I’ll ask again since I still can’t figure it out: Where can I view which provinces I have claims on? Starting as a successor state you get a lot of claims to start out(or so it seems) but I can’t actually find a good view of what the extent of those claims is.
Other than stuff like Pergamon being given to Rome in a will, kingdoms being united through marriages and stuff like that, you have very complex relationships that involve military and diplomatic conquests. Roman Italy itself was not integrated until the wars were long forgotten. It was basically a network of city states owning colonies and having Vassal city states themselves (not unlike a Feudal system like in CK 2, but based on cities and not nobiliary titles). The move towards more integrated states was more social than military. Wars were a means to achieve initial overlordship, but not always direct integration.
CK2 model of expansion is not that far from what an early history looks like. You certainly have more Republic and Empires here, but the basic style of societies (tribes, nomads, kingdoms, city states…) are here, just without the religion and messier/more distinct.
Here it’s just too easy and convenient to assimilate directly through conquest, because there is exactly one single diplomatic stance that allows any progression towards integration. When you can select it as a war result you can just take the province anyway, so it is not useful, and it’smalmost impossible to get there with the diplomatic tools at your disposal.
As Carthage I tried to play a diplomatic game making Vassal Tribal Knigdoms (which is just doable), only to discover that:
- It’s a dead end that does not allow further integration.
- there’s a hard limit on the number of Vassals you can have. The diplomatic option disappears after you have enough.
The way to progress? Fabricate a claim, give them freedom, declare war, annihilate them and conquer them into your territory.
Click on your national flag in a province, as you do to get to the diplomatic info of other nations.
You’ll have a list or active wars, vassals, trade partner… one of those is factions you have claims on.
Is there no vassal annexation in this then?
Only Client States/Feudatories, but not tributaries or Vassal tribal states.
Those last two are diplomatic dead ends. To move from tributary to client state you have to free the tributary. And probably go to war.
The issue is that when you can get a Client State/ Feudatory, you can also annex directly. At least in every case in my 6 hours playthrough. There might be exceptions.
I would have preferred annexation to be very limited and force you to go through the Client State route most of the time, which I feel is more authentic for most of the period.
Nice
Again, for all the nitpicking his looks good. Make it more like CK 2 and it would be really good. The military stuff is more of a pet peeve of me.
Not to derail this, but Field of Glory Empires has one unique USP in that the battles can be exported, played, re imported.
If there were some version of tactical warfare in Imperator I’d buy it in a heartbeat.
I get the impression combat is very CK2?
If it were like Dominions 5, that could be very very cool.
Yeah, I specifically mention Pergamon in my review, because it’s an interesting case-study. There’s also Macedonia itself, although admittedly the Romans fought 4 Macedonian wars. After the third war they dissolved the monarchy and set-up four republics, which then got invaded by a pretender to the old throne, which was what the fourth war was about.
But after the fourth war, the Romans basically decided to look after the Macedonian’s defence for them, annually sending a Praetor with a legion to garrison the frontier - BUT, as far as can be seen, they didn’t actually 'formally; turn Macedonia into a ‘province’ - they didn’t paint the map. The Macedonian republics were just left to make money while Rome handled defence and foreign policy, as far as I can tell from my reading.
The Kingdom of Bithynia I think also got passed to Rome in a will, and I think one of the Ptolemies also was going to will Egypt to Rome provided they didn’t have a natural heir (which I’m assuming they did, because it didn’t happened that way). Many more states seemed to willingly submit themselves to the Roman’s sphere of influence, especially after the Punic Wars, so didn’t require ‘conquering’ either.
You’re right about Italy itself - the various Latin peoples up and down the peninsular weren’t even given Citizen rights until the Social War of 90 BC.
I would love to see a mechanic where, polities of say ‘Great Power’ or higher can be asked by lesser powers to intervene in a war, provided certain conditions are met.
A strange thing about this is that it takes a long… long time to load. It takes a longer time to load than any other game I own. When I start it, I just get a black screen with a waiting Windows circle for like 3 minutes.
Imperator goes back to the roots of Paradox of being a board game and your enjoyment of it is going to be inverse from how much you expect it to be a simulator. You can convert an entire province, pops in a single day to your culture or religion ie you press a button a pay a cost and you have instant results.
It’s probably because it was designed by the resident grey eminence who seems to like multiplayer centered games; who knows. But Imperator is a classical world skinned board game, not a simulator, and it does a lot of things that are not precisely reflective of history.
So they are going the Stellaris way and again releasing a game they know doesn’t feel “complete” or why is such a roadmap even neccessary for a full price product?
If you choose to interpret it in that way, sure? Honestly, though, I’m not sure how you can look at the $40 price tag and the size and scope of the game and feel like they haven’t built out a game yet. What other $40 games are you playing that have been noticeably larger (content-wise) at launch?
There’s multiple reviews and hundreds of hours of Let’s Play material online to view to determine if what’s there is worth $40. That’s a much better metric than seeing a roadmap for future work to decide if Paradox has shipped an empty box or not.
Er, and I don’t want the above to sound like I’m saying Imperator is the Best Game of All Time or anything. I honestly haven’t had anywhere NEAR the time to figure out if I like it or not. But that’s a separate issue.
There’s a ton of stuff going on in Imperator. I think what people are complaining about it is that 90% of that is superfluous to just armies/conquest, and/or, that the game doesn’t accurately reflect history. Sometimes people will mix these things up and decide that this means the game isn’t done.
Even though I rather have a manual, the videos are actually helpful and at least touch upon many things. Watching them points out things I may want to have a closer look at. They also actually get me a bit excited about the game.
Still, I wonder if I shouldn’t be putting this effort into EU IV instead. It’s been so long since I played it and I prefer that to CK 2 by a wide wide margin. Maybe I should get a game of this under my belt after watching the videos while my interest is up and then think about EU IV.
Carthage has lots of special decisions. I went over them in my stream for like an hour. You can upgrade your ports, Take all of Hispania and it unlocks all sorts of events and bonuses.
This. lots of cultures have special events and conditions to create historical and ahistorical events. Like if you start a Gallic tribe you can unite Gaul and if you’re early enough you can hold back Roman conquest. You have a LOT more resources. It’s pretty cool. Like all Pdox games, DLC will flesh out everyone and give new events and abilities
Very cool pics!
Two is not lots. Carthage decisions in the first six hours of my game where build a port and get a foothold in Hispania. And the bonus you get are pretty minor.
But I agree that the game is done. There are things I don’t like about it and that I hope will change, but it’s a solid if uninspired (for me) game about a subject I really like.