What's EB team opinion on Imperator: Rome

New game from Paradox studio Imperator: Rome will be released in 25th April games and is set in EB time period (game starts in 304 BCE).

https://www.gameimperator.com/assets...3bda8be340.jpg

As someone who enjoyed strategic map part of TW games more than the battles I really look forward to it. Imperator will have around 500 playable factions with different government types and very impressive 7000+ regions (cities) on map with population divided into citizens, freemen, tribesmen and slaves and each of them with its own culture and religion. Paradox games are always very moddable and Imperator should be their most moddable game yet with 'easy' text editing modding and included map editor tool.

I know EBII is still under development but what are the chances of EB mod for Imperator in the future? Or would the lack of 3D battles make the game not interesting for EB team/EB players?

I'd be more interested in the features in the IR that can inspire new features/balance in the EBII.

The move to small provinces (civitates) in the IR seems to ameliorate the biggest blunder (imo) of the EUIV: the battle system. The only way to beat the AI there is to concentrate forces and beat small AI armies. This requires mastering of the time-of-arrival of armies in the provinces. This is stupid and tedious, making EUIV unplayable. As I've voiced it here, I think that combination of small provinces and real time movement (first present in the Total War engine, second in the Paradox platform) is the way to make better both engines. Anyway, this is probably not possible to be implemented in the EBII.

I really think that there may be chance that this will be the best game ever made, together with Morrowind and Crash Team Racing.

I offer you a visual representation of what the EBII community thinks of Imperator: Rome or any other vanilla game versus our glorious mod: :surprise:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D4Ph-vCW4AITtMR.jpg
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D4Ph-vCW4AITtMR.jpg

My interest in IR is just to get some Diadochi wars fix. Though, having to play as Phrygia instead of Antigonid Kingdom or what not is not starting well in my book...

Due to the incident during coffee break today, I would like to announce that, from here on out, any links posted by Roma Victrix will be assigned the default classification of "Not Safe for Work".

As for the game, I am really happy that there is what looks like a genuine attempt to deliver a historically accurate game set in classical antiquity. I am not holding my breath though, since so much of what is done in games, movies, and television today is utter shite. It almost seems like the modern audience is assumed to be so slow-witted that they cannot be entertained by real history, however fascinating and inspiring it may be.

If these guys make a real effort to do the right thing, I think I will buy just out of respect and curiosity. Still find it unlikely that anything could take the place of this community project on my list of best things ever.

It seems @Cohors_Evocata found out they're they are just fracking using one of our concepts:

Compare the upper left tradition:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

https://forumcontent.paradoxplaza.co...traditions.png

With this:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/attac...2&d=1408352607https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/...20160222144056

Without giving us credit... buch o' dicks :laughter:

Personally I think it looks interessting I have CK 2 EU4 and Victoria III but I can't play Paradox games for long before getting bored. I just need real time battles tbh

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Originally Posted by alex33

With this:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/attac...2&d=1408352607

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It looks like the expandable box is not showing anything.

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Originally Posted by Septentrionalis

It looks like the expandable box is not showing anything.

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fixed

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Originally Posted by alex33

fixed

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Thanks! I have not seen the picture below before, but if it is EBII stuff and used without permission, it is absolutely plagiarism.

However, my first impression is that the company has scouted this forum for talent. If I was tasked with managing a project of making a commercial, historically accurate strategy game set in the classical antiquity, contacting individuals by private messages here would be among the very first things I would do. In fact, it would an insult to the community if none of the talent here was considered worth recruiting. It may also entail purchasing rights for artwork and signing agreements not to divulge ones participation on any forum.

If I am on to something, we may be about to see a game produced with a good amount of financial resources AND the enthusiasm and profiency of the modding community here. That sounds absolutely great if conducted in a fair manner.

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Originally Posted by Wulfburk

My interest in IR is just to get some Diadochi wars fix. Though, having to play as Phrygia instead of Antigonid Kingdom or what not is not starting well in my book...

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I don't like that name either and also would prefer Ptolemaioi or something like that instead Egypt.
Also things like Cotini are placed in lower Pannonia but they didn't get there until 180AD when Marcus Aurelius resettled them there from what is now Northern Slovakia (Púchov culture).
Luckily these things can be easily fixed with mods.

Paradox games are not well designed, so I'm not very excited about it.

1) It will have the same movement and combat system like eu4, which utterly sucks imho.

2) it's developed by paradox, so it will be a feature-bloat game. just compare eu4 with it's thousand variables that doesn't interact, to a genuinely well designed game like civ5. paradox thinks you make a game good by stiching together many small modules into an unmanageable cluster-:wub:. you don't. You do it by having fewer variables, but having them interact with eachother in a meaningful and interesting way, like civ.

3) paradox has wierd priorities, again illustrated by eu4. nevermind that war is a major part of the game, the combat system hasn't changed much since eu2. nevermind that the era is much about trade, their trade system is neither realistic or a fun mechanic. paradox makes adds eye candy but leaves glaring big problems unadressed, like that you can ship 40k men from europe to america in 15th century. If I was paradox, that'd be the first thing I'd fix, but they still haven't.

In summary, I do not expect a well-made game from paradox.

I saw a video some time ago about this game but at the time it didn't felt right, it had many gamey stuff. I remember watching the guy playing and he sent his army to attack an enemy army in the north, he won the battle but the enemy army finished with more men than his, wtf? Plus the fact that at this period, battles were the most important aspects of the time and would determine if the faction could survive or not, so I'm not really interested in having my battles decided by some autocalculator and not by my decisions on the battlefield. Note that my experience in Paradox games comes only from CK2.

Still, it will be awesome in some aspects, like the huge amount of regions and factions, which is a crazy amount and of course something that EBII could never do due to faction limitations. And since Paradox games are very moddable, I can easily predict that this game (with mods from persons interested in historical accuracies and more realism) will be one of the best historical games for the next years. In addition, having companies doing games in this time period is always great for every game related with ancient history because it raises awareness for this type of games both for gaming companies and for new consumers, I bet EBII will appear in every comparition on this game forum and it will gain new followers as a consequence.

Lastly, CK2 had soo many complexities and different options that it took me a good amount of hours to fully grasp it, I hope this game does not follow the same lines...

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Originally Posted by NosPortatArma

stiching together many small modules into an unmanageable cluster-:wub:. you don't. You do it by having fewer variables, but having them interact with eachother in a meaningful and interesting way, like civ.

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that's an interesting observation.

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Originally Posted by Lusitanio

I saw a video some time ago about this game but at the time it didn't felt right, it had many gamey stuff. I remember watching the guy playing and he sent his army to attack an enemy army in the north, he won the battle but the enemy army finished with more men than his, wtf? Plus the fact that at this period, battles were the most important aspects of the time and would determine if the faction could survive or not, so I'm not really interested in having my battles decided by some autocalculator and not by my decisions on the battlefield. Note that my experience in Paradox games comes only from CK2.

Still, it will be awesome in some aspects, like the huge amount of regions and factions, which is a crazy amount and of course something that EBII could never do due to faction limitations. And since Paradox games are very moddable, I can easily predict that this game (with mods from persons interested in historical accuracies and more realism) will be one of the best historical games for the next years. In addition, having companies doing games in this time period is always great for every game related with ancient history because it raises awareness for this type of games both for gaming companies and for new consumers, I bet EBII will appear in every comparition on this game forum and it will gain new followers as a consequence.

Lastly, CK2 had soo many complexities and different options that it took me a good amount of hours to fully grasp it, I hope this game does not follow the same lines...

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if it will be anything like their other games -very likely- the core of the game will consist of maneuvering your armies around in a tiresome and unrealistic manner, by playing order-cancellation games, trying to be the defender in favorable terrain. Everyone who have played a pdox game knows what im talking about, since it has plagued their games since the beginning, but for those that dont know: enemy moves army toward a province, so you order your army there too to catch them, but in the last second they cancel the order, so they get away. and of course you do the same trick to them. that means, to wage war effectively forces you too stare constantly at your armies, counting the ticks, then issue/cancel orders at the right time, in order to catch your enemy in bad terrain. this is a mechanic that demands much attention, but it is not funny or rewarding, just a tiresome chore. but this mechanic is largely unchanged since forever, ad people have complained all time, but they NEVER fix it. this is the core of all their games -eu4, vicky2, ck2 - and its equally horrible in al of them, so i expect imperator will be just as bad. there are other things they consistently do a bad job at, but combat is by far the biggest, and enough for me to not bother.

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Originally Posted by tentaku

that's an interesting observation.

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thanks

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Originally Posted by NosPortatArma

if it will be anything like their other games -very likely- the core of the game will consist of maneuvering your armies around in a tiresome and unrealistic manner, by playing order-cancellation games, trying to be the defender in favorable terrain. Everyone who have played a pdox game knows what im talking about, since it has plagued their games since the beginning, but for those that dont know: enemy moves army toward a province, so you order your army there too to catch them, but in the last second they cancel the order, so they get away. and of course you do the same trick to them. that means, to wage war effectively forces you too stare constantly at your armies, counting the ticks, then issue/cancel orders at the right time, in order to catch your enemy in bad terrain. this is a mechanic that demands much attention, but it is not funny or rewarding, just a tiresome chore. but this mechanic is largely unchanged since forever, ad people have complained all time, but they NEVER fix it. this is the core of all their games -eu4, vicky2, ck2 - and its equally horrible in al of them, so i expect imperator will be just as bad. there are other things they consistently do a bad job at, but combat is by far the biggest, and enough for me to not bother

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This is absolutely true. But maybe the smaller size and bigger number of provinces would change something? I think in CK2 there's an option that once a march order is given, you cannot change it.

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Originally Posted by Jurand of Cracow

This is absolutely true. But maybe the smaller size and bigger number of provinces would change something? I think in CK2 there's an option that once a march order is given, you cannot change it.

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eu4 is going toward smaller and more numerous provinces with each major patch, and they also have the feature that "locks" the army when it has moved more than halfway towards a province. this solves nothing imho, since the trick is now to cancel just before it locks. smaller provinces mean less travel time between provinces for armies, meaning you have to pay even more attention to your armies. The sad thing is that it is NOT optional to micromanage your armies in this tiresome way, because both in single- and multiplayer you are at a HUGE disadvantage if you dont. says a lot of pdox that they spend time making the AI a master of abusing this broken mechanic, rather than make a good mechanic to begin with.

I actually love PDX games so I'm genuinely excited for Imperator. In EU4 the movement mechanics where you try to catch an enemy in favourable terrain are imo acceptable because they're only decisive early game (i.e. the first 100 or so years), after that things like army composition, tech, general quality and national ideas begin to marginalise terrain (except when it comes to attrition). I think the run-around wars are fun enough in the early game where conflicts are quite small and maneuvering your armies quite closely and deliberately is one of the few ways you can fight decisively. After 1550-1600 other factors become much more important and the -1 or -2 pips you get from terrain almost cease to matter.

But their games do get kind of messy, they're not very tightly designed and absolutely do tend towards feature bloat, so while I'm positive I'll pick Imperator up eventually I don't think it will be the be-all end-all game covering society and war in the Hellenistic period.

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Originally Posted by Baharr

I actually love PDX games so I'm genuinely excited for Imperator. In EU4 the movement mechanics where you try to catch an enemy in favourable terrain are imo acceptable because they're only decisive early game (i.e. the first 100 or so years), after that things like army composition, tech, general quality and national ideas begin to marginalise terrain (except when it comes to attrition). I think the run-around wars are fun enough in the early game where conflicts are quite small and maneuvering your armies quite closely and deliberately is one of the few ways you can fight decisively. After 1550-1600 other factors become much more important and the -1 or -2 pips you get from terrain almost cease to matter.

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the problem is actually not the terrain but the ability to fight battles against smaller forces. The only way to beat a bigger faction is to beat the AI armies separately. So it also matters in the later game.

I agree with @NosPortatArma that you're at huge disadvantage if you don't do this. this is indeed a broken feature in the Paradox games.

I'm not really sure I agree with the idea that smart concentration of force being rewarded is somehow broken, tbh. I usually have "symmetrical" armies that can be split into two (and later four) even-sized stacks and they end up roaming split around the map and combining as necessary - really there's an element of strategic maneuver there since the attrition mechanic rewards you for, as Scharnhorst famously said, "marching divided and fighting united". If you can catch a dispersed enemy force at a local numerical disadvantage then you can overwhelm him in detail, which is absolutely a thing that happened pretty much across the entire represented timeline, from the Thirty Years' War to the French Revolutionary Wars. Of course the price for balling everyone up into a doomstack to achieve this is (eventually crippling) attrition damage, so you need to carefully balance stack sizes with attrition penalties and, for the really big battles, you need to watch your reinforcement arrival times.

Imo it simulates the concept of strategic concentration of force very well.

Of course if you find this mechanic irritating, unrewarding, confusing, or not fun then you are entirely within your rights to do so, but I don't think it's fair to say it is "broken".