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The foundation for this game looks very solid with its myriad systems, so I'm totally on for it even at release. The main thing I'd want dlc wise is adding more CK2 in terms of your character and the flavor from that, since that's what always has me coming back to it.
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Apr 22, 2019 21:24
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United Hellas and standing up to Rome and the Macedonians sounds like a fun run. Dunno who to play for such a run though. If Lesbos was independent I'd totally play it for obvious reasons. 
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Apr 23, 2019 22:19
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TorakFade posted:If anyone's still on the fence, you can prepurchase on GMG for 25% off using SPQR25 code at checkout. If I bought it from GMG already is there anyway to apply that code to my purchase?
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Apr 24, 2019 19:59
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TorakFade posted:
Ah shame. Stupid code only coming out right before the release.  I'm assuming the tutorial is just as Rome? Or could you go through it as anyone?
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Apr 24, 2019 21:21
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English is very, very dumb.
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Apr 24, 2019 22:47
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Davincie posted:i enacted the gender equality law and was able to replace all but 1 of my people with way higher statted women (as sparta). rather op Kassandra run looking good. Need enatic and not just cognatic though! 
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Apr 25, 2019 22:11
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Sekenr posted:Maybe I'm misunderstanding trade but why can I import iron to Carthage from foreign country and immediately gain all the benefits but cannot likewise import iron from my own province in Spain? Do you have a surplus? You can only trade surpluses iirc.
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Apr 25, 2019 22:56
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So trip report after getting my hands on it. This game is hard. Or maybe just Sparta is meant to be loving hard, I don't know. My only possible ally was Epirus, who is now very dead because Macedon threw their weight around and I was in a Peloponnessian hellwar. All the other powers are wary of me, even Carthage, meaning I have no allies possible. I managed to hold off Macedon for now, but they control the rest of Greece and without an ally it doesn't look good for me. The UI took ages to get a handle of what was what, it's not intuitive. And echoing that in general, it's pretty flavorless. My characters don't interact, I get characters badgering me for jobs out of nowhere, and something like just balancing what families get what jobs is a grind because the UI is not set up to accommodate that in anyway. Military is...intimidating, as just learning what each troop does is confusing, there doesn't seem to be as much of a point to numbers so light infantry feel kinda worthless? I've no real idea what I'm doing here and just made HI and archers and kinda prayed and it's...mostly worked. Since I'm Sparta I just stuck my king as the general because what kind of Spartan king isn't the army commander? Of course this means I don't have any practice balancing generals and splitting armies up to keep the loyalty threat less. Strategic goods to construct armies feel very limiting, as there's just not enough to go around, the powerful nations usually start with them, so it's just the rich getting richer. There's seemingly no way for me to get horses beyond killing Macedon while they outnumber me, and have horses already. Overall I want to like the game, and the general concepts in place feel good, but it is definitely lacking. Of course for stuff like handling the army I'm sure a lot of that is just because I have no bloody idea what I'm doing. Or it could just be like HoI where it's designed for the big boys and everyone is just there 'because' and I should play an Egypt game or something. Also, a minor point, even with gender equality on, there's no enatic succession law. There's not even a proper cognatic. You can get agnatic-cognatic, but the only others were agnatic, agnatic seniority, and xwedohdah marriage which is also true cognatic? Strange.
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Apr 26, 2019 04:59
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I'm probably going to hold off on glorious Sparta and just do an Egypt run to get more of a hold on things. Also I really want to see what some math nerd figures for how the army system works because beyond the obvious of HI, cav, and elephants being good it's a bit if a mystery.
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Apr 26, 2019 20:55
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So after playing Egypt for a bit to get more of a handle on things, I've learned a bit more about things, but not enough to be 'useful'. Beyond that the power difference between the majors and minors here is truly horrendous. At least I learned something of army comp, in that it's best to just ditch outlier units and build purely to your tactics. So if you have phalanx, ditch archers, go all in on HI/LC/LI. Or whatever other tactic you wish to use, just get rid of anything irrelevant. Not sure how to use this knowledge to get a smaller power to punch above it's weight, but it's something. Egypt really lives up to the easy difficulty rating though. Even if you just fully embrace Kemetism and Egyptian culture and take the -40 loyalty hit on every character worth a drat in your court, it wasn't enough to bring about any problems. Your various cultured pops are incredibly chill, and everything just works smoothly. Also on embracing culture, even in the western Empire, it took decades, if not a century to fully Romanize a region. The Gauls did not just abandon their traditions and put on togas and start speaking Latin. It was a concerted effort by the Romans that sparked unrest and took a long time to actually take root. It happened by just limited jobs to those who spoke Latin and acted Roman, meaning that if you wanted a job, you'd start acting Roman. I'd much rather have fusion cultures, to reflect actual melting, or just to reflect a more traditional ruling structure of elite who are primary culture/religion, and the plebs who were whatever they always were. Eimi fucked around with this message at 04:58 on Apr 27, 2019 |
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Apr 27, 2019 04:43
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Dr. Video Games 0031 posted:There is no such thing as a tactic that only plays to your strengths. The bonuses you see are simply bonuses to the countering ability of the tactic. Which means you should pick a tactic that counters the enemy every time. Tactics that don't counter the enemy's tactic do nothing, aside from the two-sided casualty modifier which is sometimes important if you want to win battles while preserving manpower. Is that so? I noticed a very big difference between picking tactics, even when they did not counter anything. Even if they're evenly matched there's a huge difference between one that my army could use at 80% efficiency vs 10%
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Apr 27, 2019 05:45
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Conquest SHOULD be easy. Holding it should be the hard part. Even more so than any other time in history, you should be able to point at land and go, I want that, it's mine, and the trouble is having to hold it. Of course even the game's base UI doesn't make that easy, as there's no easy way to see provincial breakdown of culture. As well to parallel other games, I think culture should be a bigger driver of that rebellious nature than religion, and there should be incentive to spread out conquered pops to other areas of your empire, essentially splitting up the cultural block. The ability for this to be in the game, and even the ability to manage it, are present, albeit very obtuse. Senor Dog posted:sounds like you want to be playing ck2 instead tbqh In a way, yeah, I wanted to play CK2 with stuff appropriate to this time period. Our history of this era is very 'character' driven, just by virtue of how it was left to us, we know the names of Phyrrus, Marius, Sulla, Scipio, and so on. The EU nation approach is a rather odd framework to view things from. And in the case of everything but Republics things, sort of function as in CK2. If your ruler loses a civil war, you're out. You're just not out if the dynasty dies out. As well a feature from CK2 that I like is the ability to play as a proper subject and rule the nation from the inside. Rome's start date has some super powers from the start that playing a minor can be very hard, and having the ability to swear fealty/client status/what have you, to eventually emerge as the ruler is satisfying gameplay. You could even differentiate say clients and vassals, client behaving as marchers from EU, military vassals that you cannot integrate but that add some military power on your border. If you played as one you couldn't interact much with the internal politics of your master, as you're still different states. Meanwhile vassals could be integrated, but would impact internal politics of the kingdom/republic they are subject to. Playing as a family rather than a nation could also introduce some incentive for you to care about the personal wealth of your character. I saw a holding 0/1 on some provinces, and while I have no idea what role that serves, I think it would be a neat layer of gameplay if each prominent family was aiming to control those holdings, setting up villas, latifundiia, and all the various other things that the mega wealthy did in their spare time. This would incentivize you to give governorship's to family members, and maybe even encourage corruption when you ruled, because no siphoning away the state coffers could confer some benefit to you. Ultimately, I guess i'm frustrated because it's a time period I massively love, and unlike EU4, there's some effort put into characters, emergent narrative, and the rp aspects, it's so close to being what I want, but what I want is ultimately not what the game is.
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Apr 28, 2019 02:54
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Koramei posted:This would make for really boring gameplay if you can just squash your rivals irrecoverably after one big war though, wouldn't it? Expansion being slow enough for them to regain strength/change alliances between wars is important I think. There was a real question if the Empire would survive the Julio-Claudines. And the interplay between various patrician families was huge in the development of the Republic. As an argument for why family/characters should matter more. As for that, you'd basically have taken your rival inside you. They should basically be working to ruin you as much as they can, until you can mollify them. Your conquests should be stopped as you have to spend time and resources pacifing the newly conquered population. Integration should be a big struggle.
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Apr 28, 2019 03:31
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Quick question about formables, I'm guessing that since Sparta is a monarchy you cannot form the Pan-Hellenic League? At least decision wise I just have Arkadia and Argead Empire, and I don't really want to move the capital from Sparta to form Arkadia.
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Apr 29, 2019 05:33
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Is there a policy that converts slaves? I know there's one for tribesmen.
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Apr 29, 2019 08:16
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Maybe you hire tech people and there four categories and whenever the tech pops you pick one of three like it is now? And the more people you hire the quicker it goes. Which is also more make work jobs for families so you can spread your state income around! Honestly that's a brilliant idea that plays into systems already there. Similarly I'd love to see sub commanders or the three front system ck2 has, just to be able to offload more jobs. Also it would encourage more loyal cohorts to people which means more chance of chaos, another positive.
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Apr 30, 2019 22:53
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For monarchies I would love the ability to support a pretender but say have it force a civil war, the size of which depends on who loves the de jure heir. That would at least let you mitigate things like your prime heir having poo poo stats. Also a bit of a modding question but has anyone found out where the succession laws are located? Laws just details the ability to switch between them. Defines might have the logic but I'm not entirely sure on how it works. Basically I want to add some enatic laws.
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May 1, 2019 20:05
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Moving slaves should be cheaper than moving citizens or freeman. You end up with so many and well...being able to forcibly tell them where to live fits with them being slaves.
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May 1, 2019 22:31
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RabidWeasel posted:In terms of "the game as it is played" rather than looking at the structure of underlying systems I'd definitely rate it as more strategically challenging than V2, EU4 and CK2. I don't play HoI and I haven't played Stellaris since the last couple of reworks so I don't want to comment on those. This is basically me. I enjoy the flavor and roleplaying aspects of pdox games the most, go figure ck2 is my favorite, and while I really do think IR has some really neat systems that can be ironed out to be amazing, they are rather contextless. Even like EU tier flavor is missing, for everyone but Rome. Like I've played as Sparta, which while not historically significant you'd figure it would at least have some events, and Egypt. Neither had any country specific flavor events that I saw. Nothing about the Nile flooding, or any of the various religious festivals, or even court intrigue really. All the little things pdox games usually have that interrupts your map painting. Take the intrigue system and court member demands a position in your government events, which are shared between CK2 and IR, at least in theory. In CK2 you could get people wanting a spot in your council, but they'd usually only badger you if they were your characters spouse or had better stats. As well you could just flat out turn them down. In IR it seems the people who demand a spot are entirely random, and have whatever stats. There's no option to turn them down, beyond waiting them out. Which gets into the second issue. In CK2 everyone gets the intrigue system, the AI has the same one you do. You can see how it works, know what plots are available, etc. In IR there is some kind of intrigue system, but it's not one the player can access, it's just a black box and events pop out, usually all bad. Eimi fucked around with this message at 08:17 on May 2, 2019 |
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May 2, 2019 08:13
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SnoochtotheNooch posted:MIght be way behind on this topic, but it’s weird that Carthage is green right? The colors they chose for Carthage and Egypt really bother me. Luckily there are mods that make them white and yellow respectively. Also I'm probably going to poke at using a TW flag mod since I like their flags more.
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May 3, 2019 00:47
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ISP has a hilarious video on what happens if you just make all your pops citizens. Well all your freemen anyway. It's ridiculous. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ckoStlQdxUA
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May 3, 2019 22:04
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I don't think he's saying EU4 is bad as much as, he doesn't like it from the ground up, and it's fixes haven't fixed that for him. Which I can understand, I'm at a similar point with EU. Mainly here yeah, this game, even in the flawed state it's in, has a lot of potential and I want it to be good, very good. The classical era is my favorite bit of history, I want to love it as much as I love CK2. Like take a foundational system like combat, I'm not a fan of EU's combat engine and I don't think they are going to pull it out. Not sure why the EU system never sits right, too deterministic? Too closely tied to it's legacy as a board game? As well same with the forts. I'm fine with forts blocking the way, but the EU fort siege system is one of the biggest reasons I do not like that game, and I'm not sure it applies in this era? The CK morale of defenders that goes down would work more than the dice roll and stages.
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May 5, 2019 01:23
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When it comes to mana I think a lot of the gripes over it, or at least my own bad feelings, are how its interactions are instant and guaranteed. (The guaranteed part might just be my ck love talking). If generating a claim cost mana over time instead of a lump sum all at once, for example it would feel better. Representing you putting the diplomats of your country to work for that, instead of just magically getting a justification. And I think everyone has complained about instant conversions of pops.
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May 5, 2019 18:13
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StarMinstrel posted:Do yourself a service anyway and put the music volume to 0 and pop the EU:Rome Soundtrack by Waldetoft in your browser Total war Rome 1 ost is also a classic.
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May 8, 2019 21:18
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Jimmy4400nav posted:I haven't bought the game, but I've been watching a ton of lets plays while I wait for the 1.1 patch and I think this kind of hits on a big thing I noticed. Once the mid/late game comes around you really dont have much pressure in you apart from waging external wars against empires of similar size. Thats not bad but it leaves the game kind of hallow, especially for the time period. I think they need more ways to ramp up the pressure on you to make choices to balance your empire size vs the realities of ruling a large area considering that was a constant source of headace for ancient empires (be is Persian satrapts or Roman proconsuls). I do think there should be more tension between the noble families and the state, because I guess if you had to boil down internal issues for a lot of the big players, the dynamic between people supporting the state and themselves drove a lot of that tension. That's why many societies developed as they did, trying to herd the nobles into making what's good for them good for the state, and the one's that imploded couldn't manage those tensions. I'd prefer CK style playing as a family, so that you are directly in that role, of perhaps not wanting to do what's best for Rome, but do what's best for your family, siphoning off funds, incurring tyranny by taking out rivals, that sort of thing. Or they could code the AI doing that, however if it wasn't an act you were in control of that would be insanely annoying. Or pointless, as all interactions that use a character's personal wealth do now. I thought things like managing loyalty and different cultures would at least fulfill that desire to have meaningful peacetime mechanics but right now the balance on them is really off. Culture is incredibly binary, either they are your culture and are happy, or they aren't and are useless and should be converted. There's no middle ground of working through a mixed culture empire, it's all about making them your culture asap, and the game has tools so you can do this instantly if you so wish. Loyalty as well is something you basically have to try to have an issue with. Your tools for managing it are incredibly powerful and the drops to it don't really occur if you are playing decently.
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May 12, 2019 05:53
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Beamed posted:It demonstrably does not want to be the latter. I've repeatedly come back to "CK2 has the lessons Imperator needs in how to make a fun, character-driven, content-filled game, at least as much as CK2 at launch", but Paradox has repeated time and again they wanted this to be as much like EU Rome as possible, which is a 10 year old, bad game. Yeah. I guess I expected more ck2 than we got, but it's also on me thinking that ck2s core loop of characters driving the conflict would apply to the classical world as well. I basically wanted ck-ancient edition, so this game is sadly looking like it will never be something I enjoy, regardless of what improvements they make. Map painting isn't fun to me without all the rp stuff behind it.
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May 25, 2019 21:25
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I'm absolutely in the camp of this game should have more CK Rome than it does, and sadly these fixes all look entirely numbers focused. It just feels like such a miss to me that this period with it's powerful and colorful characters wresting away power from a state, such as it existed back then, isn't the focus, and instead you play as the nebulous state trying to deal with those actors, instead of the other way around.
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Jul 4, 2019 08:31
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RabidWeasel posted:Rome AI needs a special ability to just magic up extra armies and -1000 to make peace to be historical Italian territory should get a bonus to manpower or something to represent it's extra fertility at this period, since along with a refusal to surrender just having more bodies to throw at things was a Roman strength. And if it's Italian territory in general the other powers in the area have that same advantage.
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Jul 24, 2019 22:30
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I think part of the issue with Imperator is that while it's clearly a direct sequel to EU: Rome, the different name kinda sold it as something different, instead of just more polished EUR. I have a feeling that has played into some of the backlash.
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Aug 1, 2019 08:04
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As someone who loves CK2 for that, no this game is absolutely not that game. If you like character interactions and guiding a dynasty you won't achieve that. This is much much closer to EU4.
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Aug 9, 2019 21:32
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Ham posted:The real problem with republics is just how ineffectual it all feels. There's no real weight to the factional interplay, no moving parts the player can influence/attempt to control, no consistent intrigue, and no real differences between the factions. All you're left with is your character and interactions with other states, and caring about your character is pointless when they rule for perhaps 20-30 minutes of game time and then it's on to next random dude and their family. I really think they should just give in and have you play as a family and let you be the dickhead countryman who's out to build up their family at the expense of the Republic while you don't rule the country. The holdings system could be the game you'd play while not in power and give you control of the province with your holdings in it or somesuch.
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Sep 26, 2019 05:34
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So I finally decided to play for some to see how the new changes did and get my feelings on them. I played about 5~ years in game as Rome and Sparta to see the differences between Republic and Kingdoms. Overall my game as Sparta was much more straightforward which lead to me enjoying it more. Republics felt like there was an insane number of fiddly nobs I had to turn with the knowledge that I'd have to do it all over again when my next character was elected, while at least as a monarchy is per character death, so I felt like I could plan long term with my relations, holdings, etc. It was a pain getting the senate to decide to take out Etruria, but I did manage it no matter how much I was tempted to each the tyranny, while for Sparta it was just picking who isn't guaranteed and isn't a city state to start expanding. The game overall feels much better, but it's still very bland, with the story/narrative all in your head. Because they just focused on mechanics it's still just paint the map. Kingdoms totally work much better than republics with the mish mash of character stuff because in a Republic there's no long term reason to care about anything because they'll be replaced soon enough. And given that the key nation is a Republic something needs to be done. If you don't want the solution to be playing as a family, I don't know maybe play as a set political party? Something that lets you build up character relations for the long term is key though. Also unlike EU4 the big nations at the start are just already big and don't have as much internal trouble as they'd anticipated. They are both super stable and rather boring to play. Like say I wanted to play Egypt but didn't want to reunite Alexander's empire, there's nothing really for me to do. I already control all the Egyptian clay, I'd just be developing it. Maybe find some reason to have more vassals or little powers so they have to do something just for gameplays sake. Or have important parts of the nation in the hands of the wrong Diodochi to get some early war between them. Lastly EU4 style fort sieges suck here even more than the combat. There's just too many long sieges. Also tactics are still just confusing and not very worth it. Overall it feels like where it should've released, but it's still not good imo.
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Oct 9, 2019 02:14
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ilitarist posted:Can you give an example of a strategy game that is a counter-example? What does it lack? Feels like there's a lot of things people might mean by that. I'd use CK2, but instead I went and played EU4 recently, a game I'm not the biggest fan of but it felt like it was better at that. Through it's use of age/mission/events EU4 paints a better picture of the world, gives you more feedback on what you're doing, so if you're playing Granad and you re-reconquista there's something beyond the mechanical details of conquering new land to your conquest. As well missions and formables provide goals beyond just conquer everything. Formables in EU4 are something that's very exciting to do, often giving you new ideas, a new flag, and a new color on the map. Formables in IR just change your name. They aren't exciting and there are barely any. All your goals have to be self made.
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Oct 9, 2019 17:09
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Wafflecopper posted:They also change your colour and give you a new government rank, some give you claims too Is that so? I admit I didn't do any on this patch but last patch I formed Arkadia as Sparta and I still kept Spartan colors and flag. Which was...weird.
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Oct 9, 2019 18:45
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Oh right I totally had a bug after I conquered Messenia as Sparta, where I'd get a message every month about the former Greek state of Messenia having a claim on me. Despite them not existing on the map anywhere.
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Oct 9, 2019 19:30
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So my dumbass idea on how to improve republics that is probably entirely incapable of being implemented, is that you select one of four families corresponding to one of the four useful parties. You either start with control of that party or can get it via investing and character actions. When that party is in control of the Republic, you have access to all Republic funds/troops, etc, playing as you would now. When your party isn't in control via one of the two consuls, you just use your entire family funds, meaning there's a strong incentive when you control the Republic to give your family jobs, holding, governor titles, etc. Using the entire family fund together should mean you can still field some kind of army and could still wage private wars, ala Caesar. Later as you build up your power base you could buy control of other parties, controlling two could be expensive but doable, while three is basically you've won the game territory. This way given there are two consuls you could guarantee control of the Republic. Now why I'd prefer this way to the current set up is that it more accurately represents the conflict between personal and governmental interest that marked a lot of this period of history, and has you making decisions that are good for your family or good for the Republic. As well this would allow more long term use of character interactions instead of having to shift gears every 5 years. As well it would do something interesting with personal wealth and holdings beyond making them invisible assets that only truly matter if the character is disloyal.
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Oct 11, 2019 18:20
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Average Bear posted:They should make Rome about the story of your family in your chosen state. Maintaining your Gens estate and holdings while taking part in whatever gets you a bigger share of the pie. You could even keep playing if another state annexes you because they don't have to crucify you all. Anyway that's my thoughts. Looking forward to playing this again when it's finished Railed against this forever but I very much do not like playing as the state. But it seems that this is the bizarre hybrid system they want to work with. If they want to keep you as the state characters should be more of a hand off thing where you just react to Publius Dickius loving the state over instead of caring that he has a rivalry with the consul you are playing as at the moment. I don't know. It's a loving mess as is and they do not seem to be threading that needle any time soon. The system as is mostly works for monarchies and tribes but fails at republics when you would figure getting the republic experience right would be the first thing they did.  The mission tree system they are talking about sounds really nice. I like that it's about making choices in missions instead of just following a tree like in EU4, or the rng old EU4 was.
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Oct 14, 2019 18:12
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I think a lot of the complains around the old MP were that they just come from your ruler's stats with no way to influence them in IR. In EU4 there are advisers and national focus to offset a bad ruler. In CK2 you could educate your child and try and direct how their stats turn out, but not IR. Political influence works a lot better just because it comes from something you can control.
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Oct 15, 2019 19:01
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Dalael posted:Aggressive Expansion is just a number. Using client kings should be something you have to, as that's historical, so nice to see it working out if you're going for the world conquest. Also something that strikes me for being omitted from the game, especially if it wants to have any character focus at all, is the client system. You even have personal wealth modeled! While I don't think any other non Roman powers had anything similar, clientele should be an important part of managing the Republic drat it.
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Oct 16, 2019 18:13
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Yeah I think going for what you describe for EU3 or a CK2 type way of doing those decisions would make them more interesting, and bring characters in more. They do a little bit, since your rulers stats influence how quick the claims complete, but they are 100% chance. As well I do not think they should be called claims, as in this period you weren't going around fabricating documents that said you totally should own this clay. Just call them justifications since you know it's a famous tactic of the Romans to claim they were attacked and thus this war is totally defensive and justified and we're just going to take all their land and make them slaves. You could roll in the randomness in some places as is fairly easily too. Like instead of omens being push this button every 5 years for x bonus, make it so when you click it, there's an event based on the skill of your current high priest, perhaps the omens are incredibly beneficial and you gain more than the listed bonus, or perhaps the drat chickens say it's not the time yet and you get less of the benefit.
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Oct 17, 2019 18:20
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