Well that’s why it probably needs tweaking, so you pay a bit more attention, but what you’re complaining about is exactly the kind of issues that these guys would have probably had to deal with at the time. Do we have enough food? What food is there in the local area we can use to sustain ourselves? Do we attack now or wait to gather more supplies so we can fight in the field longer? etc…
I’m sorry if realistic logistical problems are boring for you :P
Although I could have sworn food was dealt with in the Army UI screen? You don’t have to look at each unit. The army itself will have a total good bar that will accumulate all the food carried by soldier pops and then any supply wagons. It’s right under the commander portrait, so not that hard to take in at a glance.
Fun Fact: The Romans used to call their supply trains “Impedimenta”.
Meh - I’m not looking for a perfect historical simulation - I’m looking for a fun grand strategy game. Abstracting supply makes more sense to me.
I will say that the micro wasn’t so bad last night, with supply. But does seem super pointless. Build 2 -4 supply caravans and attach them to your army and you basically do not even worry about attrition. Seems overpowered if I’m honest
With every concept added to a strategy game, what matters is whether it adds interesting decisions. The advantage of having supply in a game is that 1. it can then be cut off and 2. it can complicate or make impossible some excursions. If there’s no way to do these things, or if the AI has no idea how to do it, it’s probably pointless.
Personally I think perhaps some kind of limit of 1 or 2 Supply wagons per army would be fair, and then you can perhaps improve their capacity over time?
It’s weird because for the sake of game balancing you should probably limit the operational range, especially of big armies but then in terms of what we know from history, Caesar for example went all over Gaul (which is huugggee in Imperator Rome) during his campaigns.
I started a new Rome campaign last night, and while Rome as always easy, it was MUCH easier this time. Basically used my money for a bunch of HI, and then steam-rolled Etruria with a stack of about 21 cohorts. Ended the war with only losing about 15k in manpower - so I was immediately ready to go to war again in the south.
In the previous version, I had to do a little more dancing to make sure I didn’t drain my manpower from attrition. Used my allies more to soften up the enemy, and was careful to have a siege force that wasn’t going to to suck my manpower to zero when i missed my 42% roll for a year. When I was done my manpower was fairly drained and I needed to wait a little bit for it to recover enough to wage war again - which had given the other italian states the chance to get into a defensive pact
I’m coming to believe that except for some unusual circumstances (isolated armies) historically getting supply was achievable but very expensive. Maintenance and re supplying cost of those trains could be made to be significant.
Logistics is immensely complicated. This was also true in the Ancient world. Operations such as that of Julius Caesar in Gaul are the exception - not the rule - and required a commanding officer and an officer corps of supreme skill (also a loyal and veteran army).
To understand this, it’s actually worthwhile to go to the primary source - Caesar’s Bello Gallica - and read it. If you do, you’ll notice one thing: Caesar is constantly planning around supplies. He writes about food constantly. Almost every decision made, concerns how to get food, or how to keep his army supplies. Battles with the enemy are almost an afterthought; in almost every instance, he worries more about getting his supply lines cut than about actually fighting the enemy. Every single disaster or crisis he runs into with the army, is because he outruns his supplies.
Part of the reason for this is no doubt his celeritas (blitzkrieg) style of warfare - moving fast is generally incompatible with keeping well-supplied. Whenever his lightning strikes on the enemy failed, he got himself into major trouble. Fortunately, he was a master of getting himself out of such situations.
Also - even though he is criticized by many modern historians for the logistical situations he put himself in, it’s worth noting the strong awareness of time he evinces. He might strike for the Rhine and launch a blitzkrieg campaign across the river, but at the end of the year, his Legions are always back in their defensive works, distributed across the region and safe for the winter.
You find the same care for logistics - and balancing on the very edge of disaster - in the campaigns of Alexander the Great (Donald Engels seminal work remains a classic). Meticulous preparations were also a hallmark of the campaigns of Pompeius that earned him the sobriquet of Magnus.
What these men did (even Pompey), is not something any General could do.
Kind of mixed feelings on this one, after finally playing it (haven’t had time for much gaming this year, but finally took the time to try this out) what with new patch, etc. It’s definitely better than EU:Rome, but that is damning with faint praise. Two big problems for me:
Warfare model doesn’t feel like ancient warfare much. It might simply be a bridge too far for this game engine, but the siege-centric model which - kinda - fits for the 16th-18th century is way out of place here. The primary concern in an ancient campaign was always to seek out and defeat the enemy army - if the enemy field army was defeated, if would take a long time for it to be reconstituted and (in most cases) even longer for it to be in fighting trim. In the meantime, cites and strongpoints would generally be falling over themselves to accommodate the winners. A fortress/city would only resist if they were either desperate or could see the possibility of relief (most multi-year sieges were either capitals or “last stands”). Also, most field armies would of course be between 20-40K. This is a constant for the period, probably because it wasn’t practical - tactically or logistically - to command and coordinate significantly larger forces (this is a constant for pretty much all pre-industrial history, in fact). Noteworthy that the few times the Romans claim to muster significantly bigger armies, e.g., Cannae, Arausio, it tends to end up a disaster of command confusion. Here, of course, you pretty much have to muster huge armies to fight the bigger empires.
Playing as Rome, as usual, also doesn’t feel particularly Roman. I do like the new missions and event chains - they’re fun. Had a Civil War when I backed a reform that would give me a permanent +5 to wrong culture happiness; too good to turn down, IMO. But therein is also the problem - it’s all just numbers. I never really care who is Consul or Co-Consul or anything else. It’s possible there is a game in there that could be used to min-max the Republic’s strength, but why would I care for 0.02 extra money or influence per month? I expect playing a monarchy or tribe would be more fun (it was in EUR as well), but doubt it fundamentally changes the gaming-as-spreadsheet equation.
And that about sums it up for me - there are some nice ideas in the game, but like EU:Rome, it still feels like the poor cousin - a game about Rome crammed into the EU engine, rather than a game in its own right.
What kills me is the lack of consequences for losing battles.
While casualties are high, the retreat + morale mechanics does mean an army take a while to be in fighting shape again.
The problem is that you can win (or lose) battle after battle without the war coming to an end. In the period many wars were decided in a single big battle, and even longer wars had a bunch of major engagements at the most.
Of course, you can’t give winning or losing battles a huge warscore modifier unless you make avoiding battles much easier. That two armies in the same region are forced to fight feels very ahistorical.
Still, I think it’s moving in the right direction. Most of my concerns with the model now are possibly fixable through settings, except the forced fight nature of armies sharing a space.
That’s kind of what I’m getting at. In practice, sieges tended to be political rather than military operations - for obvious reasons; losing a siege meant Armageddon for the populace involved. A state that had seen it’s field army defeated would tend to see mass defections, and only the presence of strong garrisons or the strong loyalty of the populace (e.g., the native peoples of the state or - in Rome’s case - it’s Socii, who displayed remarkable loyalty even after Cannae) could prevent surrender.
There was also the problem that the core of people that could be deployed as usable troops was pretty small, so once the main army is defeated, that tends to be it for effective resistance. It took Macedonia a generation to recover from the second Macedonian war. The Seleucids - for all the vast size of their realm - had only a small core of military settlers (IIRC, estimates suggest 30-40K) from which to muster their Phalanx; once the phalanx was defeated at Mantinea, Antiochus pretty much had to surrender, or risk fatally weakening his army. Pretty much the only nations who were not heavily restricted by this effect, was Rome (due to its ingenious system of foederatii) and Carthage, who relied heavily on mercenaries.
And yeah - armies pretty much only fought when both sides wanted to. It’s one of the reasons why almost every battle of the period features largely equivalent forces.
Not sure this is really fixable though - would entail some major changes in the game, I think.
Your comment about consul and co-consul rings true with me as Rome. Elections happen so frequently that I really don’t care at all who leads the country.
I felt more invested when playing as Egypt and Macedon… but overall I feel like the character mechanic is more tedious than not. I like the idea of it, but there are so many characters and they change so fast that I don’t really care about any of them.
I tried Imperator: Rome for 15+h during the free week, mostly in the tutorial scenario, and strongly disliked it. The map is pretty, UI scaling mostly works, but everything else I had complaints about: terrible tutorial, no manual, insufficient tooltips, obscure UI buttons, family/character management sucks (and is mandatory because they die constantly), there’s always a new scorned family after loading my save (bug?), meaningless micro decision and fiddly stat events, managing per-city trade is awful, “mission” feature is a giant TODO list, 200G is an absurd amount to pay for a character to get treatment, province-based food is bad, every siege takes YEARS, fort spam roadblocks everywhere, warscore system doesn’t feel like it fits the period, and combat is an endless tedious chore. I was very tempted just to automate my armies since Rome’s vassal states were quite effective, but I didn’t get around to trying this.
The core gameplay loop is just too simple (conquest, rest, repeat), and it’s full of hassles and busywork. I was going to play a tribe or Macedonia at normal difficulty, but I couldn’t bear continuing. Maybe it will improve enough to be worth another look some day, but I’d play CK2 or any decent wargame or 4X over this right now.
I’d give Imperator another shot, but game backlog is growing and not shrinking. I will say that I enjoyed the tribal game , more than Rome, or Macedon. Egypt was just too big to play.
I wouldn’t put it quite that strongly, but I can’t say you’re wrong.
Also, a surprising amount of bugs for a Paradox game. 0-size fleets hanging around for ever, land units who have had their fleet destroyed being left behind in an ocean area, etc. Don’t think I’ve encountered that before.
