Sell me on this game.

[Lazy Sorcerer]

I never bought it because of it's reputation, but I have been hearing about how 2.0 is an amazing hidden gem. So what is so great about it compared to other Paradox games? (My favorite ones are Victoria 2 and (to a lesser extent) CK2, if that matters.)

 

[olivenkranz]

I never bought it because of it's reputation, but I have been hearing about how 2.0 is an amazing hidden gem. So what is so great about it compared to other Paradox games? (My favorite ones are Victoria 2 and (to a lesser extent) CK2, if that matters.)

I can only tell from what I personally enjoy the most, but the game has a lot more to offer than just the coming points.

Imperator has a deep combat system that is also well-understandable.
Pops simulate a population and a lot is based on them: research, the amount of troops at your disposition, tax income, goods produced for trade and local use.
There are 4 different rights a culture can have: Nobles, Citizen, Freemen and Slaves (there also are tribesmen pops, but they aren't a pop right); based on that the pops of the given culture will tend to promotoe (or demote) to that role. Nobles are research, citizen reseach and manpower, freemen are manpower and tax and slaves are pure tax. Besides for slaves, a pop's happiness will dictate its output.
I like the technology system. It works as follows: you have research produced by nobles and citizen. Depending on research ratio (based on integrated cultures), your technology has a different speed. There are 4 different technologies types. Once any increases by 1, you get an innovation. Here the really interesting part comes in: for each tech type (military, civic, religious and oratory) you have different tech trees where you can spend innovations for various bonuses. Some are minor, some innovations unlock laws or mechanics and some are just strong modifiers. Across all four types there is not even close to enough playing time to ever unlock everything (mods can change that obviously). That means that you can tailor your game to your needs or to your narrative (if roleplaying f.ex.)
I love building roads and the beautiful map. Very satisfying to watch cities appear on the map and grow larger (based on population) and roads connecting them.
There are many different buildings and most have an actual purpose (some are a bit too weak to matter sadly; looking at you market place and earthwork).
To me the building makes peace time play a lot more interesting (I like peace time and I do not enjoy endless wars without any breaks; soem are fun from time to time though)
There are some characters, but they aren't as deep or as important as in the CK series (I originally started with ck2). Their stats do matter: a high zeal stat tends to make your national stability higher than someones with a low stat and a high finesse stat makes building cheaper (did I say already that I like buildings stuff?)
In monarchies the royal family can be interacted with (marriages f.ex.) and I personally do enjoy that quite a bit. There also 6 bloodlines in vanilla (): Aiakid (Epirus), Lagid (Egypt), Alkimachid (Thrace), Antiptarid (Macedon), Argead (best by far; Alexander's blood; found in Epirus and Macedon) and Seleukid (Seleukid Empire); mods make this specifially so much better though.
Stability is a lot more dynamic than eu4 (there is none in ck2 and I haven't played Vic2), but the effects of agressive expansion are more limited on your country.

I am sure other players will have different takes - that was mine.

 

[Barron of Gondor]

When the game launched; it took the worst parts of both CK2 and EU4. You had to manage large numbers of characters like CK2 but didn't have the fun an interesting story that came from those characters. Then it took the Arcade/Board Game feel of EU4, but also tried to make it complex at the same time. You built individual Armies, and Fleets. Spent manna; the POPs at launch were more akin to EU4's development than a "Portion of Population". And the entire game was just a map painter.

With all the changes from the patches(Marius is just one of them) the game is much more in-depth; and deserves the title "Grand Strategy".
It's lost the EU4 Arcade/Board Game feel entirely. And I wouldn't be comfortable calling it a CK2/EU4 mix. It is actually more akin to a CK3/Stellaris mix. No, your not in space. But the Culture Management feels a lot like Species Management from Stellaris. And the POP's are now "Portion of Population" like Stellaris' POP's.(They are not like Victoria's Pops). The tiles on the map are in a hierarchy like CK3, and are roughly the size of CK3's Barony, Duchy, and Kingdom. There is no county size tile. So a Settlement/City/Metropolis(those 3 are just different types of "Territories") are like a Barony; a Provence is like a Duchy; and a Region is like a Kingdom; then you can think of your tag as the Empire rank. All those territories are like Stellaris' Planets. Some Territories, are Cities or would be good locations to found Cities. A City is similar to a large inhabited planet in stellaris; a lot of POPs live there, and produce most of your income. A settlement is similar to a mix between a small inhabited planet, and an uninhabitable planet. It holds a relatively small amount of POP's, produces very little, but you need them for base recourses(like food, iron etc.) and also POP growth. The Warfare is close to CK3's Levies and Men At Arms, although more in depth. You have Levy Armies, and Legions. Levy Armies are generally of worse quality than Legions, however not made up of a "Levy" unit type like in CK3. They are instead based on the dominant culture's Levy template. So Roman Levies will have a lot of Heavy Infantry, and Iberian Levies will have a lot of Light Infantry. Legions are like Men at Arms; You can customize your Legions to the Template you want, however they are standing armies, so you must pay for them at all times. The game definitely has Early, Mid, and Late game feelings, like Stellaris. in the early game, most of the nations are small(their are notable exceptions) the mid game has a lot of medium powers, and late game has small amounts of large powers.

The game is truly a hidden gem in PDX and I would love to see them work on it more. Rather than yet another EU4 mission pack, or HOI4 Focus tree.

 

[Pugmak]

One aspect of Imperator I really enjoy is replayability.

Example: I've had the game since launch and have been playing it off and on since.

And, I've only ever played as Rome. Yep. I'm that boring.

But, even in what I call "the short game" which consists of conquering the Italian peninsula, Sicily, and such, with some expansion into Greece and raids on Carthage, the game can play out very differently. The various AI nations aren't seemingly tied into set alliance patterns and the timing of who allies with whom and when can vary quite a bit.

So, the game will often throw a twist at you and that keeps it pretty fresh.

That, and the game dev stopped some time ago. The mods are plentiful and you don't have to worry about them being broke by a new patch.