with several options that vary in costs and consequences. At a decision point, you must choose one of the options presented. Once the decision is taken it cannot be changed, future events have been determined. The consequences of your choice are immediately apparent to you and the other factions in the game. The decision events are revealed to you as you progress through the game.

As the name implies the new mechanic is focused on the politics in Rome. Playing as the Romans you get to decide, playing as other factions you are simply an observer of what is happening in Rome and you have to face the consequences.

The "tree" of decision events can be shared across the two consecutive scenarios. As the Roman leader, your policies established in Gaul will continue to be in effect in Britain. But this is something I will talk about in detail in a future spotlight.

Previous campaign maps have turns lasting a month, a quarter or even half a year and as such, it made no sense to implement more tactical mechanics. Perhaps with the exception of a „battle view“ and even here the possibilities would be quite limited. Besides, this is not a direction which we want to go in right now.

The Rise of Ceasar DLC has a different time scale and turn length compared to previous campaign maps, which was a major factor in shaping our decisions about what changes to implement.

The fact that one turn in the Rise of Caesar DLC equates to one week dramatically changed our options for adding more tactical elements to the game. The most important one is Weather and Seasons.

The mechanic has 3 elements – rain and snow, snow cover and temperature. Let’s dive into each of them now.

Rain and snow (depending on temperature) lowers the mobility of units and reduces the effectiveness of supply lines. Both phenomena move across the map with the wind. Tiles where it was snowing the turn before will be covered with a snow crust (this also reduces the mobility of units and the effectiveness of supply lines but to a lesser extent than snowing itself). The snow cover stays on the tiles until the temperature rises above 0°C.

Temperatures change over the seasons. Most of the time you will not need to pay extra attention to it, however it will become an important factor when it gets to more extreme levels (above 30°C or below -5°C). In such cases, all units not stationed in or close to a city will be affected by the extreme weather.

In hot conditions their battle readiness is temporarily reduced (the men are exhausted), but it will return to its original level when the temperature drops. The health of units exposed to freezing temperatures below -5°C is negatively affected with every turn the situation lasts. This is a more permanent effect on health that does not automatically recover when the temperature rises, any units affected will need healing before they reach full battle readiness again.

A new Weather panel above the Map Menu has been added, this indicates the weather for the current turn and a forecast for the coming turn. It shows the temperature, the weather and the wind direction for the current turn (wind direction is important to give you an idea of how the weather will develop for the coming turn). Forecasts are only indicative and should be viewed accordingly.

Special warnings are displayed when snow, rain and/or extreme temperatures are forecast for the coming turn. This notification can be disabled directly in the Weather panel if so desired.

I consider this mechanic to be the most interesting new concept in the DLC. It greatly expands the tactical dimensions of the game and forces you to plan your campaigns as well as any backup plans to account for the effects of winter and the actual weather. Caesar himself had to plan his conquests in a similar way, winter was too unpredictable and campaigning too risky.

• Terrain look was improved.
  
• New models and icons of forts and defensive walls were added.
  
• New window added when you start a new game, summarizing the changes of that particular DLC.
  
• Tutorial button is now present in all the official mods, making it easier to come back to it.
  
• Slow convergence of Army Morale as a result of government changes (instead of instant change) was implemented (based on Kaysoky's suggestion on Steam forum).

• Preventing misclicks when a unit has moved but the unit selection has not yet switched to the next unit.
  
• The list of potential improvements and trainings is now sorted per availability.
  
• Text of the tutorial has been updated to explain some actions more clearly.
  
• Performance improvement from fine tuning of bitmaps.
  
• When joining a PBEM game, a tooltip notifies you that you haven't filled in the email address.
  
• Updated Russian, German, French, Japanese, Italian, Spanish, Czech and Chinese.
  
• First Korean translations added. We are now looking for volunteers to help with proofreading!

• AI is now capable of building forts and defensive walls and actively uses them.
  
• Neutral factions can build boats and disembark units.

• An issue with default birth rate support (per city) when a confederation is revoked.
  
• An exploit when a player was selling a unit.
  
• An issue when a General declares a new state based on a member of a current confederation (General is NOT at war with neither the original faction, nor its master).
  
• An issue with birth rate support in cities that are trading posts when a player has not enough resources to support such a grant.
  
• Further logging of a couple of issues added.
  
• Couple of rare CTDs were fixed.

• Argentine Peso
  
• Turkish Lira
  
• Russian Rubles
  
• Ukrainian Hryvnia
  
• Hong Kong Dollar
  
• Brazilian Reals
  
• Norwegian Krone
  
• Polish zloty
  
• New Zealand Dollar
  
• Taiwanese Dollar
  
• Japanese Yen
  
• Chinese Yuan
  
• Swiss Francs

• Birth rate support mechanism was improved by adding a grant limit based on city size. This allows you to set a maximum size for a particular city (on local level) or all cities in general (on global level) and limit the birth rate support for cities that exceed the set size. It should make the management of birth support easier, especially for bigger empires. (This improvement was suggested by Guirai in Steam forum)
  
  
• Terrain color schemes were implemented. You can now choose from several different color schemes the one that best fits your taste. Go to Game settings -> Player settings -> Advanced settings -> Color scheme. We would appreciate your thoughts on the various color palettes, which ones do you like and why?
  
  
• Terrain textures and overall readability of the map was improved, including changes in terrain textures, tweaking a number of static geometry objects (trees, bushes) and other.
  
  
• Mandatory objectives were implemented in the Age of Alexander, Ancient Greece (vanilla) and Peloponnese scenarios. It is an optional mechanic that will have impact on new games only.

• Ambiguous mandatory objectives have been removed from the mandatory objectives list but stay in as generic objectives (per suggestion from MiyabiSFG).
  
  
• Impact of the "Influence" action of a General has been tweaked by taking into account how far he is from his country. The odds of him successfully initiating a revolt in a foreign city, resulting in the city changing ownership to your faction decrease with the distance he is from his motherland. The actual chance of a revolt stays the same but could result in a city becoming independent or joining another nearby faction (based on feedback on Steam forum).
  
  
• "Center on preset position" functionality was added. It is an extension of a "center on unit" functionality allowing you to center the camera on a selected map item in the exactly same angle and height. This way, you can make nice time lapse sequences taken from the same position.
  
  
• New kingdoms established by the migrating tribes are now more prone to quick collapse at the beginning of their existence.
  
  
• The ability of Heroes and Emissaries to survive an attack and cause considerable damage to an attacker was reduced. These units are now very vulnerable to any attack.
  
  
• Proposal offering to lead another country (when the player is defeated), was improved to reflect the historical relations and current proximity.
  
  
• The loading of a save game was accelerated.
  
  
• Number of improvements to lower the memory consumption were implemented.
  
  
• Rome vs Carthage DLC was further balanced, especially Macedonia faction setup (based on feedback from Steam forum).
  
  
• Error report tool was further improved.
  
  
• All the city names and territories were translated to Japanese.
  
  
• Updated translations for Japanese and German.

• AI stops proposing trade deals when the demanded amount of food is near the limit of the player's capacity.
  
  
• AI proposing unions of any type (confederation, federation or absorption) was further improved.
  
  
• Rare bug showing an empty field where a reason for the AI rejecting certain diplomatic proposals (like accepting treaties) should have been, was fixed.

• Roman basic units - Milites - were able to cross rivers. This is not possible anymore.
  
• The flag pole for Generals in "incognito" mode was still showing faction color (even if it shouldn’t) was fixed.
  
• Quickload and quicksave in multiplayer games were disabled.
  
• Loading the game for the first time (when vanilla and DLCs are purchased together) was loading the new DLC straight away. This was fixed so that the vanilla mod is loaded first to allow the player to go through the tutorial.
  
• Bug when a player could not recruit a new unit in a particular situation, was fixed.
  
• Cancelled federation or confederation leading to incorrect owner changes for units such as Emissary, Sage and General. This is now fixed.
  
• Bug allowing a unit placed in reserve in a city to perform the "influence tiles" action, was fixed.
  
• Bug allowing a General to incite unrest while still aboard a ship, was fixed.
  
• Bug allowing stables to have multiple specialization was fixed (thanks to Altruist and his forum post)
  
• Very specific and rare "deadlock" in AI algorithm was fixed.
  
• Couple of rare CTDs were fixed.

• Migrating tribes will challenge anyone daring to explore the wilderness beyond the borders of the civilized world.
  
• Multiturn events such as plague, revolts and floods allow you to change the outcome through prompt actions.
  
• Mandatory Objectives will make strategic decisions even more important than before.
  
• Historical events provide more immersion and an authentic feel.