After well over four years of development, the time is ripe to unveil my next game: Never Second in Rome. As guessed by some of you, it is set during Caesar's campaigns.

If you have played A Legionary's Life, you will find familiar concepts, but there are also many big differences. They are too many to mention here, but here are some of the most important:

• In A Legionary's Life you are a conscripted ordinary citizen at the beginning of the game. In Never Second in Rome you will start off as a freshly promoted centurion. You will not only control your character, but also your century and specific individuals within it.
  
• The character generation in A Legionary's Life is random. This is not the case in Never Second in Rome, which uses completely different mechanisms.
  
• Main battles are experienced not only at individual level as in A Legionary's Life, but also at formation level. Individual fights can erupt under proper conditions during this phase.
  
• Individual combat differs from A Legionary's Life in many ways, some very apparent and some subtle. You should not assume you already know how each combat action works because you played the first game. Besides, actual numbers have replaced the old visual indicators, while modifiers and dice rolls have replaced the old percentages. You can also see in detail how each stat and condition affects each available combat action.
  
• Unlike A Legionary's Life, there is no permadeath in Never Second in Rome, although I might add an option at a later time, for veteran players looking for a different kind of challenge.
  
• And many more you will find as you play.

There is a free demo on the official website[www.arobertigames.com] for those of you who want to try it as soon as possible. I will also make it available on Steam sometime during the next few weeks.

I can't be more precise at the moment, but I plan an Early Access release in a matter of months. Don't forget to wishlist Never Second in Rome to be notified as soon as it is available!

https://steamoss.com/steamstore/app/3169580/

It is almost a year since the game came out of early access and was released in its first complete form. I want to thank once again all of you players who have spent words of support and appreciation here on Steam and elsewhere.
Today's update offers a description for each enemy type, a few little improvements that should help new players get their bearings faster and a couple of minor balance adjustments.

• I have added a brief description to over 40 enemy types. The description can be seen in the details screen of each enemy, below the name. It should provide more background information to players who are not familiar with the time period, and also add more depth to the encounters. Special thanks to flori2412, who once again offered to translate all the new content into German for free.
  
  
• Fights against enemies who have the terrain advantage are preceded by an alert that explains the situation and its consequences. The icon indicating this condition and your Stance circle are highlighted for a brief moment. High ground is a crucial factor in combat and it was commonly overlooked by players. This change should make it less elusive.
  
  
• When fighters enter the fray, a tip will remind you that you can click on their avatar to see detailed information about them. If you find this feature annoying, you can turn it off in the Combat options.
  
  
• Every time you adjust your Attitude (and you should do it very often), a basic tip will appear next to the slider to show whether your Attack and Defense are being affected positively or negatively. This should help new players figure out as early as possible how Attitude affects their performance, and its extreme importance in combat.
  
  
• Libyan spearmen now spawn in the second campaign with exactly the same range of possible stats they have in the first. Before this change, it was possible that they spawned with slightly higher skills. This made no sense from a historical or logical point of view. In general, I have a strong disliking for any form of level scaling in RPGs. This was the only thing in the game that resembled level scaling, so I'm happy to get rid of it.
  
  
• If your missing Health is less than 10% of its maximum value (for example, if your current Health is 46/50), you won't lose Morale when you spend turns during the camp phase. If the missing portion is 10% or more, the behavior will be the same as before.

The main reason for today's update is to fix a couple of bugs that have been reported recently. While very difficult to stumble upon, they had the potential to be fairly annoying.
I have also taken the opportunity to apply a few minor balance tweaks.

• Fixed a bug that could prevent ambushes from triggering at the appropriate time.
  
• Fixed a bug that could make a fight freeze at its conclusion.
  
• Flori2412 sent me a couple of corrections to his German translation, which I thankfully applied.

• The hand-to-hand fights against phalangites now last 24 rounds instead of 20.
  
• The difficulty of the rolls for the first three places of the elite javelin contest based on distance (part of the contests you can select shortly after your first raid in Upper Macedonia) has been reduced a little.
  
• Your share of the loot after the siege of New Carthage is now 120 denarii instead of 80. If you volunteered for the hazardous assault on the citadel, you get a prize worth 150 denarii instead of 100.

Here's what's new in today's small update:

• The first change requires a little explanation: as the majority of you already know, when fighters use the Recover action and have not been attacked since their last turn, the action succeeds automatically with no roll involved. As usual, it is true for both player and AI controlled characters. This is already explained in both the action tooltip and the combat manual, but I decided to make it more noticeable. From now on, whenever a character benefits from an automatically successful Recover action, the message will be "Succeeded! (Undisturbed)" instead of the ordinary "Succeeded!". The combat log will also contain a more detailed explanation. I hope this makes the mechanism a little more conspicuous, especially to new players.
  
• Flori2412 kindly provided some refinements to his German translation. I have imported them into the game.
  
• The implementation of the Hall of Fame has been improved.
  
• If your job in preserving the lives of your men at Ottolobus is deemed "excellent", the impact on your reward at the end of the battle is bigger.

Over the course of the last months flori2412 has been working on a fan-made, entirely volunteer German translation of A Legionary's Life. Now this considerable amount of work (the text is nearly as long as an average novel) is completed, and his translation is available to everyone with newly-released version 1.3.5. You can set the language in the main menu: the control is in the top-right corner of the screen.

Despite the fact that it is a fan-made translation, the attention to details and the care that emerged while talking with Flori are nothing short of professional work. This is a difficult game to translate; quality work requires an excellent knowledge of both the game and its historical context. Flori, you have my deepest gratitude for this extraordinary contribution.

In den letzten Monaten hat flori2412 an einer vollkommen freiwilligen deutschen Fan-Übersetzung von A Legionary's Life gearbeitet. Nun ist diese mit erheblichem Aufwand verbundene Aufgabe (der Text ist fast so lang wie ein durchschnittlicher Roman) abgeschlossen und seine Übersetzung wird allen Spielern mit der neuen Version 1.3.5 zur Verfügung gestellt. Ihr könnt die Sprache in der oberen rechten Ecke des Hauptmenüs einstellen.

Obwohl es sich um eine Fan-Übersetzung handelt, stellen die Aufmerksamkeit für Details und die Sorgfalt, die in der Zusammenarbeit mit Flori deutlich geworden sind, nicht weniger als professionelle Arbeit dar. Es ist schwierig, dieses Spiel zu übersetzen; qualitativ hochwertige Arbeit erfordert eine hervorragende Kenntnis des Spiels und seines historischen Kontextes. Flori, ich bin dir für diesen außergewöhnlichen Beitrag zutiefst dankbar.

There are several important news regarding the combat system.

Actions like Feints and Shield attacks have always had two indicators: the first represents the primary, mostly Skill based check, and the second represents the chance to overcome the opponent's resistance (based on Awareness for all Feints, but also on Quickness for Quick Feints). A full success requires the attacker to pass both checks. When they saw two circles showing a chance of success of about 70%, some players assumed that the overall chance was about the same, but combined probability doesn't work that way and the chance was much lower than they expected. This led to a lot of misunderstandings about the fairness of the RNG. To avoid such confusion in the future, I have added a third indicator that calculates the combined probability for your convenience and shows the overall chance of complete success.
A note to veteran players: nothing has changed in the mechanics of Feints. They work exactly as they did before; there is just this further bit of (hopefully useful) information shown.

I have introduced these to address extremely lucky shots by weak AI controlled characters happening even if the player was being careful. You won't see them often, because they only trigger when attacks with a very low chance to hit connect, but they are there as an additional layer of protection against vastly inferior and unskilled enemies—providing your defensive position is good enough. You will find details in the changelog.

Let's face it, some of those one-shot kills were fairly anticlimatic, especially when they happened on a fluke. Bull's-eye shots are still possible, but only when the chance to hit is at least 50%.

I have also changed the way javelins can break shields: now the rolls are more dependent on your chance to hit and influenced by your Attitude.

The full changelog follows.

• There is a further indicator for Feints and Shield Attacks. It shows the overall chance of full success (that is, the combined probability to pass both the primary Skill check and the Resist check).
  
• When the chance to hit is extremely low, attacks will succeed only partially. The target will be Grazed instead of being Hit, and the damage will be reduced to 30% of its value. Weapon Skill values above 35 will progressively reduce this possibility. The victim's lack of Stance will also make this occurrence more rare.
  
• Bull's-eye shots are only possible when the chance to hit is at least 50%.
  
• The mechanics of how javelins can break shields has been reworked.
  
• First javelin throws (the text-based ones) have been revised. Direct kills are only possible if your chance to hit the enemies is good enough.
  
• Stance damage for successful Charge attacks reduced from 80-100 to 60-70.
  
• Stance damage for successful Knock attacks reduced from 64-80 to 48-56.
  
• Stance damage for failed Shield attacks of any kind reduced from 30-60 to 20-35.
  
• Stance damage for successful Shield Push attacks against the phalanx increased from 16-20 to 24-28.
  
• Knock attacks are a little more likely to hit.
  
• Min damage of all weapons increased by 3.
  
• Max damage of all weapons decreased by 1.
  
• Handiness of Gladius Hispaniensis - type V raised from 51 to 53.
  
• Damage protection of quilted linen cuirass increased from 7 to 8.
  
• Torso Cover of pectoral plate increased from 35 to 40.
  
• Torso Cover of back-and-breast plate increased from 50 to 57.

• When a character with low Virtue tries to speed up his career by removing the opposition and fails miserably, the Game Over is properly handled.

Thanks to all of you who have expressed support and encouragement!

I had to fix a glitch affecting the Health bar and wanted to add a very small feature that was quite straightforward to implement, then I decided I might as well try tweaking a few parameters.

• Workouts are initially 50% more likely to improve your Attributes. The odds will drop a little faster than before the farther you get from the initial value. Overall, the progression curve is significantly more favorable to the player and I think it also makes more sense than before.
  
• Similarly, your mental Attributes will improve more often when you successfully complete a foraging mission or show good leadership.
  
• The chance to skip a combat turn because of slow speed has been decreased. If a character has a Quickness score of 50, the chance to skip a turn and the chance to obtain an extra action are now the same (assuming full Stance, no Fatigue and Content Morale). Suboptimal Stance and levels of Fatigue will still significantly slow you down. Morale will continue to have a small effect, too.
  
• The Phalanx had its Quickness reduced.
  
• Fixed a minor bug that allowed users to interact with the Health bar in the main character screen. The underlying Health value was unaffected, so it was substantially harmless.
  
• The name you choose when you generate a new legionary is saved and reused as default when you create the next one (it won't work for currently active characters: the name is only saved when you assign it to a new character).

Today's update is very small, but important. Besides a minor accessory improvement to the engine, I have made a few tweaks that will affect the balance of the earlier phases of the game.
Your Sword, Shield and Javelin Skills will start at 29, 29 and 26 respectively, instead of 29/29/29. However, now after the first main battle you get a 5-point bonus to all your Skills instead of 3, and 4 points after the second.

This is to reflect the fact that his first real combat experience and his first pitched battle should deeply affect your legionary's confidence and reliability in a fight.
To accomodate for the lower starting value of the Javelin Skill, the safe option for your first javelin throw (the one where you just aim for the mass of enemies in front of you instead of picking off a specific target) is less demanding.

More importantly, improvements while using the basic sparring training (the one that is always available, regardless of your relationship with your fellow legionaries) are a little easier, especially between 40 and the low 50s.

These changes should make the first campaign easier to survive, its two middle sections in particular. It won't make it a cakewalk. The way you manage your legionary in and outside of combat is still of utmost importance for his survival.
If you push too hard for the kill instead of caring about survival first, you increase your chances of facing an early game over screen. If you attack again immediately after missing your first attempt, when you are already off-balance, you risk putting yourself in a terrible position, and your opponent will likely exploit the situation at your expense. This is a difficult game, and it takes patience to master.

And as always, I would like to say thank you to all the people who have been showing their support.

I haven't done it in a while, so before talking about this patch, I'd like to thank all of you who have shown support and appreciation; unconventional indie games such as this can only exist thanks to your constant encouragement.

As for today's update:

• Added full localization support. Well, the game had already been developed with potential localization in mind, but some less urgent aspects were postponed.
  
• A certain fellow legionary whose life you can save in Hispania should be a little more resilient.
  
• During the third main battle, there is now an opportunity to change your equipment after the scouting mission.
  
• The way the persistence of the Hall of Fame is handled has been changed to allow a more user-friendly approach in case something very unfortunate happens, like a power shortage at the exact moment the file is being written. The solution adopted in a previous version wasn't effective enough.
  
• Fix: when polearm using enemies were hit by a javelin thrown by the player, the disrupting effect on their Reach advantage lasted for one round longer than intended.
  
• Fix: joysticks are now prevented from interfering with movement during foraging missions. Hopefully, this should solve the rare problem some users have reported. I haven't been able to replicate this issue, so feedback is appreciated.
  
• Fix: a Cup could be wrongly assigned to the player character after defeating a normal Gallic mercenary, if a mercenary leader had been defeated in a similar encounter during the same game. The Cup should only be assigned when the leader is defeated in single combat, not when one of his henchmen is killed in formation fighting.