Megathread: What I feel is lacking, wrong, missing, or dont like- I:R
- Thread starter Kinkness
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I was already feeling good about the game, but watching the LP where that streamer conquers Crete from an OPM start is what got me really itching to play the game. It did a good job of showing how you manipulate the diplomatic situation to your advantage and work your way through your immediate neighbours to establish yourself as the strongest. And this was just the island of Crete - the scale of this game is amazing to me. I love the detail of the map. I also liked seeing how juggling the different characters works with loyalty and trying to prevent any one person getting too powerful. I think it's the juggling that generally appeals to me - juggling diplomacy with alliances and dealing with defensive pacts and so forth; juggling different groups and people within your own nation - and I can imagine how that could get quite complex as you grow bigger.
On the other hand seeing the copy paste stability system is a bit disappointing and it's hard to conceptualise what it represents when you can be +3 stab while knee deep in civil wars. It looks like it's just a way to have there be a cost for things like no-CB or trucebreaking and you'll just aim to keep it at 1 stab most of the time. But then at least it's something I already know how to handle so it won't be a major annoyance or anything.
Overall I'm really looking forward to this. I've got that map-staring itch and EU4 with its railroad corruption from territories nonsense just isn't that much fun to play at the moment.
On the other hand seeing the copy paste stability system is a bit disappointing and it's hard to conceptualise what it represents when you can be +3 stab while knee deep in civil wars. It looks like it's just a way to have there be a cost for things like no-CB or trucebreaking and you'll just aim to keep it at 1 stab most of the time. But then at least it's something I already know how to handle so it won't be a major annoyance or anything.
Overall I'm really looking forward to this. I've got that map-staring itch and EU4 with its railroad corruption from territories nonsense just isn't that much fun to play at the moment.
I've already begun rationalizing it in my head. Yeah it's kind of silly but at the same time there are some situations where some nations were knee deep in war/civil war whilst still completely stable.
I'm looking at Rome during its darkest times of the second Punic war. They've lost three huge battles, Hannibal is marauding in Italy, it's the worst crisis they've faced since Brennus... and yet... everything is quite stable. Very few (if any) allied states have defected to Hannibal, he can't take Rome, nobody is even thinking about capitulation, Scipio is off in Spain doing what he can... a dictator is getting things done in Rome... everything is apparently quite stable. In my mind that would be a +3 stability crisis.
The year of the four emperors would also be a +3 (or maybe +2) stability crisis. There's some civil war, some battles and nobody is 100% sure how to proceed because there's no solid succession plans laid out, but everything is generally fine.
The crisis of the third century is an obvious -3 stability situation.
Stability is just a way to turn religious Power into a global bonus. Negative stability increase unhappiness of pops of your Culture as well add unrest so running negative stability for a long time can make the provinces disloyal enough to join the rebellion in a civil war, meanwhile high stability can help you avoid unrest and thus over time make the country more stable.
Stability is thus alot more important than in Europa Universalis in the way it can affect the long term stability of your nation it also have more direct impact on your economy with the effect on pop happiness and it also do affect research speed.
Stability is thus alot more important than in Europa Universalis in the way it can affect the long term stability of your nation it also have more direct impact on your economy with the effect on pop happiness and it also do affect research speed.
When you watch the two last streams, jou would say otherwise.
But on topic: i would like to see more video's from Paradox and that guy who unitied Crete wich explain more ingame stuff instead of only the battles/wars.
The early bird youtubers only got 2h to make videos and general release for youtubers seems to be the 18th which is one week Before release.
I think that Imperator has a really big potential, even from those seemingly simple mechanics (at least comparing to EU4). Pops are simple but are miles better than EU4 development, more natural, organic and it's easy to see them improved in the future. Same with character management, loyalty etc.
All in all I think that the game's core mechanics are actually nice and cleanly designed, I see them adjusted and expanded after the release. And that was not the case in Hoi4 and Stellaris where they had to tear it down and rework many of them. Characters too easy to manage? Pretty sure there will be some mods to make it harder. In Eu4 it's not even possible without reworking the game. When the first dev diaries came I was a little disappointed but I think that atm game looks (or I hope) more fun than EU4/HoI4 for me.
All in all I think that the game's core mechanics are actually nice and cleanly designed, I see them adjusted and expanded after the release. And that was not the case in Hoi4 and Stellaris where they had to tear it down and rework many of them. Characters too easy to manage? Pretty sure there will be some mods to make it harder. In Eu4 it's not even possible without reworking the game. When the first dev diaries came I was a little disappointed but I think that atm game looks (or I hope) more fun than EU4/HoI4 for me.
Personally I don't think multiplayer matches are that great at showcasing paradox games, people don't have time to really stop and do some proper planning, there is no pausing and events have to be decided on quickly. And pretty much everybody except the devs are a newbie at the game as well, if you listen to the participants it's clear that a lot of them are unaware of many of the game mechanics.
I'm going to sit down, play slow, relax with a cup of coffee and learn the game at my own pace.
I'm going to sit down, play slow, relax with a cup of coffee and learn the game at my own pace.
As discussed in my earlier thread:
2: There are many parts to keep in mind when balancing AI Diadochi and I expect we'll keep tweaking that balance long after release, I am sure we will be getting a lot of feedback on it from our players.
On the one hand we want strong viable Greek kingdoms, on the other the Seleucids must lose the eastern lands if we ever want to see a surging Parthia, Bactria or a native Persian power (and for that matter as our game starts Seleucus and Antiochus are in the middle of trying to get the various parts of the realm loyal, since it was a mess post conquest).
...
All of the above is also part of the reason we wanted this start date in the first place, if the Seleucids were already entrenched and the Antigonids already defeated then the east would be a lot more static and uninteresting.
This fear of the Seleucids becoming the equivalent of the EU3 Big Blue Blob combined with the fascination that many in the Paradox community has with the Parthians/Persians and Zoroastrianism and the desire that many have to take a "minor somewhere" (ie Parthia) and form their own "equivalent to Seleucids" has combined to form such bias.
The AI Seleucids are so inept (as I worried in my prior thread) at governing such a diverse and dis-unified realm that it didn't even take 50 years for the Seleucid revolt to turn into multiple revolts in the "Dividing the Spoils" Part 2 stream.
I, on the other hand, do not like the pops. I thought Paradox would have learned from Rome 1 or Stelaris but a ancient state does not need equal numbers of researchers as they do farmers or what not. 'Hey, you 100,000 fairly wealthy farmers, we are making you all patricians so we can research more effectively'.
The upper class at least should not be handled with pops as their numbers are quite small compared to other groups. I have not seem anything so far that shows they are handling this any differently than they did for Rome 1.
The upper class at least should not be handled with pops as their numbers are quite small compared to other groups. I have not seem anything so far that shows they are handling this any differently than they did for Rome 1.
I agree with most of OP's complaints, with a caveat - religious differences weren't actually massive. Syncretism was a thing and most of the game map was just derivatives of PIE religion and had super obvious parallels to anyone who lived at the time, that's why you have stuff like Hercules-Melqart or Ba'al-Hammon being """Saturn""". The biggest sore thumb would've been the Jews.
I'd want pops if they were actually goddamn pops instead of...whatever the hell this is. If they were V2 pops and contributed to your state in wider ways then that would actually make them worth it. Right now I fail to see the reason for any pops to exist at all.
Well in real life Bactria, Sogdiana, Cappadocia and Partia had all revolted within 60 years of game start and the Indian territories were lost to the Mauryans. And then the Celts arrived.
I'm all for clever AI but the Seleucids did face a lot of challenges holding their empire together in RL.
Well... actually, when Hannibal was at Rome's doors the Senate was almost terrified. Okay, maybe political/financial/economical/social things were good, but sort of disorder in the Republic was certainly present. The same thing during the year of the four emperors, in particular in 69 AD (the year you mentioned) it completely lacked a point of reference in the government, so everything was messed up... +3 Stability should be assigned during Augustus/Tiberius reigns or during the era of mature Republic.
I see stability as a nationwide thing. During the year of the four emperors, even with the civil war and uncertainty, the empire as a whole remained stable. The borders were manned, the provinces were under control and paid their taxes... honestly everything was pretty fine.
I dunno, I guess there's lots of ways of interpreting it.
Fair enough as many have pointed out my understand of how much religion influenced stuff may have been wrong, but I agree with the pops, which also leads into the culture meaning absolutely nothing either as a whole.. since you can just press 1 button and all your problems magically go away.
Do you play multiplayer a lot? If so then I can understand why you have such a problem with this. If not, then why don't you just not do it and instead use the cultural assimilation policy to do the converting in a more "CK2ish" way?
1) I never play multiplayer usually, and again. Please leave the whole "multiplayer is different" argument out. It isn't... Because anything you can abuse in multiplayer, you can abuse 3x worse in SP. So if you REALLY want to bring MP into the argument, you better be ready to be giving me ammunition in my argument.
2) Needing to cheese my playstyle is stupid. I don't need to cheese anything in CK2, or EU4, in either SP, or MP on the rare occasions I play MP in those games. Nor does the game magically change because I'm playing MP, to bring that argument back full circle.
From what I can see, Imperator:Rome is a shallow game, pretending to be a grand strategy. Every mechanic is shallow and simple, from trade, to armies, to generals, to family, to culture, and to religion.
More mechanics does not = deeper grander strategy.. Just because a pool of water stretches a mile, doesn't mean its suddenly deep and expansive.
This game has alot of different shallow mechanics, but those don't sum up to a grand strategy game.
Disloyal generals can be killed off easily by being sacrificed in a battle, and swooping your army in as a second attack. You can even do this quite easily without ultimately losing much more than you normally would have, and buying out a few extra merc armies to cover the loss isn't that hard.
Again trade is.. eh... It doesn't seem to effect much... I do love the fact you need to trade wood, horses, iron, etc. to be able to use the units for it. That is awesome, but again.. why the flipping F#@# do my heavy infantry suddenly get a bonus just because I'm exporting some iron? makes no flipping sense what so ever and just rips out the immersion in front of you.
Diplomacy seems to actually be the only deep part of this game, which makes me happy, but again.. with everything else in the game being so simplistic and shallow... It just adds to the over all disappointment.
Culture, and religion makes no real problems, internal civil wars, etc. are easy as hell to deal with, and with a magical press of a button and throwing some make believe points that mean nothing at the screen, you too can wash away that evil cultulre or religion over night for a mere price of a few monarch points! is utterly retarded... That stuff has no place in a game that markets itself as a GRAND strategy.
I feel like everyone is ignoring the "grand" part of the grand strategy... I:R is a great strategy, diplomacy game set in the ancient rome era, but it certainly is by no means a "Grand Strategy"...
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