You can keep the empire stats pretty healthy (at least for now). At the start of chapter 3 i ended up with 74% stab, 70% resources, 75% power.
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Haha, I thought of those step sisters from Cinderella too.
Right â but thatâs her willfulness stat, aka her independence. That doesnât necessarily relate to competence. Commodus was very willful. Itâs possible a combination of trust + willful could approximate competence (but only kind of).
My MC is torn between being a skeptic and supporting Julia lol, but is definitely way more on Consentiaâs side re: the imperial office and needing to be accountable to the public and the republican traditions.
How does that square with being Augustaâs dad and wanting her to succeed? Good question! Maybe he can get her to be like more of a civilis princeps (civilis principissa?) â a citizen empress like the early Roman emperors had to be.
This goes back to the late Roman Republicâs publicani! Itâs interesting that the Komnenoi went back to that â the early Roman emperors changed the tax system away from tax farming and Diocletian and Constantine changed the tax system again. But the general rule during the empire was that cities were assigned a tax burden and the local town senates were tasked with collecting it, with aristocrats forced to pay any shortfalls themselves.
Between them and the Komnenoi, I imagine there must have been changes too (Justinian and Basil II seem likely) so itâs funny that we end up back to where we were before the empire. Funny. It wasnât a good system, so itâs interesting they reverted to it. I wonder if it was because of their opposition to the traditional civic bureaucracy of Constantinople.
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What choices did you make for that?
I presume you had Economics V to avoid any penalty from the three crises, but any solution to the instability of Kyro reduces a stat, as does talking to the Sorceresses during the sermon scene.
Itâs a mixture of both. In order for Augusta to be competent, you will need high Will (so she is confident and makes decisions of her own accord) and to an extent high Trust (that way she will listen to the MCâs counsel and become a more skilled ruler, she is still 13 after all). Of course, she might also be competent with high Will and low Trust, but in that path what Augusta sees as good decisions for her or the Empire may not necessarily be good for the MC at that pointâŚ
Better to concentrate on no more than three Iâd say. You will probably want to put a point in your highest stat and keep it not too far above your second highest. There arenât as many checks that you can pass with a 2, they open up more at 3 and 4 (and youâd want to have a skill at 4 by Chapter IIâs start).
Tax collection is more bureaucratized than a tax farming system in Iudia, itâs why the Collectors are one of the least corrupt/ineffective arms of the civil service. They serve as both a taxation (for coin/harvest/etc) agency and de-facto intelligence gatherers as expanded upon if your MC is in the Collector career. Of course, that also means the Collectors are hated by the public for collecting both their taxes and secrets.
It is called Fall of an Empire for a reason 
. It will not be easy to stop Iudiaâs decline (if your MC even cares about this vs their own power)
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Right â weâve seen in chapter 1 what Augusta does when left to her own devices. Some decent decisions, one pretty terrible one (depending on your MC)! I suppose a high will low trust Augusta is more likely to be autocratic, a childâs impression of Julia basically.
I will be interested to see what a high trust high willfulness Augusta looks like, given different ways of framing the MC and the MCâs own motivations. E.g. a Duty MC vs a Love MC vs an Idealist MC etc.
Gotcha. Yeah I donât think Iâd spread them too thin â but good to know I might have leeway to focus on two.
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âEvery time Titus shows up.
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I donât remember the specifics of my ch1 choices, but yes iâm playing an Econ V (with Warfare IV/Rhetoric III the end of demo, subject to change depending on future stat checks 
) ex-legionnaire that sided with Amalrik.
For the sermon talk i donât feel like that counts as a decline, since it seems more like a chance for the Prefect to shore up the empireâs weakest stat.
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As beta male, i gladly pledge myself to my female peers 
. But all jokes aside, damn this story is peak fiction. Itâs a dark world, and you cannot trust anyone.
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You know, I get that Julia has to tolerate Titus for her positionâs sake. But it would be great if one point down the line she made it clear to Titus who sheâs with. It doesnât have to be very forceful. A hand on the shoulder, maybe, like when we ask to go with Augusta? I just want a nonverbal âThe Prefect here would be my husband if I had any power to make it so, Titus.â moment. Possessive Empress when?
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Real-time reaction of me when that happens.
Iâm pretty sure (HOPE) that it is a possibillity, since Julia does mention at one point with the lover Prefect that she would basically get rid of Galerii as soon as the circumstances allowed it. If Julia got the upper hand on the Galerii, and entrenched her power against the Senate, I am 99.95% she would no longer play pretend with our Michelangelo-wannabe.
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I love Augusta. Itâs really fun to help her grow into the proper Empress and I like to be loyal and helpful advisor (not to mention, this leaves her as a convenient stopper for any influencer that asks me something. âOh, Iâd love to but Empress wonât allow itâ. They donât need to know Co-Empress trusts me so much) .
Plus, the kid is earners and genuinely tries.
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Great, more converts to the Imperial Cult! Welcome, welcome!
Speaking of the Imperial Cult, are Empresses deified after their death by the Senate? Since they already hold the title of Regent of Gaia, I suppose they would be elevated to some sort of diva status (since Roman emperors were styled divus after being deified)?
If thatâs the case, I sure hope Galeria was not deified
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How could I not? Both Empress and Co-Empress want to improve the Empire. Empress makes some hard decisions but hey, theyâre not super bloodthirsty, just about the usual for warring empires, neither are their opponents are saints.
Empire seems decent, just at the brink of the crisis, and saving Empire would lead to less bloodshed than having it dissolve into few countries thatâll war with each other and rebels and barbarians.
Being loyal to Empire is simply the logical and humane choice.
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Not quite. Gaianism is a pretty strictly monotheistic religion, so thereâs no room to elevate an Empress to divinity. It is said that the Empresses are raised up to take the Goddessâ side in Paradise, as they served as the Regents of Gaia (a title that I think have mentioned in-text was previously vested in the Senate as a collective) but that is all.
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One of us!
Also, the description of Gaianism and the lack of an Imperial cult seems close to the way that Roman and Byzantine Emperors were in relation to Christianity, instead of the Greco-Roman tradition which more prominently featured the divus. Although it could be argued that the Aeternitas Imperii lives on under a Christian theological justification.
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@Azan In regard to the skill stats, what is the planned possible maximum for a single category. And would a moderately maintained skill still yield at least some optimal options down the line?
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The cap is 10 (X) for each stat.
It will, youâll have checks that allow you to succeed with lower stats. However, there will often be options (as is already implemented in certain checks) for higher stats to succeed entirely, and for lower stats to succeed, but at a cost to another stat or a narrative cost. There will also be a few rarer occasions where you can try a check, but it will fail due to other choices made earlier.
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BRAVO đđ
Iâm in love with Julia and my daughter, also for your first game so far your do spectacular so Bravo for that. Iâm very much looking forward to more of your work:)
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