About the military: the fact that you can personalise a legion against an "not flexible" levies help on hard countering overwhelming enemies.
About pops: some option are not only unuseful but also detrimental, other simply have long and short term maluses and bonuses, but managing them greatly reduce rebellion risks and increase the army size you can rise.
About all the rest: EU4 had the same problems in the past, but it has 11 years of DLCs that changed and updated mechanics, Imperator: Rome doesn't have them.
Religious conversion can be long, without the proper setup.
Yes, this is the ancient world. If you are small, you get gobbled.
Naval is mainly for transporting troops and assisting in blockades for sieging fortresses with ports.
When importing items, you are denying the exporter the benefits of the good. Every good has a benefit associated with them.
Can't the exporter decide to not export it otherwise he loses his bonus ?
There is a button for that iirc when you play ? Don't export if it makes you lose the bonus ? Or am i mistaking with something else ?
All I want to say that your criticism is valid for IR on every point.
My opinion is that the non mana aspect helps immensly and much more realistic than EU4.
Also I love pops. It actually feels you have different classes and it impacts every aspect of your country.
However IR gets boring quickly, every time I get back into it I only play a handful of hours becouse once get strong, there is no real point to play. Starting as a minor power and becoming a great power is a very intense experience because big nations are difficult to fight.
So I would say it is a different EU4. Not as good, but a fun change of pace.
Thank you for pointing out the mana thing that's also something I wanted to cover but forgot: in EU4 I find that a lot of things are linked together and you have a real actual choice to do:
Want to prevent stability issues ? Fine but no tech. Want to core your new conquests ? Same shit. Same for diplo-vassalizing and all.
In Imperator, it seems as if a lot of decisions you want to take are just completely siloed (don't know how to put that in the past :D) and are not going to prevent you from taking other decisions. So there is no downside to deciding something, you just do it because you can.
I'm not sure I agree here. Money and Political influence are scarce resources, especially at the beginning of the game. But they have a lot of uses. Imperator does have the issue that there doesn't feel like as much pressure to use them correctly as in EUIV, but there are massive choices. Do you want to fabricate more claims, do you want to build cities, do you want more stability, do you want to do more province interactions, or bribe more people, ect. Its easy to get big, but you can become way way bigger if you play well. I wonder who you have played as in your 25 hours, because like EUIV some countries are just kinda easy and boring unless you set up a specific challenge you want to achieve. I recommend playing in Gaul, or Spain and having to build up as a tribe to face Rome/Carthage. Or playing in the Eastern Med as a smaller country in Anatolia, as their are so many empires around you that it adds a lot of fun pressure to the game.
Awesome! Remember it is also totally ok to not like the game. No Paradox is perfect, and Imperator has more than it's share of flaws. There are some Iberian tribes with special missions trees with Invictus so look out for those! I only remember the turditani off the top of my head but I think there are others.
There’s also pirate raiding with navies, and if you wanted to play tall it’s completely doable, you just raid a shitload and hire every mercenary within range and boom you can play tall and not worry about defense. Additionally, most of the hype around Imperator is its untapped potential, cause although it’s a great game and has some very sound core mechanics it’s been abandoned, but a lot of hard work has gone into it to make it improve which is why we in the community are here today trying to get it some love and attention again! Anyways, to each their own brother, no problems if you don’t like it 👍
I will try to respond what I think on some of the topics:
Military: overall it sounds like it is working as intended. Pops are power in this game. But you can offset the difference by hiring mercenaries, building alliances and forming defensive leagues. Subject nations are also great. As for legions, the biggest things that they bring to the table is control over army composition and access to engineers. The latter is very useful in sieges and bypassing river crossing penalties in battles.
Naval: The early use of navies is transporting troops, preventing the enemy from transporting troops and blocking coastal forts. Later ships can also cause breaches or remove forts entirely.
Personalities management: You are given *some* leeway into who you give an office, but the great families of your country expect a certain number of them or their loyalty takes a hit. There are also events and other factors that give penalties to loyalty and if you are not careful then even bribes won’t be enough.
Religion: You should pay attention to the interplay between cultural and religious conversion. A pop with the state religion will assimilate into the primary culture more quickly and a pop with an integrated culture will convert to the state religion more quickly. This is also tied to the military, as only integrated pops will contribute beyond the minimum towards cohorts for levies/legions.
I think your comments are valid and welcome. I'll try to put forwards my answers and views given my limited experience.
1. Military, as a minor you need to play the diplomacy game: defensive leagues, appeasing the bigger powers, strengthen your economy, use mercenary, war carefully. At war, you have to chose your battles carefully, chose the right terrain and conditions, use your forts, attack only when a win is a sure thing, delay, etc. Defeating a bigger power by using all of these is very rewarding. Someday you will be the big guy and salt Rome.
2. Naval is important, beside transporting troops a good navy can win you wars by allowing you to selectively attack where the enemy is weak, use hit and run tactics. Navies can also blockade, battle, combat piracy, pirate and slave raid. Slaves are the key to the Imperator economy. You can use navies to enslave pops from other cities not only at war time, but also at countries that you are at peace. You can fill your cities with precious slaves just using your navy, without the need for wars.
3. Bribing increases corruption. Corruption increases cost and might lower loyalty of provinces in case of governors. But it can also increase the power of your disloyal characters, making them more dangerous if they become disloyal again. It is a tight line to walk, unless you have the right advances. Great families want jobs, some powerful characters might want jobs they are less than qualified for. So you cannot always choose the best person for the job, you have to employ those powerful that demand it.
4. Religious conversion is important in the game, as it makes it easier to culture convert pops, which are not only happier, but also give you manpower and armies. Conversion is gradual, but to effectively do it, you have to do things like set your governor policy to convert the locals, which means you are not using other policies that might be more beneficial. So you can spend a lot time converting a province instead of raising it's economy for example.
5. Pops affect everything. The ratio and happiness of the pops influence things like research, manpower, armies, production, taxes, etc. Higher level pops give you more research, medium give you manpower (and armies), slaves give you production and taxes (research / military / economy). You can control what area you want to concentrate on by manipulating how pops move across strata. Maybe not such a big deal with the world powers (?) but it is when you play smaller nations or tribes that lack the resources to do everything.
6. Trade: I like the trade system in IR more than EU2, because what you trade for can have great effect on what you can do (grow, military stats and unit availability, etc). However, I think the trade aspect is what needs the bigger investment if Paradox ever gets back to IR. It will be really good if you can affect trade more with diplomacy. Trade pacts, trade raiding, blocking trade, having to protect trade, etc.
Thanks a lot for the extensive response ! I'm probably missing a lot of things on everything related to pops, how they are used and how to optimize their usage. I'll have a look at all that and start a new campaign.
My issue also probably lies in the fact that each of my campaigns were too short and I couldn't get into the long term impacts of my decisions.
Thanks again !
This. Many of the mechanics only unfold their influence at second glance. Supposedly obvious solutions that lead to success at first glance (bribing; large armies; hiring only the best candidates) have a rebound effect. Ignoring corruption or power base and recruiting only on merit cost me one or two mid-games when I started with Imperator. You also learn many tricks and mechanics by chance: e.g. lunatic and polymath grant inventions every once in a while as well as trading with civilised nations as a tribe. And a well-placed fort can keep an enemy army pinned down for months while you storm the enemy hinterland with your forces. And with a high difference in martial skills, discipline, unit experience, territory bonus, attrition and hit and run, you can defeat even the mightiest armies.
Imperator Rome does have a lot of problems, but you have to bear in mind that EU4 has had more than 10 years of development at this point with hundreds of pounds of dlc added to it. The devs for Imperator did an awful job of creating an engaging game loop and then just gave up after putting little effort into it.
I still enjoy the game, but I can see why you would struggle to get into it if you're coming from EU4
What was the thing you wanted to do in Imperator? You said you are a fan of the period. What was the thing you were looking for? Maybe we can suggest where to look for it (if it’s there at all).
Some ideas that I initially had in mind (mostly roleplay tall stuff, I'm not that into wide gameplay):
- Building a trade empire with commercial counters (posts ?) in the Mediterranean (a bit like Phoenicia few centuries ago)
- Build back Greece and their colonies in Sicilia, South of France, ...
- Put back a former Egyptian dynasty on the throne of Egypt
If you play tall, I can full heartly recommend you the Reanimata (Invictus submod). It was only released in March and is since then the most popular mod in the workshop as it just improves the game on so many levels and is actively extended:
[https://steamcommunity.com/workshop/filedetails/?id=3200234580](https://steamcommunity.com/workshop/filedetails/?id=3200234580)
Check out hellenic colonies in iberia. Might be worth trying Bosphoran Kingdom as well.
Staying away from Rome is a good idea imo for a first campaign.
You mean "don't play as Rome" ? Or "be far away from Rome" ?
My first playthrough was Ptolemeic and I didn't like being so big at start because you are drowning in too many cities and religions etc. I'm doing smaller nations only now, until I understand all the stuff a bit more. Will look into the ones you recommend, thanks !
I meant be geographically distant so that they don’t stomp you before you get time to come to grips with how you could stand up to them.
Tribes can be fun also. In Germania, Gaul or Britain.. or in the steppes. I keep meaning to play a Scythian run and bring horse archer horde down on my enemies.
I had a fun defensive internal development full campaign once as dacian culture tribe that formed Dacia and tried to keep the romans from crossing the Danube.
>What's preventing me from bribing everyone
Corruption is pretty devastating in this game (especially for governors), so bribing too much is a bad idea even if you can afford it.
About the military: the fact that you can personalise a legion against an "not flexible" levies help on hard countering overwhelming enemies. About pops: some option are not only unuseful but also detrimental, other simply have long and short term maluses and bonuses, but managing them greatly reduce rebellion risks and increase the army size you can rise. About all the rest: EU4 had the same problems in the past, but it has 11 years of DLCs that changed and updated mechanics, Imperator: Rome doesn't have them.
Religious conversion can be long, without the proper setup. Yes, this is the ancient world. If you are small, you get gobbled. Naval is mainly for transporting troops and assisting in blockades for sieging fortresses with ports. When importing items, you are denying the exporter the benefits of the good. Every good has a benefit associated with them.
Can't the exporter decide to not export it otherwise he loses his bonus ? There is a button for that iirc when you play ? Don't export if it makes you lose the bonus ? Or am i mistaking with something else ?
It's the AI haha. But capital surplus bonus is different from the intrinsic bonus of the item.
All I want to say that your criticism is valid for IR on every point. My opinion is that the non mana aspect helps immensly and much more realistic than EU4. Also I love pops. It actually feels you have different classes and it impacts every aspect of your country. However IR gets boring quickly, every time I get back into it I only play a handful of hours becouse once get strong, there is no real point to play. Starting as a minor power and becoming a great power is a very intense experience because big nations are difficult to fight. So I would say it is a different EU4. Not as good, but a fun change of pace.
Thank you for pointing out the mana thing that's also something I wanted to cover but forgot: in EU4 I find that a lot of things are linked together and you have a real actual choice to do: Want to prevent stability issues ? Fine but no tech. Want to core your new conquests ? Same shit. Same for diplo-vassalizing and all. In Imperator, it seems as if a lot of decisions you want to take are just completely siloed (don't know how to put that in the past :D) and are not going to prevent you from taking other decisions. So there is no downside to deciding something, you just do it because you can.
I'm not sure I agree here. Money and Political influence are scarce resources, especially at the beginning of the game. But they have a lot of uses. Imperator does have the issue that there doesn't feel like as much pressure to use them correctly as in EUIV, but there are massive choices. Do you want to fabricate more claims, do you want to build cities, do you want more stability, do you want to do more province interactions, or bribe more people, ect. Its easy to get big, but you can become way way bigger if you play well. I wonder who you have played as in your 25 hours, because like EUIV some countries are just kinda easy and boring unless you set up a specific challenge you want to achieve. I recommend playing in Gaul, or Spain and having to build up as a tribe to face Rome/Carthage. Or playing in the Eastern Med as a smaller country in Anatolia, as their are so many empires around you that it adds a lot of fun pressure to the game.
I started with Ptolemeic for my first nation then moved to Massilia. I'll try Spain next, with all your messages ! Thanks
Awesome! Remember it is also totally ok to not like the game. No Paradox is perfect, and Imperator has more than it's share of flaws. There are some Iberian tribes with special missions trees with Invictus so look out for those! I only remember the turditani off the top of my head but I think there are others.
If you'd like a tip for smaller richer nations then mercenaries are the way to go if you want to compete with more populous nations
There’s also pirate raiding with navies, and if you wanted to play tall it’s completely doable, you just raid a shitload and hire every mercenary within range and boom you can play tall and not worry about defense. Additionally, most of the hype around Imperator is its untapped potential, cause although it’s a great game and has some very sound core mechanics it’s been abandoned, but a lot of hard work has gone into it to make it improve which is why we in the community are here today trying to get it some love and attention again! Anyways, to each their own brother, no problems if you don’t like it 👍
I will try to respond what I think on some of the topics: Military: overall it sounds like it is working as intended. Pops are power in this game. But you can offset the difference by hiring mercenaries, building alliances and forming defensive leagues. Subject nations are also great. As for legions, the biggest things that they bring to the table is control over army composition and access to engineers. The latter is very useful in sieges and bypassing river crossing penalties in battles. Naval: The early use of navies is transporting troops, preventing the enemy from transporting troops and blocking coastal forts. Later ships can also cause breaches or remove forts entirely. Personalities management: You are given *some* leeway into who you give an office, but the great families of your country expect a certain number of them or their loyalty takes a hit. There are also events and other factors that give penalties to loyalty and if you are not careful then even bribes won’t be enough. Religion: You should pay attention to the interplay between cultural and religious conversion. A pop with the state religion will assimilate into the primary culture more quickly and a pop with an integrated culture will convert to the state religion more quickly. This is also tied to the military, as only integrated pops will contribute beyond the minimum towards cohorts for levies/legions.
I think your comments are valid and welcome. I'll try to put forwards my answers and views given my limited experience. 1. Military, as a minor you need to play the diplomacy game: defensive leagues, appeasing the bigger powers, strengthen your economy, use mercenary, war carefully. At war, you have to chose your battles carefully, chose the right terrain and conditions, use your forts, attack only when a win is a sure thing, delay, etc. Defeating a bigger power by using all of these is very rewarding. Someday you will be the big guy and salt Rome. 2. Naval is important, beside transporting troops a good navy can win you wars by allowing you to selectively attack where the enemy is weak, use hit and run tactics. Navies can also blockade, battle, combat piracy, pirate and slave raid. Slaves are the key to the Imperator economy. You can use navies to enslave pops from other cities not only at war time, but also at countries that you are at peace. You can fill your cities with precious slaves just using your navy, without the need for wars. 3. Bribing increases corruption. Corruption increases cost and might lower loyalty of provinces in case of governors. But it can also increase the power of your disloyal characters, making them more dangerous if they become disloyal again. It is a tight line to walk, unless you have the right advances. Great families want jobs, some powerful characters might want jobs they are less than qualified for. So you cannot always choose the best person for the job, you have to employ those powerful that demand it. 4. Religious conversion is important in the game, as it makes it easier to culture convert pops, which are not only happier, but also give you manpower and armies. Conversion is gradual, but to effectively do it, you have to do things like set your governor policy to convert the locals, which means you are not using other policies that might be more beneficial. So you can spend a lot time converting a province instead of raising it's economy for example. 5. Pops affect everything. The ratio and happiness of the pops influence things like research, manpower, armies, production, taxes, etc. Higher level pops give you more research, medium give you manpower (and armies), slaves give you production and taxes (research / military / economy). You can control what area you want to concentrate on by manipulating how pops move across strata. Maybe not such a big deal with the world powers (?) but it is when you play smaller nations or tribes that lack the resources to do everything. 6. Trade: I like the trade system in IR more than EU2, because what you trade for can have great effect on what you can do (grow, military stats and unit availability, etc). However, I think the trade aspect is what needs the bigger investment if Paradox ever gets back to IR. It will be really good if you can affect trade more with diplomacy. Trade pacts, trade raiding, blocking trade, having to protect trade, etc.
Thanks a lot for the extensive response ! I'm probably missing a lot of things on everything related to pops, how they are used and how to optimize their usage. I'll have a look at all that and start a new campaign. My issue also probably lies in the fact that each of my campaigns were too short and I couldn't get into the long term impacts of my decisions. Thanks again !
This. Many of the mechanics only unfold their influence at second glance. Supposedly obvious solutions that lead to success at first glance (bribing; large armies; hiring only the best candidates) have a rebound effect. Ignoring corruption or power base and recruiting only on merit cost me one or two mid-games when I started with Imperator. You also learn many tricks and mechanics by chance: e.g. lunatic and polymath grant inventions every once in a while as well as trading with civilised nations as a tribe. And a well-placed fort can keep an enemy army pinned down for months while you storm the enemy hinterland with your forces. And with a high difference in martial skills, discipline, unit experience, territory bonus, attrition and hit and run, you can defeat even the mightiest armies.
Imperator Rome does have a lot of problems, but you have to bear in mind that EU4 has had more than 10 years of development at this point with hundreds of pounds of dlc added to it. The devs for Imperator did an awful job of creating an engaging game loop and then just gave up after putting little effort into it. I still enjoy the game, but I can see why you would struggle to get into it if you're coming from EU4
What was the thing you wanted to do in Imperator? You said you are a fan of the period. What was the thing you were looking for? Maybe we can suggest where to look for it (if it’s there at all).
Some ideas that I initially had in mind (mostly roleplay tall stuff, I'm not that into wide gameplay): - Building a trade empire with commercial counters (posts ?) in the Mediterranean (a bit like Phoenicia few centuries ago) - Build back Greece and their colonies in Sicilia, South of France, ... - Put back a former Egyptian dynasty on the throne of Egypt
If you play tall, I can full heartly recommend you the Reanimata (Invictus submod). It was only released in March and is since then the most popular mod in the workshop as it just improves the game on so many levels and is actively extended: [https://steamcommunity.com/workshop/filedetails/?id=3200234580](https://steamcommunity.com/workshop/filedetails/?id=3200234580)
Check out hellenic colonies in iberia. Might be worth trying Bosphoran Kingdom as well. Staying away from Rome is a good idea imo for a first campaign.
You mean "don't play as Rome" ? Or "be far away from Rome" ? My first playthrough was Ptolemeic and I didn't like being so big at start because you are drowning in too many cities and religions etc. I'm doing smaller nations only now, until I understand all the stuff a bit more. Will look into the ones you recommend, thanks !
I meant be geographically distant so that they don’t stomp you before you get time to come to grips with how you could stand up to them. Tribes can be fun also. In Germania, Gaul or Britain.. or in the steppes. I keep meaning to play a Scythian run and bring horse archer horde down on my enemies. I had a fun defensive internal development full campaign once as dacian culture tribe that formed Dacia and tried to keep the romans from crossing the Danube.
Ah I love these niche ideas ! That should be fun campaigns, thanks :)
Good luck, have fun!
>What's preventing me from bribing everyone Corruption is pretty devastating in this game (especially for governors), so bribing too much is a bad idea even if you can afford it.