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

philstanbridge said:
I like the look of this, but I'm so glad I held firm and didn't buy. There are so many complaints, both on Steam and their forum. I imagine in a year or two it will be where it should be. EUIV on the other hand is very good, and will keep me entertained for a while yet.. But how long has that taken to get where it is now...
Click to expand...

I knew what I was going to be getting, and have enjoyed it so far, but i'll finish this campaign and go back to CK2 which I've only scratched the surface of so far, and of course EUIV. But this bun needs a lot longer in the oven. I've also got Cities: Skylines to have a bash at after ZEN2/NAVI arrive.
 
Darujhistan said:
I knew what I was going to be getting, and have enjoyed it so far, but i'll finish this campaign and go back to CK2 which I've only scratched the surface of so far, and of course EUIV. But this bun needs a lot longer in the oven. I've also got Cities: Skylines to have a bash at after ZEN2/NAVI arrive.
Click to expand...

I'll probably play the major factions through before moving on, just happy it has such a good start. Way ahead of most other games, just a little thin when compared to another paradox title.
 
No1newts said:
I'll probably play the major factions through before moving on, just happy it has such a good start. Way ahead of most other games, just a little thin when compared to another paradox title.
Click to expand...

I'll probably pop back in when major patches drop to see how it plays, the first one should not be long.
 
Playing a Macedon save and my current ruler is;

Blind
Castrated
Dynestry
Arthritis
One armed

That's just his health, his characteristics;

Hateful
Narrow minded
Deceitful
Angry


Sounds like a blinking lovely and lucky man :D
 
No1newts said:
Playing a Macedon save and my current ruler is;

Blind
Castrated
Dynestry
Arthritis
One armed

That's just his health, his characteristics;

Hateful
Narrow minded
Deceitful
Angry


Sounds like a blinking lovely and lucky man :D
Click to expand...

Mind you, to be fair, if I was a one-armed, blind, castrated, athritic man I would be pretty damned hateful and angry too :D
 
philstanbridge said:
I like the look of this, but I'm so glad I held firm and didn't buy. There are so many complaints, both on Steam and their forum. I imagine in a year or two it will be where it should be. EUIV on the other hand is very good, and will keep me entertained for a while yet.. But how long has that taken to get where it is now...
Click to expand...

Unfortunately the crybabies at the forums and Steam bought exactly the same product shown fully to them since February yet they expected a completely different game.
Also many complain about performance when they trying to use it on AMD A9 based laptops because "EU4 is running fine with the same engine". That the A9 is bellow spec doesn't matter.
Others talk about diplomacy yet they dismiss your post when you reply "try to play EU4 without Art of War".

Imperator is by far the best released game PDX made. It has killed EU4 for good to me, especially because the much more interesting combat system that the naysayers haven't even looked at what the buttons do, or how you arrange the formation your units will deploy and their tactics in battle. Yet the naysayers cry combat and armies are "too simplistic" when in comparison EU4 is dumbed down.

Let alone it incorporates elements from CK2 and Vicky 2. What it truly needs is CK2 Way of Life & Conclave DLC mechanics.
 
Valid points Panos. How does the game feel? Does the map run smooth for you? I've got EUIV with nearly all the DLC and 2500 hours, and it feels like a finished product to me. i think I would be disappointed with a barebones release, even if it offers more potential. But on the otherhand, that potential is the reason why I invest in PDX. Decisions..
 
philstanbridge said:
Valid points Panos. How does the game feel? Does the map run smooth for you? I've got EUIV with nearly all the DLC and 2500 hours, and it feels like a finished product to me. i think I would be disappointed with a barebones release, even if it offers more potential. But on the otherhand, that potential is the reason why I invest in PDX. Decisions..
Click to expand...

I think barebones is a little but of a harsh assessment of the game but you will certainly notice a lack of intricacy compared to CK2 and EU4 with all the expansions. There are a lot of elements you think should be there, having played other games, that aren't and it can be a little disconcerting at times but otherwise it's damn good.

I've never seen the micro stutter issue still (about 90 hours played) the one thing that does irritate me and I think it must be a "fix" issue as opposed to my PC as it's a good PC, is the game freezing/lagging on the autosave. Even early game the delay is considerably worse than extreme late game EU4 and it is a little annoying especially Ironman mode. That aside I'm all in on the game and probably won't venture back to EU4 and will most likely stay with this.

One in game mechanic I find is a little too basic is unhappiness in provinces that you conquer. EU4 you are almost certainly going to get rebellions in provinces you conquer unless they have the same culture you have, in Imperator I've never once had a province rebel as either Rome (took all of Spain, France and half of Germany, all foreign cultures) or Macedon (took a lot of druidic culture territories) and only once had a province even approach this. Basically I find conquering and holding territory a little too easy at the moment.

I'm all in though and looking forward to the first expac.
 
The sheer fact that steam reviews for this are at Mostly Negative is the reason why I pay no attention to steam reviews and why it doesnt bother me in the slightest that other launchers dont have review systems.
 
philstanbridge said:
Valid points Panos. How does the game feel? Does the map run smooth for you? I've got EUIV with nearly all the DLC and 2500 hours, and it feels like a finished product to me. i think I would be disappointed with a barebones release, even if it offers more potential. But on the otherhand, that potential is the reason why I invest in PDX. Decisions..
Click to expand...

Few pages back posted a reply to map stuttering. Turning off refraction, the map moves smoothly, yet haven't see any drop to the quality of water. But, the map stuttering with refraction on, only exists on the nvidia gtx1060 6gb the laptop has. Not on the Vega 64 on the PC.

Also the game came out during the week Nvidia had already for one week ongoing issue with high cpu usage and was fixed the week after the game was released.

Closing, on the i7 6700HQ (3.15ghz boost clock) the game plays better than HOI4 even on battery.
 
Is it a bug/glitch or just some weird **** going on in my Macedon game but I have so many people choosing not to get married, I noticed it to a lesser extent in my game as Rome but I have (on a quick pass) 7 men aged between 21-40 unmarried and 11 women same age range unmarried, what's up with that?

I'm spending time having wars against minor provinces to conquer them so I can adopt some of their families as mine don't seem to agree with marriage! :p As I say I noticed it with my Rome save and I understand the wider you expand the more people you will need to fill roles but have potentially 7 people unmarried, thus missing out on 2-3 kids per couple is killing me in the long term and I have no idea why it is occurring.
 
You want to take on families of vanquished foes quite a bit early on, especially if they are in your culture/religious group. I read that they will only marry if they have status/wealth to do so, but they need to relax things a bit in my opinion because I have run out of people to assign more than once.

So far still enjoying the game, it's not perfect, but I think they can improve on it a bit short term.

Biggest things for me at the moment are;
  • Province view needs to show more info, I find it hard to tell when my province policy is ineffective. A breakdown of culture/religion etc would be welcome.
  • The province policy resetting when you assign a new governor. This one is a bit infuriating. For this reason I try to assign young governors where I can so they actually stay the same for a while.
  • You can even start the game with your capital province being on local autonomy setting automatically. Which is stupid really as the capital province can't be disloyal.
  • I don't mind the pop stealing mechanic, in fact I quite like it, especially when I am raiding a big empire. But it would be so much better if the pops would be a bit more dynamically located around the map instead of piling largely into the capital. I had over 1k slaves in my Byzantion game in the capital.
  • I don't have a big issue with the mana mechanics, but I would like to be able to influence this a bit myself. In EU4 you could get rulers that gave you bad stats in certain mana classes, but you could set a national focus to improve one mana point at the cost of the others, and you could hire advisers. I think advisers in this game would certainly add some flavour and could come with their own events too. Could even help you fill jobs for family members.
  • The retinues of the clans in tribes need some changes really, the bigger you get the bigger they get. I was playing as Boi and my retinues were like 70K large, which meant attrition almost everywhere they went!
  • Possibly some kind of setting on the tactics. I like them but most armies seem to default to shock tactics.
  • Buildings need some kind of improvement, they aren't as interesting as the CK2 or EU4 buildings which is a shame. I'd love a good cash dump to help improve my nation that isn't linked to the types of pops that live there.
  • The unrest blessing seems to be the best one if you are playing wide. Provinces going disloyal really hinders your plans. This blessing does quite a bit to help you keep province loyalty up.
 
Last edited:
Like them ideas, would like to see the marriage thing fixed as like you I've ran out/been low before and started wars just to get more people which is a bit silly. People want to get married so even if there wasn't a suitable noble they would find a rich merchant son/daughter rather than he single all life, the fact the game doesn't recognise this is a little weird.

I'm not hugely against pop being dumped on capital as slaves but if they want to continue that they need to make a mechanic for moving pops easier rather than single clicks which is laborious. Also a discount on movements for a time period if you do it soon enough post war perhaps.

Perhaps it's a reflection of the times back then but I find there is always a tipping point in terms of size when you become nigh on unbeatable. My Macedon game, even in a sustained war with Phygria I had a standing army in constant battle of 300j around About 300/400k Merc on hire and was still losing less than 20-30g a month (and sitting on 100k this amount was laughable) and my manpower at its lowest got down to 100k and they were apparently the 3rd strongest faction and were allied with two other fairly big nations. As I say it may be historically accurate but nations never really form blocks or alliances against big powers and really there are only 4-5 big powers anyway. EU4 Europe was in a really fine balance and you have to be continually careful on your steps incase you annoy other big powers or alliance webs, this game at the moment as long as you've hit the tipping point you basically have an easy ride over everyone and it's just a case of managing AE/Manpower in between inevitable war victories.

Still a fan, will still play, but it does certainly need some work from it's good start point.
 
In my last couple of games I was playing around the Phrygia area, and I butted heads both times against Egypt. Both times Egypt had snowballed a bit, I even lost one war to them and had to give up some land before re-taking it back later. They were a bit of a powerhouse and I've not really seen them do badly so far.

Rome doesn't usually do quite well enough in my opinion. They are normally too passive, especially when measured against historical Rome. I don't think they should always become a power house, but I think that there should be a reasonable chance that they perform well given they are the centre of the game really.

They need to work on mercs a bit I think as you can have a standing army of them eventually when you get rich enough, and there aren't really any gold sinks beside mercs. Maybe they should limit how many mercs you can have in relation to your own cohort/army size.

I think stolen pops centralising around your capital province makes sense, with a lot going to the capital region, then some to the outer cities/provinces. If the pops are starving in real life they would naturally move away to less populated areas.

EU4 you could also snowball a bit, but end-game France/Ottomans/Russia could definitely put a spanner in the works, depending upon where you started playing.
 
Didn't realise this finishes in 727. Feels a little short compared to EU4, I was pretty aggressive through out as Macedon (became Magna Grecian) but barely took any territory at all. Could have been more aggressive but not by a lot.
 
As much as I love EU4, I hardly ever finish to the end date, so it's OK for me that it's a bit shorter. HOI4 felt a bit too short.

I'd not mind an earlier start mind where stuff is a bit slower/more fragmented at the start than it is even in this game. Unsure if they'll ever change the start/end dates. I used to like playing CK2 from the 800's instead of the 1066 start date.

Been doing some achievement runs lately. Did the Sidon (an OPM) into Phoenicia run which was fun, had to get 500 ships to get it which took most of the game time to do.

Just yesterday did a Celticia into Greater Iberia run which was also fun as Iberia is pretty fractured.

I have started a new one as Rome as they have some achievements I didn't get the first time around as I lacked the understanding of game mechanics to pull off anything special. this time about I have united the Italian peninsula and I have 8 small vassals pretty quickly, which is a good place to start as it's all in the Latin culture group I only have one disloyal province with the rest set to convert to Roman.

I have claims on Carthage as well as Epirus, kind of tempted to take out Epirus next as they don't really have any allies to speak of. Then I'll move on Carthage and take out Sicily, the islands they own, and hopefully sack Carthage itself to get a beach head for future expansion.
 
Last edited:
No1newts said:
Didn't realise this finishes in 727. Feels a little short compared to EU4, I was pretty aggressive through out as Macedon (became Magna Grecian) but barely took any territory at all. Could have been more aggressive but not by a lot.
Click to expand...

The game lasts 277 years, ending in 27BC the year Octavian was declared Augustus by the Senate. (yet didn't got hold absolute power until well after 23BC)
In EU4 terms that's the year 1721. So hardly that sort game. Though both games are much shorter than CK2 if start from 769AD lasting for almost 700 years.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom