When you have two armies selected there’s a button on the top left of the panel for merge. If they are in the same city the button is able to be clicked, otherwise it’s greyed out.
Thanks guys. Yeah I was being stupid. Forgot you have to click and drag to select them first. I was just clicking on the stack so only one unit was selected. I have played all the other games, so I knew this. Blaming lack of sleep.
So far I like it well enough, but too early to say more. I played through a fair bit of the tutorial, got the idea, and then started a game as Egypt.
Because I’ve been playing HOI4 lately, I was initially surprised that a month flies by in 30 seconds in “Rome Imperator.” But with 300 years to play, I guess that’s a good 30 hours of gameplay, not counting pauses, so it makes sense. The Eurogamer review did suggest, though, that the swift passage of time may make characters’ lives seem short and inconsequential. I dunno.
A couple questions:
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Any idea what a “pop” represents in real population? 1,000 people? 10,000 people? I’m just curious from a flavor standpoint.
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In Egypt (as in Rome), much military strength is in the hands of mercenaries. I’m trying to find each mercenary leader in my list of families, and I can’t find them. Are these leaders simply not part of my nation? I see that I can buy them out (by clicking on the mercenary unit); I’m just curious if there’s any other way to interact with them.
I don’t believe mercenary leaders are ever part of nations, they just reside on certain parts of the map but available for anyone to hire.
After 7 hours of playing today here is my Carthage:
It’s going pretty well, and I am having alot of fun. I like the trade system, it really lets you customise your nation (which is good as the ideas system from EU4 has been stripped down). Combat is great and requires more skill than EU4 ever did (mostly due to binding supply limits). I also like the automation options that are available for armies.
I was worried about Rome for awhile there as they were dominating Italia, but actually got beaten down by an alliance of italian states and so aren’t doing very well at the moment.
It looks like my conquest of hispania, which I have only just started, will proceed as planned.
I have some UI complaints, but I am not really sure where people are coming from when they claim it’s a bad UI design. For instance, is there a way to simplify troop transport across the sea or has Paradox gone a step backwards and made the process manual again? That’s something they will need to fix in a patch, as it’s annoying for a country like Carthage!
Yes. Automate your fleet to naval transport. Pick an army stack, pick a province you want them to go and they’ll automatically get transported.
My RSI prone finger thanks you very much.
Something else that isn’t a positive reflection of the UI: I only just realised there’s a “laws” screen haha.
So I played about six hours so far. Liking it, but it has many issues. Sort of in-between Stellaris and CK2 in terms of feeling a fully working thing.
Stuff I like:
-The basic Republican (was playing Carthage) poitical system.
-The level of detail at city scale, just enough.
-The added military detail. Feels a little bit more like Sengoku and March of the Eagles than other Paradox games.
-The mix of civilization level control, characters and pops. Feels like a mixer of EU IV, CK 2 and Vicky 2 (including the strategic resource focus) at times. When this finally is fleshed out and working together in interesting ways, we will have a magnificent game here.
Stuff I don’t like:
-Everything feels generic as hell. Having so many cultures meant all of them (well, all of the same type) feel exactly the same but for minor cosmetic stuff.
-Combat modelling is off. Armies march too slow in general. They always fight when sahring a province with enemy armies. They spend days and days fighting, and suffer insane casualties of 20-50% in most matched battles (winner should normally lose 10-15% tops). Supply is based on supply level of cities, without taking into account supply routes, sea and river supply, etc… Most glaring of this is me not really noticing much whether I’m campaigning in Summer or Winter. For all the added detail into military stuff, they do not capture at all the specific feel of the period.
-That lack of feel extends to other parts. It’s all about percentual improvements ot everything except unique distinct stuff that makes a difference. There’s no real feel of evolving due to circumstantial pressures, but just cliking the right buttons to get the right bonus. I expect Rome to be more fleshed out and will try that next.
-Overall the Pop system and the character system seems underdeveloped (there needs to be more unique character detail like in CK2, probably through events). The basic civilization/political system and parts of the military systems are already pretty functional and interesting (but I would also like decision trees like in HOI to flesh out the main factions)
I see a lot of potential here, and I like what all the pieces look like and what they are trying to do, but the balance/feel/focus seems off. I’m going to shelve it for now until the first DLC/content patches come out, but I will buy and play those (contrary to Stellaris, which I felt was so messy I never cared about trying it again). I can perfectly see how this is going to be really good, but it’s not there yet.
Also, it means Field of Glory Empires might have a place if they keep the military systems from AJE, which is really good for modelling this age except in the combat resolution (but that was easily tweakable)
Thanks for that detail - very informative.
Poor old Carthage. It looks like Rome + alexander’s successors got most of the flavour at release. You’d expect this in a random tribe, but I agree Carthage doesn’t feel as unique as it probably should. Where it does feel unique is in the strategic situation, there is alot of flexibility and choices to make in regards to where to focus your attention next.
All Paradox games feel this way at release, although I would argue it is only ‘generic as hell’ when you compare it to Paradox games that have been out for a few years already. I can’t think of another strategy game that goes at this level of detail and scope and yet feels more fleshed out at release. CK2 avoided this problem by making half the map unplayable until DLC added mechanics for Islam etc…
One part that feels unique to me is the vast range of troop types, each type feels unique and can lead to armies that operate and perform very different from one another.
I think a ‘battle’ in these types of Paradox games are meant to represent a series of engagements including skirmishes, 1-3 pitched battles, and then pursuing the retreating army. At least that’s my head cannon. I agree with you though that victors seem to take some more casualties than in other games. This makes manpower and attrition that much more important. I also kind of like how it prevents snowballing.
Anyway, I agree that the game has alot of potential and that there are some drawbacks. I find the game fun and interesting so I am going to keep playing, in my opinion there’s no need for me to shelve it for later.
Yes, the troop types are nice (I would not call it a vast range, it’s basically the ABC of Ancient warfare, but it’s a pretty much perfect level of detail, imho).
I disagree that they are distinct. Modifiers of 25% against other troop types are too weak. When you read Ancient battles that pitch somewhat homogenous but different between them forces, you see a lot of “hard countering” depending on terrain.
Heavy infantry vs light infantry is not a 20% adjustement. It’s a huge adjustment (I could see 100% or over) on clear terrain and a minor one in rough terrain.
But this IS nitpicking. Army composition is good, I agree, and just needs to be balanced out a little. Oh, and it should add impedimenta to bring in the time-appropiate strategic constraints (again, AJE does this well).
I would agree, but:
1- There’s a dissociation with the presentation (as one single engagement) and the acceptable “head cannon”.
2- While that’s a good head cannon for Rennaissance warfare, Ancient warfare is very different. Much more mobile, much fewer pitched battles and skirmishes with very little casualties. 1-3 pitched battles is a year’s worth of battles, not a month. The model is off. Again, I think AJE pretty much nailed it (except for casualty number from battle, which were also too high there)
However, I do like a lot the strength of attrition and the modelling of manpower with a couple caveats:
1- You should be able to get manpower “from the land” so to speak. specially light infantry and cavalry. Having a single national pool is an abstraction that, given the game’s complexity, is pretty much unnecessary.
2- Attrition is too weak on winter vs other seasons, there are no supply lines, and, perhaps more importantly, attrition does not damage the city the army is foraging in. Not strongly modelling foraging and involuntary razing takes away the main reason why armies of the time had to always be on the move (attrition should increase the more time you remain in a province without external supply or impedimenta, once external supply get modelled in).
3- In ancient warfare victors took (normally, except in exceptionally pitched battles) far less casualties than in more modern times, so it’s baffling the levels we are seeing. They got it upside down.
And I can’t get over the march times. I would like to try to see how long would take Hannibal in game to cross the alps. With what I’m seeing in Spain and North Africa, in six months you would be pressed to reach the Pirinees from Cartagena, not to speak of Trebia.
Overall, some of the pieces for a decent military modelling seem to be there (importance of attrition, manpower comsumption speed, overall scale, number and diversity of units) but the system they work together to create does not resemble ancient warfare.
Sieges do work well (suitably long) except that they don’t seem to acknowledge the unsiegable nature of port cities without an overwhelming blockading force.
Anyway, I’ll play alittle bit as Rome to see if there’s more flavor there. I think the CK2 approach of making not fleshed out factions unplayable until the DLC was out could have done wonders to focus development of this.
Hah, not really :P
My impression from reading their dev diaries is that Imperator was going to focus on the core strategy game, get a solid foundation down with a huge map, and go from there. There are republics an monarchies and migrating tribes and stuff, but the focus I saw was on providing interesting strategic situations in various parts of the world instead of unique mechanics and flavor for each region.
In this way, I feel like it follows the path of their other games since CK2. That title was a little different in that they completely restricted you from playing anything but a Christian feudal lord, but expansions for that game as well as EU4 and even HOI4 have tended to focus on a particular part of the world or type of government and expand on it mechanically and thermically. I’m assuming Imperator follows in those steps. Honestly, when making a game this big, I’m not sure how else you’d do it, so no complaints for me.
This is what I expect to see happen:
- A hotfix or three over the next couple weeks addressing technical problems and pressing gameplay issues that arise now that we have our grubby little hands on it.
- 2-3 updates that include refinements and some much-requested features. Dual consul for Rome is in 1.1, I believe? Maybe some new events and other content not requiring new code to support.
- First expansion that focuses on a particular region/culture as well as new mechanics shared across the game.
A military revamp would affect every single nation and is needed to make sense of the period.
I don’t want to seem too much of a downer. There’s a lot of cool stuff here and I’m sticking with it once they start bringing in patches and DLC, but it does feel more underdeveloped than CK2 or HIO4 at launch.
I’m not a military history person, so out of curiousity how do you think EU4 and CK2 handle combat in their respective time periods?
I’ll have to disagree about CK2, at launch the UI in that game was quite bad and there wasn’t anywhere near the depth of character interactions that exist in there now. You’ve also played a game in Imperator that would have been locked out from CK2 from the get go.
I think HOI4 felt like the most developed and ‘full’ of the recent Paradox games at release, but there’s good reason for that. It was repeatedly delayeed so that they could iterate on the core mechanics, and since it’s more modern and iconic there’s less need for fluff/flavour to not let the game feel generic.
Tip from my recent playtime: Don’t slaughter every family that you annex, otherwise you may run out of characters to fill your positions! I had 5 positions vacant as Carthage at one point because I was killing everyone and my original families weren’t breeding fast enough.
The HOI4 AI at launch was pretty awful though, which really took away from my enjoyment. I played as The UK my first game, and beat Germany so easily that I barely needed help from the US.
CK 2 definitely has stuff like raiding and pillaging and non-standing armies that create some nice constraints (I do like mercenaries in Imperator). I would say EU IV focus on the economics make sense too for the level of abstraction.
However, both games do not set themselves to be a simple “paint the map through conquest” experience. Although much developed since then, CK has the character interactions and focus on a dynasty, while EU 4 was clearly a higher level of abstraction.
My problem with this is that it feels like Sengoku and March of the Eagles in that expansion is directly tied to military conquest. Add in the lower level of abstraction regarding cohorts, troop types, etc… and I feel a disconnect I do not feel about the other games.
Also, I’m more into Ancient military history than medieval or Renaissance. So perhaps the flaws in modeling bother me most. After all, a lot of this period’s contemporary history is military. Much more so than in later periods.