After months of work, it is finally here. Ancient Empires version 1.15 is a milestone in the mod's development and we are very happy to announce it is finally playable to the public! Version 1.15 features new buildings, mechanics, hundreds of bug fixes, balancing improvements and even some new units! A huge thank you to every member of this community who has followed the mod's development and assisted with feedback, and a special thanks to all our testers who put in weeks of effort combined to iron out bugs. We're doing this for you guys.
Savegame Compatibility
- Incompatible with previous save games!
Full Patch Notes - In Progress
Buildings
- Rebalanced buildings for ALL factions
- The building system is now one of synergy; in order to utilize the full potential of a particular building, you must develop related institutions
- Construction costs are higher on average and scale non-linearly by tier, meaning return of investment over a short period of time is lower for end-tier buildings compared with early tiers
- Maintenance scales, increasing non-linearly. Early tier buildings have overall low maintenance, that increases significantly towards top tier
- Construction times are increased, with infrastructure taking several turns longer on average
- Several buildings modify the construction parameters of other buildings, thus emphasizing a synergic relationship
- Effects other than income have been completely reworked for almost every chain
- Some new buildings for various established factions
- All-new buildings for horde factions (unplayable in 1.15 but will be added in)
- Latifundia/Estates are significantly more expensive than regular farms, but offer great income
- Regular farms provide plenty of food, but very low income
- Granaries 'convert' food into useful bonuses such as growth, replenishment and siege defense holdout time, while boosting income from all farms
- Forums work as a modifier to base income sources, increasing trade income heavily and cultural/entertainment income moderately
- Administrative buildings (e.g. Roman Curia, Publicani and Court) each tie into a particular Edict, significantly boosting its value
- The building interface is less cluttered with effects and more to the point
- Dozens of improved and new building icons
- Generally shorter building descriptions for some factions, further reducing the 'cluttered' appearance in some places
Public Order
- Public order from Entertainment buildings is greater and decisive in province management
- Public order from other sources have generally been decreased, with principally Administration as the second most significant building source
- Penalties from native discontent have been reduced slightly
- The dynamic nature of public order is preserved, but adopted into a smaller scale, meaning increments are smaller and thus both increasing or decreasing public order takes longer to develop
- Characters still heavily influence public order through attributes and traits. Appointing good governors is key to maintaining order. Public order from some ancillaries and traits have been reduced
Government Offices
- New effects for Roman, Carthaginian, Hellenic and Eastern offices
- The differences between offices are more pronounced
- Fewer offices give political influence
- Offices no longer give attribute points
- Administrative salary added to each office, reflected as administrative costs (equivalent of corruption) factionwide
Misc changes
- MUSIC - Fix to cutting off sound that would happen to some soundtracks
- Naval recruitment from ports takes several turns (up to 8) for most ships, based on tier
- Ships are distributed evenly across port tiers, with military ports being clearly superior in providing all high-tier ships (generally quadremes and above)
- The port interface is not cluttered
- Land recruitment now takes several turns for most units (e.g. 1 for leves, 2 for hastati/principes, 3 for triarii, 4 for war elephants)
- Virtually all land unit combat stats have been reworked, with the aim of improving balance and smoothening out glaring contrasts in quality from previous versions
- Plagues/Diseases are less infectuous and require slightly higher squalor to occur
- Garrisons in Iberia, Illyria, Rome, and other places are smaller (e.g. max 12 units for tier V city) and develop in a more interesting way
- Siege defense attrition has been increased by 33% (from 15% to 20%)
- Cost of siege engines (towers, ladders, rams) have been reduced, and the manpower per turn to construct these increased. This should solve an issue where the AI is reluctant to assault in siege battles despite great numerical superiority
- More aggressive campaign AI - will be more opportunistic, take chances to attack enemy forces and commit to sieges
- Campaign roads are now visible in all regions. Previously, roads were not visible until the 'Road' building had been constructed; now, this building merely changes the textures of the roads to reflect the upgrade
- Price of some commodities altered. Fish price reduced by 33%
- The duration and effectiveness of 'Occupation Bundles' (applied to armies and factions upon seizing new territory) have been moderated, with slightly reduced duration and slightly lower impact on trade
- Bug fix to some effects from various sources that for different reasons did not work
- Regional Effects completely reworked. 'Sparse' and 'Rural' regions are very difficult to develop and provide very few recruitable troops per turn, while due to limited infrastructure limit replenishment and increase attrition from natural sources. 'Urban' and 'Metropolitan' regions feature reduced cost of road infrastructure development and furthermore provide greater incomes from industry and trade, but less income from farms
- Imperium now mainly confers penalties
- Armies recruitable at imperium 1 increased 2 --> 3 and at imperium 2 from 3 --> 4. This should prevent situations where the AI is unable to muster troops due to not having any army in a province with either barracks or its capital
- Balancing changes to Stances, Edicts and Political Power
- Exemption from taxes now always improves public order, no matter if faction-wide taxes are set at low or high
- Public order penalty from taxation increased (ties into the previous point)
- A significant amount of buildings have been tied to technologies compared to earlier, and technologies now generally have more balanced effects and trade-offs where some effects are positive, and others negative
- Characters now respond with voice commands when selected
Unit Recruitment
- Divided into three principal chains: Legionary Barracks, Auxiliary Barracks and Garrisons
- Legionary Barracks can only be built in State-Owned settlements (referring to the main building). From these you can only recruit factional troops, e.g. Rome gets access to velites, hastati and triarii
- Auxiliary Barracks can be built in most settlements (State-Owned, Independent etc). These open up recruitment of local AoR-troops, e.g. Rome gets access to Cohors Sociorum
- Garrisons provide a limited selection of factional troops, instead of the full roster. They have higher maintenance than Legionary Barracks and additionally food upkeep
- Each building has its own unique set of effects, emphasizing different function (e.g. Auxiliary Barracks improves the Assimilation Edict, while reducing discontent)
- Particular building chains that were confusing to many players, e.g. Rome's 'Landed Grants --> Military Colony' have been removed. Legions are now recruited from Legionary Barracks
- Units that could previously not be recruited for certain factions but were available in custom battles can now be recruited on the campaign, e.g. Syracusean units (Achaea), elephants (Baktria) etc
Characters
- Ancillaries should now never trigger for a 'non-receptive' faction (e.g. a Roman ancillary will not trigger for Carthage)
- All ancillary triggers have been improved, with many being more situation-specific. Additionally, many ancillaries have new, more logical trigger conditions
- Many updated effects and some updated descriptions/names for ancillaries
- Over 25 new high-quality ancillary icons to breathe life into the characters
- Trait effects have been rebalanced, with generally milder income bonuses from positive traits
- Negative traits should trigger less frequently and/or in more specific context
- Roman army traditions have seen effects rebalanced and made more meaningful. Some other minor updates to traditions for other factions
- Spies are now recruitable. Can be recruited from Forum/Market (Roman/Hellenic/Eastern) or Entertainment (Barbarian) buildings
- New character models and portraits for several Eastern and Hellenic factions
User Interface
- Frontend updates
- Small updates to the Eastern UI
- Reworked Ptolemaic UI
- Redone unit cards for some factions, including Ptolemaic Egypt, Macedon
Startpos
- Reduced the starting territory of Rome by two regions; ceded to Iberian factions
- Updated buildings for all factions on the map - several previously weak cultures are now able to pack a punch early on due to better infrastructure
- Updated starting armies for most factions, and added in starting armies for many factions that previously lacked them
- Most factions start off with smaller armies than before
- New starting armies for Scipio and Hannibal prior to Zama
- Fix of several former startpos bugs, notably missing buildings/buildings of wrong culture in Ptolemaic Egypt and the Seleucid Empire
- Updated fertility; Egypt, Africa and other regions are now appropriately bountiful in terms of food
- Added starting navies to Carthage, Rome and Ptolemaic Egypt
- Added in Spies for all playable factions
Germanic and Celtic Cultures
- Germanic cultures are playable in 1.15 and Celtic cultures will become playable shortly
- Reworked all recruitment for these factions, moving many of their core units to farm and estate buildings
- Added in new Education, Sanitation and Military Recruitment chains
- Reworked technological effects and changed all icons
... more to be added
Known Bugs and Missing features in 1.15
- Baktrian Capital cannot be upgraded to level 2
- Germanic technologies are not overhauled and do not tie into buildings yet
- Some rebel factions are not added back (only affects a few specific geographical locations) due to stability issues - mainly some Eastern and Thracian/Dacian regions
- Armenian names - updated but currently with a startpos issue that renders starting characters [NAMELESS] - candidates are fine though. Pending update
- Spies are currently barebones - planning on adding in new traits and skills to flesh them out
- Nabatea and Media - removed last minute due to a bug with offices and political power. Will be patched in ASAP
- Recruitment is not completely redone for some factions. More units will be moved to farmlands and other peripheral buildings
- Achaean/Greek capital garrisons not reworked. African garrisons not reworked
Ancient Empires Version 1.15 Changelog
Reply With Quote
yes.
Originally Posted by assassine
