Steam reviews don’t seem to have had any impact on their share price so they’re probably not too worried.
I doubt they’re terribly worried. The game reviewed well, did well. Still, Paradox doesn’t bank on the initial box sale, they look at these franchises as long-term investments. I think she’s sincere that they’re paying attention to the negative reviews for feedback (because what developer doesn’t pay attention to user feedback?).
I’m still having fun with Imperator. I’ll probably wrap up my current game and then wait for the 1.1 update in June. I’ve been playing the crap out of it since release and there are other games in my library begging for attention. :)
They were probably your subjects. I believe you start with 3 nations as your subjects as Rome. The army size background color lets you know who they are. I think red is your enemy, blue are your allies and green is yours if I remember correctly.
I still love it too. This is the short game I just finished:
Aetolia is a small 2 or 3 city greek republic at start. I got the achievement ‘Pan-Hellenic League’ by doing this run. It’s a great country to start as since you start with a guarantee from Phygria (meaning Macedonia probably won’t attack you till much later) and there are some similarly sized countries around that don’t have the guarantee.
Greece is a fun area to play in because it’s a real web of small countries that have complex interlocking alliances, while the two big baddies (Macedonia and Phrygia) menacingly hover around the edges conquering, guaranteeing, and generally causing mischief.
I managed to conquer the west coast of Greece (and sicily, which is off-picture) before finally gathering the gall to war with the successor kingdoms for the remainder of Greece.
I am going to keep going with the game, not wait for 1.1. There’s some more achievements that sound really fun, and I haven’t even tried Tribes yet (4 realz anyway) or the titular Rome!
I tried an Assyria run (forming Assyria as Adiabene, a tributary under Seleucid) but despite murdering two kings and placing my 0 year old grandson on the throne, they suffered no ills. Right next door Phyrigia remained intact with 50k manpower and 2500 gold. I’ll have to try that again. I really want to try some nation with Persian tradition (I love horse archers) but can’t seem to find one I like.
As for tribes, three recommendations (which may or may not have achievements associated with them. Alas I like my mods so no achievements for me.)
- Dacia Region
Lots of local resources - iron, horses, precious metals, livestock, trade for horse archers and with access to a farmland gem province (one of only three gems in all Europe, the other two being on uncolonized lands.) Form Dacia, free CB’s on the entire region. You’ll have to colonize - which I like doing, but many do not.
- Noricia
You get this decision:
Spoiler: You end up with five iron in the capital province.
- Lingonia. Unlike most tribal realms, you have a lot of slaves (33.) It’s very rich, can support a large army and navy (even with the penalty to tribal army support.) My intention was to ally with the Etruscans to fight Rome. Alas that failed and I’ll have to try again.
So I bought it.
It’s really just a 1gb download?
Seriously?
Thea 2 is 2gb.
It just this map, several dozens of on-map models, some pictures and music. Not a lot of music, I must add. And faces are face-genned so they weight less than Crusader Kings 2.
I remember downloading EU3 expansions and they were like 20 Mb. Ah.
The beautiful map takes up more than 1GB of my heart on its own.
Thanks, you had it correct I think.
I restarted the tutorial, slowed the speed down and was much more deliberate about everything. When I went to war with the Samnites I paused frequently to examine armies and inspect all of the action. A lot of armies that flooded in were my subjects sending troops and also enemy troops from a Samnite alliance. I have a much better understanding of the war and how I would approach future engagements.
I also learned a great deal more generally about the game since I have been pouring over the menu screens. I completed 10 of the 13 tutorial objectives and am now deciding if I want to continue the tutorial (basically playing out a conquest-heavy game as Rome) or start a new game with a different power.
Prior to declaring war on the Samnites I was closely watching the Senate approval of a war declaration. Most of the time the in-favor votes hovered around 48/100. I held off declaring war and let some time pass and also changed my diplomatic stance and was able to get Senate approval up to around 57/100 for a war declaration, but a Declaration would still incur a 5 point corruption(?) penalty.
Is there a way to increase Senate seats approval of something like a declaration of war? Do you need to interact with the factions, leaders of factions, or some other method? Or is it a moot point and not something to fuss with?
Funnily enough, the current makeup of the Senate seems quite happy to wage war with anyone NOW as most nations I check I have over 85 seats in favor of war declarations after I won the war with the Samnites.
Some guy named Budget Monk, who is a superhardcore EU4 player that can take basically any nation and conquer 1/2 or most of the world made a pretty informative video about “things he learned” w/re to Imperator Rome and which i found very helpful.
Are any of you playing as Rome? I might have to buy the game JUST to play as Rome and post in this thread, just so we can say that at least one person has tried it ;)
I did try Rome.
It was similar to Carthage only you had a lot more manpower and less money to start with. Also free casus belli all aorund.
Rome has much more flavor and events, naturally, so I’d say that if there’s a nation that you buy the game for then Rome it is.
However, even Rome will change massively in June patch. Currently they work as a boring simple republic but after a patch they have 2 council dynamics. You still have 1 “main” council you play as and co-council who may be disloyal, but a loyal one contributes to the power of states and creates a lot of dynamics that sound fun.
So my advice is to wait for now for the patch. I like the game very much, but I don’t trust Paradox nowadays. They still can botch it and go Stellaris way, changing mechanics and adding stuff to the game so that it never becomes better than it was on release, just different.
All that is going to change in the patch is the dual consul mechanic. Which is pretty irrelevant given how little like Roman politics the game feels anyway.
And Rome has some more events, but not really more flavor than Carthage (finished a game with each). They are both really indistinguishable once you expand a little and compensate for the different initial positions (finished a game with each).
In a way, because we know so much more about Roman politics, Rome feels much more off than other factions we have less information about.
In a way, yes.
Still, the patch is going to change UI a lot. Currently I’m very irritated by province UI that doesn’t show you stuff you need to see. They also change a lot about Monarchy and Republic power structure. From what I saw tribal nations will have fewer changes, plus they’ll probably not care about fleets that are overhauled too.
On the other hand it’s dangerous to get into a trap of forever waiting for a better version of a game. I’d say that it’s good enough now. If you don’t like it now I don’t expect it to change no matter how much the game changes.
It seems like a person’s opinion of the game will depend on whether the core gameplay loop is addictive and compelling to them, as with most games. It is both of those things to me.
Ps I am another of those waiting till the June patch to play Rome. I’m having alot of fun in Greece and Persia in the meantime.
I did most of my review based on a Rome play-through which I finished at the weekend. The free Casus Belli stuff is nice but it’s not exactly hard to fabricate claims once your resources are set, which they will be by the time you’ve united the peninsular.
I enjoyed throwing my weight around and setting up a network of tribal vassals on the border, but i was very much looking for my own fun. The free CB’s lacked the ‘pull’ to make me want to enforce them until very late when I happened to get into a war with Macedon over one of my guarantees.
Also, building Roads is really, really cool.
One of interesting problems in this game is that it handles resources in a truly evolving manner. So that many people think that there’s no strategic thinking to the game. If you play tutorial or expand in a region that is made for expanding then you will get very few POPs to convert/assimilate and you’ll get enough claims for a steady expansion. You’ll swim in Oratory points. However if you start in a more interesting position or get very big then you’ll be starving for Oratory points. You’ll also need to change laws, affect characters to stop them from succeeding, change governor policies. You get a new province with 100 POPs and you’ll need 1000 Oratory power to assimilate them. Not to mention different governments having different use for points: Civic power is one of the most important for civilized nations cause it means trade and inventions. But tribes will soon get all the inventions they can and they have little trade going on, they don’t really care about civic MP. Pillaging and raiding costs military points though.
I think they wanted this dynamics for EU4 too but in that game it feels more like the demand for points is constant no matter what size you are. So you can project more power through spending gold but not through spending MP. Many people didn’t play Imperator for long and assumed it will have the same dynamic, they will always have too little Civic power and too much Religious one.
Yeah I was always perpetually low on Civic power. Would let it build up a bit then go on a tech spending spree, then stop again. Military power saw very little use outside of getting a new tradition.
There were a couple of times where I’d just bought a tradition and then didn’t have enough Mil to lay down a new road network I was going to build, but I only had a to wait a few months to fix that. I never wanted for Religious power either.