Salve citizens!
The next iteration of Ancient Empires is around the corner, featuring a host of long-awaited bug-fixes, improvements and new features!
We have set the date to January 20th (*changed from 15th) with the plan in mind that this will offer ample time to implement all the changes and features at a reasonable pace, as well as allowing testers to delve into the update and iron out new bugs that may have arised.
A three week wait is long, but in the meantime you may look forward to the changes.
Spoiler for CHANGELOG:
Campaign Updates
Rebellions
- Standard rebellion armies have been removed. These have been the root cause of many mid - to late game crashes. For the first release, there will be few rebel armies in some regions, however, only ones verified to work.
- More emphasis will be made on overall impact to society and economics regarding rebellions. You will still want to keep the populace happy, even if an army is not there to stand in your way.
UI - User Interface
- New unit cards will be present for multiple factions and aor units
- New Egyptian theme style UI design specific for Ptolemaic Kingdom
Characters
- All-new background skills (considered traits). Each skill featuring four sub-skills, characters from the recruitment pool will immediately be recognizable as useful in a particular setting
- The skill tree now has two tiers!
- New, useful and more appropriate effects for most skills
- Command, Management and Popularity attributes now start at lvl 5 - each providing new effects and more detailed UI information. Each attribute level now matters more than before
- Command: unit morale, personal aura size, inspire & rally abilities, enables night battles, increases recruitable units (edict) as governor
- Management: tax rate, construction time, construction cost, province growth, sanitation, increases effectiveness of raise taxes, lower taxes and law & order edicts
- Popularity: influence, public order, native discontent, cultural conversion, military integrity, increases effectiveness of raise taxes, lower taxes and law & order edicts
- Improved trait triggers: more specific to certain situations, lower trigger frequency to make each feel more unique
- New effects to many of our ~500 regular traits and brand new descriptions
- Certain traits that were very similar have been merged
- Characters start between loyalty 4 and 6, further influenced by the background skill
- Flushed out Dynamic reskins of Roman Generals 30 different uniform combinations based on skill and season for 30 Roman Generals. We thank Benjin greatly for allowing us to use his base mod AAA Dynamic Generals
Armies
Military Traditions
- Two-tier structure for military traditions
- Each army experience level now provides 1 skill point to spend
- Changed some Roman traditions
- Changed effects for most traditions; more useful and unique, including effects not used before. Civic effects more useful
NEW - Occupation Effects
- Upon capturing a settlement, armies are now awarded an effect bundle specific to how you treat the settlement
- Occupying without looting a settlement: Military integrity is reduced (the soldiers want spoils!), upkeep is reduced and the commander is awarded influence for the prestigeous feat - 4 turns
- Occupying and looting a settlement: Integrity is increased, upkeep is reduced further, but the commander receives less influence - 4 turns
- Sack: Integrity is increased, upkeep is greatly reduced, but movement range is reduced significantly due to carrying the spoils of war - 4 turns
- Raze: Upkeep is reduced, but integrity is decreased - 4 turns
- Liberate: Upkeep is slightly reduced, the commander is awarded influence and integrity is increased - 4 turns
- The faction of the conqueror receives faction-wide effects (good or bad) depending on the choice you make
- Razing settlements is often not well-received
- Occupying, Looting and Sacking tend to have positive effects on all income
- Occupying and Looting increases happiness from your citizens
- *ALL army and faction effects are uniquely tailored to each major culture; Rome has a unique set that is different from Hellenistic or Eastern factions (example above is Roman)
- Losing a settlement to a foreign power results in a negative faction-wide effect bundle; people lose faith in your war effort
NEW - Military Recruitment & Garrisons
- Military Recruitment is now divided into levy troops and specialized troops
- Recruitment chains now exist, allowing you to recruit specialized troops according to the classical Total War formula
- Making up the bulk of rosters, specialized troops are recruited from Stables, Drill Fields or Missile Ranges (cavalry, melee infantry, and ranged infantry & artillery respectively)
- Levy troops can be recruited like earlier through the main settlement line, requiring no extra buildings
- The Garrison chain has now been merged with the Military Recruitment chain. Garrisons now offer the same recruitment options as do Drill Fields
General Changes
- Movement range on the campaign reduced by -25%
- Roads no longer affect movement over the whole province, but only along the road network itself
- Military Integrity now starts at 60 (out of 100) upon fielding a force
- Losing battles and treading on enemy soil reduce integrity more significantly
- Forced March is back
- Military Stances such as Forced March and Raiding may be superior for some factions (e.g. Rome has a superior Forced March ability), as detailed in the Military Traditions
- Cleaner interface for military stances, with less effect spam
Buildings & Balance
- 4 Turns per Year implemented into the main mod - 2 TPY will be available as submod
- Reworked seasonal effects: fertility debuffs during winter are gone, instead replaced with income penalties. All previous effects rebalanced
- Edicts: Romanization/Promote Culture edict added. Slightly reworked effects and order of other edicts
- Buildings that influence edicts now clearly state the amount that an edict is modified by
- Several updated faction traits
- Building chains: removed some redundant buildings, merged several chains to lessen the need for building slots
- Fixed a display bug where some empty chains would show up for some factions
- Streamlined buildings: reconceptualized building tree where some buildings are thought of as producing raw materials, and other buildings mainly refining it (modifying its value). Buildings now have less overlapping effects; each choice has more precise benefits and drawbacks. The names of many effects have been reworded to reduce the space they claim, alleviating the bug where building descriptions or icons wouldn't show up. New icons for main settlement buildings along with better descriptions of each government style.
- Streamlined buildings #2: Buildings that produce a net income now no longer have upkeep, to reduce the need for "mental arithmetics" when deciding which building to go for. Most buildings now provide more useful effects compared to before
- New building icons in the dozens for several factions
- Campaign visuals: Winters now cover more of the map in snow, causing attrition in areas that were previously exempted, making winters a more devastating season to military operations
- Adjusted display bugs for some UI localisations
- Updated Eastern UI in some places
- AI Faction Income: major AI factions now have additional income (courtesy of Drunk_Flamingo) to help them stay challenging and not be wiped out by minors
- New Province and City names (courtesy of KampfKeks)
Battle Updates
- Changed unit sizes
- Cavalry 92 --> 100
- Melee infantry 202 --> 200 or 242 --> 240
- Missile infantry 182 --> 160
- Missile cavalry no longer have flaming arrows
- Cataphracts now have missile deflection
- Slower charge for heavy formed infantry (e.g. principes)
- Battering rams now deal significantly more damage to gates
- Siege vehicles ignition thresholds changed
Work in Progress:
- A unit cap system where access to certain tiers is based on your buildings, urbanisation, characters in office and more!
- Full-fledged Battle submod based on a larger hitpoint range while retaining the base principles of our current design philosophy - generals are mortal, auto-resolve should work better, units have more unique areas of use, more unit stats are displayed and much more!
- Updated Armenian names
- Complete Roman Reskin - some skin will look relatively the same, with more variants. Legions are getting a complete overhaul and will look completely different using assets from Leonardo's Imperial Legions of Rome. If you have not played this, please check out his Rome 2 mods here: https://steamcommunity.com/workshop/.../?id=345063994
- Slight Reskins for Ptolemy, using vmds from Agrez in his mod for DEI. Much appreciated for allowing us to use this. Check out his mod here: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfil...?id=1538334537
- Reskins planned for Macedon, and Seleucia, mainly comprised from DEI for Rome 2. Again we thank the Dresden team and everyone involved for the collaboration over the years.
- Tyros and Pella Battlemaps - Currently, the map design is complete, however, work is needed on the pathfinding.
- New Battle Music - Do not foresee this being released in time for next update, but will be a part of the official mod in due time.
- Various unit card overhauls and UI refining
Spoiler for IMAGES:
*Note:the movement range should have been part of the army bundle. It has been corrected
This changelog is subject to further change up until January 15th. If you want to influence what will be in this update, reply to this thread with feedback.
A shoutout and massive thank you to the people who have been involved in this process: Emi, The_Blank, HForHavoc, Drunk_Flamingo, KampfKeks, and our testers
Stay ready for more updates!