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

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Depends, they changed some stuff, had a redesign or two, some image is posted this way, some that way, but most of the time I either open the image in a new tab or right click and copy image location, after which I click the button next to Media.

Are you also using Firefox? Can you see Twitter images?

Even in the previous post i typed *[*I*M*G*]* and once I clicked reply everything that came after *[*I*M*G*]* got deleted so I had to use edit. I see now you use space around the brackets but seems weird for everything to just get deleted like that.
 

Theodora

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Yeah, I thought it might be the case but the context made it confusing. My bad.

Firefox is what I use so I don't think it's that. Some extension or AV, no idea what you have installed. I don't even know what I have installed, to be honest.

All good, was more concerned I'd upset you to be honest.

And yeah, turned out to be PrivacyBadger oddly blocking Paradox's stuff. All this time I'd been uploadinng stuff manually to imgur, fuckkk.

Yeah, I've never seen the screens in your posts, I have no idea. Are you copy/pasting them in directly off the site? That doesn't work very well on the Codex and you'd need to do the old [ img ] link [ img ].

What extensions do you have installed?
 

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I've always seen your images linking to paradox' site.

How is this game, is it still the same shit or it got a little better, a little worse?

Is there a mod that would make sense getting it?

The good thing that came out of this thread is at least I learned of FoG:E. I thought FoG was only the tactical game with blocky units like Pike and Shot.
 

AwesomeButton

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I have found that the phrase "against my better judgement" is a reliable excuse for any and all acts of stupidity that you proceeed to relay, so here it goes.

Against my better judgement, I accidentally clicked a link on the internet which downloaded the latest version of Imperator on my PC, and since it was already there, I decided to give it a first run and see how the gameplay is like.

My tldr conclusion after playing 4hrs with Rome is that while it has some ancient history flavor, probably enough flavor if you are playing with the major powers, the gameplay is too much stuck in EUIV to make it feel like a strategy game about the ancient world. It's the gameplay that makes it feel like a reskin of another game. The sad thing is that I don't see this flaw ever being fixed by patches and expansions, because when has it ever been in any Paradox' game?

Listing some evidence which came to mind while playing:
- The mechanics for army recruitment are too gamey - roman infantry should only be recruited from a couple of provinces at the game's start, not from any province owned by rome. Europa Barbarorum solved this. House rules for only recruiting heavy infantry from Rome and the immediate vicinity can't work in this game, they would cripple the player and he would be eaten by his competing powers.

- The mechanics for strategic war are hardly touched from EU1 times and they continue to be the most dated and disappointing thing about Paradox' games. I can't accept that wars in an ancient world Paradox game shall play the same as those in a WW2 Paradox game, namely "use one stack to carpet-siege the enemy territory so that he can't produce units, and with another stack slap around his standing army so that it's too busy to prevent you from carpet sieging". That's all there is to warfare strategy in this game and in any Paradox game. This is "strategic layer for retards" plain and simple, and it doesn't matter how many different modifiers or mana types they stack on top to disguise it. Games with much simpler rules have much more complex strategic layer than this.

- I understand perfectly well why the above core mechanics have never been touched - it would require a rewrite of the AI from the bottom up. Well, sorry Paradox, but reskinning isn't enough any more, you will have to get up off your asses and actually work. This simply cannot stand. I've paid enough times for same thing already, I am not paying more money for this gameplay ever again.

- Forts are blocking army movement in adjacent provinces in Ancient Italy in the same way as they do in early modern Italy/the world? It's a nice gamey feature, that solved unrealistic borders in EUIV, but it has no place in an ancient world game.

- Climate and weather effects have zero influence on campaigning. They were much more of a factor in reality.

- Diplomacy is the same copypaste of mechanics and AI routines from old games, with no thought given to ancient world peculiarities. As Rome, I should have had a patchwork of alliances with Italic minors, city states, and tribes, with different levels of affiliation to the Republic. Winning wars against the Sabellians, Samnites and Lucanians in the game should have resulted in federating and later assimilating them gradually. Instead of that, the game pushes the player towards map painting, annexation and presents you with a dialogue window (what to do with the nobility) where the most rewarding option tends to be some form of banishment or genocide - this is the exact opposite of what Rome's policy was.

- With diplomacy as with warfare, house rules about not annexing territories outright, at least in the pre-imperial period, will not work because they will handicap the player too much. Rome needs special, custom-made by Paradox, victory conditions and Rome-specific conditions for "vassalizing" Italian and Greek minors.

- I guess Paradox still deserve some credit for at least putting that dialogue window there. At least in Rome's case however, the options should be balanced differently so they favor a less brutal treatment of defeated minor tribes, and presents the player with different sets of options depending on the culture of the conquered people.

- Although very inaccurate historically, the mechanics are still addictive, and in my 20-year blitz through central and southern italy, I usually felt pressed for time and money, and never felt like I'm sitting on my hands waiting for a timer like Agressive expansion or Tyranny to tick down. Compared to other Paradox games, this is something to be grateful for too I suppose.

Overall, major disappointments regarding historical representation of the period's specifics, but fun as a map painter.
 
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thesecret1

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but fun as a map painter
I don't know, man, is it? I like some modicum of difficulty in my map painters. I played on release, picked a tiny city state in Crete. Seleucids guaranteed my neighbour, but I attacked anyway. What followed was the complete destruction of entire Seleucid army as the retards shipped tiny stack after tiny stack, just enough for me to comfortably squash. War ended up being an easy victory, after which I laughed at how Paradox AI still cannot deal with anything that has to do with ships and uninstalled the game.
 

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I don't know, man, is it?
Very subjective. Depends on how much one enojoys map painting itself, which in my case is "not really".

I haven't actively tried to exploit the AI or the rules. I'm not implying that playing as an OPM on an island is some sort of exploit, but I was as conservative and played as close to the casual playstyle as possible, just in order to see the game as much as possible in the way in which the devs wanted to show it.
 

fantadomat

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after playing 4hrs
You beat my record of an hour and 27 minutes.
Weirdly enough, it hooked me although I knew it's nothing revolutionary. I think I'll get back to trying to play a full Europa Barbarorum II campaign as the Romani. Imperator is not really worth the time investment.
:lol::lol::lol::lol:
Most likely your wife tickled your sphincter the wrong way,you got drunk and ended up writing that review. I too would have been hooked if the alternative was to pummel my wife :).
 

AwesomeButton

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:lol::lol::lol::lol:
Most likely your wife tickled your sphincter the wrong way,you got drunk and ended up writing that review. I too would have been hooked if the alternative was to pummel my wife :).
Tell me more about your fantasies. It's the internet after all. :lol:

I would rate you with "up yours" but then it would feel weird :D
 

Theodora

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Listing some evidence which came to mind while playing:

If I recall correctly, the patch in devolopment after the current one (the culture update) is meant to rework the military/war mechanics. Though that's possibly a while off depending when the next update drops relative to their vacation period.
 

AwesomeButton

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Listing some evidence which came to mind while playing:

If I recall correctly, the patch in devolopment after the current one (the culture update) is meant to rework the military/war mechanics. Though that's possibly a while off depending when the next update drops relative to their vacation period.
It would be interesting to see though I don't have high hopes.

I forgot to mention another couple of things which make a good impression:

- With updates to the engine in Imperator it's finally possible to set events to specific dates, which I think they had locked away out of concerns about system resources consumption. For the first time since EUIII it's again possible to set an event to happen on a specific date. This was previously impossible to do - events were fired on a random date of the specified month.

- The mission tree for Rome which was guiding me on a more or less scripted story. Contrary to most, I like my historical strategy games to be more linear and to stick closer to real history, branching off only to a plausible degree and in plausible directions.

- Also thanks to all the updates the engine has seen since EUIV, I know it's much easier to program the AI to value certain territories and to steer it towards trying to conquer them. More historical campaigns should be easier than ever to achieve.

Anyway, I've just installed the real ultimate ancient Rome game:

upload_2020-6-15_1-4-58.png
 

Theodora

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Very hard to resist starting up EB2 when seeing that. :P

Are you playing as Rome? (I've been meaning to try out Roma Surrectum since it's meant to be more focused on Rome and specific legions.) I'd be curious what someone who spent a lot of time with both EB and EB2 thinks of the differences between them, since the documentation online is so fragmentary (and there's no quick way to experience everything over twice).
 

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Very hard to resist starting up EB2 when seeing that. :P

Are you playing as Rome? (I've been meaning to try out Roma Surrectum since it's meant to be more focused on Rome and specific legions.) I'd be curious what someone who spent a lot of time with both EB and EB2 thinks of the differences between them, since the documentation online is so fragmentary (and there's no quick way to experience everything over twice).
EB2 took a few years to complete even if we don't count the hiatus in development. I haven't done full campaign, but I think it's notably better and more stable than EB for RTW was. EB for RTW was requiring the player to maintain the AIs by giving them money injections through the console after around the 100th turn, and as the game went on, CTDs due to some AI agent being unable to navigate its path around the campaign map were becoming more and more probable.
I was playing my Rome campaign in EB where I reached the Marian reforms by making a savegame for every turn - that's in a four turns per year campaign, and I was over 400 turns in, when the AI seemed to literally give up trying to do anything sensible in the campaign map, and then I dropped it. I was doing that in order to have backups to trace back in case the game began crashing.
 

Theodora

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Huh, I see. All I really know about EB2 vs. the original is that it has a new map, more playable factions, Imperial reform was dropped for Rome (given functionally little suddenly changed with Augustus; though there's no Praetorians anymore if that's an issue), and there's no testudo formations. And a lot of mechanics, suchs as elephants and senate machanics, are implemented in hacky ways; if that counts.

The anarchronistic use of professional armies is something that Imperator got a fair bit of shit for, but does any game or mod do this right? Don't really ask as a defence of Paradox, I'm just not familiar with anyone doing the reality of the period — in that sense, at least — any justice, and would be curious to see otherwise.
 

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The anarchronistic use of professional armies is something that Imperator got a fair bit of shit for, but does any game or mod do this right? Don't really ask as a defence of Paradox, I'm just not familiar with anyone doing the reality of the period — in that sense, at least — any justice, and would be curious to see otherwise.
The big problem with modding the post-EUIV paradox games, and this applies to modding "grand" strategies in general is - even if you can mod what you have as your house rules and turn them into complex modded mechanics, will the AI be able to cope with them?

One classic example - the EU2 way of giving the player income from taxes was on the 1st jan every game year. I don't remember EUIII but in EUIV money was given every month, which was historically wrong. Even if you could hack yearly income from taxes to happen as was most often the case in September (harvest time in Europe), there is no way for the AI to play by these rules. A second classic example - standing armies in 15th-16th century Europe were virtually unknown. There were garrisons in border fortresses, but no one would keep "stacks" of 20-30 thousand men under arms and pay their wages every month just for the pleasure of having them on hand. Why this is impossible to mod - you can't make the AI not try to spend money on armies, and only recruit them before going to war. Also the AI uses your army numbers to decide whether or not to attack you... it becomes impossible to make this aspect of the game historical.

Issuing charters to generals and captains who would take the task of actual recruitment before you begin your campaign was a process that could take some months and you didn't know in advance how much people and of what quality you would be able to get in your service. The recruiters' reputation played a large part in how successful they would be. The system was much more similar to recruiting mercenary companies in CKII than to how recruitment works in any Paradox game, especially taking into account that armies were not paid when hired, but month-by-month, and payment would often be several months in arrears. Real life is so much more messy and uncertain and that's what makes it interesting. In the game you have "haha, Marcobuilder goes click-click-click". I'm not saying let's make it as unpredictable as it was in real life, because total uncertainty isn't fun in a game where you want to make informed decisions and form strategies. But at least add enough flavor and make it look like the player is doing things the way they were done historically...

If you've read "Quintus Sertorious' guide to being a true Roman", that's a fun compromise between historical accuracy and gameplay achieved through house rules. You don't force the AI to behave extra stupid, by modifying the mechanics so much that it doesn't recognize them, and you abide by "human rules" which add immersion for someone interested in "how it was".
 

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- The mission tree for Rome which was guiding me on a more or less scripted story. Contrary to most, I like my historical strategy games to be more linear and to stick closer to real history, branching off only to a plausible degree and in plausible directions.

Hard disagree. This is one of my least favorite things about the game. I didn't like the HOI4 version of it either (along with a lot of other things about HOI4).

I would rather they spend time creating more system mechanics for dynamic happenings and events/content that react in a realistic way to the things that happen in your game (whether you or the AI did them).

I have never enjoyed my strategy games on rails. But apparently there is a large portion of Paradox's player base that does (wants to LARP history I guess?) because the debate for how dynamic and how on rails their games should be has gone on for as long as I have been following their games.
I too would have liked a very smart AI which still behaves historically, but I know it's not an option. In the particular case of playing Rome in Imperator, you do have the option of approaching the conquest of central and southern Italy in whatever way you decide, and there are missions for that too. The missions just serve to give you country modifiers, claims and senate support, in the course of an year or so. Whether or not you go to war and when is still up to you.
 

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I like the potential for alt. histories, though obviously there's a balance to hit; and I think AwesomeButton is right, in that they hit that balance with playing Rome. It feels like the Punic Wars should, the sense of rivalry building up with Carthage is very dynamic and natural feeling. But it's not so railroaded that it stops being your own story.
 
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New dev diary: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...me-developer-diary-15th-of-june-2020.1399409/

Trin Tragula said:
Hello and welcome to another Development Diary for Imperator: Rome, Menander Update!



Today’s diary will not be about any single big feature, but rather cover some of the small to medium-sized things we have done in the Menander update. Some of this is additional iteration done on already described systems, while others are things we wanted to do to address older things in the game that we weren’t happy with.



Diadochi Wars



wargoalinfo-png.590000




First up is a change to everyone’s favorite successor kings.

When our game starts the conflict over Alexander the Great’s empire was still very much alive, with the Antigonids facing off against all the other Diadochi, seemingly on their way to defeating them all single-handedly.



Last update saw the introduction of a scripted ramp up to the continuation of the Diadochi Wars. In the Menander update we have further built on those changes, and introduced some other tweaks to this dynamic:



1. Legacy of Alexander War Goal



legacywargoal-png.589991




First of all, there is a new War Goal available to all the successors from the point they get their claims on the other parties and up until they trigger the “Epigoni” event when their initial kings die (or in the case of the Antigonids, when the king after Antigonus dies). This superiority war goal is only viable against other Diadochi, and allows you to cheaply demand large amounts of land from them if you win.



2. Phrygia is no more.



antigonidname-png.589985




The kingdom of Antigonus is now referred to as the “Antigonid Kingdom” instead of Phrygia
upload_2020-6-15_18-8-21.gif
Back in the day we wanted a geographic name for this country, so Phrygia was chosen after Antigonus' Satrapy. At the end of the day though, the state is much more well known as the Antigonid Kingdom so we are now reverting to that.



3. Cappadocian Revolt



cappadocia-png.589986




The event chain for accepting Ariarathes back into Cappadocia has been changed to be less deterministic in when it triggers. This means it is more likely to happen before or during the war between the Antigonids and the other Diadochi. Cappadocia will now also become a tributary of Armenia if they should accept, pulling them out of the Diadochi wars even if they have already joined the fighting. The Antigonids will be able to choose if they will let Cappadocia go, or if they want to add Cappadocia and Armenia to their enemies and declare war.



4. Thracian War Entry



thraceevent-png.589998




Thrace now has its own separate event for joining or staying out of the war, instead of being passively pulled in by Macedon.



Last but not least, the scripted wars will now always call any relevant subjects into them. Modders will likely be happy to know that you can now scope to a war in script and add participants
upload_2020-6-15_18-8-21.gif


Egypt can now more efficiently opt out of the whole war if they so desire (this is still not really possible for the Antigonids however, who were deeply involved in the conflict long before the game starts and were in no position to withdraw without surrendering).



Slave Happiness



slave-png.589996




With the revisions to pop happiness in Menander we have also revisited slave happiness. Up until now they have been your happiest pop type, unaffected by most things that would upset others.

In the Menander update slave happiness will generally be abysmal, but slaves only contribute a third of what a free pop would to unrest, and will always produce full output regardless of happiness.



Additionally, Settlements no longer have a desired ratio of 100% slaves. Instead Slaves and Freemen will coexist in these locations unless buildings change the desired pop type ratios.



Changes to Integration: Nobles vs Citizens



noblerights-png.589994




As described in previous diaries in Menander any culture which has at least citizen rights is considered integrated. Integrated cultures will use the same happiness modifiers as your primary country culture and be immune to assimilation.

Each additional integrated culture also reduces the happiness of all other integrated cultures, as well as your primary culture by 5%.



To further differentiate Nobles and Citizens, which are both civic right statuses that count as giving integrated, there is now an additional penalty of 5% for each culture that is given noble rights. Meaning that every culture granted noble rights will dilute the happiness of all cultures even further than those given Citizen rights. Think carefully about who you ennoble!



All countries that start with integrated cultures now have these at citizen rights, with only their primary culture granted rights of Nobility.



Last but not least, there are now things that affect how long it takes to integrate cultures, beyond how many pops they have.

Each cultural right you have granted a culture will make it quicker to integrate, thereby reducing the stability you will lose in the process.



It also now takes 50% longer to integrate a culture from another culture group, making it costlier to integrate cultures that are more distant from yours.



Stability, Tyranny, & Aggressive Expansion





The Menander update has in general taken a long, deep look at how happiness and province loyalty works in the game, and such a revision could not be done without also looking at what these attributes do, and how they've changed.



Stability



stability-png.589997




As before, Stability represents how safe and stable your country is: at low stability life is chaotic and the state weak, while at high stability your country is in a Golden age of internal peace and prosperity.



With the focus being on pops, and having removed the Rebellion threshold for a more local rebellion system as described in previous diaries, we have decided to redesign the effects of stability to focus more on the people of your nation, the pops themselves.

Stability has lost most of its direct effects and will now have influence on Population happiness, decreasing it by as much as 50% when at its lowest point.

Likewise positive stability will now have a beneficial effect for population happiness in your entire empire, in addition to increased population growth and research.



Since cultural decisions and integration have introduced a number of new ways to lose stability (either over time, when integrating a new culture, or immediately when granting cultural rights) each such decision will have to weight the long term happiness gain for the specific culture against the overall happiness of your empire.



Tyranny



tyranny-png.590001




Tyranny represents how authoritarian your rule is, how prone to exercise power through violence and arbitrary decrees from the ruler rather than through tradition and laws.

As before Tyranny is not all bad. It will still decrease the cost of decisions such as Imprisonment and Execution, and it will also still increase the output of slaves. Additionally tyranny now increases the pace at which Aggressive Expansion is reduced in your country.



On the negative side, Tyranny will decrease the loyalty of all characters in your entire country, while also increasing the chance that cohorts become loyal to their commanders rather than the state. Tyranny will also decrease the threshold for how much power base disloyal characters need to start a civil war, the effect that was dropped from Stability.



Aggressive Expansion



ae-png.589983




Aggressive expansion represents the reactions towards your country’s foreign policy. The main source Aggressive Expansion remains declarations of war and annexations.



With Stability now being the main influence on Population Happiness, Aggressive Expansion will primarily affect your foreign relations, and how loyal your subject states are.

Its effect on happiness is not gone however: the more aggressive expansion you acquire the harder it will now be to keep Stability at or above the 50% mark, leading to a slow rise in dissent the more aggressively you act.

At above 50 Aggressive expansion more severe effects on things such as integrated culture happiness and political influence gain also start to kick in.



Republics and Senate Support



tyrannyburningfromsenate-png.589999




As described in a previous diary we have reworked Republics to use a senate system where votes are tied to characters and the Senate will approve of your actions based on how approving its parties are of your governance.

We have since played more with the system and decided that we would like to vest some more authority with the Consuls, but also tie how well you handle the demands of the senate to the well being of the state.



Rather than being completely hindered to act at less than 50% Senate support, you can now still take action as long as you do not have 70% of the Senate against you. Taking any decision with less than the support of 60% of the Senate will however result in gaining scaled tyranny, making all such actions very costly.



senatetyrrany-png.590002




Additionally Senate Support, ie the number of seats that would vote in your favor, is no longer only useful for approving your actions. Any Republic with a total Senate Support of over 50% will now benefit from a passive reduction of tyranny per month, relative to how big a majority they wield.



On the other hand, if your government finds itself weak and lacking the support of the Senate, your pops will now see you for the lame duck that you are. Republics with a Senate Support of below 50% will now see a scaling stability decrease over time, slowly reducing the happiness of the people all over your country.



Last but not least the members of a party will now receive or lose loyalty based on how much their party approves of your governance.



Unrest & Forts



forts-png.589988




Overall there is a lot more to keeping pops happy in Menander, from importing goods to enacting cultural decisions or integrating foreign elites. Unhappiness also has a more immediate risk associated with it since it increases unrest which can spark local rebellions.



Sometimes it will still be more efficient however to fight the symptoms rather than the causes of unhappiness. In the Menander update you will likely still want to assign troops to your Governors to reduce the unrest in their entire Governorship.



New in Menander in the same vein is that you can now decrease the unrest of all territories in a province by constructing forts there. This reflects the second use of stationary fortifications throughout history, beyond their usefulness in direct warfare. Their cost has also been increased to reflect their new wider utility in maintaining civil order.



Last but not least in this diary about the many little new things, I will leave you with some screenshots of the work that has been done on diversifying the starting populations in the world. Making pops more diverse where broad cultural groups meet, and adding cultural minorities has been an ongoing process for many updates but its effect on gameplay has perhaps never been as pronounced as in Menander.



italydominant-png.589990




(Dominant Cultures in Italy)



etruscans-png.589987




(Etruscan presence, including minorities)



ligurians-png.589992




(Ligurians in Italy, including minorities)



africamajorities-png.589984




(Dominant Cultures in Africa)



massylians-png.589993




(Massylians including minorities)



We hope you will enjoy 1.5 Menander!

Finally addressed my annoyance with the anachronistic 'Phrygia'. :)
 
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Phrygia vs. Antigonid Empire would be a neat distinction between pure primary culture Macedonian and if they are forced/decide to go more native with the culture rework that allows you to give the others more equal power. Similarly you could have the same distinction for Egypt vs. Ptolemaic Empire. Not sure what you would do for the Seleucid Empire, I think having them turn into Persia would be way too weird and confusing for the setting. Also I'm guessing the game doesn't support dynamic name changes like e.g. CK2 does.
 
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I didn't mind Phrygia, just found it weird they went with the Seleucid Empire rather than Babylonia if they were already basing faction names on the Partition of Babylon and the Partition of Triparadisus.
 

AwesomeButton

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When I say realistic, I in no way mean or imply follows historical events. I mean that the game dynamically reacts to the things that are happening in the game based off of what actually exists in the game (such as leader personality traits, diplomatic relations, and the actions of other countries), not trying to force or nudge things to play out as they happened historically.
That's what I mean too when I say realistic. And this kind of AI isn't going to be available in games in the foreseeable future.

The AI can't make long term plans or counter the player's long term plans. The AI is good at calculating numbers - which stack will win a combat and how long will it take him to reach a given province. The fact that you can manipulate the route an Ai takes by threathening to move your own stacks into the province he is going into shows well enough what its level is.
 

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