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

[Fedora Master]

It will never be finished, just like Stellaris will never be finished.

More like it will never get past being mediocre samey garbage.

Well, yes, but PDX will continue to throw patches and reworks at it without any noticeable progress.

 

[Van-d-all]

It will never be finished, just like Stellaris will never be finished.

At least Stellaris is a PDX vanity project and they still throw DLCs with new mechanics at it, not to mention the revamps of core systems. I:R is like a foundling they just pretend to care for until it dies completely forgotten like EU:R.

 

[Theodora]

Well, yes, but PDX will continue to throw patches and reworks at it without any noticeable progress.

Idk man, it's pretty alien from the launch version.

Also, those images you posted, do you know where they're from? Some things seem really off and I'd like to look up what their sources are, or intended interpretations were meant to be.

I:R is like a foundling they just pretend to care for until it dies completely forgotten like EU:R.

Idk, I feel like a big part of why I:R has such low stats is that we have both EU4 and CK2 (which have years of DLC and updates).

 

[Silva]

I just don't see why they keep insisting on POP mechanics that are anything other than the Victoria ones. I presume it's so that people continue throwing money at as many of their franchises as possible but at the same time I feel like they are wasting so much time on trying to fix the POP mechanics in Stellaris and Imperator and it's still not good enough. Nor will it ever be.

It's a warm up for Vicky 3.


(I wish )

 

[Life of the Party]

To celebrate a year since the release of the mod, the new update is out.

Here are the changes coming along with the update:

• Completely overhauled migratory group system
  
  
• New Civilization Advancement system
  
  
• Complete overhaul of the building system
  
  
• Two new Military Traditions (Hurrian and Mesopotamian)
  
  
• A ton of new heritages (at least 40)
  
  
• New unit, the Heavy Chariot
  
  
• At least 1 new unit model, the Akkadian one commissioned by the community and also an Aegean one that will be soon commissioned by Skotos_of_Sinope and Svanley.
  
  
• Many new deities (150+) and deified characters, so far Gilgamesh, Imhotep, Kubau and Sargon.
  

Spoiler

 

[Fedora Master]

Already looks way more interesting than the actual game.

 

[mondblut]

It will never be finished, just like Stellaris will never be finished.

Stellaris will be finished when they'll decide to announce Stellaris 2.

 

[Wyatt_Derp]

I just don't see why they keep insisting on POP mechanics that are anything other than the Victoria ones. I presume it's so that people continue throwing money at as many of their franchises as possible but at the same time I feel like they are wasting so much time on trying to fix the POP mechanics in Stellaris and Imperator and it's still not good enough. Nor will it ever be.

It's a warm up for Vicky 3.


(I wish )

Given the era the Vicky games cover, plus the modern political slant that PDX crew seems to have, I'd be surprised if there ever will be a III.

 

[Fedora Master]

Every country will have the option of instating LGBTQ equality by 1890, duh.
Also communism will be mandatory for all nations that were historically communist, because clearly it is the best ideology.
Also also, you can revive the glory of the Ottoman Empire by clicking two decision buttons.*


*DLC only

 

[Life of the Party]

I wonder if the Imperator mechanics might simply be better suited for the Bronze Age than for Hellenism.

 

[Lagole Gon]

Is it good yet?

 

[Fedora Master]

I wonder if the Imperator mechanics might simply be better suited for the Bronze Age than for Hellenism.

The mechanics aren't that much of a problem, it's the utter lack of flavor. They're slowly giving each region its own but only via DLC. Curious, huh?

Even now there's no real difference between, say, a North African tribe and a Germanic one.

 

[Life of the Party]

Months before it came out I remember being disappointed that they needed DLCs to turn Rome into Rome... in a game called "Rome".

And then I saw a post by one of their fans about how it's simply too much to expect for Celts to be different from Germans, as if those two were some small, obscure tribes in Nowhereland rather than two massive ethnolinguistic groups in the middle of Europe. I guess they simply know their audience.

There are certain mechanics that make more sense, or feel more authentic, over there in Mesopotamia than they do in the Graeco-Roman world. POPs seemingly lacking any autonomy and feeling a bit disconnected from the nation's internal politics, deified mortals, holy sites, holy relics, all of these things belong more with Gilgamesh than with Caesar. Even chariots, come to think of it.

 

[Mortmal]

Is it good yet?

Much better than release , got 135 hours out of it. You wont have the longevity of CK2 let alone EU4 but in this day and age its decent enough. What to play else anyway ?

 

[Life of the Party]

Gudea's Heritage gives Lagash +50% Omen Power and +20% Monthly Political Influence.

 

[Life of the Party]

Spoiler

Hello and welcome to another Development Diary for Imperator: Rome and the features of the upcoming Menander update. Today I will be talking about some of the changes we are bringing to cultures and how it interacts with countries, pops and characters.

Before that however I would like to introduce the new Pop Type that the Menander update will bring.

Meet the Nobles

In the Menander Update we will be adding a new Pop Type at the top of the societal hierarchy. In Rome these would be the Patrician class, but Nobles are by no means unique to Roman society.

We will likely expand on what Nobles do in the future but for now each Noble will produce the same amount of Commerce as a great number of Citizens, meaning that if they are happy they could bring in quite a bit of gold.

Nobles will however, be very hard to please, with a base pop happiness of -10%, and rare with a base desired ratio of 0 in all territories except country capitals.

The happiness of a Noble pop also impacts unrest much more than that of the other pop types, meaning that you may want to consider importing expensive luxuries like gems or precious metals to keep them happy. The Court building will also now increase the desired ratio and happiness of Nobles.

On start not many Nobles exist in the world , the ones that do will be spread out in capitals and to some extent in the former Persian & Argead Empire.

Cultural Happiness & Cultural Integration

Up until now the only way for a country in Imperator to rule a large and diverse empire has been to culturally assimilate the vast majority of pops under your control. This is in stark contrast to most empires in the real world (perhaps with the notable exception of Rome itself) where multi-ethnic empires where often the norm and instead chose to integrate the various conquered groups into the power structures in their society.

In the Menander update a system for integrating cultures will be added, as well as a system of bestowing Civic rights on the pops of a culture - regulating how high pops of that culture can promote. If civic rights are at ‘Citizen’, or ‘Noble’ level, all pops of that culture will be treated as a part of your own state culture. The price for this in the short term will be destabilizing the state, and the long term cost a permanently lower happiness for all state culture and integrated culture pops.

While this feature is in the process of implementation we can still offer this mockup of what we want the future interface to look like.

Civic Rights & Cultural Happiness

In the Menander each culture inside your country will have an individual Civic Right set. This right can be set to any of the pop types in the game (Slave, Tribesman, Freeman, Citizen or Noble) and will control the highest level a pop of the given culture is allowed to promote.

Default right (ie the rights of newly acquired cultures) will start set at freemen level but can be set to either Freemen, Slaves or Tribesmen by the player. Existing pops that are above their allowed status will in time demote to the highest pop type allowed for their culture.

Changing civic rights of a culture will have a one time cost of Political Influence but more importantly it will impact the Cultural Happiness of that culture.

Cultural Happiness

Together with the re-imagining of Integrated Cultures in the Archimedes update we will remove the concept of blanket wrong culture happiness and wrong culture group happiness.

Instead, every country will have a happiness value for each culture in the game, and will have to manage the happiness of its subjects as a group.

Cultural Happiness will start out similar to the old system but over time through your actions these this will change on an individual culture basis, and will also be affected by the Civic Right that a culture is given in your country.

While you will be able to interact with the happiness of the cultures in your country through events and by granting them privileges through decisions and the like the most significant impact on cultural happiness will be the Civic Rights of a culture both in itself, as pops promote or demote (since pops have different base happiness ratings) but also as the pops and characters of the culture as a whole reacts to the rights it is given (or has taken away).

Integrated Cultures

Cultural Happiness is not the only thing in the Menander update that will regulate the happiness of the cultures in your country. The game will also make a distinction between those cultures that are “integrated” and those that are not.

An Integrated culture is a culture that has the civic rights to promote to Citizens or Nobles, this makes that culture part of the elite in your country.

Each integrated culture will reduce the State Culture Happiness by 5% and exempt all Pops of that culture from cultural assimilation completely.

Since they are considered part of your State Culture, Pops from Integrated Cultures will also get the Happiness modifier that your State Culture pops get - this means that for each culture you integrate you dilute the extra happiness that your state culture enjoys.

Gaining new Integrated Cultures

In order for a culture to be granted Citizen or Noble Rights it needs to first make up a sizable part of the total population in your country. Unlike the effect of changing civic rights for a culture normally integration is not instant. Instead progress will build up over time (with the total time being dependent on the number of pops in your country of the culture) and as long as integration is in progress you will suffer a negative stability penalty.

On the road to integration you will also run into events that pose you with choices relating to the integration of the new culture. You could be asked to take in a new Great family from this culture, to adopt one of their deities, or to make concessions of some sort.

Integrated cultures can also be lost - at a very high cost to cultural happiness.

Related Changes

In order to accommodate the changes we are doing to how happiness works in regards to cultures we will be making some related changes. Base assimilation of culture will be reduced sharply (similar to how we did the same for religious conversion in the Archimedes update), and we will also be splitting up some cultures and culture groups in the world.

These are the biggest changes to the culture setup in the update:

The Celtic culture group has been broken into a Gallic and a Panonian group.

Persian Culture Group will be split into 3 new groups: Iranian, Anatolian and Caucasian.

The Nilotic Culture Group has been renamed to Egyptian, with 3 subcultures in it.

Scythian culture has been split up.

Lastly a new Pracyan group has been broken out of the eastern part of the Aryan culture group in India based around the countries using the eastern indo-aryan court dialects. A new Atavi culture has also been added for the tribal peoples in the east-central inland.

That was all for today. We hope that these changes taken together will let you interact with the people of your country in a more interesting and believable way, and that the Menander update will bring an end to the rule that all great empires must be mono-cultural ones in Imperator. This is however just the first of the diaries on this new update, more will follow in the coming weeks.

 

[Comte]

This is turning into a dry run for Vicky 3

 

[thesecret1]

Up until now the only way for a country in Imperator to rule a large and diverse empire has been to culturally assimilate the vast majority of pops under your control. This is in stark contrast to most empires in the real world

It took them this long to notice this? I remember people bitching about this even back on release.

 

[Theodora]

There are certain mechanics that make more sense, or feel more authentic, over there in Mesopotamia than they do in the Graeco-Roman world. POPs seemingly lacking any autonomy and feeling a bit disconnected from the nation's internal politics, deified mortals, holy sites, holy relics, all of these things belong more with Gilgamesh than with Caesar. Even chariots, come to think of it.

The changes in the latest dev diary I think help illustrate why I keep babbling on time and again that I have so much faith in Arheo as the new (well, not too new anymore) lead dev, as he's directed the team to focus a lot on the elements incongruous with Roman history. Some highlights:

• New pop class — nobles:

We will likely expand on what Nobles do in the future but for now each Noble will produce the same amount of Commerce as a great number of Citizens, meaning that if they are happy they could bring in quite a bit of gold.

Nobles will however, be very hard to please, with a base pop happiness of -10%, and rare with a base desired ratio of 0 in all territories except country capitals.

The happiness of a Noble pop also impacts unrest much more than that of the other pop types, meaning that you may want to consider importing expensive luxuries like gems or precious metals to keep them happy. The Court building will also now increase the desired ratio and happiness of Nobles.

On start not many Nobles exist in the world , the ones that do will be spread out in capitals and to some extent in the former Persian & Argead Empire.

​

• Cultural integration reworked

In the Menander update a system for integrating cultures will be added, as well as a system of bestowing Civic rights on the pops of a culture - regulating how high pops of that culture can promote. If civic rights are at ‘Citizen’, or ‘Noble’ level, all pops of that culture will be treated as a part of your own state culture. The price for this in the short term will be destabilizing the state, and the long term cost a permanently lower happiness for all state culture and integrated culture pops.While this feature is in the process of implementation we can still offer this mockup of what we want the future interface to look like.

​

• County-by-county happiness

​

In the Menander each culture inside your country will have an individual Civic Right set. This right can be set to any of the pop types in the game (Slave, Tribesman, Freeman, Citizen or Noble) and will control the highest level a pop of the given culture is allowed to promote.
Default right (ie the rights of newly acquired cultures) will start set at freemen level but can be set to either Freemen, Slaves or Tribesmen by the player. Existing pops that are above their allowed status will in time demote to the highest pop type allowed for their culture.

There's a lot more detail on this if you look at the dev-diary, but the bottom line is tha it's suddenly a lot more relevant to Rome's historic empire building, and it's exciting even if it seems like minutae.

Less relevant but I love every elaboration on the culture groups:

Spoiler

"The Celtic culture group has been broken into a Gallic and a Panonian group."

"Persian Culture Group will be split into 3 new groups: Iranian, Anatolian and Caucasian."

"The Nilotic Culture Group has been renamed to Egyptian, with 3 subcultures in it."

"Scythian culture has been split up."

"Lastly a new Pracyan group has been broken out of the eastern part of the Aryan culture group in India based around the countries using the eastern indo-aryan court dialects. A new Atavi culture has also been added for the tribal peoples in the east-central inland."

 

[Life of the Party]

Since the new patch, there was a change on loyalty that dramatically changed the course of the game. Well, here my tips to solve some loyalty issues.

1. Never make the head of a family general
   
   
2. Put some corruption reduction modifiers(national idea, laws, and increase wages), then use bribes and free hands

3)Prefer loyal generals over better generals. A 15 general is less useful than a 9, the amount of micro and the risk of going though civil war or pay down loyalty is pain the ass. Also a good strat is to put your good general inside a small stack. So he doesn’t have the power base in order to become dangerous

4)Split your army to different stacks 10,20,40 depends on how much big you are. A general controlling 10% of your total army is less dangerous than a general having 60% of your army as loyal

5)You should favor a family or 2 depend on how much available jobs there are . If you intent to scorn a family , don’t grant any unnecessary positions to them 6)Put head of family members as researchers. There is a nasty event that reduces loyalty on head of a family. Since they have large power base , don’t put them in government office. You will lose potential political influence

7)Rotate disloyal people with ones that are loyal on office and generals

The biggest I have found by endlessly staring at modifiers when I get disloyalty warnings is that for now it seems like the loyalty system is counter intuitive; medium-large nations are more stable than small ones. The reason for this seems to be power base penalties. Heads of families gain large bonuses to their power simply because they are heads of families, more power makes them disloyal, and if a certain percentage of your power base is disloyal you progress towards civil war. A family head with no government positions and only two other family members has enough power in a local/small regional power to progress to civil war with just one or two traits pushing disloyalty. Two traits in particular annoy me: lapsed(-10) and lustful (-5). Most of my disloyal characters have had lapsed, and lustful is just ridiculous, it shouldn't have the same penalty as ambitious.

Larger nations benefit from more decentralised power. Armies, navies and governorships all contribute to add power to a nations total power base, reducing the amount of power held by any one person. OP's suggestions are great, but the implications for small powers are unfortunate. The most optimal setup for a city state that can only field 4 cohorts is to have four separate armies with a single cohort each and only one commander. If a commander has the whole army under him he will be very powerful. Watch the traits of your commanders carefully, if their loyalty dips below 50 replace them.

I'll add that dealing with disloyalty comes in two parts: improving loyalty and reducing power. I always check power base in loyalty dilemmas. A 2.0 power base minor character? You can have 0 loyalty for all I care. Additionally of you have a character with low loyalty and high power see if you can reduce their power. Pay off their veterans and remove them from command while you still can, revoke their holdings, if they're a governor you might get the option to imprison them if they are corrupt and certain events fire. 0 loyalty characters don't normally cause issues if they lack power to act against you.

 

[Theodora]

Tbh I hope they add some level of decisions beyond the player's choice, when it comes to assigning generals. I want tensions when it comes to legions being loyal to a troublesome politician, not just the one's I'd put in charge.

 

[Average Manatee]

You can completely avoid generals. Assign your armies to provincial governors (switch in the best martial guy available if you want, though this will upset your governor policies) and hire the best-skilled merc around (they have base +5 martial so will generally be at least as good as your best if not godlike rape machines*). Then take lots of the laws that improve governor loyalty at the expense of generals. Now you can run 100% tyranny for that sweet, sweet assimilation/tax/warscore bonuses and laugh. Make your ruler a general so they can get popularity boosts and good events for sieging cities

You DON'T want to split armies across lots of generals because every general employed gets 2.5% of your whole country's income as their base wage (boosted by their corruption). Merc armies do count for this but provincial governors do not.

Also if you want to entirely eliminate a family easily, watch for who will be heir and imprison them before the ruler of the family dies (since Health is entirely deterministic you can predict when people die to the month generally). Then proscribe them. You can then sell them into slavery and so on to make a bunch of bucks and reset to a new family with shit prestige. Aside from the effects of tyranny surprisingly no one else cares much about this.

*Keep in mind that base rolls are 0-6. Estimating average enemy general to be about 8 (+4 to rolls), and you can usually get at least a 14 (+7), you're effectively changing your average roll from a 3 to a 6, which is an absurdly good boost in power.

 

[fantadomat]

Why are people still talking about this shit? Is the codex half the player population about it?

 

[Life of the Party]

I haven't really played it since the release and now when The Bronze Age added my beloved Mesopotamia I had to try it out.

So here I am playing Thera with the hope of forming a certain something you'll never guess (Plato HATES it!) and I find myself struggling with the power base thing. Like the second guy said, the loyalty system right now feels really counter-intuitive.

 

[Life of the Party]

and the long term cost a permanently lower happiness for all state culture and integrated culture pops

Better than nothing, I guess.

Less relevant but I love every elaboration on the culture groups

Still no Slavs.