Hi Johan,
first, I would like to express my gratitude for the bravery of taking on the Rome era again, especially after the years of jokes around announcing Rome II. Generally I think a lot of the bad feedback around the blandness of the game reflects more on the situation Paradox is in in terms of launching a new grand strategy game, and less actually on Imperator. So this could have easily been the case for EU5 or CK3 as well. The whole situation reminds me a bit of EU3, which was a wonderful visual upgrade, but really bland compared to EU2 with all its events and mods around it, but to a much lesser extent, as now EU4, CK2 is way ahead compared to where EU2 ever was.
Secondly, having tried quite a few countries, I must admit this game does not seem to be sticky at the moment like CK or EU is. Playing with a minor (like Caledonia) is interesting for a time, and the successor wars are quite good until you become the strongest, but there is little to do afterwards.
I think that the primary issue is not a lack of content, rather that Imperator lacks is it's history-specific systems and mechanics. If you look at Victoria2 and EU, Victoria has its mechanics for industrialization, military, etc. that are quite distinct from EU, while Imperator is mostly lacking such.
Where I personally think things went a bit sideways is that the game fails to reflect
1) the historical reality and
2) the state and mechanics of the world
in any meaningful sense.
Ad 1) If I play a major country in EU, there is a natural path, a story to be made driven around by the various elements in the game, like the historic missions, events, surrounding countries, etc. Regarding Imperator, these stories are just not in the game currently.
Just to give an example from Roman history, it could be arguably seen as a series of crises starting from a military made up of citizens of certain wealth, and later the lack of them (as the land ended up with super-rich senators in latifundiae ran on slaves, while the middle-level farming strata declined), the social fights and crises between the senators, the plebeians, and the equites, and also later the optimati, the various responses in the actions of the laws passed, the Gracchus brothers, the military reforms, which lead to the armies being more loyal to generals than the state, the civil wars, the struggle between Marius and Sulla, the triumviratus, the principatus, and so on and so forth. Now in my opinion this is not an issue of lack of historical events, but rather the lack of mechanics. Some of these events are there in the forms of selective government rules, but they are displayed as separate measures and not as a chain of events about the change and fall of the republic.
Something similar could be said for the wars of the diadochi, where it's quite impossible to end up with the historical reality of the Antigonids taking control of Macedonia by Demetrios, after loosing all holdings in Asia Minor.
Ad 2) I find the game to be too centralized and too modern for its timeframe. Rome, for much of its history was only one city, and the main source of armed forces for the republic, at least until the Marian reforms (who granted citizenship to allied soldiers). These armies were not standing armies, rather than citizens (mostly farmers) of certain wealth who could be called up to serve. It was in fact a requirement to be a citizen to serve in the legions, and citizenship even to other Italians generally was only granted by Julius Caesar. Also, pre-Marius the state did not pay for equipping the troops, and afterwards the settling of veterans in provinces on land grants became an important tool of romanization.
Something similar was the case with the diadochi, who relied on military settlers and colonies of Greek people for their main military forces, like the phalanx. I am less familiar with barbarians, but there were surely no warbands of tens of thousands of people roaming around all the time. Carthage had almost no recruitment across its citizens, it relied mostly on mercenaries.
The way Imperator handles the military is in my opinion clearly linked to how expansion becomes the map painting: easy and rather boring rather fast. I think something like a system from CK2 could be a better fit, strictly limited to nationalities that are willing to fight for the state, instead of the current system that is more like the system from EU.
Another point is that the world is too easily converted and assimilated. In a couple of decades it's possible to turn a large part of Persia into Macedonian and Hellenistic, by simply tasking the governors to do so. Historical reality is more like limited settlements living along the natives, or displacing / enslaving them, and establishing new colonies.
Lastly, the world is too centralized in my opinion. Direct control over the different provinciae was not really possible with the traveling distances, administrative capabilities, etc. This chould be more abstracted away, taking also away a lot of micromanagement, perhaps something along the lines the colonies function in EU4.
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I would appreciate if you considered (or even read) the above, obviously this is more food for thought than anything directly actionable. Right now Imperator feels like this Frankeinstein put together from pieces of EU:Rome, EU, Victoria and CK. It's a rather polished software product, but not that enjoyable as a game as the other members of the family. On the bright side, at least you are competing mostly against yourselves
In my opinion, it needs a Stellaris treatment to realize the potential that is definitely there in this era of history.
