Greetings all!
Today I’m joined by Trin Tragula who will bring you up to date on some of the rebalancing and tweaking that has taken place in the Cicero update, after I’ve explained a little about the changes we’ve made to the food and pop systems. These changes are not currently live on the open beta, so those of you who have kindly opted in to the beta to help us out, will have some new information to read.
It has been rightly pointed out that the way that starvation applies in the current beta iteration results in some undesirable results. To solve this, starvation will no longer be applied at a flat rate, which caused Settlements to dwindle away when a large city is present in a Province.
Instead, provinces which run out of food will apply a -75% total multiplier to the population capacity of all Province territories. Overpopulation will now yield a small (-0.03%) population growth malus for every pop over the threshold, alongside the happiness penalties previously implemented. This solves a number of issues we had when playing with Cicero, and feels like a much more organic solution to starvation and overpopulation. Territories that exceed their population capacity will begin to slowly grow fewer pops, organically reaching a stable population point, and starvation will no longer punish Settlements unduly.
In addition to these food changes, we’ve taken a pass over the initial setup of the territory map, adding food resources to a few Provinces that were lacking access to a renewable food source, and removed a series of buildings that were erroneously lurking in territories of the wrong category.
A seemingly minor, but important change coming to population, is in the way that ratios are calculated. It was previously possible to raise the desired ratio of a pop-type to well above 100%, and depending on the order (from left to right) in which it appeared, would be given precedence over other types. In an effort to solve this problem, and provide a better baseline with which to balance setups, we’ve elected to normalise pop ratios across the board.
In practical terms, this means that a territory which in the old system had 20% Desired Citizens and 10% Desired Freemen, would now have 66.6% Desired Citizens, and 33.3% Desired Freemen.
This system is much easier to balance around, and should never result in a situation where it becomes impossible to gain any pops of a specific type in a territory.
Some valuable feedback regarding the cost of founding a city has been given and received, and we’ve changed the cost from a scaled gold cost, to a flat gold cost. This seems logical, as the benefit from a city does not scale linearly with national income, as a scaling cost would imply.
Now I shall hand over to Trin Tragula, to explain some of the balance changes we’ve made, in the Cicero update!
/Arheo
Hello and welcome to this second part of today’s Dev Diary. Here I will show some of the changes that Cicero brings on the balancing side. One of the greater benefits of an open beta is that we have been able to change things based on the feedback players provide as they try out features. Some of this you will already be aware of if you have been playing the open beta, some of it will be new even if you have.
Military Traditions:
Traditions are in many ways the main thing that differentiates countries in various parts of the map, and in some cases they also unlock things that you cannot otherwise make use of. As such there will likely always be many opinions on them and their relative balance.
Offense, Defence and Discipline: Something that has been frequently mentioned by the community is the fact that traditions have not always seen to the full picture when it comes to the use of unit specific Offense, Defence and Discipline modifiers. As of the Cicero Update almost all such modifiers from traditions have been changed. Some have increased, others have decreased and in many cases a Discipline bonus has been turned into one for Offense or Defence.
Levantine Traditions: When traditions were originally conceived the intention was always that Egypt make use of the Levantine set. This later changed to make the successor kingdoms all use the same (Greek) Tradition set. In the name of variety Cicero has brought the Levantine set back to Egypt, while also reshuffling it a bit to make the middle path able to unlock Mega Polyremes. The Legacy of the Builders tradition will now also provide extra building slots in cities.
‘Barbarian’ Traditions: Perhaps our most wide reaching set, that of the Barbarian Traditions, have seen an increase in bonuses related to Light Infantry and Chariots.
Military Units:
A fair bit of the feedback we have been getting during the open beta has related to unit type balance. In some ways the new food system has meant that units with a higher weight are more valuable now, and to some degree this feedback has just related to general concerns present since 1.1 or before.
Elephants:
While elephants themselves have not been changed their general viability has increased with the introduction of food. Having a healthy food storage, and taking control of the enemy food storage in offensive warfare, have made these giant beasts of the battlefield a much more viable option in many cases.
Horse Archers & Light Cavalry:
The effectiveness of flanking means that both Horse Archers and Light Cavalry are very useful, more so than is warranted by their cost and availability. As of the Cicero patch we have increased the attrition weight of both, reflecting the great need for food of horses. Mounted archers will now also take extra morale damage and therefore retreat more quickly from the field of battle if they are opposed, much like archers do when deployed as skirmishers.
Chariots:
Chariots are a tricky unit type balance wise since they were largely outdated in many ways by the start of our game, yet they were still in frequent use in some societies. As of the Cicero patch Chariots are cheaper to recruit (from a cost of 8 to 6) and traditions that boost them have been further increased.
Heavy Cavalry:
While expensive Heavy Cavalry was a central part of a number of prominent armies in this timeline. Cicero patch increases the viability of Heavy Cavalry by reducing their price to 10 (this is further reduced by Military Traditions in many cases).
Mega Polyremes & Octeres:
The idea of the Heavy ship class was always that its main use would be the special abilities that they have access to, that allow them to influence land warfare and help more directly with naval invasions than other types. This is why their maneuverability is low enough that they can only target a ship directly in front of them, but even given that these ships have tended to perform very well against other ship types. More so than intended, even given their high cost.
For this reason both Mega-Polyremes and Octeres have now lost their greater ability to absorb strength damage, making them slightly less useful in ship to ship encounters.
National Ideas:
Even if the need to match your national idea to your government type remains in Cicero the removal of monarch power has made it more important that national ideas can compete with each other for utility.
The bonuses have therefore been revisited, both with an eye on their value and to adopt them to our new game mechanics such as food or conversion.
Central Urban Spaces:
Province loyalty gain increased from 3% to 5% to make the idea more worthwhile.
City Planning:
With the introduction of cities a national idea that gave more building slots in only cities turned out to be of limited use. Instead this idea now gives a general increase in Population Capacity.
Standard Construction:
With buildings playing a larger role in the game, and with the more expensive buildings in settlements this idea has grown more useful. It will remains o but the discount for buildings have been decreased from 20% to 15%.
Grain Stockpile:
Instead of increasing population growth directly this idea will now increase Food output as well as the food capacity in every Province in your empire.
Institutional Proselytism:
This idea will now increase population conversion speed in your nation.
Siege Training:
In order to make this idea more worthwhile the bonus to Siege Ability is now 15%.
That was all for today. It is however by no means the only tweaks coming to the Cicero update! We will cover more changes, as well as more of the general features of the Cicero Update next week. :)
Click here to discuss this week's development diary with our team!