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Never Second in Rome

 
Update 0.10.0 and future plansMay 5, 2025 - Community AnnouncementsI have made several changes to the building mini-game, in order to make it less simplistic and somewhat more challenging. I have also added a couple of unrelated options that some of you should like, especially the first. Changes Added an option to skip the animated rolls in individual combat. Added an option to hide the exact numerical difficulty of checks in text events. In the building mini-game, warning icons are shown in the last turn if the current selection is insufficient to complete the work, or if completion is possible only with a successful Bonus Production Roll. The way Superior Quality production works has been changed: now it is more efficient in the first quadrant of the work progression. In the second quadrant it is still slightly better than it was in the previous version of the game. In the third and fourth quadrants it gets worse and worse. The option to "push your men to work faster" can be used at full efficiency only a limited number of times. If your century has good Endurance, more uses are available. When they are all used up, the production increment becomes less and less beneficial. The Troop's Opinion cost of the "push your men to work faster" option has been changed. The first use costs 2 points, a little less than before, but the price increases with each further use up to a maximum of 6 points. Tooltips have been added to the panels showing Attributes and Skills in the character/century summaries. Another unrelated tooltip has ben added to the cohort status panel of the battle UI. A hint panel has been added to the Combat UI. Other small UI changes and improvements. About the future After the release of version 0.9.1 at the beginning of April, I started working on the continuation of the story in parallel with the changes I made for the two most recent updates, but there is still a long way to go. For now, I have implemented the transition to the new legion and century in my local copy, with all the particulars that had to be handled, and I have began building the details of part 11. I can tell you with certainty that the next chapters won't be released one by one, that would be way too disruptive of the player's experience. At the moment, the idea I am most keen on is to release them in two installments made of several chapters each, when they are ready. It is difficult to make an accurate estimate, but it is safe to assume it should take at least several months before the first of such installments is published.Update 0.9.2Apr 22, 2025 - Community AnnouncementsToday's minor update is mainly about a couple of fixes. Counters related to a specific type of mini-event should not be carried over when abandoning the current game and starting a new one. Fortunately, this did not affect any positive mini-events in the current version of the game, only a negative one, but it would definitely have affected future content. The list of recently used events should be properly cleared when abandoning a game and immediately starting a new one. At the end of the seventh chapter you can move up two ranks instead of just one if you meet the requirements. The ranks that can be attained do not include that of Pilus Prior, which, just as before, becomes available at the end of the following chapter. Fixed a spelling error in the tenth chapter. Update 0.9.1Apr 1, 2025 - Community AnnouncementsBefore diving into the details of this update, I'd like to take the chance to thank all those of you who have been supporting me. The resources of a solo developer are very limited, and this activity is possible only with the backing and encouragement of the players. Changes You can give nicknames to your staff and notable legionaries. The complex tooltips of some battle stats have been divided into two sections, a summary with a concise description and the details. This way, a new user should be able to learn the basics without having to get into the complex technicalities. Same as above for the tooltips of Recompact and Encourage, available during Lulls, and for most individual combat actions. The tutorial page that explains the battle stats (Cohesion, Front, etc.) has been simplified. A few more hints have been added to help the players gain their bearings and get the gist of the game. The Minimum Goal for battles has been renamed to Primary Goal. Successfully evading the battle in the eighth chapter is no longer counted as a failed Primary Goal. If you don't save and exit during a battle when you have the opportunity, the game is autosaved now. The save and exit function is there in case you have to stop playing in the middle of a battle, since they can be long. The new autosave is there to provide a backup just in case of technical problems and similar issues before the battle is over. In the building mini-game, successful bonus production rolls are highlighted in green. In the foraging mini-game, the messages informing you that additional supplies were found by a specific individual are also highlighted. When a special Order is selected, but the overall Commitment of both formations is too low for a clash to happen, an icon warns that player that the Order will be ignored. Fixes A scripted event in the eighth chapter should not be repeated when the game is reloaded in turn 2 or later. Update 0.8.1Mar 19, 2025 - Community AnnouncementsChanges Two new special orders have been added to formation combat. The Direct commission background comes with an additional 5,000 sestertii to your starting money. The initial Sword/Shield/Javelin Skills are now 47/47/33 instead of 43/43/29. Two new mini-events have been added. Mini-events are more frequent. Most of the mini-events that regard the tesserarius now also affect the Other Duties score. Your companion in the fight for the first Civic Crown should behave more carefully. It is a lot more difficult to grab the Initiative with a Cautious or Very Cautious Commitment. If you reduce the enemy's Cohesion to 0 ahead of time*, each unused Melee phase makes torques easier to win. The minimum Goal for the first battle is now 1350 instead of 1200. No more than 3 combats can trigger in the same battle turn. Disruptive Commitment Shift now lasts for an entire round instead of just one turn. Clarified in the tutorial that an aggressive Commitment of either side, not just the defender, can cause more individual conflicts. * Remember that this is difficult to do. Your main objective during battles is the minimum goal, or failing that, to hold the line and survive. Fixes Fixed a potential crash when leaving the Trade screen. Fixed a few errors in the text. I have also updated the free demo.Update 0.7.1Mar 5, 2025 - Community AnnouncementsChanges When your Formation Attack Support is negative, you are now allowed to skip the individual fights of your legionaries during battles. These fights will be auto-resolved. This comes at a cost: you will miss the opportunity to gain Valor and other advantages that an interactive combat might have yielded, and your fighter will suffer wounds according to his stats, those of the enemy, and other applicable conditions like the ground. Only the fights of your subordinates can be skipped, not those of your own character. Several small changes have been made to the formation combat UI, to make it clearer who is acting, which formation the numbers belong to and how the Momentum value is determined. Also, the colors of the arrows indicating the direction of the "Gain Momentum" and "Advantage Opportunity" rolls have been changed. The previous colors were too similar to those of the standards above and could easily confuse the player. Low Supervision is now a lot less penalizing when picking a staff member or a notable legionary, especially when selecting their "best" and "superior" Abilities, but also for their untagged (or average, if you prefer) and weak Abilities. Supervision is still very important, as it affects your century's training, but at least the individuals generated with a low Supervision score should not be useless. The penalty to Troop's Opinion when asking the optio for advice has been reduced, since the effect has become smaller. Rolls in individual combat are slightly faster. Also, remember that you can increase the speed of combat in the gameplay options. The speed of Threat/Kill rolls has also been increased a bit. The Versatile bonus feature now gives +2 to Intellect, Endurance and Quickness, +1 to the rest. The Athletic bonus feature now gives +3 to Strength, Quickness and Coordination, +2 to Endurance and Constitution, -1 to Intellect. Skill levels from 23 to 29 now require 800 advancement points instead of 1000. During the Camp phase, you can raise the troops' Morale for a much cheaper price than before. The battle in Part 4 has been shortened from 10 to 8 Melee phases. Fixes You shouldn't be allowed to change your equipment in the middle of the last battle. You shouldn't be able to select a second Bonus Feature involving a penalty that would deny the requirements of the first. A few spelling mistakes have been corrected. My personal thanks to the players who have reported them in the dedicated thread. Update 0.6.5Feb 18, 2025 - Community AnnouncementsIn preparation for the Early Access release, I have implemented several small changes and improvements. Changes In addition to its previous effects, a positive Supervision score offers a small bonus to the efficiency of your century's training. This bonus improves as the score increases and is applied both to the unit as a whole and to the individual soldiers. Similarly, a negative score makes the training less efficient. Each Melee (i.e. Sword or Shield) training will cause a little Strain for every turn in which more than 3 Training Points are allocated. Other Duties offers a larger bonus to Discipline than before when more than 3 Training Points are allocated. Endurance training by Workload alone has been reduced. The contribution of Physical Attributes and Drill training has been changed so that a single Training Point (the minimum) gives no bonus at all to Endurance, while 3 or more points give a higher bonus than before. The Specialization bonus has been reduced from 25% to 20%. The amount of advancement points required for some levels of Traits and Opinions has been changed. It has been reduced for some of the low levels and increased for the high levels. The amount of Valor assigned for defeating enemies in combat has been reduced. The requirements for some decorations assigned after a battle have also been reduced. The Strength Divisor of all weapons except clubs has been reduced, which means Strength will generally have a larger impact on damage than before. The Kill Bonus of all weapons has been increased. The Defense formula for shieldless fighters has been changed to AVG(Melee Skills) - 12 (the old formula was: Weapon Skill - 12). When Strikes result in a Graze, the Health Damage is reduced to 1/3 of its full value instead of 1/6. Morale loss due to Health damage has been tweaked. Morale moves towards its Stability value at three times the normal rate if the difference is above 20. Fatigue damage for attacks on arms and legs is now based on the percentage of Health damage inflicted instead of the raw Health points. This makes the victim's Constitution more relevant. Successful attacks on legs inflict 3 points of Fatigue for every percentage point of Health damage inflicted. For attacks on arms, the coefficient is 2. The Fatigue cost of most individual combat actions has been increased by 1. Health damage for attacks on legs has been reduced from 70% to 60% of Base Damage. For attacks on arms it has been reduced from 60% to 50%. You can now view your legionaries' stats by clicking on them on the Battle screen. The optio's contribution to the Recompact action has been reduced. The "Act In Advance" option during the initial javelin throw uses the units' Javelin Skill as well as their leaders' stats. The penalty of the "Wrong Timing" effect is now -25 instead of -20. The modifier based on a leader's mental Attributes for the "Act In Advance" option has been halved. The modifier based on a leader's mental Attributes for the Initiative rol...Early Access launch on February 18Feb 12, 2025 - Community AnnouncementsI'm thrilled to announce that Never Second in Rome is entering Early Access on February 18 at 17:00 CET (08:00 PST). The initial version will contain 10 fully playable chapters extending from the beginning of Caesar's Gallic campaign to the siege of Alesia. The free demo will remain available even after the official release, so that you can try the game before you buy it. However, I have been making a lot of small changes and tweaks since the last demo version (0.5.1) was published. I'm going to release an up-to-date build on the day Early Access launches. I expect Never Second in Rome to stay in Early Access for longer than A Legionary's Life, possibly for about a year, but it's difficult to predict with certainty at this stage. Whether you decide to jump on board as soon as possible or prefer to wait until the full release, please remember to wishlist the game if you haven't already done so! https://store.steampowered.com/app/3169580/Demo Update 0.5.1Oct 9, 2024 - Community AnnouncementsThis is a small update dealing with a couple of bugs. Fix: Strain for extra workload should be calculated correctly when an old game is abandoned and a new one is created. Fix: the Valor level of fallen legionaries should be saved correctly. Fix: typo in the character creation screen. Demo 0.5.0 AvailableOct 1, 2024 - Community AnnouncementsOver the last few weeks, the demo of Never Second in Rome has proven to be very stable and I have decided that it is time to make it available here on Steam. As for my future plans, the present top priority is to create enough content for an Early Access release. Speaking of which, I think a reasonable estimate is Q1 2025; I have updated the release date on the store page accordingly.

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