My issues with IR: frustration and tedium

[CaptinObvious]

tl;dr: IR suffers from serious balancing issues that cause the game to turn into a frustrating, maddening, grind, that is deep in the uncanny valley between abstraction and simulation, that has the 'everything is just off" feeling to it.

So recently I was warming up to IR and going through the cycle of "now why did I stop playing this game?" which always winds up with "oh, that's why"
so I started to play IR and thinking to my self, "why did I stop playing?" "why did everybody stop playing?", "why are numbers at Cicero levels again?" and started taking mental notes as what was going on and how I felt.

I felt frustrated, aggravated, agonised, and in a state of tedium, but never quite exactly bored, like the game was doing something right but it felt 'off' somehow, so I asked my self 'why' and the answer was that it was due to a for a variety of very specific, yet very noticeable balance-related reasons; it had nothing to do with 'flavour' nor 'unique' mechanics for factions, nor issues with the AI, it was sorely due to some bizarre balance choices that honestly makes me question the intentions whoever it was that made them.

I genuinely believe that one of, if not *the* primary reasons that IR is failing to capture a stable and healthy audience is that on a 'subconscious' level, the game is triggering all sorts of negative feelings and emotions that make the game feel frustrating and tedious, a little "ugh, won't this EVER END!?!?" was nagging in a corner of my brain, as well as a "If X, Y, or Z was a little different, this would be so much better", as the brain is very good at detecting this kind of 'off' feeling about stuff, like the game so close yet so far, and with IR being so deep in the uncanny valley off neither full abstraction, not more simulation, it was maddening.

The issue was that I can feel my hair whiten on my head, and my life slowly wither just waiting for stuff to happen, there was simultaneously too much happening, and too little, I was pushed to pick up the pace and ram up aggression by the tight deadline, yet I was suffocated by the many, many poorly balanced mechanics that made my want to stop and take my time;

IR suffers from having a glacier pace of stuff happening, resources accruing, and politics changing, but a flood of decision making.

like take conquest for example:

You spend the extremely precious resource of PI, a resource which is needed for everything, from bribery to fabrication of war goals to improvement of opinion, to government policy, to fabricate a war goal, which is very strange, wars in this era started for political reasons, namely the clashing fo spheres of influence, and not this 'claim' that people had on land, like the concept itself is strange and causes, at least to me, immediate disconnect, no, people did not claim land in this era, wars were fought because of whole other reasons, what is this? 1840?

but then after an agonising wait, where I somehow 'fabricate' a 'claim', for however much sense that makes in this era,
I go to war, and then logistics, or lack thereof, starts bugging me, see in EUIV and early on in IR, attrition was caused by putting too many men in one place, and then and extra for besieging, now in IR, this lead to WWI style deployment of forces, in even amount across the whole front, which was dumb and caused a lot of tedium, which IR has plenty of, so in 1.3, the devs took a hack at fixing, and miserably failed at, as supply trains were so fast, but could carry so much food, attrition stop being a thing, this both lead to manpower being too plentiful, and sieges being too easy, encouraging fort spam, lowering the stakes, since now you can just park a death stack on a fort rather than as few as you can get away with, significantly adding tedium and removing challenge, fun, or interesting interaction, combine this with IR's ridiculous sieges, and you have a recipe for disaster

But then you fight a battle, which has it's own set of issues, I will copy what have I written about battles in the past here, since the point still stands:

the issue is that this style of doing battle has been basically the same since EUI as I understand it, at least since EUIII,
un(substantially)changed from then, the only changes have been the removal of the 2nd line, and setting your flanks, and that's very minor,
this needs some major changes, like Cicero levels of major, both to fix underlying issues, and to bring it to a modern standard,
since we no longer live in the year of our lord 2007/2760 AVC.

There are several intrinsic issues that this style of combat faces that stem from it being a third-grade approximation of Line warfare
hacked into a pathetic attempt at abstracting classical infantry group defence tactics (Hoplite warfare),
then shoehorned into the rest of classical infantry combat, both heavy inf (chequerboard cohorts/maniples), and lighter inf
(think of the many *many* light inf fighting styles that the ancient world is famed for), and let alone how many different styles of cav.

I frankly don't envy the devs on this, since any attempt at fixing this system wouldn't do enough, but any attempt at substantial changes
look like a nightmare to even think of, let alone implement, if they are even possible with the design goals/limitation that they have imposed/deemed practical/possible within the limitations of the engine.

this just leads to battles feeling a bit like a ridiculous farce, again going back to that nagging feeling of "something is off", but then you win the battle, and then another, and another, and another, and another, and another, and another......[], why are all nations as politically resilient in the face of defeat as Rome? how can they fight after this much losses?

this is where the next issue begins, battles, sieges, victories and defeats don't matter, neither in the warscore senes, nor in the political senes, you can just fight until you kill every single fighting man in the whole nation, this drives up war exhaustion, which again, falls into that "this makes no sense for the period" as it really wasn't a thing outside of wars like the 2nd Punic, or Peloponnesian, remember, the Diadochi spent nearly 30 years continuously at war with each other, defeats on the battlefield and in sieges had major political the consequence, however, like the destabilisation of monarchies' line of succession, or the ousting of political leaders, and especially so for local politics, a defeat in a major engagement/siege could break a country's control over whole regions, not simply send their forces behind the nearest fort line, and leaders knew this, they didn't fight out of sheer bravado or stupidity, but because of major internal pressure, both political(a victory could cement legitimacy for a monarch/secure elections) and economic (are you gonna just let them getaway with our stuff without contention?)

there are simply too many resources, and too much political stability and normalcy in the face of defeat for any of it to matter

and then let's say that you win your war.....and your prize?

Almost nothing; you can bearly take *ANYTHING* in a 100% peace deals, many pages of discussion have been written about how comical warscore is in this game, it is just ridiculous that after many years of war and hundreds of thousands of casualties, all I can take is 3 provinces, this is just nuts, you can't even take money in a peace deal, do I have to explain why this is a farce?

so you pull an exploit, perhaps separate peace an ally and attack them earlier, or attack a tributary, whatever, you are back at war, but you just broke their spine in the last war, they have no armies, just forts, so it's just going through the motions, again and again, and again and again and again and again....[], it's just soo tedious and frustrating...

after the 2nd Punic war, Rome took most of Carthignian Spain, dismantled all of their holdings outside of Tunisia, freed all of their subjects, totally demilitarised them, and imposed very hefty war reps this ould be well over a 500% peace deal of not over a 1000%, there were three Punic wars, not several dozen, there was no magic number stoping a country from taking over a whole other country at once, there were many administrative, and cost-related reasons, but no magical 'cap' on land taken, a 100% peace deal, should be 100% of everything, land and treasure alike.

So let's just attack a group of minors right?

Merc spam, while not as bad as it used to be, it is still cancerous, a small collation of smaller city-states can pull literally hundreds of thousands of mercs, so many mercs I have PTSD flashbacks to when I attacked a group of greek city-states and they literary threw 600k+ mercs at me, so no, the Persian Empire did not get 10-1 overrun stackwhiped by the greeks at Thermopylae, it was a desperate struggle, when Gaul did unify, they didn't all pitch in to hire all mercs from India to Spain, they raised their *own* forces, smaller city-states did not employ mercs to this extent, outside of Carthage nobody did, this is ridiculous

So warfare is beyond broken due to ease of logistics, abundance of manpower, lack of destabilisation due to losses on the front, comical merc spam, and just how pathetic warscore limit is.

So let's develop our country right?

here we run into the same issues we ran into in warfare, total lack of balance, too easy logistics, and farcical cities

Starting with food, I'll again repeat what I said in the past:

Food was an extremely scarce and rare commodity right up until about the industrial revolution and the mechanisation of agriculture,
it was a major concern to feed one's own population, let alone army, but right now outside of the capital and select provinces food might as well not exist,
and especially for armies.

N.Africa, Egypt, Sicily, Mesopotamia, India, and China weren't rich because of trade, or production,
but because until basically the industrial revolution, wealth was determined by how much food one could make,
because it was that scarce and that much of a bottleneck for growth, Rome was basically bankrolled by Egypt,
as so much grain and wealth flowed from there, right now these areas are only powerful because of starting population, not food production,
which is why their starting pop was so high in the first place.

Like an entire region producing nothing but grain is pretty mediocre, but such a region would've been an economic superpower at the time,
since for most of history, most people spent most of their money (or production) on getting enough food to survive,
Augustus's social welfare boosted the economy soo much because it freed wealth from being spent on food and instead going for luxury goods that made serious bank from India and China.

So what about cites?

they way cites work right now is beyond broken, they aren't hard to feed, they don't need specific buildings to function, you can just have a city made with nothing but aqueducts and everyone will be just happy, a lot has been written on how broken IR's cites are, and how you can stack pops in them to a ridiculous extent, making massive amounts of cash and research points, it's just insane.

I will stop blabbering here and some up with this:

So in the end, we have a game where everything is slow and tedious, deep in dissonance with the era, and deep in the uncanny valley between abstraction and simulation, it's like a house where all of the clocks are crooked, and all of the tiles are misaligned, it's just maddening, and grating.

it is above all else, frustrating.

thanks for reading, this was originally a rant about warscore, it got out of hand.

 

[MohawkWolfo98]

Trying to condense for analysis: So ur frustrations to summaries are: Warscore too ineffective, lack of land gain for all the tedium of managing a war, food is unrealistic.

Starting with food, personally I think this is one of the times where we need to put gameplay over realism. I don't really want to play a game where my citizens are starving all the time. I do agree that it’s abit unrealistic to have mega cities of hundreds of pops and none dying due to plague etc, but I like the idea of my cities growing, and not some arbitrary mechanism keeping it negative.

I agree with you on war, and that is what the next autumn of war patch is for. But I think you are right, there has to be a tweaking of How the war score is calculated (it’s incredibly tedious rn to win a huge war against a large empire) and the peace treaties, in particular how little land we can get from it.

 

[Reman]

and then let's say that you win your war.....and your prize?

Almost nothing; you can bearly take *ANYTHING* in a 100% peace deals, many pages of discussion have been written about how comical warscore is in this game, it is just ridiculous that after many years of war and hundreds of thousands of casualties, all I can take is 3 provinces, this is just nuts, you can't even take money in a peace deal, do I have to explain why this is a farce?

so you pull an exploit, perhaps separate peace an ally and attack them earlier, or attack a tributary, whatever, you are back at war, but you just broke their spine in the last war, they have no armies, just forts, so it's just going through the motions, again and again, and again and again and again and again....[], it's just soo tedious and frustrating...

This statement very accurately reflects my gripes with the game as well. It's a major reason why Imperator breaks apart at high level play. The primary gameplay loop resolves to pure tedium. Most other strategy games like the Civ series, Total War series, EU4, Stellaris, HoI4, etc. make it so you can take more land at a time as the game progresses, which is necessary to create a proper sense of pacing. Imperator does the opposite of this. You begin by being able to take respectable amounts of territory, but by the end you could consider yourself lucky if you can take more than 2 provinces from a large enemy.

Starting with food, I'll again repeat what I said in the past:

Food was an extremely scarce and rare commodity right up until about the industrial revolution and the mechanisation of agriculture,
it was a major concern to feed one's own population, let alone army, but right now outside of the capital and select provinces food might as well not exist,
and especially for armies.

N.Africa, Egypt, Sicily, Mesopotamia, India, and China weren't rich because of trade, or production,
but because until basically the industrial revolution, wealth was determined by how much food one could make,
because it was that scarce and that much of a bottleneck for growth, Rome was basically bankrolled by Egypt,
as so much grain and wealth flowed from there, right now these areas are only powerful because of starting population, not food production,
which is why their starting pop was so high in the first place.

I disagree here though. The main bottleneck to city size in Imperator IS food, which is why Egypt has most of the best megacity locations.

There's also quite a bit of strategy that goes into city planning as well. It's also necessary to build them due to the game's ubiquitous scaling costs and excessively strict timeline. Cities are a fun system with plenty of deep gameplay. Whenever I see someone attack them, it's always through an isolated appeal to "realism". There are plenty of other systems in the game that don't make sense from a gameplay perspective AND a realism perspective, which should take priority as far as reworks are concerned.

 

[CaptinObvious]

I disagree here though. The main bottleneck to city size in Imperator IS food, which is why Egypt has most of the best megacity locations.

There's also quite a bit of strategy that goes into city planning as well. It's also necessary to build them due to the game's ubiquitous scaling costs and excessively strict timeline. Cities are a fun system with plenty of deep gameplay. Whenever I see someone attack them, it's always through an isolated appeal to "realism". There are plenty of other systems in the game that don't make sense from a gameplay perspective AND a realism perspective, which should take priority as far as reworks are concerned.

Well for point one, all I've seen from cites (outside of the capital and the odd provincial metropoli here and there) is wrist pain, I just use an auto clicker to build academies because no gains are worth the pain, as for the capital and provincial metros, I just build equal n of libraries and Academies, with enough aqueducts for pop cap, cities needed other stuff to function, in IR you can just build a hundred aqueducts and be done with it, cities need more to function than aqueducts, housing, food storage, markets, workshops, housing etc, this does conflict with the pain-inducing micro, but that is at least interesting.

As for city placement.....the existing of Ostia meta gaming is indicative that something is wrong....

As for food
I did not mean the import of enough food to megacities; I meant farming it in the first place.

In IR you can just put 20 odd slaves in every grain territory in Egypt and that's that, whole world fed, all the rest that you have to do in import it, which is a bottleneck in IR, but the issue in real life was farming the food in the first place, not shipping it (altho shipping it was an issue as well, but not as big as farming it), Rome *needed* all of Egypt, Rome *needed* all of N.Africa*, and Rome *needed* all of Sicily to feed but a few megacities, not the whole world, places like India and China were rich because they had the farmland to support a large population, Rome did not, and hence was relatively poor by comparison

The issue was surpluses food in the first place, IR you can just sort territories by grain and that's it, you can do that because there wouldn't have been enough surplus.

And with changes to how import routes are going to work, I struggle to see how food is ever going to be an issue, especially when Italy (farmland territory for farmland territory) is as fertile as Egypt.

And I am not suggesting a rework for food, but a simple halving to thirding of it's production.

I do however agree that there are things more important than food for cities

Like food for armies

 

[Reman]

Well for point one, all I've seen from cites (outside of the capital and the odd provincial metropoli here and there) is wrist pain, I just use an auto clicker to build academies because no gains are worth the pain, as for the capital and provincial metros, I just build equal n of libraries and Academies, with enough aqueducts for pop cap, cities needed other stuff to function, in IR you can just build a hundred aqueducts and be done with it, cities need more to function than aqueducts, housing, food storage, markets, workshops, housing etc, this does conflict with the pain-inducing micro, but that is at least interesting.

As for city placement.....the existing of Ostia meta gaming is indicative that something is wrong....

As for food
I did not mean the import of enough food to megacities; I meant farming it in the first place.

In IR you can just put 20 odd slaves in every grain territory in Egypt and that's that, whole world fed, all the rest that you have to do in import it, which is a bottleneck in IR, but the issue in real life was farming the food in the first place, not shipping it (altho shipping it was an issue as well, but not as big as farming it), Rome *needed* all of Egypt, Rome *needed* all of N.Africa*, and Rome *needed* all of Sicily to feed but a few megacities, not the whole world, places like India and China were rich because they had the farmland to support a large population, Rome did not, and hence was relatively poor by comparison

The issue was surpluses food in the first place, IR you can just sort territories by grain and that's it, you can do that because there wouldn't have been enough surplus.

And with changes to how import routes are going to work, I struggle to see how food is ever going to be an issue, especially when Italy (farmland territory for farmland territory) is as fertile as Egypt.

And I am not suggesting a rework for food, but a simple halving to thirding of it's production.

I do however agree that there are things more important than food for cities

Like food for armies

I fully agree that the micro required to build up a city is ridiculous. The game really needs a way to move more than one slave at a time.

Building equal number of libraries and academies is definitely NOT anywhere close to optimal. You're leaving tons of research potential on the table if you do this.

The food amount vs import requirements is an interesting discussion. Food is the main limiting factor to city size right now, but only because import routes are so expensive. Opening up trade routes could make more locations strategically viable, which I think would be a net-positive.

 

[CaptinObvious]

I fully agree that the micro required to build up a city is ridiculous. The game really needs a way to move more than one slave at a time.

Building equal number of libraries and academies is definitely NOT anywhere close to optimal. You're leaving tons of research potential on the table if you do this.

The food amount vs import requirements is an interesting discussion. Food is the main limiting factor to city size right now, but only because import routes are so expensive. Opening up trade routes could make more locations strategically viable, which I think would be a net-positive.

Care to elaborate on point two?

I remember somebody doing a graph on Reddit about it and equal n was the most optimal, besides, not like other building give research point/citizen percentage.

 

[Jehzir]

Care to elaborate on point two?

I remember somebody doing a graph on Reddit about it and equal n was the most optimal, besides, not like other building give research point/citizen percentage.

You believe Reddit? There lies the heart of the problem. There are a multitude of solutions, you are just attempting to project what you want on everyone else. We can file tickets and request all the feature changes in the world. If it does not make sense the devs will not do it. That is why IR has a pretty decent mod system. Maybe there can be a mod request thread and you can dump your wishlist there and see if some programmers can design your game.

 

[arcadeplus]

The biggest problem I have with warfare in this game is not how one-dimensional it is, really, it's that it's in the wrong dimension for the period. Classical warfare did not really revolve around sieges of cities; one an army got to the point where it was laying siege to a city, it had essentially already won. Defeating other armies in pitched battles, and doing economic/social damage by destroying farmland, enslaving a population, etc, are the more important parts of ancient warfare, but these have comparatively little effect on your war-score in this game. Others are rightly pointing out that the inability to demand indemnities in a peace deal is a major oversight.

That, and the economy is backwards and makes no sense.. I encourage the Devs to read The Cambridge Economic History of the Greco-Roman world in order to better represent the ancient economy, but here are just some suggestions to make it more realistic: You can have provinces with nothing but slave pops in them? and no one to own them? that makes no sense.
Also, the tax office/Provincial Procurators decision is backwards. At this time in history, the way a regime collects taxes is to hire out tax collectors individually to go out and collect taxes, they do not increase their tax revenue by building infrastructure. Instead of using political influence to increase output, and using money to invest in infrastructure that increases tax revenue, it should be the opposite: you ought to use political influence to invest in individual belt-men to work for you, which ought to increase the tax rate, and gold ought to be used to invest in physical infrastructure which increases output. In the game as-is, it's the reverse.
Concentration, and particularly concentration around ports, is the best and easiest environment in the pre-modern world for tax collection. Perhaps giving an ability to invest in port infrastructure would be nice. Freeman should generate lower tax in rural areas, and higher tax in urban areas.
Fleshing out economic institutions like property and currency, and giving the player choices about them, would be interesting.
the Pop system is good in essence, but using organizations like households or firms would be interesting to implement in some way. As is, this ancient economy is totally individuated, and there is little attention paid to land ownership or economic organization. i understand that this is not the primary focus of the game but It would make it much more interesting to me if the economy of antiquity, particularly of the relatively advanced economies and technologies of the Hellenistic period, were better represented. There is no option, so far as I know, to discover the ability to invest in new buildings? Windmills and Watermills were not unheard of in this era.

 

[bigdaddytyrone]

Care to elaborate on point two?

I remember somebody doing a graph on Reddit about it and equal n was the most optimal, besides, not like other building give research point/citizen percentage.

Personally I go 2L/2A, 3L/2A, 4L/5A, 5L Max, rest of slots go to academies. After 5L the happiness and ratio barely changes. Build libraries before academies until you reach 4 libs then build academies first.

 

[Reman]

Personally I go 2L/2A, 3L/2A, 4L/5A, 5L Max, rest of slots go to academies. After 5L the happiness and ratio barely changes. Build libraries before academies until you reach 4 libs then build academies first.

This isn't right either, but it's much closer to the truth.

The optimal ratio will depend on tons of factors like the trade good produced, # of slaves per trade good, which pop you're optimizing for, level of AE, pop modifiers, religion/culture, etc. It's a really involved problem actually, and I had to use a spreadsheet to even get close to optimizing it in one of my runs:

In this case the optimal ratio was 147 academies to 30 libraries. Libraries start off strong but rapidly run into diminishing returns. With massive pop numbers they can become relevant again, but there's still very few instances where building more than 30 would be a good idea.

 

[Chlodio]

the game is triggering all sorts of negative feelings and emotions that make the game feel frustrating and tedious, a little "ugh, won't this EVER END!?!?" was nagging in a corner of my brain, as well as a "If X, Y, or Z was a little different, this would be so much better"

To me, this is every Paradox game and the reason why I tend to get more enjoyment from coding my own simple simulations than continuing stomaching Paradox's bizarre game design. Take CK2 for example:

So, I'm playing as Socotra and have conquered Somalia and Yemen. Meanwhile, a Shia Caliphate spawns in Mesopotamia, and instead of continuing their wars with the Sunni, they decide to launch the subjugation war on Dubai, and then me. Okay, then I can't match their event spawned armies, but I'm able to prevent them from taking my capital island, so I let them occupy everything but Socotra, and... They get 100% war score and I auto-lose the war. Thus I became, vassal, and they immediately started revoking my titles, so I refused, thus began a rebellion. They re-occupied my possessions outside of Socotra and got a 100% war score. Then I auto-lost was imprisoned and they revoked country of Socotra despite failing to occupy it.

This stems from multiple factors, and if any of them would have been false, I wouldn't have ragequitted:

• AI targets Dubai and me because it has been just told to attack anything that's weaker than it, no other reason.
• Despite, not sharing a border with Dubai, they are able to DOW Dubai because CB is considered valid if the province is two sea zones away. With the same rule they, are able to DOW me later, despite being two sea zones away.
  • If the limit was just one sea zone, this wouldn't have happened.
  • If the size of sea zones was consistent, this wouldn't have happened, the Persian Gulf might have as well been subdivided into six sea zones as opposed to three.
• If Paradox's only solution to depict conquerors wasn't just to give them an attrition-free death stack, I might have been able to repel invasion.
• If the peace system was just a bit more complex, I would have been given the option of yielding my possession, or keeping them and becoming a vassal.
• If the rebellion system was more thought out, I wouldn't have been considered the attacker in a war where I defend, and I would not have been auto-imprisoned I was still able to hold my capital.

 

[Álvaro Núñez de Lara]

Yes they can't hack the food system right. In my mod I've kind of fixed it making food consumption almost double. The problem is that through trade you can get all the grain you need, you dont really need to vassalize and conquer anyone.

Also, away from your capital, it takes too much micro and its difficult to supply other cities because the lack of trade routes outside the capital province.

Its gonna be tricky to balance it all and get it right. It will take several patches and a few mechanical reworks of the economy, trade, diplomacy, etc.

 

[Dayvit78]

This isn't right either, but it's much closer to the truth.

The optimal ratio will depend on tons of factors like the trade good produced, # of slaves per trade good, which pop you're optimizing for, level of AE, pop modifiers, religion/culture, etc. It's a really involved problem actually, and I had to use a spreadsheet to even get close to optimizing it in one of my runs:

View attachment 589470

In this case the optimal ratio was 147 academies to 30 libraries. Libraries start off strong but rapidly run into diminishing returns. With massive pop numbers they can become relevant again, but there's still very few instances where building more than 30 would be a good idea.

Look at those number overflows in your image ... the IR devs really did not think about UI at all. I just saw a GDC talk from 2018 by the lead dev of CK3 and even he mentioned making sure you leave enough room to show everything. That's a lesson the IR team could have learned internally but didn't.

 

[tribunus_plebis]

This isn't right either, but it's much closer to the truth.

The optimal ratio will depend on tons of factors like the trade good produced, # of slaves per trade good, which pop you're optimizing for, level of AE, pop modifiers, religion/culture, etc. It's a really involved problem actually, and I had to use a spreadsheet to even get close to optimizing it in one of my runs:

View attachment 589470

In this case the optimal ratio was 147 academies to 30 libraries. Libraries start off strong but rapidly run into diminishing returns. With massive pop numbers they can become relevant again, but there's still very few instances where building more than 30 would be a good idea.

This is precisely one of my mega turn offs with the game. The "Optimal" development for a City is just ridiculous and immersion breaking, it feels like an excel sheet devoid of any higher meaning besides multiplying modifiers.

What's the point to grow and expand (basically the one-dimensional direction of the game) if you can't turn your cities into something glorious, or something that feels like development?. 43 academies, 38 aqueducts, 30 libraries, 20 theaters and so on? This is by far one of the worst abstractions present in a strategy game.

Also it doesn't help having such a poor UI, that is basically a glorified excel sheet.

 

[ReadeB]

Modding feels like the way to fix some of this. Autumn of War will change things, hopefully better. Claim fabrication in ancient world? Better sieges, battles resolved in hours not days etc..

"Take them all" Mod fixed the War Score cost issue for me. Now I have lots of AE and the AI hates me. Fine.

I would think changing food production or consumption would make things more realistic, though some may hate it due to starving pops.

One thing I would like is the ability to speed migrations. Spend coin to send ships/horses to speed up individual migrations that have already begun. Turn years into months. This would seem to help the movement of starving pops out of bad locations. Also, slave movement should be directed and point to point, but use realistic travel times.

Megacities are fine, but need fire and plague to make them challenging. Many major cities were brought low by these issues.

Also, simple blockades sea and/or land should cause starving pops which affect siege success.

 

[Quimera]

it's that it's in the wrong dimension for the period. Classical warfare did not really revolve around sieges of cities; one an army got to the point where it was laying siege to a city, it had essentially already won. Defeating other armies in pitched battles, and doing economic/social damage by destroying farmland, enslaving a population, etc, are the more important parts of ancient warfare, but these have comparatively little effect on your war-score in this game.

You have a good point over there, but keep in mind you are speaking about the Classical Hellenic Period, the Rise of Rome and minor cities states, because big empires like Persia, Rome when an Empire, Indian states and the Diadochi could endure a lot of sieges and fallen fortresses because their dominions were huge, but I agree there were exceptions like Chandragupta and her capital Pataliputra that when fell, the empire too, it is very tedious in-game to conquer again and again the same cities and fortresses, I hate when in-game Rome and Carthage lost their capital they still existing as "Rome" and "Carthage" when one lost the capital their respective territories should be divided by rump states of them if Rome didn't conquered directly Carthage after the 2 Punic War was due to Scipion didn't want to siege the city with his exhausted soldiers, just after the siege of Carthage in the 3 Punic War, Rome annexed the city.

 

[Badesumofu]

The thing that killed my interest in the game, as it turned out even though I enjoy a lot of the mechanics, was when I went to war with Carthage as Rome. Fought a big war, won, and then realised that I would have to re-fight the war another 10 times against a defeated opponent to actually conquer them. No thanks.

I like the sound of a lot of what the devs are doing with this game, but until the core problems are addressed it's a bit irrelevant because I can't bring myself to want to play the game.

 

[Xuanzue]

my problems with Imperator

- Not historical paths
- Sandbox is boring, in victoria 2 pops feel real and can't be tamed. In Imperator pops are trivial, and you can still move them with mana they are now microed with gold!. I have said it before, to explain how the pops work in vic2 I need 3 videos. to explain how the pops in Imperator work I need 1 minute. victoria 2 had complex pops that can't be micromanaged. Imperator has trivial pops that still need micromanagement.
- Not enough hotkeys (for all the clickers that think this is ok AoE2DE brought more hotkeys in a recent patch, see? devs can bring more hotkeys with no downsides)

Today a friend asked me if he could play as Scipio in an historical path. Alea Jacta Est (AGEOD) is too old and there is not a good Roman historical game.

Even telling him how Imperator is in the xbox pass for cheap, he was not interested in Imperator.

 

[Herennius]

In Imperator pops are trivial, and you can still move them with mana.

Only slaves (and as tribe, tribesmen too) and the cost is Gold since v1.2

 

[MohawkWolfo98]

my problems with Imperator

- Not historical paths
- Sandbox is boring, in victoria 2 pops feel real and can't be tamed. In Imperator pops are trivial, and you can still move them with mana. I have said it before, to explain how the pops work in vic2 I need 3 videos. to explain how the pops in Imperator work I need 1 minute. victoria 2 had complex pops that can't be micromanaged. Imperator has trivial pops that still need micromanagement.
- Not enough hotkeys (for all the clickers that think this is ok AoE2DE brought more hotkeys in a recent patch, see? devs can bring more hotkeys with no downsides)

Today a friend asked me if he could play as Scipion in an historical path. Alea Jacta Est (AGEOD) is too old and there is not a good Roman historical game.

Even telling him how Imperator is in the xbox pass for cheap, he was not interested in Imperator.

No idea what you are talking about. Mana has been removed long time ago. Have you looked at any of the dev diaries?

Agree with you on historical characters, there needs to be more of them

EDIT: Oops, didnt see Herennius post, my bad.