Grand Strategy Imperator: Rome - the new grand strategy from Paradox

[The Wall]

This was probably the worst GSG I've ever played. Not only is every single feature recycled from EU: Rome, EU4, or CK2, but it also somehow manages to be much worse than in those games. Started as a city state in Crete, managed to beat Phrygia because the AI is just that terrible.

With or without Pompey Patch? Vanilla 1.0 isn't even a game, it's broken Excel spreadsheet in toga

 

[thesecret1]

Without. Played it on day 1. I thought that no matter how bad it is, it can't be worse than HoI4. I was wrong.

 

[Agame]

Well annexing the Austrian Empire as Prussia requires a lot of metaknowledge in regards to how you can do that in the first place (also it requires a lot of work to get Austria out of the Great Powers until before late game).

Anyway, the real problem with war in Vicky 2 is really that it's almost entirely a numbers game, if you have higher population and better tech, you will win without any thought given. But the bigger problem is that the way raising armies is linked to provinces is a huge pain in the ass that adds nothing but annoyance. Personally I'd prefer a revised system based around mobilization, where tech has been decoupled from war effectiveness (at the very least, equipment should be something you can just BUY instead of a thing that can change magically overnight), in general I'd wish the tech system to be changed entirely.

Part of the problem is also the terrible wackamole combat, but thats just inherent in Paradox games. And of course I:R is lazy copy paste garbage with the combat like every other part of it. I would argue its even worse in fact, the new tactics system is some kind of joke. Lets play 'rock paper scissor' before each battle to decide the winner? Fucking bonkers...

Imagine a world where we had AGEOD combat combined with the more complex strategy layer of Paradox, I want to believe!!

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Well the tactics are straight from CK2, and they suck there too. I'm honestly not sure how to fix the combat in EU/CK/Imp, since the question mark is the number of armies at play, but with Vicky you could just import a slightly more stripped down (more than anything for the sake of performance) HoI baseline and it would already improve things immensily. Sometimes as a (half-)joke I've pondered that it'd be kind of amusing if there was a Crusader Kings/Musou crossover, since it'd at least be amusing (though it wouldn't change that what I really want in that sort of sense is an Operation Europe Musou game that's as ridiculous as possible).


Although I may have something of a tolerance for the whack-a-mole thing too, since I've played nearly a thousand hours of Supreme Ruler Ultimate which has probably the worst war model in these sorts of games (Supreme Ruler has its own charms, but it's definately also a showcase of why Paradox dominates this market because it's full of all sorts of frustrations that are simply not present in Pdox titles, the very least being that Clausewitz engine is just really really good). Then again, IF there is enough map detail the HoI combat works with a low number of units too (though this also requires intricate long term balance).

 

[Fedora Master]

With a short hiatus coming up here in Sweden where many of us across the country are taking extended vacations, we wanted to give you a preview of what we've been working on so far for update 1.2 (Cicero) and give you a very early beta access to the upcoming update. The large caveat from the team here is that this is an early look at the progress so far, and what we're seeing is pre-release that will contain no localization (only English), placeholder text and assets, and is obviously a work in progress.

Spoiler

###################
# New Features
###################

- You can now disband loyal cohorts, for double the cost, but those loyal cohorts will turn into "veteran cohorts" for that character that impact their powerbase, and will be raised as experienced cohorts if that character revolts.
- Pops now no longer instantly promote to another type, assimilate their culture or convert their religion. All of these changes will now instead happen over time due to a combination of factors that you can speed up through government policies and other actions. An overview for current changes underway in a city can be opened from the city interface.
- Pops now migrate over time to neighboring cities, cities in the same province, or between provinces with a port in your empire. Manual movement of pops is now only possible for Slaves and Tribesmen (if you are a Tribe).
- Monarch power has been removed as a concept. Instead mechanics have been changed to happen over time, use other currencies or opportunity cost. A new currency, Political Influence, is now generated by loyal members of your Government over time. Political Influence will be used to perform actions directly relating to your country's government such as selecting National Ideas or implementing Laws.
- Reworked Experience. Unit Experience no longer decays from losses in combat but instead decays over time. All armies now have access to the Drill ability which will increase their cost and loyalty gain chance while allowing them to build up experience.
- Reworked Military Traditions. Military traditions are now acquired using Military Experience, a countrywide value that measures the degree of Military Experience your country has built up. Military Experience increases from your average cohort experience and War Exhaustion, where reliance on mercenaries reduce the speed it accumulates by.
- Added 11 new building types, to create more depth to develop your cities.
- Fabricating claims is no longer instant and takes time.
- A new character interaction to bestow a regional nickname on governors has been added.
- A new character interaction to impose corruption sanctions on a character has been added, reducing their corruption at a cost of loyalty and tyranny.

###################
# Gamebalance
###################

# Economy
- Each Holding now gives a boost to commerce income in the city which they are situated.
- Economic Policy for Wages now only affect those characters that are getting wages.
- Economic Policy for Wages reduced to 0.05 loyalty when increased, down from 0.1.
- Building cost inventions previously targeting specific buildings are converted to -0.05 build_cost, with the exception of Granaries
- All traits yielding build_cost are now -0.05 build_cost from -0.1

# Governments
- Government rank now increases Political Influence gain.
- Ruler Martial now increases Manpower Recovery Speed & Army Morale Recovery.
- Ruler Finesse now increases National Commerce Income & reduce Build Cost.
- Ruler Charisma now increases Tyranny Reduction and Claim Fabrication Speed.
- Ruler Zeal now increases Monthly Stability Growth and War Exhaustion Reduction.
- Disloyal Characters are less likely to be elected in a Republic, as the Senate is less likely to trust them.
- Standardized Construction idea reduced to -0.2 build cost and speed from -0.3
- Consort or Co-Ruler will now use their finesse instead of rulers for governor policies, if higher.

# Characters
- Families now keep track of how many children they have in total.
- Courtsize limit lowered to 120
- Foreign characters will now have less children.
- Families with less than 4 current children will now be allowed more children.
- Commanders now earn more gold and popularity from taking cities.
- Frequency of disloyalty schemes has been increased
- Magnitude of disloyalty schemes has been increased

# Units
- Popularity from naval combat is no longer 1% of what it should be.
- Cohorts loyal to a rebel commander, but not in their current army will be disbanded at the start of a civil war, and turned into veteran cohorts for that commander.
- You can now move regular cohorts loyal to a character to another unit. (merge, split, transfer, detach..)

# War & Peace
- Powerbase for Subject Loyalty is based around loyal cohorts, not total population compare.
- It is no longer possible to demand gold as part of a peace treaty.
- Experience from combat increased by 10X

# Religions
- Bon religion bonus reduced to -0.1 build_cost from -0.15

# Cities & Provinces
- Governor Policies is now scaled by the finesse of the govenor / ruler.
- Encourage Trade is now +33% commerce instead of +10% commerce & +1 trade route.

# Pops
- Slaves will no longer be sent to cities that are at their population capacity limit. Instead slaves will be spread out to other nearby cities.
- Slaves now produce 16.6% more gold.
- Tribes have less happyness penalties with other cultures.

# Tradegoods
- Furs changed export and capital bonus changed to -0.005 experience_decay, from starting experience.

###################
# Interface
###################

# Alerts
- Alertmanager tooltip for disloyal characters now have more information about the powerbase.

# Map
- Added a pirate haven indicator to provinces with pirate havens in the barbarian, diplomatic, trade and traderoute mapmodes.

# Misc
- View Pops screen now changes to another province when you click on the map.
- Trade Interface reworked with more information and a sortable list of trade routes.
- New Technology popups will now list what inventions were unlocked.
- Legitimacy and Centralization is now shown in the top bar for countries that have them.
- You can now detach damaged ships from a fleet with one button press.
- All characters with a power base will now be considered as relevant for the disloyal characters in outliner and alert.
- Added two columns for religious and cultural unity for provinces in the ledger.
- Made the event window slightly less squished

##############################
# User Modding
##############################

# Effects
- Added 'add_loyal_veterans' effect for character scope.

# Triggers
- Added 'num_loyal_veterans' trigger for character scope.
- Added state_level_loyalty trigger on state scope.
- Added has_low_economic_policy, has_mid_economic_policy & has_high_economic_policy triggers.

###################
# Setup & Script
###################

# Events
- Roman flavor events added, pertaining to schisms and significant civil wars.
- Unpopular consuls will now trigger various adverse events on election.
- High power base characters will now be eligible for various event chains reducing their loyalty and affecting internal stability.
- Fixed military character triggers in military co-consul chain
- Stopped consorts demanding offices
- Increased cooldown of Bureacratic Issues event from 5 years to 25
- Fixed chance of duplicate characters in Debt Bondage Scandal event
- Reduced harshness of modifiers in Incendiary Slave event
- Fixed missing event picture in a trial event
- Fixed imprisoned characters being scapegoats in trials or appearing in mediation events
- Fixed A Venemous Tongue firing for already disloyal provinces
- Fixed names of cities in Diadochi startup events
- Made Eager Consort and In Good Hands chains mutually exclusive
- Removed some charisma from the Incendiary Slave

# Setup
- Greekified Greek names, family names, nicknames, and regnal names
- Added Nikaia, Pleistarchos, and Alexarchos Antipatrid (siblings of Kassandros)
- Added Arsinoe, and Eurydike (daughters of Lysimachos)
- Added Blood the Argeads trait to children of Kassandros and Thessalonike (Philippos, Alexandros, Antipatros)
- Fixed family name of Apama Sogdianid (Seleukos' wife)
- Tweaked Numidian Kings event for Carthage
- Fixed starting Centralization of Massaesylia, Massylia, Musulamia, and Pontus (from 0 to 50)

# Map
- Added more dynamic city names, removed duplicates, and fixed some anachronistic city names.
- Changed Epirus starting capital to Passaron
- Changed Euobean starting capital to Karystos
- Changed Karystos trade good to marble to represent Cipollino/marmor carystium
- Tweaked starting roads in Jharkhand/east Maurya

#######################
# Bugfixes
######################

# Stablity & Performance
- Fixed rare crash in longer games
- Fixed crash when killing ships with boarded cohorts
- Fixed rare crash when selecting event options

# Multiplayer & Out of Syncs
- Fixed rare on-action related OOS

# Game Mechanic Bugs
- Clan chiefs will no longer start as another position.
- Fixed a few bugs where the game had hardcoded 1000 instead of the Cohort_size define.
- Cost Changes for Declaring Wars now work, aka no-cb-wars-omen etc..
- Can no longer attempt ransom prisoner from char interactions if at war.
- Lack of Governor will no longer upset pops that governor is of a different religion called "".
- Hordes can no longer accumulate negative loot.

# Text & UX
- Heritage in Ledger is now sorted by name, not by internal index.
- Now only shows 2 decimals for Unit Weight in attrition tooltip.
- Fixed the detach siege tooltip when all are loyal.
- Improved tooltip for Garrisons in cityview.
- Build Ships UI no longer resets to army when clicking on another port.
- Fixed bug where building progress was not displayed when building buildings.

# Misc
- DLCs which don't affect the checksum are no longer required to load saves

 

[CyberModuled]

Have a laugh (it's an entire chain as well)

 

[Wilian]

How is the industrial revolution considered more niche than the Roman era?

It is. The average prole has no idea what the IR was. But everyone has heard about Cleopatra and Anthony.

Maybe that's the problem with modern society.

More like US education system

 

[M. AQVILA]

Roman era is far more interesting than the industrial revolution. I remember when I was in school I had very little interest in it, only the history of art managed to be more boring to me.

 

[thesecret1]

I'm honestly not sure how to fix the combat in EU/CK/Imp, since the question mark is the number of armies at play

EU4 combat is deeper than it seems at first sight. Not somehow deeply complex, mind you, but it does offer a fairly decent array of strategic decisions and customization. You can crush a far bigger army than yours if you properly prepare for it - carefully pick the terrain, make sure your army composition is good (meaning you make use of all the combat width, have enough artillery, etc.), invested in the various military buffs through techs and ideas, etc. You CAN, in fact, pull some cool stunts with the system if you're familiar with it, and army size alone will not determine the result. You can't pull shit with Imperator.

 

[Wyatt_Derp]

How is the industrial revolution considered more niche than the Roman era?

It is. The average prole has no idea what the IR was. But everyone has heard about Cleopatra and Anthony.

Maybe that's the problem with modern society.

More like US education system

Years ago I was chatting about conspiracy shit with a friend of mine and it turned towards Roman/late antiquity/Templar shit. My buddy made one of the greatest quotes of all time -

'The 3rd century crisis was an inside job.'

That should be a goddamn bumper sticker. I was so proud of him for that.

 

[catfood]

 

[fantadomat]

Roman era is far more interesting than the industrial revolution. I remember when I was in school I had very little interest in it, only the history of art managed to be more boring to me.

It is not good for such type of a game. It is time that lacked nationalism and many powerful states that could be counterparts to each other. It lacks the power struggles between great powers. It will be far better in a CK like game.

 

[Axioms]

I'm kinda annoyed Johan might actually get Imperator into a system without mana, since that's my main pitch for Axioms of Dominion. That its actually a simulation. Now that I have throw off the Bernie Sanders cult mindfuck I am ready to get shit done. Especially since I only have rent money for 4 more months. Wasted 2 of my 6 months of no job on Bernie. Blarg.

 

[Popiel]

Especially since I only have rent money for 4 more months. Wasted 2 of my 6 months of no job on Bernie. Blarg.

Joined: Today

 

[Axioms]

Especially since I only have rent money for 4 more months. Wasted 2 of my 6 months of no job on Bernie. Blarg.

Joined: Today

I had a pretty epic flame out on Bernie Twitter where I had been incredibly involved. I've been playing distant worlds for 3 days now. For quite a while the Bernie thing had been going really well and then I actually got on a volunteer project that got us really connected to the campaign and I realized it was a dumpster fire. You can read some epic rants by me on PredictIt(under the disqus name Axioms of Dominion), about what happened. I made like $100 there better on Bernie lol. Would been $200 but the fees are rough as hell. Lowest I bought shares was 11-14 cents and Bernie is at 12 cents now. Of course he isn't worth nearly that much. I'd put fucking Yang ahead of him after what I learned about the campaign.

So Vicky 2 is now more popular than Imperator huh? I'll say one thing, Imperator was WAY better than EU: Rome. By far. If you take out the mana shit and if they had spent another year on features it could have been early EU4 decent. But the mana was so stupid and the character system had nothing on CK2. Like, the idea that you needed to start with a frame of a game and add DLC is dumb when most of the major mechanics existed in other games.

I've been hyped as fuck with Distant Worlds Universe though. I had less than 100 hours on it before now and I'm on my way to doubling that. What's sleep? With a few improvements to the expansion planner and separating out the more in depth empire resource manager I might never have needed another game. I understand the game way better now than I did before. What's wild is people say the game is really complicated but to me its easy as pie as far as knowing what is happening and what to do. Like, Imperator is has more of a complexity issue. Of course I have super terrible executive function to balance out my intelligence which means any time I turn off automation I screw up. I literally spent 20 years wondering about my weird resource shortages in my giant 250000 million pop 150 colony empire. Turned out that since I was doing manuals ship designs I had added hyperdrives to passenger, colony, exploration, and military ships but my freighters were running on proton drive for 20 years...

The upside of Johan finally realizing he needs to fix Imperator by making it a better sim is that no one is playing it and no one will ever care that it got fixed, whereas Axioms will be a fresh launch. I wonder if Toady is over my flame war with him on Bay12. Those guys will hype up any sim game no matter how vaporware it is. Its been like 5 years, I'm sure Toady has forgotten.

 

[Average Manatee]

Without. Played it on day 1. I thought that no matter how bad it is, it can't be worse than HoI4. I was wrong.

Did you play HoI4 on release? Even now its a buggy, badly designed game with a whole list of issues that the devs can't fix but on release it was awful, awful trash.

 

[Axioms]

Without. Played it on day 1. I thought that no matter how bad it is, it can't be worse than HoI4. I was wrong.

Did you play HoI4 on release? Even now its a buggy, badly designed game with a whole list of issues that the devs can't fix but on release it was awful, awful trash.

Why is it so hard for Paradox to take the amazing aspects of their games and then add stuff that isn't shit? Or to move amazing aspects from one game to another?

 

[thesecret1]

Without. Played it on day 1. I thought that no matter how bad it is, it can't be worse than HoI4. I was wrong.

Did you play HoI4 on release? Even now its a buggy, badly designed game with a whole list of issues that the devs can't fix but on release it was awful, awful trash.

I played it on release and then again about a month ago. It was and still is terrible garbage designed by idiots, and I doubt it will ever approach anything resembling even just a half decent game. But Imperator is worse.

 

[Axioms]

Oh fuck! They ripped off M&T 2.0: Pop Overhaul for the population mechanics in Imperator! That's a lot more intelligent than I expected of them. That system was pretty good. Still gamey but not mana trash.

 

[Makabb]

It's funny, on paradox reddit Victoria 2 is most discussed title, I guess this shows the quality of their current titles vs previous ones.

 

[JarlFrank]

Although I may have something of a tolerance for the whack-a-mole thing too, since I've played nearly a thousand hours of Supreme Ruler Ultimate which has probably the worst war model in these sorts of games (Supreme Ruler has its own charms, but it's definately also a showcase of why Paradox dominates this market because it's full of all sorts of frustrations that are simply not present in Pdox titles, the very least being that Clausewitz engine is just really really good). Then again, IF there is enough map detail the HoI combat works with a low number of units too (though this also requires intricate long term balance).

One thing Supreme Ruler Ultimate has over PDX games is that you can play as ISIL in the 2017 start.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Yea but it kinda sucks because only a handful of unit tech trees are anywhere near comprehensive, and the 2017 scenario kinda sucks anyway because democracy basic modifiers are ridiculously OP if you have a start where critical mass snowballing has already happened (literally the only reason to play regular start is if you want to defeat Kwa). Honestly, only the Shattered World scenario is worth playing, since the AI just shits itself after enough years in 1918 or 1936 because the military unit system is prepostrously stupid and the economy can't scale from early start to 2000 because of the background inflation and the utterly bonkers way social spending is multiplied by treasury.

But yea, you can play as ISIL if you want.

 

[Life of the Party]

 

[fantadomat]

Buahahaha the fuck is this "guy". Love the close up shot of him,it is amusing how his eyes just move from side to side while reading the script. Buahahahah this is so sad.

 

[Wyatt_Derp]

LOL. He skipped right passed transitioning to a woman and went right to James Bond villain.

Gamer - 'Do you expect me to believe that you fixed the AI pathfinding and diplomacy bugs with the latest patch?'

Paradox Snokes/Moby Emperor guy - 'No, Mr. Gamer. I expect you to die!'

This is how you promote your material, Paradox. Please leave the Xanax and estrogen pills at home.