Imperator: Rome - Preview with Game Director Johan Andersson

[anastiel]

Imperator: Rome - Preview with Game Director Johan Andersson

Discuss about this video
What did you guys think about the video? which strong and weak point? And what would you like to see in the next videos?

 

[Nicolas-]

I like how trade is going to work both ways, intra and inter. So basically you can choose to either trade goods between your own states to maximize your local bonuses, or trade the surplus with other nations (probably for gold).

I think this game will be really more in depth, economy-wise, compared to EU4 and Victoria 2.

I think that battles will also have a lot of unpredictability, which is good. Nothing is predetermined. I see that units have bonuses and penalties against other types. And I think army composition will be very important too. This is what I liked about HOI4, unlike EU4, and I'm glad that they implemented this in Rome 2.

In another video, Johan mentioned that expanding too much brings more challenges, as you have way more characters to interact with and potentially appease, pops and trade to micro. And I really think it's great. Because right now in EU4, managing a large empire isn't hard. However, in Rome 2, it seems like it's going to be more challenging, and that's how it should be.

He also said, that Generals have loyalty, and I think this is great. In EU4, your great 6/6/6 generals are taken for granted. They fight for you no matter what, which is a bit unrealistic. I think trying to keep your generals loyal and happy is also going to require a bit of skill.

Based on all the information so far, I think this game is going to be less of a "map painter" than the other paradox titles. Yes expanding is always good, but do so with caution. It'll require some skill and micro to keep your large empire stable too.

 

[JCivX]

This video made me much more optimistic about the game (and I was already looking forward to it). It's an ambitious project for sure and I'm sure there will be some game areas at release where many of us feel they didn't go far enough etc. But if they can execute what they have planned, it is sounding VERY promising indeed. Sounds like it has the potential to be the most refined PDS game yet.

 

[blusarge27]

First, thanks for the video, been waiting patiently to see the whole presentation instead of just the bits and pieces we've been getting.

That map just gets more beautiful each time I see it, and I love how much you can zoom in and change the angle.
Really happy to see that trade is going to be more meaningful and engaging than the EU4 style of throwing merchants around to squeeze out a few more ducats. I look forward to seeing just how important Rome's importing of grain from Egypt will be.

Also nice to see the natural pop growth, and the interaction we'll have with them, promoting them and such.
And of course the military side seems promising too, it looks like army composition will be really important. As well as knowing not only how many, but what kinds of troops, your enemy has could be crucial to winning battles.

And finally, that portrait editor looks fantastic. I wonder if they'll release that with the game. I'm also wondering now if we're going to get similar tools like Nudge for HOI4 for map editing. I hope so! I can see a lot of good things mod-wise coming out of this.

All in all, the more I see of the game the more excited I get. Can't wait for those dev diaries to start rolling through.

 

[Kazanov]

The game looks amazing, i want to play it right now! just take my money!

I just loved the pops and trade mechanics, now we have to wait to see how they work differently for Carthaginians and greeks.

 

[hermithill]

Thanks for the video.

 

[JCivX]

I can only imagine how good this game will be in 4 years with all the extra expansions. And I'm not saying that sarcastically. I'm pretty confident it will be a great game and fun to play at release (like EU4 was, I've heard worse things about HOI4 though) but imagining this game at a later stage of its development cycle just makes me drool even more.

 

[anastiel]

user LordMackie in reddit have write this

Here is a written summary for people who can't watch it for whatever reason:

• They show us the map. Here is a screencap I quickly took. Sorry if there is a better version somewhere else
  
  
• 400+ Countries
  
  
• Resources (Civic, Oratory, Military, Religious, Gold, Stability, Manpower, and Tyranny)
  
  • Civic: Basically political power from Hoi4 or Influence from stellaris, Used to pass laws or buy technologies. Used for Internal politics only it would seem.
  • Oratory: Similar to the Civic resource but for diplomacy and external politics.
  • Military: For traditions (not sure what he means here; I would assume similar to army and navy tradition from EU4) and military abilities
  • Religious: for "calling down omens, stabbing pigs and doing important activities". Pretty vague but it sounds neat.
  • The previous four resources are obtained from ruler stats (think Europa Universalis) and matching ideas (again, sounds like EU but I'm not 100%) with government types.
  • Gold, Stability, and Manpower. Which, unless this is going to be your first Paradox game shouldn't need an explanation.
  • Tyranny: "Impersoning people for no reasons, accidentally assassinating political opponents". Again kinda vague. It's apparently a stat pulled from EU: Rome but I never played that so I'm not sure what it is. Probably a measure of how much absolute power you are wielding / how tyrannical you are. Others feel free to correct me and shed light for us that do not know.
• Pops
  
  • 4 pops types: Citizens, Freemen, Tribesmen, Slaves
  • Each pop type has their own happiness, culture, religion and revolt risk.
  • Citizens provide research and commerce
  • Freemen provides manpower
  • Tribesmen provide a tiny bit of manpower and tiny bit of tax, basically the "uncivilized" people in your empire. Tribal nation will be predominately tribesmen.
  • Slaves provide gold, acquired by conquering nations. No mention if you can have too many or if there is any downside to having a lot of them.
  • Each Province (If you've played EU4, Provinces are called cities and states are called provinces in Imperator) gets its own growth rate.
  • You can manually promote pops. I imagine balancing the numbers of each pop is a big gameplay element to managing your empire.
• Trade Goods, about 40 of them. List not given. Each province (State or region) provides 1 (or multiple?) trade good. Each trade good provides a flat bonus and each additional resource of that same type will add an additional bonus. (For instance, 1 grain might give you +20 growth in all provinces and each additional grain will give you +5 growth. This is just an example he gave and is probably not going to be the final numbers)
  
  
• Can establish trade routes with other countries to gain access to their resources and vice versa. Countries can only export surplus resources so if you only have 1 grain, you can't export it.
  
  
• 9 Military Unit Types: Archers, Light Infantry, Heavy Infantry, Mounted Archers, Light Cavalry, Heavy Cavalry, Elephant Cavalry, Desert Cavalry, & Chariots. Some units are restricted by your military traditions (i.e. Romans can't use chariots), Some are restricted by resources (if you don't have access to Elephants, you can't use Elephant Cavalry). Easily moddable.
  
  
• There will be characters you can interact with but you play "the spirit of a country" and not the characters. Sounds like a blend between EU4 and CKII. They will supposedly be really important nonetheless but information was limited as it sounds like he wasn't allowed to give too much information on character mechanics.
  
  
• You use Armies to build roads that help your units move quicker.
  
  
• Cities are physical objects on the map (And they are pretty numerous) and they will grow as the populations of your provinces grow.
  
  
• Number of pop decides how many buildings you can build in a province.
  
  
• Armies are composed of each unit type listed above in blocks of 1000. So similar to EU4 it looks like the smallest army you can have is 1000 of a certain type.
  

SPECULATION AND OPINONS BELOW:

• He doesn't mention anything about it at all but it LOOKED like you have a lot more control of the tactics an army uses on the battlefield or how they operate on the map. No idea, but there are a lot of options.
  
  
• Character creator looks fucking neat-o. Also characters age and the change in looks is a lot more natural than what you'd see in CKII.
  

And the video ends. Very little gameplay is actually shown. They just pan around the map and show what comes up when you click a province and army or whatever. Not really going to explain that part. Just watch the video when you can. Game looks pretty cool.

Edit: Formatting and Grammar

 

[Darth.]

I can only imagine how good this game will be in 4 years with all the extra expansions. And I'm not saying that sarcastically. I'm pretty confident it will be a great game and fun to play at release (like EU4 was, I've heard worse things about HOI4 though) but imagining this game at a later stage of its development cycle just makes me drool even more.

This same line of thought caused me to read through the EU4 base game dev diaries yesterday lol. EU4 was so different back then....I hope Imperator: Rome ends up with a patch 1.25 too. With Johan having learned from developing EU4, I imagine Rome will be much better than EU4 was at release. Imagining how good it'll be 25 patches later with added provinces (considering we're starting with 7000!), takes me to my happy place This opinion might not be very common since I have no problems with the Paradox DLC policy while others do.

 

[Yavanion]

This same line of thought caused me to read through the EU4 base game dev diaries yesterday lol. EU4 was so different back then....I hope Imperator: Rome ends up with a patch 1.25 too. With Johan having learned from developing EU4, I imagine Rome will be much better than EU4 was at release. Imagining how good it'll be 25 patches later with added provinces (considering we're starting with 7000!), takes me to my happy place This opinion might not be very common since I have no problems with the Paradox DLC policy while others do.

Cant but agree, i was very happy to see a few "swedish" provinces, their likely going to be crappy, but i look forvard to try form somehthing from it...

 

[Darth.]

I'm just praying it's not taxing on your pc because my laptop has trouble enough with HOI4, and 7000 provinces with those gorgeous graphics might just blow up my laptop. i5 processor (7th gen) with barely 8gb of RAM in there I miss my gaming rig.

 

[Yavanion]

I'm just praying it's not taxing on your pc because my laptop has trouble enough with HOI4, and 7000 provinces with those gorgeous graphics might just blow up my laptop. i5 processor (7th gen) with barely 8gb of RAM in there I miss my gaming rig.

funny thing is, i have a old 550ti card, and it runs hoi4 just fine...

 

[Darth.]

funny thing is, i have a old 550ti card, and it runs hoi4 just fine...

....that's just unfair. Do you use any separate hardware/optimization software? I'm skeptical regarding exactly how useful that is, but hey if it works....

 

[Nikolai]

So we finally got an answer to the question we had a few days ago about the cities vs provinces. A province has several cities, so the list is from within that province and not the ones you can trade with, as some speculated.

 

[DarthJF]

Just watched the video and I loved the presentation. I was very impressed by the map and it was cool seeing places like Ethiopia and all of India with their countries.

Game system sounds nice as well and as a Vicky 1 fan I'm glad to get manual pop promotion back.

 

[ziglak]

Hey, kind of a new guy to the Forum but I have been playing alot of Paradox games and I love that they are making another Rome game and everything looks great so far except for one minor thing I think they should look back on about certain pops, specifically Freemen and Citizens.

I still don't like that manpower comes from "freeman" pop exclusively, and the fact that freemen "only" serve in the Army, like hmmmm. Pretty sure freemen did ALOT of things given they were the majority of almost any country. They should also be allowed to pay taxes/work in commerce.

But going back to the military aspect, the majority of ancient armies used citizen soldiers, people who had political rights and deep investment in the idea of their country and political structure, which often gave them deeper incentive/pride to defend their land. Freemen didn't really have that incentive/drive to take up arms(which they most likely couldn't afford to buy) to protect against invaders. In fact, one of the major ways Rome was able to get Freemen to join Auxiliary Cohorts was by promising citizenship upon retirement.

And even when Rome started providing arms and armor to her soldiers, Legionaries were always citizens. Maybe they should have two manpower pools and two unit "classes", not types, but classes. You can have the "Citizen soldier" class and the "Auxiliary soldier" class, each with their own benefits and drawbacks. Also, maybe certain unit types are limited to a certain class, like in Rome's case, maybe citizen soldiers can only be heavy infantry while auxiliaries can be everything else except for heavy infantry.

Additionally, I find it odd that the game depicts "standing" armies, when in fact, most countries in antiquity didn't have standing armies, mostly due to the fact, that again, by having citizen soldiers, their "soldiers" lived normal lives as economically and politically active civilians, and were only mustered during times of rebellion or war. Perhaps Paradox can add a mechanic that allows for "shadow armies" to exist, which can be built and modified but don't exist on the map, at least not until your country is in a state of rebellion or war. And raising these "shadow armies" into actual controllable armies shouldn't cost a large amount of money to raise but maybe a decent amount to upkeep due to the fact that citizen soldiers were expected to arm themselves but the state did pay them stipends due to them being away from their civilian jobs. At least in Rome's case.

Anyway, these are my thought so far, in all honesty, most of my understanding of antiquity relates to ancient Rome and specifically, in how she conducted politics and warfare. How this has been good constructive criticism and I hope to hear honest responses!

 

[icedt729]

I really think it's more accurate to call upper-class POPs "aristocrats" rather than "citizens." In a Roman context you had plenty of citizen farmers and plenty of non-citizen landlords, and until the late principate citizenship was a special privilege handed out to non-Latins on an individual basis and not something that could just be "promoted" into. I think the terms they're using here blur legal and economic status too much.

 

[squirter!3]

I guess I'm a little worried about how fun itll actually be playing as any country other than rome or the other handful of polities that are recognizable from the time period. One of the main draws for me in Paradox games such as EU4 is being able to choose from countless countries which all have rich histories and trying to do the weirdest stuff with them ( coptic ottomans). Historical sources and general knowledge of the time period in which Imperator is set is much more lacking compared to other Paradox games (Vic, EU, HOI, etc.) and likewise inhibits what really make those games special to me. For example, I'm really not going to be too invested playing as "Arverni" Maybe that's just me though. I understand that this problem is not a fault in game design (which we haven't even been shown enough of to criticize) but of the setting of the game itself, so I'm not really sure why i wrote this comment.

 

[Holy.Death]

I still don't like that manpower comes from "freeman" pop exclusively, and the fact that freemen "only" serve in the Army, like hmmmm. Pretty sure freemen did ALOT of things given they were the majority of almost any country. They should also be allowed to pay taxes/work in commerce.

I think it is done that way for gameplay purposes. It's not 100% accurate recreation of how things functioned back then.

If you, as Rome, find yourself in a position in which you desperately need more men you can "free" slaves by promoting them to freemen. Citizens are not included in manpower pool because they are basically "researchers" who make sure that Rome stays ahead technologically compared to other nations and freemen generate no money to make slaves an important part of the economy (which they were in real life) as without them it will cease to function. So all in all it does make sense.

Perhaps it could do with some renaming? Like turning "freemen" into "citizens" and "citizens" into "equites" (or something else that's above citizen level)? To keep it consistent citizens of Rome could be changed into freemen when captured or conquered by the barbarian tribes. Something like promotion resulting in a conversion, which should be fairly easy to do, given that every POP has its own culture and religion in I:R.

But I do like your idea of citizens enabling recruitment of heavy infantry and freemen serving as other troops. It would make citizens even more valuable resource, like elephants for elephants units.

Perhaps Paradox can add a mechanic that allows for "shadow armies" to exist, which can be built and modified but don't exist on the map, at least not until your country is in a state of rebellion or war. And raising these "shadow armies" into actual controllable armies shouldn't cost a large amount of money to raise but maybe a decent amount to upkeep due to the fact that citizen soldiers were expected to arm themselves but the state did pay them stipends due to them being away from their civilian jobs. At least in Rome's case.

Oriental Empires does this really well - you can basically raise huge armies at a moment's notice but having them around for a long time will make people unhappy (and they can rebel, very much like POPs from Victoria) plus it is very costly, especially when raising an army from peasants who contribute to your income by farming. CK2 did something similar by making your vassals upset and having a standing army cost you, so I think they have the means to do this in a different way than EU4 does it. One that better reflects how it was done during that time period.

 

[ikki]

I'm a bit alarmed at the concept of slaves and packing them in the capital without some kind of population movement around the whole realm.
Especially as buildings and thus development would thus pretty much only happen in the capital.

So one could hope citizens can also move into the provinces with some slaves.. and once slaves have been around for a while learning to love the gods and speaking the language etc they would more or less automatically turn into freemen? So got to keep on conquering or you will eventually be in trouble with a treasury drying up. (or as luck has it.... there is india with a whole vast south of ministates..)
Also i do wonder how greeks treat greeks from the other diadochi or even colonies. One can hope they would retain citizenship. Might be a bit dumb to put archimedes into a marblemine to chop stone.... when a puntian/saban could do the job too.