"From Scythia in the north to Ethiopia in the south, from the Indus in the east to Hispania in the west, all the known world is Helleno-Macedonian."
Imperator: Rome, a New Antiquity Grand Strategy Game from Paradox Interactive
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"From Scythia in the north to Ethiopia in the south, from the Indus in the east to Hispania in the west, all the known world is Helleno-Macedonian."
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epic cities like alexandria (rhages), alexandria (persepolis), alexandria (ekbatana), alexandria (pasargadae)...
tankdrop24
Tread First into Hell
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I love reading a developer diary and being able to systematically identify which academic sources they used. This is good shit.
Fancy Face
Tactically Superior
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Imperator DD : Civilization, Buildings and Macedon
Greetings all! Today, @Chopmist will be taking you through the mission trees for the final nation we’re covering in the Heirs of Alexander content pack: Macedon. Before we deal with the bloodthirsty Kassander however, it’s time to explain some...
This dev diary is split into two parts. The first covers a rework of the "civilization" value and several building types. The basic summary is that the new civilization value has less of an effect on pop happiness compared to culture, but has much stronger boosts to production and can be stacked more effectively by buildings as opposed to government type and policies.
The second covers the three mission trees for Macedon. The first is Antipatrid specific and covers their struggle for influence with the Antigonids in Greece, regime change in certain Greek cities to flip them to your side, and the construction of new cities. If you succeed in getting the Greek cities aligned with you, you can reform the League of Corinth as an extremely strong and loyal feudatory.
The other two mission trees can be taken by anyone who manages to form the Macedon tag. These consist of "Hellenic Mastery", building up your court and patronizing scholars to get periodic skilled characters by event, control over the Oracles and religious centers of Greece to cement your legitimacy, and building up a massive megapolis to rival the cities of the east.
The last concerns the Adriatic, and is mostly about taking control over the area, building up a chosen port + road connecting it to your capital, and and strengthening your fleet. Basically seems like a prelude to an invasion of Italy, more than anything.
tankdrop24
Tread First into Hell
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- The Center of the Universe: Toronto, Canada
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tankdrop24
Tread First into Hell
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- The Center of the Universe: Toronto, Canada
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So, this thread is pretty dead and Paradox has of course all but abandoned Imperator. But everyone's favourite classicist assistant administrator has not, so I'm doing a Let's Play. Come vote, have fun and play with me in Roma Aeterna!
I've gotten pretty close to a world conquest recently (likely to give up out of boredom), and I figured I might jot down some notes on military traditions, and the units they favor. I'm sure someone's written a more elegant rant on this before somewhere else.
Now, units in Imperator work in a fairly simplistic way; beyond maneuver values, their main differences are mainly what other unit types they get a damage bonus against, as well as what combat tactics work well with them (though I never could figure out how the combat tactics system wasn't just rock paper scissors, or arguably blackjack if you're considering the odds that a Greek nation will be using Phalanxes rather than anything that is good against stuff that counters Phalanxes - mainly applicable in multiplayer, I suppose).
Where things gets somewhat strategic is when you consider how to stack various modifiers on top of each other, which is where the Military Traditions system comes in. Some cultures can theoretically make much better and more efficient use out of certain unit types than others due to these traditions.
However, where this gets a bit funny is if, uh, you're doing a world conquest, you have a tonne of levies (because you're optimizing culture conversion and strategically integrating cultures you intend to conquer before you actually conquer them), and they have a lot of starting experience and experience decay reduction. If you disband 100 levies with 30% experience each after having them raised for seven months, you get more than enough Military Experience to pick a new tradition. Do this with 500 levies (being careful not to disband them all at once since ME caps out at 200) many times in a row and you're suddenly in a situation where you don't have to pick and choose. You can just get all the traditions, as long as you can get at least 500 pops in a single culture of any given culture group, which is usually fairly easy (though can be a bit annoying if you beat up the Italians very early, and might have to wait for their population to grow naturally if your own main culture is very large). You don't even have to forego legions, if you're big enough.
Turns out, some unit types get way more buffs than others if you have more than one tradition tree.
Top of the line is Heavy Infantry (who also get more bonuses from innovations), who get bonuses from every single one of the seven sets of tradition trees in the game. Next up are Light Infantry and Light Cavalry, who benefit from five of seven sets. Archers benefit from 4, Elephants from three, Chariots and Heavy Cavalry from two, and Horse Archers and Camels from one each.
Heavy infantry is already pretty good to begin with, and light cavalry is generally the best flanker to begin with. Light infantry is pretty bad, but logistically convenient. Archers are theoretically better than light infantry, except that their required military trees are somewhat spread out (you'd need to be/have beaten both Rome and the Maurya) and their favored combat tactics don't always combine well with both heavy infantry and light cavalry.
I'm amused to note that Rome's levies contain these three troop types to begin with and that their special combat tactic favors all three. (Though I was playing as Noricum.)
Not entirely sure where I'm going with this. I'm just amused at how optimized legions can turn into absurd death machines that will destroy legions three times their own size without too much trouble, I suppose.
Now, units in Imperator work in a fairly simplistic way; beyond maneuver values, their main differences are mainly what other unit types they get a damage bonus against, as well as what combat tactics work well with them (though I never could figure out how the combat tactics system wasn't just rock paper scissors, or arguably blackjack if you're considering the odds that a Greek nation will be using Phalanxes rather than anything that is good against stuff that counters Phalanxes - mainly applicable in multiplayer, I suppose).
Where things gets somewhat strategic is when you consider how to stack various modifiers on top of each other, which is where the Military Traditions system comes in. Some cultures can theoretically make much better and more efficient use out of certain unit types than others due to these traditions.
However, where this gets a bit funny is if, uh, you're doing a world conquest, you have a tonne of levies (because you're optimizing culture conversion and strategically integrating cultures you intend to conquer before you actually conquer them), and they have a lot of starting experience and experience decay reduction. If you disband 100 levies with 30% experience each after having them raised for seven months, you get more than enough Military Experience to pick a new tradition. Do this with 500 levies (being careful not to disband them all at once since ME caps out at 200) many times in a row and you're suddenly in a situation where you don't have to pick and choose. You can just get all the traditions, as long as you can get at least 500 pops in a single culture of any given culture group, which is usually fairly easy (though can be a bit annoying if you beat up the Italians very early, and might have to wait for their population to grow naturally if your own main culture is very large). You don't even have to forego legions, if you're big enough.
Turns out, some unit types get way more buffs than others if you have more than one tradition tree.
Top of the line is Heavy Infantry (who also get more bonuses from innovations), who get bonuses from every single one of the seven sets of tradition trees in the game. Next up are Light Infantry and Light Cavalry, who benefit from five of seven sets. Archers benefit from 4, Elephants from three, Chariots and Heavy Cavalry from two, and Horse Archers and Camels from one each.
Heavy infantry is already pretty good to begin with, and light cavalry is generally the best flanker to begin with. Light infantry is pretty bad, but logistically convenient. Archers are theoretically better than light infantry, except that their required military trees are somewhat spread out (you'd need to be/have beaten both Rome and the Maurya) and their favored combat tactics don't always combine well with both heavy infantry and light cavalry.
I'm amused to note that Rome's levies contain these three troop types to begin with and that their special combat tactic favors all three. (Though I was playing as Noricum.)
Not entirely sure where I'm going with this. I'm just amused at how optimized legions can turn into absurd death machines that will destroy legions three times their own size without too much trouble, I suppose.
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check out the terrifying amount of buffs heavy cavalry gets, its kinda incredible, i made a whole game out of playing a migratory celtic tribe with persian and greek integrated (i founded an anatolian empire after migrating) just so i could combo the heavy cav celtic inventions with the persian and greek heavy cav traditions, it's a terrifying power only blocked by the amount of bother you need to get to it
I don't think heavy cavalry gets the same amount of buffs in total that heavy infantry can get, but it certainly comes in larger lumps. +25% defense/+25% offense from a single tradition is AFAIK unprecedented?
I'm a bit curious about the details of that game you mention. I only came aboard after 2.0, so it might be that my questions are rooted in a completely different type of gameplay, but that sounds like a tremendous pain in the ass. In my hyper-aggressive game as Noricum I still don't have the Gallic/Belgae/Pannonian techs - I've been too busy getting the stuff that leads to Imperial Challenge, Militant Epicureanism, Legions, bonus influence and city founding cost reductions etc., and with the Gallic inventions being locked behind some fort defense bonuses and Tribesman output, I've had a hard time justifying going down that branch. It ought to be even trickier as a Migratory Tribe, even if you completely ignore Oratory inventions.
I happened to see this post before I went out to do a lot of manual labor, so I've been thinking it over in my head a bit, and my best guess is that, beyond techs from traditions and researchers with good traits (which is a random event with a cooldown of five years), you did a lot to boost Unintegrated Culture Group happiness and got research from conquered cities that way? Not particularly bothering to assimilate more pops than necessary? Or did you civilize after forming Galatia?
edit: I guess you must have civilized, since it's pretty hard to get enough heavy cavalry to use the bonuses, otherwise. Biggest heavy cav ratio of any levy is Thessalian with 25%, and there's not a lot of Thessalian pops.
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Heavy cav can stack almost the same amount of buffs as heavy infantry, more of them are just stuck in innovations for celts instead of military traditions.
Makes the best army (IMHO) to be a HI Mainline HC flank. I mean provided you have the buffs. You don't need to go through all this effort to have uber strong units.