So I haven’t played Imperator Rome that much since spending about 85 hours in 1.0. Since I am waiting for EU4: Emperor to come out, I thought it was about time that I played a game as Rome. I aimed for the Mare Nostrum achievement and managed to pick up 10 achievements in all:
Phrygia had a perfect game as both the Seleucids and the Ptolemy were racked with revolts from the get go, so Phrygia was strong and had to be broken 3 times.
I think the game has improved significantly since launch. Revamping the mana system turned out to be a great move. I feel fairly ambivalently about mana in the modern Paradox games. If it’s done well I can really enjoy it (EU4), and if it’s done well I can enjoy the games that rely on different systems. The trouble with Imperator, I think, is that the original mana system wasn’t implemented very well. It reduced immersion and made decisions fairly stale. I really like the hybrid system they have now, with one mana currency and the rest being a tradeoff between corruption, stability, loyalty, etc. etc… There are now interesting decisions that involve difficult tradeoffs.
I also like a number of other systems they’ve introduced or improved. The way that trade goods and food production works feels very Victoria-esque, I love it.
I really feel like this game has the potential to be Paradox’s best, but it needs more fleshing out. It borrows mechanics from EU, CK, and Victoria, but even though it is now more fun than at launch it still feels like less than the sum of its parts. The map painting is not as addictive as EU4, the interpersonal dynamics aren’t good enough to be a story generator like in CK2, and the pops system needs a revamp to be great.
One thing that can’t be taken away from the game is the beauty of the map. It’s still stunning to look at a year later. It looks like CK3 won’t beat it in that regard either.
I hope the team gets the chance to keep improving the game. In the meantime, I think the next run will be trying to get the ‘besieger’ achievement as Phrygia.
Fired up Imperator a couple of weeks ago, as tribal guys. But I really could get back into and since Old World is such a better game IMO, and covers the same period. I don’t see me really playing again for some time.
Imperator’s dev team just returned from their summer break with a surprise announcement that the 1.5 update will be launching tomorrow. I think I’ll jump back in on this one.
The changes sound good. If you haven’t played in quite awhile you should be able to get 2 more runs of fun out of it (at least that’s what I found when I played in the above post back in May).
PDS has been working on an Imperator 2.0 update for a while, which is looking really good. There’s a few dev diaries already on the topic but they just posted today’s which covers major overhauls to the military traditions as well as more about the inventions/technology overhaul they first talked about a week or two ago.
I really like the idea of being able to branch into adjacent region/culture military traditions. The example they used in the dev diary is that if you go down the Greek Poleis tree, you can unlock the ability to branch out into Levantine traditions.
Inventions are also going to be more about choice rather than getting them all as long as you have the economy for it. The UI shown here is very much WIP placeholder but it gives a good visual representation of what they’re talking about:
I haven’t seen any talk about dates or timeframes yet. They’ve only started talking about it at the end of September but it’s clear they’re already a ways into it. If I had to guess I’d say very end of this year or maybe early 2021, but really is just a guess on my part.
Thanks for the update. I may give it a try again after they release 2.0. I know they’ve been working hard on fixing it with smaller changes this past year, but I’m hoping 2.0 is a more cohesive and unified vision for the whole game. I really haven’t touched Imperator in a long time, but I remember it needing a lot more flavor to elevate it. Maybe some of the last year’s updates tried to remedy that?
I think that’s what they’ve been tackling, yeah. More flavor to characters, your council, religions, cultures, etc. 2.0 is focused on overhauling warfare, pacing, and UX. They brought in a new UX designer who has been working on the overhaul for some time. If you’re interested in that sort of thing, I found her dev diary on the issues with the current UI and her goals with the new one an interesting read.
My difficulty with Imperator is that when I start to play it, I get cravings to play EU and/or CK. Not that Imperator is a bad game, but EU and CK just scratch the same itch better at the moment.
I’m super impressed Paradox has kept at it, though. The UX stuff is fascinating from a design perspective, and kudos to them for continually reinventing this. I’ll have to give it another legitimate look. I played some with 1.5 but wasn’t in the right mind set to give it a decent effort.
Yeah, being a sort of hybrid game, that can definitely be an issue. If you’re in the mood for nation building there’s EU4 + years worth of expansions and for the more character driven and politics appeal there’s the very excellent CK2 and 3. Tough to compare to both of those.
Perhaps what Imperator really needs is its own identity. They do seem to be working towards that to some degree, even if it’s (as far as I know) not a stated goal. I haven’t played for the last couple updates, so looking forward to seeing what 2.0 looks like. I have to think that 2.0 is the big push to see if they can “save” the game. I hope they do, because there’s a lot of things I really like about it. I’d like to see it succeed and be built on for a little while yet.
I’m excited for the changes they are making, but I do not like the tree UI they introduced with the mission stuff and are now expanding out to inventions and traditions. It somehow shows too much and nowhere near enough information at the same time.
This is a strong point. I feel like both EU and CK do a good job of dropping me into the time period. When I played Imperator heavily on release it felt a bit sterile.
I think this applies both as individual nations (there was a certain sameness across nations, with the exception of Rome and a few others) and as a game (it feels somewhat like a generic strategy game, but not something that captured for me the identity and flavor of the time period).
I don’t know if you’ve played in the last year, but they’ve already made big strides on that front. I found the game utterly dull at release and didn’t play more than 4 hours or so. Went back some months later after they got rid of mana and made a bunch of other changes and have since racked up over 100 hours.
This is a pretty major change. Levies instead of standing armies to start with standing armies gradually developing over the course of the game. Ties into the pop system too so that pops raised as levies quit producing and can die.
Oh my! Authenticity in my GSG? Yes, please!
Since you mentioned the big items, I’ll mention a few small ones. Levies are also based on the culture of the pops where they are raised, and get to be led by the regional governor.
