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Beamed posted:CK2's actual character-driven narrative has been what people have been repeatedly saying Imperator lacks. The narrative is exactly what I'm saying CK2 has. I:R doesn't have much of it. Instead it has meaningful choices about characters.
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May 7, 2019 15:31
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ilitarist posted:The narrative is exactly what I'm saying CK2 has. I:R doesn't have much of it. Instead it has meaningful choices about characters. I still think the entire character thing could be dropped without much loss. Pretty much the only good thing it gives is the army commander loyalty discouraging large stacks, but this could be achieved in other ways. There's so much stuff around the character system that's either pointless (marriage, children, imprisonment) or actively unfun (that bloody disloyal families screen) that dropping it and spending the development resources on other aspects would be a big improvement all round.
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May 7, 2019 15:48
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ilitarist posted:The narrative is exactly what I'm saying CK2 has. I:R doesn't have much of it. Instead it has meaningful choices about characters. The narrative CK2 has is because of the meaningful choices the player and the characters make, and because of the interplay of their differing goals and abilities. But let's not derail this thread into further CK2 talk. Chalks posted:I still think the entire character thing could be dropped without much loss. Pretty much the only good thing it gives is the army commander loyalty discouraging large stacks, but this could be achieved in other ways. I agree, if this meant improved political and nation-building mechanics.
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May 7, 2019 16:00
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they included the characters because this is a recreation of EU: Rome and EU: Rome had the same useless shallow characters. thats probably the most depressing thing about this, they put no deeper thought into the game than to fully recreate their worst previous game. Apparently no creative thought about basic gameplay changes happened between 2008 and this game, aside for more provinces and a better map. when this game was announced I was excited because it gave Paradox another shot at the classical era after they had obviously blown their first... and they just did the exact same thing?? I hope paradox doesnt actually do a sequel next, and does a different historical era than previously covered, because maybe it will force them to develop some new ideas. Sheng-Ji Yang fucked around with this message at 16:21 on May 7, 2019 |
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May 7, 2019 16:19
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Cold war era grand strat please, i want a game where diplomacy and espionage is the main focus instead of mass scale warfare
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May 7, 2019 17:07
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ilitarist posted:The narrative is exactly what I'm saying CK2 has. I:R doesn't have much of it. Instead it has meaningful choices about characters. The game is really bad at telling you when you're making a character decision that actually means something, so it's extremely understandable that people think that their choices are virtually meaningless. Plus the game is generally badly tuned / balanced (global RR reduction makes rebellions basically nonexistent) and there's also extremely easy ways to work around a lot of restrictions (such as spam changing governors to get policies you want, merging and moving armies to get rid of generals, etc) AnEdgelord posted:Cold war era grand strat please, i want a game where diplomacy and espionage is the main focus instead of mass scale warfare Uh I think you mean STRAITS 
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May 7, 2019 17:10
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As someone that doesn't really like CK2, I like the current amount of character interaction and don't want them to go all the way down the CK2 path of sports team roster manager with medieval trappings. For what it's worth.
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May 7, 2019 17:13
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Sheng-Ji Yang posted:they included the characters because this is a recreation of EU: Rome and EU: Rome had the same useless shallow characters. thats probably the most depressing thing about this, they put no deeper thought into the game than to fully recreate their worst previous game. Apparently no creative thought about basic gameplay changes happened between 2008 and this game, aside for more provinces and a better map. This really baffles me tbh, especially when you have Johan on Sunday saying "I took everything we had in Rome I, and made every mechanic deeper and more complex". EU: Rome had a bad-to-tepid reception and it wasn't just because the mechanics weren't complicated enough, so what did he think would happen? I don't care too much about character interaction as an end in itself - I think the complaints about not having enough of it are mainly because the game doesn't have anything to replace it with to provide immersion. I've started a few games in I:R and have lost interest quickly in each of them because it all just feels empty and abstract. I don't have much to add to other people's criticisms here: the clunky UI, the overly abstract mechanics, and general lack of flavour are all major issues. One point I don't see brought up too often is that the AI feels not so much stupid as sterile. Historically this was a period of massive upheavals, rivalries between hugely ambitious people and - at least in the "civilised world" - empires being forged and disintegrating all over the place. But more often than not it just feels like nothing much really happens. The Diadochi states often pretty much stay as they are, and a lot of the time they're even allied to each other. Carthage is... there. Maurya just hangs around and doesn't do much.  I understand they don't want to push the end date because they don't want to spend too much time on mechanics for imperial management and potential decay, but that's not a problem you can avoid when massive empires already exist at the start. The Seleucids at game start control an area larger than Augustus' Roman Empire, for example, and maybe 1/2 to 2/3 the population historically. There needs to be more going on with the big players.
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May 7, 2019 17:39
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I played CK2 for a few months after it first launched. I stopped playing primarily because at the time all stats potential heirs received were totally random. The "strategic" depth amounted to stabling ones way through the succession line of a rival realm, or amassing enough gold to hire mercs to take their land after an indeterminate amount of time for creating a claim (which might take decades to fire, hmm RNG strategic goodness.) Started playing it again after five years, initially just vanilla as I owned no DLC. Game mechanics had not appreciably changed. After buying various DLC the game had a lot more interesting choices (but I still can't play as a Muslim nation since I didn't buy that DLC. Mind, I'm not complaining about it , the bang for entertainment buck is definitely worth it.) Early EU4, whenever anyone asked "how do I play this nation," be it Portugal or England or Mecklenburg the answer invariably back then: Invade Italy and/or become HRE (IOW, blob.) The criticism that I:R has no depth is a bit reactionary. "Doing this or that is meaningless" is a reductionist view that can be true of any game. "I assign a governor to a province and ignore him for the rest of the game" can apply to CK2 as well: "I gave character n a duchy and ignored him for the rest of the game." (Unless that character is my heir, in which case assigning him a duchy results in him gaining every bad trait the game has available.) Snippet of a trip report from a user on a different forum: quote:In my Knossos/Crete game, I was pretty much hemmed in by Phrygia, Egypt, and Macedon guarantees or vassals. I solved that problem by making powerful friends in Phrygia and arranging both the leader and the heir to suffer unfortunate and untimely deaths. The resulting implosion gave me the opening I needed to expand. (And this doesn't even scratch the surface of troop composition, resources and trade offs when spending power points.) Shallow game play indeed. /s
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May 7, 2019 17:42
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I used friendships and arranged marriages to become super-friends with Phrygia as the Bosporan Kingdom, that culminated in us murdering Macedon together and me helping them in a war in Egypt that while not giving me any land gave me a ton of slaves
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May 7, 2019 17:55
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the game is good because i i'm only half joking. i'm the guy who beelined for the Longest Road victory bonus in Cataan immediately on hearing it was a thing, w/o considering whether that's actually a good strategy behold my trans-adriatic superhighway, my Classical Bridge Between the Two Sicilies, my Carthaginian Express juche avocado fucked around with this message at 18:22 on May 7, 2019 |
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May 7, 2019 18:20
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You're both talking about Monarchies. In a Republic the ruler that's around for 10 years could maybe make friends with the leader of an opposing nation, but arranged marriages aren't a thing. Plus, with a ruler that gets replaced every 10 years and a very unclear mechanic on how to even get the 'most likely to win' candidate to be a certain person in a Republic; I'm right there with most people in that the character interactions seem...obtuse and pointless. Why not just suffer with whatever dud of a ruler gets elected because it doesn't matter anyways. I'm also not clear on how you're even supposed to find people in other countries to make friends with. Do you just click on the ruler and traverse through family until you find a rival to make friends with? Why would one ever make rivals in their own nation? Why is 'flogging' a button that can be pressed on prisoners? There's tons of stuff there for character interaction, it's just not clear what any of it does.
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May 7, 2019 18:27
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Half-wit posted:
Its the person with the most popularity, its pretty easy to understand. You have way more agency in a republic over who becomes your ruler than a monarchy since all you can do is put your heir in bad situations and hope they die if they have terrible stats. Half-wit posted:
Because good rulers get a million more mana than bad rulers
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May 7, 2019 18:53
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Blackluck posted:The criticism that I:R has no depth is a bit reactionary. "Doing this or that is meaningless" is a reductionist view that can be true of any game. "I assign a governor to a province and ignore him for the rest of the game" can apply to CK2 as well: "I gave character n a duchy and ignored him for the rest of the game." There are lots of reasons to care about who you land in CK2. Do they have claims to press? Are they set to inherit anything? Do they have good traits or a bloodline? Will they remain loyal to your underaged heir? Maybe you want to roleplay a little and land your younger sons even though this is usually a bad idea? You can even choose not to land anyone at all and keep the duchy for yourself, which has its own pros and cons. You can just land whoever and not care about what you're doing, but the game will actually reward careful planning. There's a reason to care.
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May 7, 2019 19:19
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zhuge liang posted:People say it's meaningless because there's little reason to pick any particular character over another. You assign the guy with the highest finesse and lowest corruption and then forget about him for the rest of the game. There's remarkably little strategy to this choice in a strategy game. I mean I literally never cared about any of those things in CK2 and I played fine. I tried once but it was way to tedious for so little reward I just went with best stats Sometimes I dint even care about that
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May 7, 2019 19:40
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zhuge liang posted:People say it's meaningless because there's little reason to pick any particular character over another. You assign the guy with the highest finesse and lowest corruption and then forget about him for the rest of the game. There's remarkably little strategy to this choice in a strategy game. So you assign the guy with the best stat (finesse) who also say has dropping loyalty and a gambling problem. Think that's a good idea? At the end of the day, just like in CK2 and EU4 (I don't know about other titles) once past a certain threshold none of it matters because no one really poses a threat. I personally don't blob in these games because I like to develop medium-ish but robust (read rich and advanced) realms. Then I go around guaranteeing smaller nations or fighting wars and having large nations release smaller ones. That's fun for me, might not be fun for someone else. This also isn't CK3: Rome. It's not a character driven game. It's a game that has characters in it that can have impact on what transpires. Or not. It can be ignored or indulged. Like in the example I gave a few posts ago. While playing a Hellenic monarchy in the Black Sea region, the king's first wife died. I had that king marry again only the women he chose was a Scythian. I didn't pay close enough attention to her traits (jealous, ambitious, shrewd). She got caught trying to murder the primary heir. My choice as a player - forgive her or throw her in jail? I chose to throw her in jail, resulting in a divorce. I couldn't find anyone else to marry that I liked so I freed her and married her again. That choice resulted in her becoming the rival of the primary heir (who by the way had 12 finesse, likely a result of getting tutored.) But some years later the primary heir murdered her. I threw him in jail too but had him participate in gladiatorial combat, which he won and gained him his freedom. Some years later he killed his stepbrother. The original choice I made - jail the wife, free her and remarry - led to two murders. Once he gained the throne I risked civil war (which, granted, doesn’t' pose too much a threat. But they didn't in CK2 either.) Is that strategy? Maybe not, but it's story. That's not the primary focus of the game though. Where you start (geography), resources available, aggressiveness of your neighbors that all changes the kind of game you play and the choices you make (sounds a little bit like strategy to me.) Sure you can blob anywhere as anyone, and that's not any different than blobbing in EU or CK. But "shuffling people around doesn't matter" is clearly wrong. E.g. there's a gem province in Dacia located on farmlands. Put 20 some odd slaves in that city and compare the results against having a handful in the same city. I can guarantee you there is going to be a meaningful difference. I've played both EU4 and CK2 way too much but enjoyed both. And I enjoy this one too. It doesn't need to be "just like CK only better." /shrug Like the game, don't like the game I don't care. But claiming it's shallow just clangs as unreasonable to me.
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May 7, 2019 20:19
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https://www.strategygamer.com/articles/imperator-steam-rating/ An article about Imperator's Steam reviews. What a time to be alive.
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May 7, 2019 20:29
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Didn't you say in an earlier post the reason you think this game is deep is because someone trivially murdered a king and his heir before conquering it? I don't know if I think Imperator should be more or less character driven. It shouldn't be where it is, where it's a distraction. But I find it interesting when people say it's boring and cite CK2 As an example that wasn't boring, the reaction is always "well this isn't CK2, it shouldn't have these widely agreed upon fun mechanics". Then why have it in the game at all?
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May 7, 2019 20:30
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ilitarist posted:https://www.strategygamer.com/articles/imperator-steam-rating/ Wow some real hard hitting journalism here. 1) He talks nonchalantly about review-bombing and doesn't qualify it all. Review bombing isn't "lots of people say it's bad!", it's when people dog pile it for reasons unrelated or tenuously related to the product itself. Like leaving bad reviews because someone representing the company made a political statement you don't like. Or because a famous youtuber/streamer has a beef with the game and their followers run off to slam it. Dumb poo poo like that. And I don't see any evidence that anything like that is in play here. 2) Author: "imo, all the common complaints are really the same thing. Welp that's all moving on to next point". lol 3) "Is it fair to review a game at release, when in the future they will be making more stuff for it???" Real galaxy brain  right there. I'm pretty sure that's exactly why Steam displays both the overall review metric and the "recent reviews" metric. It's so that folks can get an idea if community opinion has changed over time.
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May 7, 2019 20:47
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this game is hollow. hollow doesn't preclude 'deep', just means empty.
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May 7, 2019 20:48
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Chomp8645 posted:Wow some real hard hitting journalism here. Don't you know that disliking a game on release is something only an entitled gamer would do? It's almost as bad as refusing to buy a game with features you dislike. Only the worst gamers do that.
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May 7, 2019 20:55
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ilitarist posted:https://www.strategygamer.com/articles/imperator-steam-rating/ "Yeah people giving their opinions on products they can purchase is great, unless I disagree with them, then I will FREAK OUT and bitch about it endlessly" it is indeed a time to be alive
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May 7, 2019 20:59
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Firebatgyro posted:Its the person with the most popularity, its pretty easy to understand. You have way more agency in a republic over who becomes your ruler than a monarchy since all you can do is put your heir in bad situations and hope they die if they have terrible stats. Except it's explicitly not the person with the most popularity: reference, let me load up this game: Current Candidate:  I don't know, let's look at one of the heads of one of the political parties for comparison:  No. It's definitely not the most popular person that becomes candidate for the next ruler. I'm even aware that if a person has previously held the ruling office they're disqualified for a number of years, that's not what's going on here. Is it based on family prestige? Individual wealth? Popularity? Prominence? Friendships with members of opposing parties? Rivalries with members of opposing parties? A combination of all of the above? It's not clear at all. Someone can spend the time to reverse engineer whatever mechanism it is, I'm sure; but from a "pick up this game to play it"...for all the "too much information" people state are in the tooltips, something like "how do I get man on throne" for a republic definitely isn't clear.
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May 7, 2019 21:01
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Half-wit posted:Except it's explicitly not the person with the most popularity: reference, let me load up this game: The UI isn't super helpful here but if you go onto the individual character pages and mouse over the bit where it tells you how many "points" they have for getting elected it gives a breakdown of the modifiers. Party leaders get a big boost but prominence, family prestige and popularity are also important.
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May 7, 2019 21:24
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Half-wit posted:snip It's a factor of Popularity, Prominence and how large the party is in the senate. It took me literally 5 seconds to "reverse engineer" the mechanism, by reading its tooltip   efb;
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May 7, 2019 21:26
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Cynic Jester posted:Don't you know that disliking a game on release is something only an entitled gamer would do? It's almost as bad as refusing to buy a game with features you dislike. Only the worst gamers do that. If the game is stable, works fine and you get just a couple of patches in a couple of months then that's what we call abandonware. Steer clear for such games cause you'd comfortably play them like a pleb instead of watching patch reviews and reading devdiaries like a patrician.
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May 7, 2019 21:27
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Sigh...I really am an idiot (or this UI is bad). Did you know there's a tooltip for the 'icon' that gives you the other 'current candidates'. Apparently if you mouse over the number within that same box it gives the succession numbers as you've shown me.  Because of course one box would have multiple tooltips dependent on what you're mousing over.
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May 7, 2019 21:36
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Important info buried in tooltips in a Paradox game? It's more likely than you think...
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May 7, 2019 21:50
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Half-wit posted:Sigh...I really am an idiot (or this UI is bad). It’s one of many little things that are useful to know that is obvious once you know about it/notice it but the game makes basically no effort to point out.
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May 7, 2019 23:54
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While a "boycott" may seem harsh and unproductive, I do believe it is a necessary evil in order to convince paradox to change its corrupt business policy. I have bought the game five times with different accounts in order to increase the amount of negative reviews per person, and very much convinced my friends to do the same. Change doesn't come easy, but if we want it to happen, some limbs have to be cut.
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May 8, 2019 02:36
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NoNotTheMindProbe posted:While a "boycott" may seem harsh and unproductive, I do believe it is a necessary evil in order to convince paradox to change its corrupt business policy. What if I told you that you vote with your money?
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May 8, 2019 02:39
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NoNotTheMindProbe posted:While a "boycott" may seem harsh and unproductive, I do believe it is a necessary evil in order to convince paradox to change its corrupt business policy.
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May 8, 2019 03:03
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NoNotTheMindProbe posted:While a "boycott" may seem harsh and unproductive, I do believe it is a necessary evil in order to convince paradox to change its corrupt business policy. Source your quotes. https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/megathread-my-opinion-of-i-r.1172944/page-10
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May 8, 2019 04:28
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I like the people claiming they are 'corrupt and evil' as opposed to them just being a moron
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May 8, 2019 04:40
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Steam reviews are like aggressive expansion, just a number.
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May 8, 2019 05:01
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Zotix posted:So as Epirus, Egypt and a few others declared war on me. I've managed to get a few of the others to back out of the war. This leaves Egypt and one other nation still at war. I occupy the smaller nation completely, but I can't get them to do anything, not even a white peace. The same thing goes for Egypt. I'm sitting at 7 war score with no way to move the score up. As there is no hold a territory to create a monthly increase in war score. I can't white peace. What do I do? I can't even white peace while owning like 15 of their territories? Because Egypt is the war leader and those territories are meaningless to Egypt. I had exactly the same issue. The only way to sort it is let those territories be taken back and eventually the game will auto white peace. It's poo poo, it really is. And an issue stellaris had that people complained about - but this is that issue turned up to 11
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May 8, 2019 12:21
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Azuren posted:Steam reviews are like aggressive expansion, just a number.
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May 8, 2019 12:28
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What, there's already a Rome - Complete Soundtrack DLC lol I'm a sucker who bought the deluxe edition, and it wasn't included lol, but really? ha ha no music for you! Is someone trying their best to get negative review on steam or what!
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May 8, 2019 19:32
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Descar posted:What, there's already a Rome - Complete Soundtrack DLC lol Reviewers Did Nothing Wrong
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May 8, 2019 19:37
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Descar posted:What, there's already a Rome - Complete Soundtrack DLC lol Do yourself a service anyway and put the music volume to 0 and pop the EU:Rome Soundtrack by Waldetoft in your browser https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Cz-KgXj3aw
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May 8, 2019 19:59
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