It’ll be interesting to see how POPS work in Imperator. I don’t get the sense that they’ve been designed as a block on blobbing, necessarily, but if nothing else they should be easy to mod and will make the demographic side of things easier to engage with.
Slightly off-topic, but since we are talking about the hows and whys of making conquest harder…
From a gameplay perspective, putting anything in the way of the standard video game snowballing means that players will see stagnation and setbacks, even if they are doing well. This is extremely difficult to implement without sparking frustration. If you are adding systems that do this, the emphasis needs to be on making interesting choices, rather than a stark success / failure binary… essentially offering at least *some* rewards to a player to make losing fun (or at least tolerable).
For example, conquering the hill tribes: I guess the reward is painting the map, but the negative is that they will become a resource sink for centuries if they aren’t kept loyal. If you fail to conquer them and keep them at arms length… well, you have to pay them off occasionally, or get raided, but you also get access to hassle-free mercenary troops. And if you actually end up losing to them in a great invasion… well, they’ll probably take up residence in your capital, so you can have an interesting game with a new government type that wouldn’t have happened otherwise.
In short - making winning a lot harder is a good idea, but only if you offer consolation prizes for not winning. Realistically that means adding depth to systems (e.g. POPS) so that the games go beyond being 'just' map painters.
Slightly off-topic, but since we are talking about the hows and whys of making conquest harder…
From a gameplay perspective, putting anything in the way of the standard video game snowballing means that players will see stagnation and setbacks, even if they are doing well. This is extremely difficult to implement without sparking frustration. If you are adding systems that do this, the emphasis needs to be on making interesting choices, rather than a stark success / failure binary… essentially offering at least *some* rewards to a player to make losing fun (or at least tolerable).
For example, conquering the hill tribes: I guess the reward is painting the map, but the negative is that they will become a resource sink for centuries if they aren’t kept loyal. If you fail to conquer them and keep them at arms length… well, you have to pay them off occasionally, or get raided, but you also get access to hassle-free mercenary troops. And if you actually end up losing to them in a great invasion… well, they’ll probably take up residence in your capital, so you can have an interesting game with a new government type that wouldn’t have happened otherwise.
In short - making winning a lot harder is a good idea, but only if you offer consolation prizes for not winning. Realistically that means adding depth to systems (e.g. POPS) so that the games go beyond being 'just' map painters.