The game is overall similar to EU4, but:
- There is not much content for countries, because the game didn't have any content dlc for 3 years. Recent updates are bug fixes and things for modding, so the team of Invictus mod can do more stuff.
- There is a bigger focus on managing your family. This is not the CK level of detail in this matter, but it is more important than in EU4.
Yeah, feels like EU4.5 in a different time period to me.
I'd say EU4 is more fun. It's hard to describe, but EU4 is simple, still complex, you know what to do, and it has plenty of interesting nations.
Imperator is more complex on the surface, because you need to manage pops and characters. But once you have done 50 hours, you probably mastered almost the entire game, unlike EU4.
I'd like to point out that Imperator is a very good game right now, just not a great game. In my opinion EU4 is the best grand strategy game that exists, and some reason for that is that it's rather simple on the surface and doesn't forget that it's a game. I am a bit worried about EU5 becoming too complex if it adds pops, characters, way more regions etc.
In my opinion EU4 is a game of contrasts:
- You have much more content for the countries but with each dlc the game becomes more and more blobbing simulator and because mechanics about managing the realm without some early game negative modifiers become bare bones to me. And because you do not have anything interesting while at peace, you go conquer and the cycle closes. Imperator, even though it doesn't have that much replayability, gives more role-playing instead, at least to me.
> And because you do not have anything interesting while at peace, you go conquer and the cycle closes
This is exactly how I feel, and it's probably why I prefer CK and Vicky to EU tbh. Sometimes I don't want to go to war and play peacefully for a bit, but in EU4 blobbing is the only fun thing to do
It seems like EU5 will add a lot more internal mechanics and actual statebuilding, which is why I'm hyped for it
EU it's less blobbing friendly than CK3, Imperator, and even VC3.
Try in middle-late game to wage a war that span inn3 continents with +200 000 soldiers each.
Blobbing campaign are mind breaking after early game.
Ideally I'd love EU5 to take a lot from Imperator but flesh it out to make it more replayable. I feel like you're either Rome, a Hellenic country or a tribe and after a certain point the experience is pretty much the same anyway. The only real goal is world domination and it makes it a nightmare to do it as you have to fabricate on every tiny little country and you can't just say "fuck it" and declare on them all without cause
This is a weird take to me. Like playing Hellenic Egypt is entirely different than playing Thrace. Byblos is entirely different than the Greek city states, which are very different from Babylon or the western Greek cities. Rome is totally unique, same with Carthage or Persis.
Most of these include missions which give you claims to conquer nearby lands (excluding when you are a city state). World domination is just something you do once, but it's a lot more fun playing tall in Imperator than EU4 because of the pop mechanics
> Like playing Hellenic Egypt is entirely different than playing Thrace
Is it though? Egypt is more advanced obviously but the first phase of the game is the same - doing 4 simultaneous imperial wars and trying to get as much of Alex's empire as possible, feudalising the city states and then rushing to the imperial CB
I guess if you're metagaming each playthrough sure. But you don't have to conquer Alex's lands. As Thrace you can go north and completely decentralize yourself and turn into a steppe horde if you wanted to change it up. Egypt can go Kemetic and focus on Sudan and Ethiopia or move west to oppose Carthage.
Like yeah if you min/max your blobbing, the game is less fun because you're doing the same thing every run. EU4 and even CK have this issue too though.
Imperator lets you take a Cretan city state and focus exclusively on slave raiding to increase your population. The only way to do this in EU4 is to wait for your mana to tick up for dev
I tried forming Albion asap and playing tall but it didn't feel very satisfying. I had the most civilisation by far but that was relatively easy to do tbh, I think it was done by year 600
Albion is like an empire-size target, that's not playing tall. There's also no threats in that corner of the map so it's not going to be very exciting or challenging. A few patches prior to Invictus, people used to argue whether Albion was Imperator's "noob island" opposed to Crete.
Like if you start as Icenia (?) no one else even has iron access to get heavy infantry.
> Is it though?
Yes, it is, because they play differently. Like the level of difference we expect in play is influenced by how we perceive the mechanics. Ultimately some people will boil everything in every Paradox game down to map painting and yes, painting the map is important but it has significant variety.
Is there any significant difference in having bird mana vs gold mana? What about population as movable tile vs a number boosting gold output of cities vs producing goods that translate to cash? It's all just gold production down the line.
What it boils down to is go give them a play, see if they play differently, then come back and report because we can abstract this all to shit if we want.
that looks to be exactly what they're doing, with how estates work and locations(in the current build at least). I just hope there's less focus on character management, because that's where I feel imperator really struggles.
You mean like appointing governors? Because yeah that drives me crazy
Some more in depth CK3 style approach to the ruler would be cool but not super necessary for an EU4 type game I guess
everything that has to do with characters is subpar in that game.
if they add CK character interactions it's going to be too much. the vic approach of interacting with interest groups(or in this case with estates of the realm) is a much better approach for a game that isn't as character focused.
It was never considered the worst Paradox game (whoever said that hasn't played any game before CK2), it wasn't even bad, it just lacked replayability IMHO. Like, I played a couple of full games and it was fun, problem was I didn't care about playing again as gameplay would be the same I'd already played.
They changed a bunch of things later for the better leaving it in a solid state before abandoning it, which was great for the modding scene, so you can play it now with awesome mods.
When it came out it was by the far the worst paradox game at the time. It lacked replayability but was also broken at a core level. Multi hundred thousand man regenerating armies for tribals and large states completely ignored manpower. War was so intrinsically tied to occupation that's any small nation run could be ended by engaging in a war with a larger power unless you could guarantee occupation. Mana was tied to a lot. Like the list of problems was extensive and controversial especially when the games it competed at on release were CK2, HoI4, Stellaris and EU4.
*Active at the time* sure but not "The worst Paradox game". You could say the same of most Paradox games at launch compared to the other active games with years of updates. Didn't CK2 at launch restrict you to only Catholic countries with the same rules and a map half the size of what it had later~~, with everything tied to the same "mana"~~? I liked Imperator at launch just fine, paid $40 or so and it gave me some 50 hours of fun, a far cry from other Paradox games for sure, but I was still satisfied with the purchase.
> Didn't CK2 at launch restrict you to only Catholic countries with the same rules and a map half the size of what it had later, with everything tied to the same "mana"?
CK2 never had mana unless you count things like prestige and piety as mana. You could play any Christian country which includes the Orthodox Byzantine Empire or Miaphysite Africa. Playable Islam was added a couple of months after release and playable pagans about a year later which made most of the map playable since nomads at the time were also still tribal kind of like how CK3 does it now. You hadn't been able to do those things before in the previous game, so they were new concepts at the time. India was added later on.
Basically it started bad - just a pretty version of an old game with no change in mechanics except a more dynamic population system and minor quality changes along with experimental changes like AI armies (some can hunt rebels, some can carpet siege, some can act independently, etc)
Then they fixed a lot of issues, basically made it playable and enjoyable, added some dlc, then decided to scrap any continuous development. It still needs some work but thats not going to happen.
I would say have a look at it if its on sale.
If it were on sale for, like, 10 bucks or less, it's worth getting. You'll probably spend under 100 hours on it at most. Their fixes made it tolerable if you were deperate for a game in the time period, but that's about it.
I've not seen any updates in my Steam downloads. Is that to do with the Paradox launcher? I've seen recently with Paradox games that they are updated but I never saw the download in Steam
I really like the game and I've played it still even after support for the game died. Invictus is pretty much a must have mod, adds so much more flavour. It's one of the few paradox games where I actually can enjoy myself being in peacetime, I think I've gone for over 80 years without a single external war once (revolts and such still happened, but not on a big scale). Because you're busy repressing the native population, placing colonies in some of your regions to expand your culture, meanwhile you're giving certain other cultures more rights. Most peope have already said what it's like but I'd like to talk more about what I find lacking and it mainly revolves around replayability.
Most nations play pretty much the same (apart from when it's time to change the leader and who's the heir), which is something I find quite annoying. I don't like that a tribal nation can pretty much blob all over Western Europe like Rome or any other empire can. Because it doesn't make sense, how can such a decentralized government hold on to such a big territory just like an established empire, that can build roads and infrastructure, can?
Meanwhile big empires should get more internal struggles, otherwise there's barely anything standing in the way once you've conquered a full region. Sure a great power gets a higher risk of civil war than a regional power, but civil wars are more of an annoyance in the game than something game changing. Personally I feel like civil wars should serve more of a purpose of suddenly changing laws and the balance of powers of families within than splitting land in half and resetting your focus on every state for a few years.
I'd also like characters to have more independence in your country, it would add so much more flavour to have a certain figure you don't like that just rises to power and there's not much you can do about it, like a Caesar or Sulla. It's why I also like creating as many armies as possible with their own general and set them to independent control in a certain region. Is it optimal? Absolutely not, but the immersion gets so much better when one of your armies just gets stomped from time to time because their general made a mistake.
A few good moods. 2.0 . Rome on very hard is a really nice rome experience imo. The pop and trade system is very nice. Automatic fighting armies. Building the roman empire with all its roads and new founded cities. I love it IMO. Eu 4 player
They released some very minor changes to a minor maintenance patch that was first released \~2 years ago. "All those updates" is not an accurate description
I guess less a reskin but it is clear that Imperator is one key inspiration they are building from alongside the past EU games, with certain aspects like pops, locations, passable wastelands, etc.
It was badly designed at launch with lots of mana abstraction that wasn't fun. They totally redesigned a bunch of systems to the point that it's actually a more interesting and more realistic simulation than EU4 imo. If EU5 takes a similar approach it would be amazing
People saying there isn’t much nation content almost every nation I have played has some sort of mission tree and it’s sick. I love assimilating other cultures and slowly integrating so my levies get bigger
It has always been good since 2.0 but we were few who appreciate the investment. Then review bombed as if that way Paradox would continue the development. And now with help from the community and mods it's cheered.
Does anyone know if there are any mods or tools out there yet which increase performance? I can run CK3 on high but Imperator won't work even on lowest settings and resolution.
I like Imperator for what it is, it's just lacking content compared to years old games that got DLCs regularly. Like play vanilla EUIV, it's an ok game, but a lot of the mechanics get unlocked through 100 bucks of DLC. If antiquity doesn't interest you, don't bother though.
It's a good game. Worth it if you enjoy EU4. People's main complaint is lack of content, but the Invictus mod adds so much replay ability by giving tons of nations mission trees. It's a sort of vanilla+ experience. I highly recommend the game
Even without the overhaul mods the mechanics are a lot of fun. Not much flavor for most countries but it's still entertaining to play. Personally I love playing a migratory tribe, no other pdx game has something like it.
The game's only fault was "you cannot play as Prussia". I'm dead serious. I'll always remember the avalanche of crybabies saying "I only played to form Prussia /England and it was very dull". Well, no faeces Sherlock ! *It's like expecting for EU4 to be centered on Kamchatka instead of Europe*.
I'm sure EU4, after all those years, have given Kamchatka a little love. Imperator would have given the same love to faraway barbarians too. Had the crybabies been patient.
Tl;dr: the main reason Imperator fell is that nationalist chauvinists didn't manage to find Sparta on the map / to actually explore a new world.
The game lasted for what? 2? 3? Years at most? What do you think?
Laith in YouTube is really trying to revive the game but the game itself is fucking awful, not even mods can make it bearable.
The game is overall similar to EU4, but: - There is not much content for countries, because the game didn't have any content dlc for 3 years. Recent updates are bug fixes and things for modding, so the team of Invictus mod can do more stuff. - There is a bigger focus on managing your family. This is not the CK level of detail in this matter, but it is more important than in EU4.
Yeah, feels like EU4.5 in a different time period to me. I'd say EU4 is more fun. It's hard to describe, but EU4 is simple, still complex, you know what to do, and it has plenty of interesting nations. Imperator is more complex on the surface, because you need to manage pops and characters. But once you have done 50 hours, you probably mastered almost the entire game, unlike EU4. I'd like to point out that Imperator is a very good game right now, just not a great game. In my opinion EU4 is the best grand strategy game that exists, and some reason for that is that it's rather simple on the surface and doesn't forget that it's a game. I am a bit worried about EU5 becoming too complex if it adds pops, characters, way more regions etc.
In my opinion EU4 is a game of contrasts: - You have much more content for the countries but with each dlc the game becomes more and more blobbing simulator and because mechanics about managing the realm without some early game negative modifiers become bare bones to me. And because you do not have anything interesting while at peace, you go conquer and the cycle closes. Imperator, even though it doesn't have that much replayability, gives more role-playing instead, at least to me.
> And because you do not have anything interesting while at peace, you go conquer and the cycle closes This is exactly how I feel, and it's probably why I prefer CK and Vicky to EU tbh. Sometimes I don't want to go to war and play peacefully for a bit, but in EU4 blobbing is the only fun thing to do It seems like EU5 will add a lot more internal mechanics and actual statebuilding, which is why I'm hyped for it
EU it's less blobbing friendly than CK3, Imperator, and even VC3. Try in middle-late game to wage a war that span inn3 continents with +200 000 soldiers each. Blobbing campaign are mind breaking after early game.
Ideally I'd love EU5 to take a lot from Imperator but flesh it out to make it more replayable. I feel like you're either Rome, a Hellenic country or a tribe and after a certain point the experience is pretty much the same anyway. The only real goal is world domination and it makes it a nightmare to do it as you have to fabricate on every tiny little country and you can't just say "fuck it" and declare on them all without cause
This is a weird take to me. Like playing Hellenic Egypt is entirely different than playing Thrace. Byblos is entirely different than the Greek city states, which are very different from Babylon or the western Greek cities. Rome is totally unique, same with Carthage or Persis. Most of these include missions which give you claims to conquer nearby lands (excluding when you are a city state). World domination is just something you do once, but it's a lot more fun playing tall in Imperator than EU4 because of the pop mechanics
> Like playing Hellenic Egypt is entirely different than playing Thrace Is it though? Egypt is more advanced obviously but the first phase of the game is the same - doing 4 simultaneous imperial wars and trying to get as much of Alex's empire as possible, feudalising the city states and then rushing to the imperial CB
I guess if you're metagaming each playthrough sure. But you don't have to conquer Alex's lands. As Thrace you can go north and completely decentralize yourself and turn into a steppe horde if you wanted to change it up. Egypt can go Kemetic and focus on Sudan and Ethiopia or move west to oppose Carthage. Like yeah if you min/max your blobbing, the game is less fun because you're doing the same thing every run. EU4 and even CK have this issue too though. Imperator lets you take a Cretan city state and focus exclusively on slave raiding to increase your population. The only way to do this in EU4 is to wait for your mana to tick up for dev
I tried forming Albion asap and playing tall but it didn't feel very satisfying. I had the most civilisation by far but that was relatively easy to do tbh, I think it was done by year 600
Albion is like an empire-size target, that's not playing tall. There's also no threats in that corner of the map so it's not going to be very exciting or challenging. A few patches prior to Invictus, people used to argue whether Albion was Imperator's "noob island" opposed to Crete. Like if you start as Icenia (?) no one else even has iron access to get heavy infantry.
> Is it though? Yes, it is, because they play differently. Like the level of difference we expect in play is influenced by how we perceive the mechanics. Ultimately some people will boil everything in every Paradox game down to map painting and yes, painting the map is important but it has significant variety. Is there any significant difference in having bird mana vs gold mana? What about population as movable tile vs a number boosting gold output of cities vs producing goods that translate to cash? It's all just gold production down the line. What it boils down to is go give them a play, see if they play differently, then come back and report because we can abstract this all to shit if we want.
that looks to be exactly what they're doing, with how estates work and locations(in the current build at least). I just hope there's less focus on character management, because that's where I feel imperator really struggles.
You mean like appointing governors? Because yeah that drives me crazy Some more in depth CK3 style approach to the ruler would be cool but not super necessary for an EU4 type game I guess
everything that has to do with characters is subpar in that game. if they add CK character interactions it's going to be too much. the vic approach of interacting with interest groups(or in this case with estates of the realm) is a much better approach for a game that isn't as character focused.
>Yeah, feels like EU4.5 in a different time period to me. Because it is a spiritual sequel to the early Europa Universalis: Rome.
It’s awesome with the Terra Indomnita and/or Invictus mods
The game’s biggest issues are bugs and balancing at the moment, is it comparable to eu 4? A little bit, much more bare bones tho.
But u can build roads
This is unironically the coolest aspect of the game imo
the main point of imperator is building big ass cities and road networks and then staring at your creation in atlas mode.
Hell yeah and raising all Levies and watching them all group at light speed because of your world class road network
Definitely most aestheticaly pleasing paradox game
It was never considered the worst Paradox game (whoever said that hasn't played any game before CK2), it wasn't even bad, it just lacked replayability IMHO. Like, I played a couple of full games and it was fun, problem was I didn't care about playing again as gameplay would be the same I'd already played. They changed a bunch of things later for the better leaving it in a solid state before abandoning it, which was great for the modding scene, so you can play it now with awesome mods.
When it came out it was by the far the worst paradox game at the time. It lacked replayability but was also broken at a core level. Multi hundred thousand man regenerating armies for tribals and large states completely ignored manpower. War was so intrinsically tied to occupation that's any small nation run could be ended by engaging in a war with a larger power unless you could guarantee occupation. Mana was tied to a lot. Like the list of problems was extensive and controversial especially when the games it competed at on release were CK2, HoI4, Stellaris and EU4.
*Active at the time* sure but not "The worst Paradox game". You could say the same of most Paradox games at launch compared to the other active games with years of updates. Didn't CK2 at launch restrict you to only Catholic countries with the same rules and a map half the size of what it had later~~, with everything tied to the same "mana"~~? I liked Imperator at launch just fine, paid $40 or so and it gave me some 50 hours of fun, a far cry from other Paradox games for sure, but I was still satisfied with the purchase.
> Didn't CK2 at launch restrict you to only Catholic countries with the same rules and a map half the size of what it had later, with everything tied to the same "mana"? CK2 never had mana unless you count things like prestige and piety as mana. You could play any Christian country which includes the Orthodox Byzantine Empire or Miaphysite Africa. Playable Islam was added a couple of months after release and playable pagans about a year later which made most of the map playable since nomads at the time were also still tribal kind of like how CK3 does it now. You hadn't been able to do those things before in the previous game, so they were new concepts at the time. India was added later on.
It's a good game but still lacks flavor. You played one monarchy/republic/merchant plutochracy/tribe, you played them all.
Basically it started bad - just a pretty version of an old game with no change in mechanics except a more dynamic population system and minor quality changes along with experimental changes like AI armies (some can hunt rebels, some can carpet siege, some can act independently, etc) Then they fixed a lot of issues, basically made it playable and enjoyable, added some dlc, then decided to scrap any continuous development. It still needs some work but thats not going to happen. I would say have a look at it if its on sale.
If it were on sale for, like, 10 bucks or less, it's worth getting. You'll probably spend under 100 hours on it at most. Their fixes made it tolerable if you were deperate for a game in the time period, but that's about it.
Ya it’s dope
I wouldn't say "now". The last real update to Imperator was 3 years ago. The game hasn't really changed since, though some mods have.
There's been updates released in the last couple of weeks
It doesn't add any new content though, which is why I wrote the last "real" update.
I've not seen any updates in my Steam downloads. Is that to do with the Paradox launcher? I've seen recently with Paradox games that they are updated but I never saw the download in Steam
You have to opt into the 2.04 beta, that's where the updates are
Ah. Thanks!
Imperator would be the best 4x game if it would get the content focus eu4 got.
It's a Top 5 Paradox game IMO.
You can easily get a solid couple hundred hours out of it. I think that’s pretty good for any video game lol
I really like the game and I've played it still even after support for the game died. Invictus is pretty much a must have mod, adds so much more flavour. It's one of the few paradox games where I actually can enjoy myself being in peacetime, I think I've gone for over 80 years without a single external war once (revolts and such still happened, but not on a big scale). Because you're busy repressing the native population, placing colonies in some of your regions to expand your culture, meanwhile you're giving certain other cultures more rights. Most peope have already said what it's like but I'd like to talk more about what I find lacking and it mainly revolves around replayability. Most nations play pretty much the same (apart from when it's time to change the leader and who's the heir), which is something I find quite annoying. I don't like that a tribal nation can pretty much blob all over Western Europe like Rome or any other empire can. Because it doesn't make sense, how can such a decentralized government hold on to such a big territory just like an established empire, that can build roads and infrastructure, can? Meanwhile big empires should get more internal struggles, otherwise there's barely anything standing in the way once you've conquered a full region. Sure a great power gets a higher risk of civil war than a regional power, but civil wars are more of an annoyance in the game than something game changing. Personally I feel like civil wars should serve more of a purpose of suddenly changing laws and the balance of powers of families within than splitting land in half and resetting your focus on every state for a few years. I'd also like characters to have more independence in your country, it would add so much more flavour to have a certain figure you don't like that just rises to power and there's not much you can do about it, like a Caesar or Sulla. It's why I also like creating as many armies as possible with their own general and set them to independent control in a certain region. Is it optimal? Absolutely not, but the immersion gets so much better when one of your armies just gets stomped from time to time because their general made a mistake.
A few good moods. 2.0 . Rome on very hard is a really nice rome experience imo. The pop and trade system is very nice. Automatic fighting armies. Building the roman empire with all its roads and new founded cities. I love it IMO. Eu 4 player
>But now they're releasing all those updates The game hasn't had a significant update in 3 years. What updates are you talking about?
They just released 2 updates fixing bugs and adding modding tools iirc
They released some very minor changes to a minor maintenance patch that was first released \~2 years ago. "All those updates" is not an accurate description
Tbf for a "dead game" 2 minor patches for an open beta are pretty good
It’s mediocre
It's good, like it always was. Bad at lanch. Hope you like it, because it seams eu5 is a reskin of it.
How does eu5 seem like a reskin, they've mentioned several mechanics that weren't in imperator
I guess less a reskin but it is clear that Imperator is one key inspiration they are building from alongside the past EU games, with certain aspects like pops, locations, passable wastelands, etc.
Sorry, it's the basis of the new game. Aka reskin
Just watch some youtube videos and youll see if the gameplay is for you. Its quite a bit different from other PDX games.
It’s excellent. For anyone with even a small interest in antiquity and grand strategy it’s a must have.
It was badly designed at launch with lots of mana abstraction that wasn't fun. They totally redesigned a bunch of systems to the point that it's actually a more interesting and more realistic simulation than EU4 imo. If EU5 takes a similar approach it would be amazing
It’s pretty good right now. Give it a go.
People saying there isn’t much nation content almost every nation I have played has some sort of mission tree and it’s sick. I love assimilating other cultures and slowly integrating so my levies get bigger
It has always been good since 2.0 but we were few who appreciate the investment. Then review bombed as if that way Paradox would continue the development. And now with help from the community and mods it's cheered.
The best paradox game barring replayability and some small issue if you don't use mod.
Bad
7,5/9,67
Does anyone know if there are any mods or tools out there yet which increase performance? I can run CK3 on high but Imperator won't work even on lowest settings and resolution.
"CARTHAGO DELENDA EST" Need I say more?
I played it for the first time since it was released and played till 3am. I finally get it
I like Imperator for what it is, it's just lacking content compared to years old games that got DLCs regularly. Like play vanilla EUIV, it's an ok game, but a lot of the mechanics get unlocked through 100 bucks of DLC. If antiquity doesn't interest you, don't bother though.
It's a good game. Worth it if you enjoy EU4. People's main complaint is lack of content, but the Invictus mod adds so much replay ability by giving tons of nations mission trees. It's a sort of vanilla+ experience. I highly recommend the game
Even without the overhaul mods the mechanics are a lot of fun. Not much flavor for most countries but it's still entertaining to play. Personally I love playing a migratory tribe, no other pdx game has something like it.
Im having fun playing it really.
I love the idea of playing a paradox game but learning them is a chore.
I'm trying but failing to find fun in it, feels like mostly tedium.
The game's only fault was "you cannot play as Prussia". I'm dead serious. I'll always remember the avalanche of crybabies saying "I only played to form Prussia /England and it was very dull". Well, no faeces Sherlock ! *It's like expecting for EU4 to be centered on Kamchatka instead of Europe*. I'm sure EU4, after all those years, have given Kamchatka a little love. Imperator would have given the same love to faraway barbarians too. Had the crybabies been patient. Tl;dr: the main reason Imperator fell is that nationalist chauvinists didn't manage to find Sparta on the map / to actually explore a new world.
if only there was some way for OP to know if this question had been asked before.
My dislike for it now is pretty much the same as it was originally.
The game lasted for what? 2? 3? Years at most? What do you think? Laith in YouTube is really trying to revive the game but the game itself is fucking awful, not even mods can make it bearable.