Topic: Research?

[Igor]

Will there be any kind of research and development of new technologies in the game, to help the playe's nation along, such as increased production or agricultural output? After all, the romans came up with many technological innovations during the existence of their empire. For example, cement, which let them build bigger and better structure faster and more cheaply. And the roman abacus which greatly reduced the time it took to make many calculations, which greatly aided people like merchants and tax collectors who had to do a lot of counting. So it makes quite a lot of sense to add research to the game so that players can give themselves an edge over their opponents. Otherwise, the less developed nations won't have a chance to compete with the superpowers, since they can't research anything and can never reach the same level of development as the more addvanced nations.

[Philj]

For a dissenting opinion, I'd say that the last thing on the mind of a Roman patrician or Hellenic king is funding research into road building, agricuktural development etc (and how would that work if you represent one of a number of Roman factions).  This is not to say that they did not patronise scholars or whatever (and in Rome's case occasionally kick them out). 

FWIW I think a better model of the development of technology is by doing.  If your faction faction delves deeply into trade,   And to throw a spanner into the works, often teh biggest catalyst for change isn't success but failure.  When a system doesn't work, you are likely to say what is better.  And with chnage comes resistance and teething problems (EU's stability slider rpovides an example of a technique to provide the impacts of change).

So in terms of our time frame and focussing on military aspects, the Hellenic kings don't "get" to recruit legionaries until they get the snot beaten out of them many times [how many Macedonian wars and still we see the (or perhaps more accurately) a phalanx, perhaps teh Romans initial change from phalanx themselves took more than a couple of beatings].  Queue argument on the relative merits of the phalanx versus the legion.

I think one of the worst artifices of resource management games is the idea of switching investment in research to obtain the next killer technology - not that this suggestion requires the technology tree approach; it just seems common in those type of games.

I have a distinct feeling of deja vu after typing this.

[Strategy]

There won't be any research mechanism in the Imperium gameplay. I'm not a big fan of research trees in the ancient world (see, e.g., the interview of Flash of Steel (former Portico), but the main reason is that I do not have the resources (read: time) to add this to the game.

Most of the technological development that occured over our period was small, and changed life relatively little on the scale of the game. The example of the abacus is a good example of this; no doubt it was a help to merchants everywhere, but it didn't make people richer simply for that. With the exception of siege technology (where all the advancements took place in the century prior to Imperium's era) and a little bit of naval development, it is hard to talk of research in this era at all.

The major difference between states, in any case, is the societal systems and culture. Culture broadly determines what kind of troops are available in the state; the structure of the state determines how they can be utilized. And societal structure should be able to change, of course; e.g., if a tribe ends up conquoreing a lot of land, it should eventually develop into a kingdom; same way that the Republic of Rome will eventually develop into an Empire at some point. How these changes and culture interplay is another matter; one which I will probably not get to explore fully at this point (won't have time to implement and test all the ideas).

Keep in mind that - though the total of the game itself may end up pretty complex - I am really working very hard to keep things as simple as possible; lest another 10 years pass before I finish the game (*). 


(*) That's an exaggeration, btw; but it sometimes feels like I've been working on this for a decade. 

[Porcius]

Will military innovations be present from the beginning or will there be some to reflect those changes beyond the tech system? The most dramatic, of course, was the Corvus, but you also have the evolution of the legions from the maniple to the cohort, the Hellenistic/Pontic experimentation with legion types (with no great success) and the Carthaginian move from chariot armies to elephant armies after the Sicilian War.

This stuff may be too small for the grand scale of Imperium, but considering there is a battle component...

[Strategy]

I am still debating exactly how to deal with military changes over the game period.

Some, like the manipular legion, I expect can be handled through the "societal system"; i.e., it can be triggered through the development of the game world, and essentially become a "law" in the game module (a little bit the way it works in RoR).

The experiments of the Hellenistic world can probably be handled in another way; essentially, if a Hellenistic kingdom is defeated in a war, it will have the option to convert its guard regiments to the primary type of the state that defeated it. This would very neatly handle the Seleucids, for instance, allowing them to adopt Cataphracts from the Parthians and Legionaries from the Romans; but only for a limited number of their troops.

The "one-off" innovations like the corvus are a bit harder to integrate into the game. They might simply end up as "personal innovations" of specific associated persons (e.g. - Corvus is only available when Duilius becomes consul, etc).

[Syagrius]

I agree with you Strategy, during Ancient times there was no real technological radical development or breaktrough, changes were the result of the evolution of laws, politics and society.