Megathread: What I feel is lacking, wrong, missing, or dont like- I:R

[Kinkness]

Edit: As of release, I can say 2 things.

1) I was 100% correct in everything I said below..

2) I enjoy it more than I thought I would, but.. the "Grand" is definetly not there.


I'm an avid lover of CK2, Europa, Vic, and HOI (albeit I hate 4 with a passion, as its too simplistic).

When originally hearing about Imperator I was super excited. Taking the best bits of CK2, Europa, Vic and compiling it into a roman era? Holy frack, miracles do exist! A pseudo hybrid game where you have a family and playing as a ruler, but focusing more on the grand empire "paint the map" like Europa, but where the make up of your people actually matter (unlike CK2).

But.. the more I watch lets plays, the more I watch PDX's dev clashes, etc. The more iffy I feel about Imperator.
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Dev Clashes:

This was a huge red flag one to me, and made me watch things more closely over all. Where 80% of the dev clash was just headbutting armies non stop. Very little actual internal building, or problems. Very little internal politics, which was supposedly something that was supposed to matter, where general loyalties, province loyalties, etc. was supposed to stop aggressive expansion, and AE itself being a huge internal issue.. but it never was. Not once.

Maybe they nerfed how much of a problem this was originally going to be because of how short the time frame is, but that just leads to things being meaningless.

Lets Plays:

It's one of the things I noticed in most of PDX"s later games. They begin to add mechanics that are worthless, meaningless, and add nothing of value when they should on a grander scale, or larger scale, as I mentioned above..

Example is for instance religion in Imperator.. seems to be completely pointless as a whole other than to modify a few %'s that are utterly worthless as a whole itself. The Dev Clash, and other lets plays nearly almost always ignore this point, religious differences, etc. at this point in time should be HUGE, as much so as cultural differences, which also is barely worth mentioning, when again that should be HUGE....

ANother example is when people were going to colonize.. Already having pops in area's, or taking over countries.. Yea ok your provinces are disloyal, unhappy, but not much comes of it. Ontop of that, all you have to do to convert their culture and religion to yours is press 2 buttons, and instant conversion over night...

This is even more dumbed down and simplistic than Europa's where you had to actually wait a good while for the conversion to go through, and through that time you would be causing even more unrest. It was a trade off, a meaningful choice, at least more meaningful than right now...

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The more I watch, and the more I really get into the nitty gritty the less I like what I see. They took the best of 3 awesome games, watered down those mechanics to near pointlessness, and then bashed them all together in the hopes they'll work each other out is the ultimate feeling I'm getting from what I'm seeing..

Then you have red flags of complete lazy game design, like the trade system. On the surface it seems in depth and awesome, but then you realize just how lazy it was when you get down too it and take the wool from your eyes.

Why would exporting Iron suddenly make my soldiers discipline better? lol.. "Hey you soldier! Don't worry you'll be able to take orders from me better under a hail of arrows because our empire is now exporting Iron!" How fking stupid is that lol...

You realize the trade system is so simplistic when you realize a basic programmer with almost no programming knowledge could re create it in less than a day, and probably with deeper mechanics to boot.

Exporting should of been less lazily done, making breaking alliances much more costly, and creating alliances much more important. Add that in with much harder and more meaningful Vic mechanics where your peoples culture, and religious differences can cause bigger problems, and you have a game about empire building + stability + trade + alliances that matter, etc. Because getting that Iron isn't as easy as gobbling up the nearest 4 countries, gg, oh now you need Fur, gobble up the next 2... ahh don't worry you have enough monarch points now, just spam those into stability and convert your provinces culture instantly GG......

My visions of the games may be somewhat skewed because of the state of HOI4 being incredibly dumbed down in comparison to 3, (the only argument I keep hearing is that the UI, and management was better done, which it was, but everything else was insanely dumbed down), and then Stellaris being an absolute mess since release... I LOVE stellaris still.. but... its a royal mess of mechanics that barely function, over half of it meaningless (like governments, still mean NOTHING as a whole, or the traits, or anything in the grand scheme of things), and its just a mess... I'm am worried Imperator will just end up being the same..

Edit: 4/15/2019

I just wanted to add a little more to it.


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"...

 

[Vercerotix]

Personaly i'm hype but what I saw until now. Sure everything isn't perfect but it's look good.

For the iron bonus I think that it means more than your soldiers are better equip to fight in offensiv and defensiv.

Maybe that the problems that you describe become better with higher difficulties ? I don't remember if the dev played in normal mod or not.

Personaly my only complaint is that you play a country more than a dynasty of characters. try to maintain your family in power in a republic or try to gain the next elections could be very interesting.

Except this for the moment my interest is always present.

 

[DukeDayve]

The devs are playing in multiplayer aren't they? Against each other? MP in any strategy game is always very different to single player. In single player you can roleplay and take things slowly, oversee every little detail of your empire, but in multiplayer you're obliged to just get as many troops as possible and ignore everything as much as you possibly can.

 

[halbort]

I think the fact that so many influencers had trouble with rebellions and civil wars means that internal dynamics are not trivial.

 

[Gibsy]

The dev clash version of the game was overtuned, especially manpower. They addressed this already. Manpower replenishes much slower.

I don't agree with anything else you said. You act as if EU4 is the gold standard for "fun". Sorry mate, not even close.

 

[Kinkness]

The dev clash version of the game was overtuned, especially manpower. They addressed this already. Manpower replenishes much slower.

I don't agree with anything else you said. You act as if EU4 is the gold standard for "fun". Sorry mate, not even close.

EU4 is actually the lowest of my favorite list. So I don't know how you came to that conclusion.

 

[Kinkness]

The devs are playing in multiplayer aren't they? Against each other? MP in any strategy game is always very different to single player. In single player you can roleplay and take things slowly, oversee every little detail of your empire, but in multiplayer you're obliged to just get as many troops as possible and ignore everything as much as you possibly can.

That's the most absurd bs I've ever read no offense... Is CK2 magically less deep, strategic just because you play multiplayer? of course not.. Do mechanics or events suddenly become less important, or vassals suddenly becoming less important? of course not...

Saying it was multiplayer so "was different" is just stupid.

 

[DukeDayve]

That's the most absurd bs I've ever read no offense... Is CK2 magically less deep, strategic just because you play multiplayer?

Actually... yes. In multiplayer your biggest threat is other players because they're smarter than the AI can ever be, so you cheese the vassal mechanics to make sure they never rebel.

I believe NK mode was one thing people used to use before Paradox nerfed it.

 

[Kinkness]

Actually... yes. In multiplayer your biggest threat is other players because they're smarter than the AI can ever be, so you cheese the vassal mechanics to make sure they never rebel.

I believe NK mode was one thing people used to use before Paradox nerfed it.

You completely miss the point, and what you just typed has nothing to do with the argument.

 

[Kinkness]

The dev clash version of the game was overtuned, especially manpower. They addressed this already. Manpower replenishes much slower.

I don't agree with anything else you said. You act as if EU4 is the gold standard for "fun". Sorry mate, not even close.

SOrry mate, but you may find yourself slowly becoming less rose tinted with Imperator as you play it.. Seeing as Imperator is 90% EU4 with a different cosmetic wrapper. Of course there are some mechanical changes, but ultimately they are the same thing that's been even more simplified mechanically than EU4, but ultimately the same thing as a whole (like colonization, or converting culture.. same thing as EU4 ultimately, different mechanic and even more simplified).. 5% vic, and 5% CK2 90% EU4.. Since you seem to dislike EU4, you wont like Imperator much when you come to this realization and fact.

 

[Gibsy]

SOrry mate, but you may find yourself slowly becoming less rose tinted with Imperator as you play it.. Seeing as Imperator is 90% EU4 with a different cosmetic wrapper. Of course there are some mechanical changes, but ultimately they are the same thing that's been even more simplified mechanically than EU4, but ultimately the same thing as a whole (like colonization, or converting culture.. same thing as EU4 ultimately, different mechanic and even more simplified).. 5% vic, and 5% CK2 90% EU4.. Since you seem to dislike EU4, you wont like Imperator much when you come to this realization and fact.

I'm well aware of all of that, and I never said that EU4 wasn't fun. lmao

 

[Reman]

The fact that Paradox made the dev clash one of the biggest promotions for the game was probably a mistake. Mosh pit MP looks very different to SP in every Paradox game, and Imperator is almost certainly no different. It's rather difficult to see the internal struggles and development the players are making when the casters are only interested in the flashy battles, which makes the world of Imperator look more like a WW1 hellscape than like classical antiquity.

 

[Lord Tataraus]

Dev Clashes:

This was a huge red flag one to me, and made me watch things more closely over all. Where 80% of the dev clash was just headbutting armies non stop. Very little actual internal building, or problems. Very little internal politics, which was supposedly something that was supposed to matter, where general loyalties, province loyalties, etc. was supposed to stop aggressive expansion, and AE itself being a huge internal issue.. but it never was. Not once.

Maybe they nerfed how much of a problem this was originally going to be because of how short the time frame is, but that just leads to things being meaningless.

The Dev clash started during the balancing phase of the production, this lots of things still in flux and they've adjusted balance as the clash went on. Additionally, many of the players are QA whose entire job is to break the game as much as possible to find bugs and imbalance, it's not surprising that they know how to optimize things. But even then plenty of the devs had internal issues. Also, the casters have a bias to show the wars, not the minutiae of internal management to make an entertaining stream. That doesn't mean the devs were doing all of that stuff.

Lets Plays:

It's one of the things I noticed in most of PDX"s later games. They begin to add mechanics that are worthless, meaningless, and add nothing of value when they should on a grander scale, or larger scale, as I mentioned above..

Example is for instance religion in Imperator.. seems to be completely pointless as a whole other than to modify a few %'s that are utterly worthless as a whole itself. The Dev Clash, and other lets plays nearly almost always ignore this point, religious differences, etc. at this point in time should be HUGE, as much so as cultural differences, which also is barely worth mentioning, when again that should be HUGE....

ANother example is when people were going to colonize.. Already having pops in area's, or taking over countries.. Yea ok your provinces are disloyal, unhappy, but not much comes of it. Ontop of that, all you have to do to convert their culture and religion to yours is press 2 buttons, and instant conversion over night...

This is even more dumbed down and simplistic than Europa's where you had to actually wait a good while for the conversion to go through, and through that time you would be causing even more unrest. It was a trade off, a meaningful choice, at least more meaningful than right now...

Religion in this time period was a lot less of a deal in terms of conflict then in later periods. In fact lots of these empires made it a point to accept and even integrate local religions into the state religion, polytheism is inherently more tolerant than monotheism. Though I do agree the instant conversion for culture/religion would be better implemented to take some time.

Then you have red flags of complete lazy game design, like the trade system. On the surface it seems in depth and awesome, but then you realize just how lazy it was when you get down too it and take the wool from your eyes.

Why would exporting Iron suddenly make my soldiers discipline better? lol.. "Hey you soldier! Don't worry you'll be able to take orders from me better under a hail of arrows because our empire is now exporting Iron!" How fking stupid is that lol...

Agreed the bonus for exporting is a little weird, but honestly doesn't really bother me since it is there to incentive exporting vs. keeping the goods for the surplus bonus.

You realize the trade system is so simplistic when you realize a basic programmer with almost no programming knowledge could re create it in less than a day, and probably with deeper mechanics to boot.

That's pretty uncalled for, you obviously have no idea what programming a game is like...also, you are critiquing a design decision which has little to do with how easy it is to implement.

Overall, I'm still pretty hyped about this game. I don't expect it to be perfect, I would have been happy with EU4 in antiquity, but this is already much better than that. And really, take dev clashes and let's plays with a grain of salt. All of them are on outdated or still in development builds and only recently had balance changes finalized. Though we know even more planned balance changes are coming in a post-launch patch. We really won't know what of these balance concerns are valid until we get our hands on the game.

 

[Irons_Of_Hearts]

To me Paradox's games are always fun at release plus the first couple of patches. Then the games lose their charm with more dubious features being added, "rebalance", etc.
I expect I: R to be a fun game, but I doubt I would find it fun after a dozen patches and reworked features. I remain optimistic however. CK2 got sort of back on track, after all.

 

[Denkt]

First of I think we need to play or atleast see the release version of the game, especially since many important Changes have happen or will happen since the dev Clash started.

Dev Clashes:

This was a huge red flag one to me, and made me watch things more closely over all. Where 80% of the dev clash was just headbutting armies non stop. Very little actual internal building, or problems. Very little internal politics, which was supposedly something that was supposed to matter, where general loyalties, province loyalties, etc. was supposed to stop aggressive expansion, and AE itself being a huge internal issue.. but it never was. Not once.

Maybe they nerfed how much of a problem this was originally going to be because of how short the time frame is, but that just leads to things being meaningless.

I have seen many player nations collapsing because of internal conflicts which pretty much meant defeat and players who did not conduct diplomacy careful have often been killed by the ai nations. The main issue was they started with an early version with the dev Clash and implemented many important Changes later on such as no longer being able to sell Power or the Manpower nerf which makes Manpower more precious and they have also said that mercs is going to get a nerf.

Lets Plays:

It's one of the things I noticed in most of PDX"s later games. They begin to add mechanics that are worthless, meaningless, and add nothing of value when they should on a grander scale, or larger scale, as I mentioned above..

Example is for instance religion in Imperator.. seems to be completely pointless as a whole other than to modify a few %'s that are utterly worthless as a whole itself. The Dev Clash, and other lets plays nearly almost always ignore this point, religious differences, etc. at this point in time should be HUGE, as much so as cultural differences, which also is barely worth mentioning, when again that should be HUGE....

ANother example is when people were going to colonize.. Already having pops in area's, or taking over countries.. Yea ok your provinces are disloyal, unhappy, but not much comes of it. Ontop of that, all you have to do to convert their culture and religion to yours is press 2 buttons, and instant conversion over night...

This is even more dumbed down and simplistic than Europa's where you had to actually wait a good while for the conversion to go through, and through that time you would be causing even more unrest. It was a trade off, a meaningful choice, at least more meaningful than right now...

As far as I can tell from the vidoes, pop actions such as instant religious conversion is seldom used and for good reason because it is extreamly expensive and impossible to use on a large scale, they are only suited for nations with very small population who likely need the most help as nations with large population are powerful. Policies have opportunity cost with Culture conversion not being the no brainer some people make it out to be because using it mean not using other policies and having your nation being of your Culture greatly limit tyranny based actions as only pops of your Culture care about tyranny.

Happiness of pop directly affect their productivity which can have massive impact on your country. Unhappy pops will also create unrest which also reduce the productivity of the city and will slowly reduce the loyalty of the province which in turn make your nations more vurnable to civil war and rebellions as disloyal provinces wont support you as far as I know and also Count towards rebellion and civil war.

One way you can run multicultural and multireligious empires is by using governours with local religion and Culture as pops very much like being ruled by their own people rather than foreigners, this however have the drawback that foreign characters have less max loyalty.

Religion also affect religious unity which affect the omen Power as well as how much legtimacy monarchs get when they inherit the throne.

Then you have red flags of complete lazy game design, like the trade system. On the surface it seems in depth and awesome, but then you realize just how lazy it was when you get down too it and take the wool from your eyes.

This assume that simple mean lazy which is not generally the case. The trade system is built upon the EU: Rome trade system but improved in several ways. The base of the trade system is that it should not use up much of the player time and consider that you have to setup 100+ trade routes during one game, setting up a trade route should not be a difficult thing to do.

Why would exporting Iron suddenly make my soldiers discipline better? lol.. "Hey you soldier! Don't worry you'll be able to take orders from me better under a hail of arrows because our empire is now exporting Iron!" How fking stupid is that lol...

Discipline represent the general fighting ability. Having surplus iron could represent having access to better quality Equipment which would improve the fighting ability. From design Point you are not going to have access to all trade goods in the capital and you have too few trade routes to get the capital surplus bonus for all trade goods so you have to choose which bonuses to get.

You realize the trade system is so simplistic when you realize a basic programmer with almost no programming knowledge could re create it in less than a day, and probably with deeper mechanics to boot.

This assume you know the code for the trade system and while it may look simple on the Surface don't mean the code is simple.

Exporting should of been less lazily done, making breaking alliances much more costly, and creating alliances much more important. Add that in with much harder and more meaningful Vic mechanics where your peoples culture, and religious differences can cause bigger problems, and you have a game about empire building + stability + trade + alliances that matter, etc. Because getting that Iron isn't as easy as gobbling up the nearest 4 countries, gg, oh now you need Fur, gobble up the next 2... ahh don't worry you have enough monarch points now, just spam those into stability and convert your provinces culture instantly GG......

As far as I can tell religion and Culture in Imperator: Rome cause far more issues than it do in Victoria 2 but Imperator: Rome unlike Vicky 2 offers mechanics to tackle these issues. Alliances matters alot given I have seen players lost wars because they did ignore enemy Alliances or did not spend the time they should on getting allies. Also Imperator: Rome use a Alliance system built on Power rankings which allow for cascading Alliances if a stronger Power guarantee a nation of a lower Power ranking. I found Victoria 2 be amongst the easier paradox games because there is not really much that can hurt you, meanwhile the ai or civil war can kill you or set you back alot in Imperator: Rome.

SOrry mate, but you may find yourself slowly becoming less rose tinted with Imperator as you play it.. Seeing as Imperator is 90% EU4 with a different cosmetic wrapper. Of course there are some mechanical changes, but ultimately they are the same thing that's been even more simplified mechanically than EU4, but ultimately the same thing as a whole (like colonization, or converting culture.. same thing as EU4 ultimately, different mechanic and even more simplified).. 5% vic, and 5% CK2 90% EU4.. Since you seem to dislike EU4, you wont like Imperator much when you come to this realization and fact.

Yes it is so simple that one of the most powerful nation at the start of the game completely collpased while winning a war simply because the player did not take well care about the internal situation of their country.​

 

[Sabinus]

It would be easier to adress and discuss all your points, OP, if you could point out exactly what would you want to see instead, because saying "Trading system is simplistic" can mean a lot of things, to be fair. There is a decent amount of trade goods from what I've seen, there are events related with trade and many side mechanics that affect it as well. So, do you mean you want to see more trade goods or more events or just overhaul of the entire system and if so, then in what way?

1) From what I heard, this game has much stronger emphasis on trade and keeping your nation from internal turmoils than EU4. Devs made it pretty clear on numerous occassions. Also you don't need a complicated trade system to be a good one. All you really need is to make trade goods valuable, numerous and introduce Supply & Demand system (which doesn't really have to be hard-coded into the game, as players and AI can pursue valuable goods in their own way), everything else in unnecessary, but a welcome addition. Some of the best economic games, like Port Royale, had very simple, but addictive system that probably "inexperienced programmer could implement".

2) Religion did played a role back then, but like it has been said; polytheism is way more tolerant towards other faiths than monotheism. In multicultural societies it was not uncommon to pay respect to the gods of other religious groups (for example; one could pray/make offer to two different gods of sea before setting sails, just to make sure that gods' favor is on his side) and some gods were accepted into already established pantheons without any opposition.

3) If you are exporting goods, then it means that you have abundance of them. It wouldn't make sense otherwise. In case of iron it might mean that your soldiers are better equipped, because you were able to supply them with better gear or they were able to afford better gear, because prices were lower. Also the game is complex enough that we don't really know if there is some special perk behind this morale boost or is it a common thing, which I don't have any problems with. It kinda makes sense.

I'd rather have fewer, but useful mechanics than abundance of useless ones.

Besides, can we wait for the release of the game before we make our mind about it?

 

[Flamur]

Example is for instance religion in Imperator.. seems to be completely pointless as a whole other than to modify a few %'s that are utterly worthless as a whole itself. The Dev Clash, and other lets plays nearly almost always ignore this point, religious differences, etc. at this point in time should be HUGE, as much so as cultural differences, which also is barely worth mentioning, when again that should be HUGE....

I probably should have just stopped reading after this bit. This time period is probably one of the least influential periods when it comes to religion. They cared about religion probably as much as they do in Game of Thrones. People had different Gods, it's normal, you pray for yours and I'll pray for mine. If only modern day was as simple as back then.

So no, it shouldn't be HUGE.

And it's been well documented from dev clash to dev clash that they have been nerfing and buffing mechanics as a direct result of their sessions. Some things are harder to predict until you have people trying to exploit things (and people try to exploit things in multiplayer far more than in single player. Beating your comrade is far more important, and harder, than beating the AI). Heck, even in the dev diaries sometimes they have to re-go over a previous mechanic because they've changed it as a result of play.

There absolutely are very plain/simplistic mechanics in the game that will no doubt get overhauled as time goes by (probably by directed DLC's). It's just how Paradox approaches these things. Try to get an intricate game ready for market, and then revisit mechanics and develop them with player feedback for free patches or DLC's for complete overhauls. Compare vanilla CK/EU to their current forms. No one in their right mind would suggest those games be delayed by a few years till we hopefully got all the perfect mechanics in there. We all enjoyed them for hours and hours from day x.

 

[Tiramisu]

Still u need to play a full game-play to say something about it.

 

[jdavis86]

The fact that Paradox made the dev clash one of the biggest promotions for the game was probably a mistake. Mosh pit MP looks very different to SP in every Paradox game, and Imperator is almost certainly no different. It's rather difficult to see the internal struggles and development the players are making when the casters are only interested in the flashy battles, which makes the world of Imperator look more like a WW1 hellscape than like classical antiquity.

This rings true to me. I'm enjoying the dev clash but haven't followed development too closely. The endless truce breaking seems especially strange and annoying.

OP, I share your sentiments about HOI4. I didn't even fire it up for the free man the guns patch. My mood may change, but I think HOI4 overall has been a pretty colossal disappointment.

Right now I think I'll buy IR though. I do wish paradox would spend a bit more time with immersion. Especially when it comes to connecting players to whatever abstraction they're making for gameplay purposes.

 

[Zolotaya]

This was a huge red flag one to me, and made me watch things more closely over all. Where 80% of the dev clash was just headbutting armies non stop. Very little actual internal building, or problems. Very little internal politics, which was supposedly something that was supposed to matter, where general loyalties, province loyalties, etc. was supposed to stop aggressive expansion, and AE itself being a huge internal issue.. but it never was. Not once.

A stream where you observe the players from the outside without any inside knowledge or commentary from those players' perspective is going to give you a misleading picture of what is actually going on.

Perhaps watching the "Dividing the Spoils streams from both the player perspectives and then the overview as an observer stream directly from Paradox would be a better sample to use.

In the developer clashes, you don't see Egypt bankrolling other powers, allowing them to avoid internal collapse or you don't realize that there are agreements to play out between the players ... you only are made aware of them after the fact if at all when the players talk about them for less than 5 minutes a session.

With the Divide the Spoils stream, the players are actually discussing the game from their individual perspective, so you learn that the Phrygia player has a totally different idea of what is fun than the Egyptian player. Luckily Paradox did get a variety of different play-styles, none of which you really see play out in the official Paradox observer stream - why? Because the streamers are not concerned with the same things as the actual players themselves.

So you end up watching Rose's fight against Carthage and her fanboy gushing all over her for defeating Carthage. All you see is just another war, one among several already watched.

So you really do not see what a player actually is doing internally.

All this said, doesn't mean there are not concerns. There are always concerns and issues to address... multiplayer assassination spam is an obvious issue and I hope the devs nip it in the bud now instead of waiting for live release like they did in Crusader Kings 2.

My personal concern is the Seleucid AI being able to handle the complex situation within the Empire ... every single stream and Let's Play shows problems destroying the empire within 50 years ... while historically, it took 200 years and Rome's challenge to cause major issues. I know most of this community have a bias against them - but having a perpetual sacrificial cow that rarely, if ever, acts historical is something that I really find disturbing and worrisome.

Even when a "good" player like SirRogers plays the Seleucids, they fall flat on their face. This is something I brought up a while ago and I have not been reassured in anything I've seen so far.