Imperator: Rome (Paradox's Next Grand Strategy Title)

Soldato
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Here's the blurb, straight from the horse's mouth;

Go from Brick to Marble in Paradox’s Imperator: Rome
Paradox Development Studio Announces New Roman Themed Grand Strategy Game

STOCKHOLM – May 19, 2018 – What we think of as “western civilization” was not guaranteed. Imagine Alexander’s empire centralized under one successor. Italy might never have been unified under Roman rule, strangling a juggernaut in its cradle. A world without Caesar. Now you can explore these alternate histories in Imperator: Rome.



The masters of historical strategy have returned to the days of legions and legends. Paradox Development Studio is happy to announce Imperator: Rome, an upcoming grand strategy game set in the classical world from the glory days of Athens to the establishment of the Roman Empire four centuries later. Rule any nation on the most detailed Paradox map ever stretching from the Pillars of Hercules to the far reaches of of India, allowing you to build an empire to dwarf that of Alexander. Govern republics or monarchies, balancing the factions, and keeping the loyalty of your most capable generals.

Imperator: Rome’s features include:
  • Character Management: A living world of characters with varying skills and traits that will change over time. They will lead your nation, govern your provinces and command your armies and fleets. We also introduce our new, more human-like character art.
  • Diverse Populations: Citizens, freemen, tribesmen and slaves – each population with its own culture and religion. Whether they fill your armies, fill your coffers or fill your colonies, keep an eye on their happiness – your success depends on their satisfaction.
  • Battle Tactics: Choose your approach before battle to counter the stratagems of your foes.
  • Military Traditions: Each culture has a unique way of waging war. Romans and Celts have different options available to them. Unlock unique bonuses, abilities and units.
  • Different Government Types: Manage the senate in a Republic, hold your court together in a monarchy, answer to the clans in a tribal system.
  • Barbarians and Rebellions: Migrating barbarians may sack or settle your best land, while disloyal governors or generals can turn against you – taking their armies with them!
  • Trade: Goods provide bonuses to their home province. Will you take advantage of stockpiles for local strength or trade excess goods to spread the wealth around?
  • Provincial Improvement: Invest in buildings, roads and defences to make your kingdom stronger and richer.
Imperator: Rome is scheduled for a 2019 release.

It's an era that has been covered a lot, but if it has some of Paradox's usual depth and attention to detail, then I'm very excited.
 
Soldato
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There are a few screenshots on the Steam store page. They show how big the map is!

Yeah, according to the presentation with the solders and the game designer Johan Andersson dressed as Caesar on the announcement feature at PDXCon it will cover from Britain and diagonally carve all way down to India and Afghanistan.

Looks impressive because it incorporates mechanics from four games. Parts of EUIV diplomacy and general mechanics, the characters and AI from CK2, pops from Vicky 2 and production from HOI IV.
It is going to be possibly the best game they made by that time and I do not believe Johan Andersson has made a bad game yet, since he is responsible for HOI III, CK2, EUIV and Stellaris....

Also AOW Planetfall looks great for next year also.... Add the usual DLCs for HOI IV, Surviving Mars, CK2, EUIV also, PDX going to get few hundred pounds of me again next year...as they already have this year so far...
 

apg

apg

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There are a few screenshots on the Steam store page. They show how big the map is!

I like the size and the aesthetic. Definitely looks an improvement on EUIV. They have also mentioned though about new improved 3D character portraits, I like the current ck2 ones though so i hope they arent 'too' 3d and hold some of their style.

I wish they would do something Pre-Rome, Babylonia, Sumeria, Ancient Egypt etc.

I think this is pre rome. If you look at one of the screenshots Rome is still a minor state along with other nation states. Plus dont forget there will probably be some sort of mod for the dates you may wish.
 
Man of Honour
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I think this is pre rome. If you look at one of the screenshots Rome is still a minor state along with other nation states. Plus dont forget there will probably be some sort of mod for the dates you may wish.

I hope so, I always wanted to play as Sumeria in Europa Universalis IV but apparently there was an issue with pre-AD dates which meant that nobody did a mod of it
 
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I hope so, I always wanted to play as Sumeria in Europa Universalis IV but apparently there was an issue with pre-AD dates which meant that nobody did a mod of it
Judging from the little bit of text on the Steam page about it being around "Alexander’s Successor Empires", looks like it'll likely have the timeline starting from around 235BC.
 

apg

apg

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I hope so, I always wanted to play as Sumeria in Europa Universalis IV but apparently there was an issue with pre-AD dates which meant that nobody did a mod of it

Ye I don't think that will be an issue this time around. We should get some dd's soon confirming the playable dates. Ck's dd day has been moved from Monday to Friday so maybe the first imperator Dec diary will be next Monday!?
 
Soldato
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Judging from the little bit of text on the Steam page about it being around "Alexander’s Successor Empires", looks like it'll likely have the timeline starting from around 235BC.

Given the initial map and the date 1/1/450 AUC that means the game starts at 302-303BC.
So all the Diacochi are still alive (battle of Ipsus took place in 301BC) which will make the game interesting because of the further fragmentation of the area, for a great political game, if is true that all CK2 elements are in game with the AI agents.

Personally looking forward to play with the Antigonid dynasty, especially Antigonus I Monothalmus and his son Demetrius I Poliorcetes, because is time to beat the rest of the usurpers of Alexander's Empire.
Also Demetrius is a very historically intrigue figure, that not many in the west know about him. He was worshipped by the Athenians as titular god, after it freed the city from the Macedonian rule but they even closed their doors at him after Ipsus, when he lost everything. But from nothing became the King of Macedonia later establishing the dynasty until the Romans.
Also Demetrius is the one who moved the siege technology ahead, by improving the battering ram and helepolis designs, and his designs remained in use for thousand years.
 
Soldato
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Second dev diary today, displaying the detail of the world in terms of cities/provinces.


Hello everyone, and welcome to the second development diary for Imperator! This time we’ll talk about our map!

This is arguably the biggest and most detailed map we have had made for a game ever. More is not always better though, as of which the original release of HoI3 is a great example. We have taken good care into making a game where you can have interesting situations both while playing a small state, and while playing a vast empire.

In various games before, we’ve worked with organising entities on the maps in various ways, with States being groups of provinces tracing back to Vicky1. In Imperator we’ve been designing the game from the ground up with having 2 layers of interaction. The smallest part of a map is what we call a city, which corresponds to about a province in previous games. A city holds a city (or village, or metropolis), a bunch of pops, produces a trade-goods and may have a few buildings. A Province is a group of cities all belonging to the same country. A province is usually about 10 to 12 cities, and this is the entity you interact with to control trade and assign governors to.

Let us quickly compare how Sicily have been depicted in our previous games, as this is where we’ll take a look today.
  • Eu2 had 2 provinces
  • CK2 has 5 provinces.
  • Eu4 has 3 provinces
  • HoI4 has 9 provinces

In Imperator, Sicily has 23 cities (provinces in previous games), and 4 impassable mountain range areas.

This creates a much more interesting military campaign, and also more variety in your peacetime activities.

Of course, as you would expect from a game with Rome in its title, we have the entirety of Mare Nostrum covered, but there is far more of the world in the game than just that area. And with those words I’ll hand over the keys to @Arheo & @Trin Tragula , our research team!

One of the major reasons behind our choice of start date, aside from being a particularly interesting period in Roman history, is the state of the successor kingdoms in the east. We’ll go into depth about those in another development diary, however, it is worth noting that many of our decisions to include certain territories were down to their relevance within the hellenistic world, as being fascinating in their own right.

Britain made up a sizeable portion of historical Roman conquests, and played an important part in the tin trade throughout the bronze age, into the iron age. Data on pre-roman Britain is scarce, particularly for the period preceding 150 BC, and some liberties have therefore been taken regarding the extrapolation of tribal territory as known to Caesar.

The inclusion of southern Scandinavia, despite it being the epitome of all modern civilization (enough of that now - Editor), was a calculated decision. Our start date of 304 BC places us during the migration (not to be confused with the Migration Period, which occurred as of the 4th century AD) of the original Germanic tribes from modern-day Scandinavia, into northern and central Germany. The displacement of the native inhabitants (about whom very little is known), and latterly some of the celtic tribes, occurred over the course of the next several hundred years. As with Britain, very little concrete data exists on the exact nature of the locations and names of tribal groupings towards the beginning of this period.

The recorded history of the Ethiopian region extends back far further than our timeline, however, none of the contemporary sources we were able to discover, were particularly detailed regarding location data or political situation. Even now, structures built by the D’mt kingdom around 700 BC still stand, a testament to the advanced civilizations out of which the contemporaries of our start date grew. The Nile has always been the lifeblood of north-eastern africa, and we felt it was worthwhile including as much of it as possible.

The inclusion of the Indian subcontinent is something we considered as vitally necessary to complete the world that was relevant to the Hellenistic era. A state of conflict had already existed for some time between the recently established Mauryan Empire, and Seleucus Nicator, self-proclaimed King, by the time we begin. Greek traders had long-since been visiting west Indian trading ports, trading in fabrics, gemstones and spices, and indeed, many of the ancient names we have for these locations appear also in Greek, or show Greek influence.

Last of all, since we only have one start date, we have wanted to include as many interesting things as possible in it. This means that we have also tried to identify interesting states that can reasonably start as subjects of others, rather than directly owned by governors, both to better cover the political realities of far off regions like northern Anatolia or Judea, and to allow the player the choice of taking over the reins of many unique polities in these regions.

Over the course of development, we have used a great number of sources, texts and maps in order to craft what we believe, is an immersive, living world, which is as close to history as is possible. One invaluable reference tool for our Roman areas which deserves special mention, is the Digital Atlas of the Roman Empire, compiled at Lund University, using data from the Pelagios Project.

Additional sources include (but are far from limited to):
  • The Schwartzberg Historical Atlas of South Asia
  • An Atlas of Ancient Indian History - Habib & Habib
  • Perseus Digital Library
  • Pelagios Project
  • Pleiades Gazetteer
It should be noted that while these have been great resources we have sometimes had to take liberties to create as full a map as possible. As such, any errors are likely to be ours and the reference materials we have used should not be faulted. :)

If there are any significant reference materials you believe might be relevant, we always welcome suggestions from our posters.

2018_06_04_6.png
 
Soldato
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Huh time flies by :)

Do people still here follow the game? Many interesting things have come up with the current campaigns showcased by PDX, especially the Egyptian one, however not even the top of the iceberg is been covered ;)
 
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