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One thing that I would like to see added is some way of simulating the communication difficulties inherent in this time period. Long communication delays were one of the primary causes of the disintegration of large powers. This wasn't just an issue for the movement of armies. Communication delays made it easier for regions distant from the capital to formulate and implement their own policies that may have conflicted with the aims of the central government. Distant governors could more easily establish their own base of support and authority within the territories that they ruled. Also were often assigned to governors because they were best positioned to rapidly respond to foreign incursions.

Obviously the player must take an unrealistic level of perspective in order to play the game, but you could simulate these challenges in other ways. Maybe power costs, times and likelihood of rejection or increased resentment could result from interacting with and overriding characters located far from the capital. In addition to commanders gaining loyal cohorts, you could also have loyal cohorts and cohorts under the command of a governor get bonus to movement speed or combat in the region to which they are assigned. With the addition of the coconsul mechanic you could add other dual ruler mechanics. like maybe you establish one of your sons or a close political ally as co-emperor in order to help with administering different ends of the empire. Sure it is now cheaper and easier to directly manage affairs far from the main capital, but you are also creating a secondary center of power that might one day challenge the government for leadership.

On dual leaders and civil wars, why should the game end because the main government under the player lost? Divorce the player more from the specific political factions by allowing them to pick sides in the civil war and continue running the country regardless of who wins once the war is over. Trying to lead the nation after it has just been through a brutal civil war and is now under new leadership (a leader that may not have been the player's first choice) can be a fun challenge. After all, just because the Shah's sun overthrew him doesn't mean that it isn't still the Persian Empire that he is leading. This would also give player's more agency in matters of succession by allowing them to push the country towards civil war in order to get rid of the incompetent twit sitting on the throne in favor of his much more brilliant older brother. Of course, that means risking losses to opportunistic neighbors, but hat is an interesting choice that the player may believe is worth the risk.

I agree 1000% with everything you said. And also will give roads more meaning if they influence the penalties related to distance.
 
Sadly with the powerful moddable UI system UI files and localisation all those files are checksummed.

There should have been some notification or way to see that achievements are disabled. Many of us used basic UI mods, like the popular one to make it in 'night mode' since the overly white UI is blinding and distracting, but there was no indication that achievements were disabled due to this, which was a "waste" of many hours of our lives.
 
Hey everyone,

With Imperator: Rome, a project very close to our hearts, now released and finally in the hands of our awesome community (that’s you!), we have been taking the time to look at the feedback you’ve provided. As always, we pride ourselves on the continued support of our games and by no means will Imperator be different.

We are working towards releasing a 1.0.1 patch early next week, which we’re calling ‘Demetrius’. This patch will improve the AI, fix compatibility issues, game crashes, some multiplayer out-of-syncs, and will also contain some performance improvements.

At the same time, we have been looking at all the feedback from play-testing, our Twitch and YouTube communities, and the press for the past month and a half as we prepared for release. Now we are adding all of your feedback from Steam, the forums, and social media to that! With it, we have begun developing a major patch which is aimed for release in June.

This 1.1 patch is nicknamed ‘Pompey’ internally. We will go into more detail with upcoming development diaries before it’s released. Pompey will cover the following topics:

  • Balancing of Technology Progress, Mercenaries, Shattered Retreat, Truce Breaking, Assassinations, Governors, War Exhaustion, and Legitimacy.
  • Improving the mechanics for Population Growth, Stability, and Barbarians.
  • Tweaks to Civil War mechanics, with new power-base mechanics.
  • Naval rework, with Naval Combat mechanics and multiple ship types, as well as navigable major rivers.
  • Deeper Holding mechanics for characters, where you can give characters holdings and they can purchase new ones as they grow in wealth.
  • More character interactions.
  • New Piracy mechanics.
  • Redesigning of functionality where instead of spending power for an instant result, you now spend power to nudge it towards that result over time.
  • Better abilities to play tall, including centralising trade, impacting specific cities, etc.
  • Tribes being able to decide what units their retinues should have.
  • Dual Ruler mechanics for Roman Republic, and Consorts for Monarchies.
  • Government Abilities for all government categories.
  • ‘Quality of Life’ features like viewing all characters in a foreign country, new alerts, road building being a continuous action, and more.
  • Adding of features from previous PDS games like moving capitals and regnal numbers on monarchs
    Much more modding support.

Whilst we have already started towards patch 1.1, we will continue to look at fixing any major issues that come up between now and then as well.

For the list of currently known issues see here.

So badically.. you admit you released a non-feature complete game, and are ok with charging 40 bucks for... basically mana generator 2: lag bugaloo.

Piracy isnt a mechanic in 1.0
Naval combat? That exists? Not in 1.0
Insta-buy is gonna be even more regressive with a spend mana to nudge.. increasing the bulk mechanic of the game: wait until you has mana, spend mana, wait some more, maybe war, hopefully war engages enough to stockpile mana, repeat
 
So badically.. you admit you released a non-feature complete game, and are ok with charging 40 bucks for... basically mana generator 2: lag bugaloo.

Piracy isnt a mechanic in 1.0
Naval combat? That exists? Not in 1.0
Insta-buy is gonna be even more regressive with a spend mana to nudge.. increasing the bulk mechanic of the game: wait until you has mana, spend mana, wait some more, maybe war, hopefully war engages enough to stockpile mana, repeat

I just got terminally ill from reading that. I feel like the IQ of the forums has gone down a tad over the past few days.
 
You'd think a very successful independent development company would have the benefit of not needing to rush out their games. Surely with all the DLC and ever increasing success of game launches, which Paradox like to boast about, you'd be able to make the next big step in grand strategy better. Playing CK2 and EU4 for so many hours and buying addons I at least hoped future games would make use of the design experience gained and financial success to ensure subsequent releases would be a step up in almost every way, but Stellaris and HOI4 I found disappointingly shallow, and have no plans to buy Imperator looking at the game either. It's just a shame and a totally unnecessary regression, comparable to Bethesda with RPGs or Creative Assembly with Total War - it's like the devs forget what made their games great and, in an effort to improve the polish and accessibility, leave behind the real mechanics, which rather than just be at minimum copied over should actually be built upon as years go by. Instead we get shallower releases and are expected to buy into something that will be engaging years from now, maybe.

Come on Paradox! You've got a great team, community and the finances to make the single best strategy of all time. When it arrives, I'll buy it and play forever. :)
 
It sounds great! :) I hope for more immersion as playing Carthage. Maybe a bit different government? ^^ Also I'd love to see new flags of formable nation instead of flag from the "founder". I hope all the best for this game :)
 
One thing I would like to see is a way to move around pops more easily. At the moment you seem to be able to move them around within the same province and to any bordering cities, this means a lot of micromanagement if you want to move a few slaves to a city in another province a distance away. Is there any way we can move them anywhere maybe with a malus effect if its too far? But at least that would enable me to 'program' my cities a bit more effectively. Or would that be considered unrealistic do you think?

Either way could do with more info on the effects of the pops - which cities are the best places to move the various pops to get the most benefit etc. At the moment its just a guessing game. I am just moving most of my slaves to the province capitals but I dontr eally know if there is any real benefit in that. I know you can sort of specialse your cities by adding slaves/markets,freemen/training together but there has to be more to it than that! Pops should have other effects like having too many citizens should create corruption, but you should be required to have a certain number of citizens in the capital for the senate/governors to be able to work properly etc - like Vic 2 does it - more complexity.
 
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Just a disclaimer, I haven't been a Paradox player since EU3, HOI3 etcetera, I started playing Ck2 well into it's release when a friend introduced me to the game and taught me to play in various MP games. I absolutely loved it, as a history lover who went into IT instead, it was great to do both of my hobbies at the same time; History and gaming. I just bought the base game as my friend had the DLC already but I ended up buying it all (the important ones IMO) as I loved playing. I've got 519 hours in CK2 and I loved every single one, especially with the release of Holy Fury which added so much and is something I need to explore in further detail. I then got introduced to EU4, I was initially hesitant to play but after a while I ended up loving it and finished my first MP game as Great Britain with the same friend who introduced me to CK2. I've also played some HOI4 and Vic 2.

Now everyone knows where I stand with the previous releases of PDX and what I have played and haven't, I will continue with Imperator, a game I was incredibly excited about. I watched as much as I could from the dev clashes to streamers on Twitch whilst still trying to keep some surprise about the games events etcetera. So far I've put 34 hours into the game with a mixture of some MP games and a SP campaign. Most of it has been with my SP campaign with Rome where I have taken most if not all of Italy, Sicily, Corsica and Sardinia and I've moved into North Africa after two successful campaigns against Carthage. So far, I have enjoyed myself, being a lover of Roman History, I imagine myself as the Ciaran Hinds portrayal of Caesar in Rome and I just have a blast. I love going through my generals and seeing who they are, what they've done and looking at the family ties with other notable people within the Republic. Yesterday, after my conquest of large swathes of North Africa, I assigned a governor, a young chap with great promise. After exploring a little through my generals, I realised he was the son of my naval commander and the brother of another great general of one of my Legions posted on the border with the northern tribes who had previously fought and took lands. This for me is what I love about this game, I love this time period and out of all Paradox games is my favorite they have done so far.

I do however, have some issues with the game, most notably the wait between wars which, whilst I enjoy reading about the deaths of various people within the Republic and reading some of the events I do feel like it is a little lackluster when compared to previous PDX games I've played. I feel that like others, the UI was certainly an interesting choice and I do remember quite clearly thinking that when I saw it for the first time before release, saying I hope it doesn't stay like that. Now that I've played it, it can be difficult to try and get to where you want and doesn't give you the information you need and expect from a PDX game. Now, as you're reading this you're probably saying "Well Jackson, you've never played a PDX game at launch, you should see how they went and get back to us" to which I say this, yes, I wasn't involved in those released and I've had the benefit of playing with multiple patches and DLC to better the experience I've had with HOI4, CK2 and EU4 etcetera. However I think this is a poor excuse, just because it was done like that in the past doesn't mean it should be replicated with future releases. What I expect is that they learn from their mistakes with previous releases and put a base game out that is worth the price they release it at. I don't think it's worth £40 in it's current state and it is disappointing that rather than learning from the past, they decided release the game in it's current state. I truly believe it could have done with more time in development, I think that the Pompey patch release should have been included in the base game and if that meant that the release needed to be pushed back, so be it. I know PDX used to be a small company, but at the moment they're not as small as they used to be. I won't pretend to understand the complexities of running a business like this and what it takes to make video games nor will I pretend that a lot of AAA games with much larger budgets don't release with bugs etcetera and require patches to fix it. I do however feel that taking what you have learned from previous projects, both positives and negatives is the foundation of any project management and should be used to ensure you release a product that you are happy for people to pay full price for. Despite making some patches to fix issues and tweak features with the Demetrius and Pompey patch and the fact that they have discussions with the community, which I think is great, they seem to be underplaying how poorly this release has done in terms of community happiness, just by looking at the steam reviews, you can see this game hasn't done too well. Despite a lot of the community clearly voicing their opinions and concerns on the game, to say that a small portion of the community expectations and their own are partly out of line is somewhat disingenuous and something which I thought was poor form from PDX in my opinion.

To those who have read through my ramblings of nonsense, I salute you. I would like to finish off by saying I will continue to play this game, in fact, I plan on doing so after I have finished writing this. I will, despite the questionable DLC policy of PDX, buy their DLCs as I do truly love this company and games they make. I do think however, they need to rethink their strategy when it comes to game releases and how they package their games and DLC. I think Imperator is far from being worth the £40 price tag and needs some quite serious overhauls to the UI, non-war mechanics and gameplay (including overall flavour of countries and the macrobuilder) as well as some tweaks to the combat mechanics, mostly naval (which I understand will be addressed with the Pompey patch) and hope they whatever comes next, they keep in mind the rocky start to Imperator's no doubt long development cycle.

EDIT: After thinking about it again and playing, I want family trees as well please!

Cheers

-Jackson
 
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I love that you took the time to update us, and I especially love that you took on the feedback regarding navies and rivers even though it could be considered a less popular aspect. This kind of thing is why I have spent a thousands of hours on your games. Thanks, Paradox!
 
EDIT: Oh, and another small suggestion: let us re-name all proper nouns. IE let us rename cities, provinces, and even our empire if we wish.

On dual leaders and civil wars, why should the game end because the main government under the player lost? Divorce the player more from the specific political factions by allowing them to pick sides in the civil war and continue running the country afterwards regardless of who wins. After all, just because the Shah's son overthrew him doesn't mean that it isn't still the Persian Empire. Trying to lead the nation after it has just been through a brutal civil war and is now under new leadership (a leader that may not have been the player's first choice) can be a fun challenge. This would also give players more agency in matters of succession by allowing them to push the country towards civil war in order to get rid of the incompetent twit sitting on the throne in favor of his brilliant younger brother. Of course, that means risking losses to opportunistic neighbors, but that is an interesting choice that the player may believe is worth the risk.

I'm not sure I agree about further simulating the time delays for communication in the game, especially intra-faction (though it would be cool to see much more exacerbated communication delays between factions based on the proximity of the capital cities) but I STRONGLY agree on letting us pick a side in the civil war. I desperately want this in every game where civil wars are an option, and have always been disappointed. (Unless maybe this is in Stellaris? Sadly I've never had a civil war in Stellaris).

I'm much more of a causal 4x gamer, so my reasons are pretty simple: it's more fun to tear down the established order than to preserve it. In other words, I wanna play the rebels!
 
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Hey everyone,

With Imperator: Rome, a project very close to our hearts, now released and finally in the hands of our awesome community (that’s you!), we have been taking the time to look at the feedback you’ve provided. As always, we pride ourselves on the continued support of our games and by no means will Imperator be different.

We are working towards releasing a 1.0.1 patch early next week, which we’re calling ‘Demetrius’. This patch will improve the AI, fix compatibility issues, game crashes, some multiplayer out-of-syncs, and will also contain some performance improvements.

At the same time, we have been looking at all the feedback from play-testing, our Twitch and YouTube communities, and the press for the past month and a half as we prepared for release. Now we are adding all of your feedback from Steam, the forums, and social media to that! With it, we have begun developing a major patch which is aimed for release in June.

This 1.1 patch is nicknamed ‘Pompey’ internally. We will go into more detail with upcoming development diaries before it’s released. Pompey will cover the following topics:

  • Balancing of Technology Progress, Mercenaries, Shattered Retreat, Truce Breaking, Assassinations, Governors, War Exhaustion, and Legitimacy.
  • Improving the mechanics for Population Growth, Stability, and Barbarians.
  • Tweaks to Civil War mechanics, with new power-base mechanics.
  • Naval rework, with Naval Combat mechanics and multiple ship types, as well as navigable major rivers.
  • Deeper Holding mechanics for characters, where you can give characters holdings and they can purchase new ones as they grow in wealth.
  • More character interactions.
  • New Piracy mechanics.
  • Redesigning of functionality where instead of spending power for an instant result, you now spend power to nudge it towards that result over time.
  • Better abilities to play tall, including centralising trade, impacting specific cities, etc.
  • Tribes being able to decide what units their retinues should have.
  • Dual Ruler mechanics for Roman Republic, and Consorts for Monarchies.
  • Government Abilities for all government categories.
  • ‘Quality of Life’ features like viewing all characters in a foreign country, new alerts, road building being a continuous action, and more.
  • Adding of features from previous PDS games like moving capitals and regnal numbers on monarchs
    Much more modding support.

Whilst we have already started towards patch 1.1, we will continue to look at fixing any major issues that come up between now and then as well.

For the list of currently known issues see here.

And, if you want to learn more about the game development of Imperator, I created a thread on the subject, please do check it out! You simply have to click here!
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Johan i got one main topic i'd like to talk about. There are a lot of negative reviews for the game and although some of them may feel deserved as it is apparent this is not the final game i want to object to all those people and say: I love paradox games and i don't mind supporting the company that gave amd still gives me a lot of fun. Imperator-Rome is a dream coming true, gaming wise, for me. Keep supporting and evolving this already good game. For me it's clear that Imperator has the potential to be, if not the best, one of the best Paradox titles. Keep working hard and polish this raw gem you gave us. (one final tip, fix the problems that exist before you add new features and keep listening to your community)
 
Is there any chance we could get event chains rather then a gradual nudge? Like for example you want to fabricate a claim. So you press the button and an event pops up with different characters having different power costs and chance of success pop up, then as they progress to their goal there is a chance of positive and negative events that you can deal with in ways that may provide negative or positive on a roll for chance.