Started as Kush, think I figured most of the mechanics by the mid-point, managed to pull ahead of Rome to be #1 shortly before the endgame year. I had a slow start both because I began this save all the way back on 2.0.1 when the Mac version had that bug where all levies were a single type (e.g. I only had stacks of archers) and I was trying to also play the diplomacy game to no avail. So I ended just shy of great power status and with 23 levels of tech in everything. Now that I know what all the buildings do, I think I could do better on tech, but I'm also not sure how that compares as I was fighting ahead of time penalties for the entire game.
Overall the game was decent and I think I'll do another playthrough, this time around with the Heirs of Alexander DLC. I wanted to jot down some thoughts below about systems from a first-time player perspective (though I've also played CK3 and Stellaris).
Things I liked
Military management (after 2.0.3). This one surprised me as normally the warfare side of games is the part I enjoy least, preferring to focus on building up my empire's economy. But I liked the levy and legion composition system. I only had one legion via Royal Guards (no great power status for legion law), but I did have to scale my army up and down and adjust composition a few times depending on what strategic resources where available to me and what I was fighting.
The culture system, which is a lot more involved than CK3. Early game I had to give some concessions to conquered pops to deal with unrest, and later on I was integrating cultures to unlock additional military traditions. The tradition trees also gave me some conquest goals and pushed me to fight more than I normally would have in order to get enough pops of the requisite cultures.
The innovation trees. Yes there are a lot of tiny modifiers and a few innovations that seem underpowered compared to others of that type, but I do appreciate the ability to improve almost every aspect of my empire in some way in almost any order. (Though I never could get the search feature to work for me, so finding specific innovations or bonuses was a challenge.)
I liked being able to automate a number of things, especially later in the game where I got big enough it didn't matter. More specifically, the trade and military orders automation was nice.
Things that could use improvement
The UI. Most of the main windows were fine and easy enough to navigate, but there are definitely some annoyances here and there that would be nice to have ironed out. For example, character management involved a lot of reopening and closing the character window when I wanted to marry off people from my family, because the back button on a character's screen sometimes wouldn't go to the previous window that launched the character as I expected, but rather a character I had looked at previously (even if it was some time ago), which was much less useful. Another annoyance is when disbanding levies, the disband button on the army is disabled with a note that I have to disband from the military screen. I assume that's to prevent disbanding only a portion of a province's levies, but it would be nice if the button would just take me to that levy on military screen then, instead of forcing me to close and open another window. It also was incredibly confusing to figure out how to move artifacts from a conquered province to my holy sites - having to do so from the holy site list rather than the reliquary or the city screen itself, even though the artifacts are shown on both of those windows.
I also think more information needs to be clarified in-game. There are a lot of innovations that give +bonus to something without describing what that bonus does. Mechanics I had to go out of game to figure out include discipline, naval range (what's the penalty for being out of range for ships?), army weight, how many boats I need to carry all my troops, how many siege engineers I need for a bonus against a certain fort, siege ability, research efficiency, the outcome of certain major decisions (e.g. build the pharos lighthouse, which doesn't tell you what it is until after you've built it), and more.
I remember from the Marius DDs that the CK3-style nested tooltips were a recent addition, and they're great when they work, but most of the blue text indicating a mechanical bonus in a tooltip does not. E.g. if I try to look at the details of an innovation, usually the only thing that supports a nested tooltip is the line containing the innovation I'm already looking at, which isn't the part I wanted a nested tooltip for. I'm also still not really sure how the score is calculated (and was disappointed there wasn't a breakdown comparing how I did to the top 10 nations on the game over screen like with Stellaris).
A number of systems also feel overly obscure. I generate a number of research points that is then converted into a percentage, then normalized to a percentage out of 100 to calculate how many months until I get the next tech. Or in some cases I have to make a choice between e.g. +X Happiness and +X Output, where Happiness also impacts output (but I assume happiness is also capped at 100%) and thus don't really know how much gold/research points/manpower I'm getting from either choice until the monthly tick after I make it.
The peace screen overall was okay (and I liked how you could negotiate non-wargoal demands unlike CK3/Stellaris), but I definitely hit a number of issues with the UI when trying to negotiate partial acquisition of a province. In some cases, clicking on a territory to remove it from the demands would reset the entire list. I guess only one of the provinces in my demand can be a partial province?
Systems I didn't like
The events. The minor ones are okay and I liked choosing between gold and influence, but the major events got really old fast. There seem to be about 12 events for a monarchy and they fire all the time. I'd be off doing something interesting only for yet another popup about how my governor threw a lavish party (regardless of corruption, traits, skill levels, etc.), a granary caught fire, a building collapsed on my slaves, someone built an offensive statue, I apparently sired an illegitimate heir, the people want a trial for a governor, etc. Pretty much every major event was a "oh, you wanted to build up your empire? too bad, now pay lots of gold and/or suffer a loyalty/stability hit" and even just 50 years into the game I wanted the events to go away.
Diplomacy was a pretty big letdown. Early on I was attempting to conquer in one direction and diplomatically acquire subjects/alliances in the other (carefully managing my AE to avoid any relation penalties). I don't like going to war against everyone, but even with max relations and gifts and such, diplomatic conquest/tributaries doesn't seem to be possible until you get half the oratory tree. And by the time you have that many innovations it doesn't matter anymore because it's faster and easier to fall back to conquest anyway. Later on, I wanted to team up with a great power to take on a different and more powerful great power that had been attacking both of us, but none of them were interested. Either I was too weak or by the time I was on their level they didn't want to listen because I was then a threat. In Stellaris, the enemy of my enemy can become my friend (especially if we're both rivaling the same empire), but I haven't figured out how to make that work in IR.
The character loyalty system. I get why it's there, and it was definitely easier to handle later in the game (either because of my techs or because I figured out how to manage family prestige better), but there were a lot of annoyances early on trying to prevent my first non-capital region governor from rebelling. Not to mention the worthless upstart character that would pop up and demand a job or they'll make your other employees upset (by the way, outside the event window it's impossible to figure out which character wanted a job since it's apparently not listed in the message log, and it doesn't help that many characters have similar names). It's basically just a tax on fun. (I'm okay with the scorned family mechanic and cohort loyalty. If I had to be more specific, I think governor loyalty is what I found most annoying.)
If you end a war while your army is invading overseas for warscore, your army gets exiled but your ships don't. So you can't dock at a port to pick them up and they have to walk the long way home.
Miscellaneous
This is the first PDX game I've played that has message settings, and I was simultaneously impressed by the number of options and disappointed that it didn't give me the options I wanted. I don't care about civil wars concluding in empires across the world from me (Maurya seemed to have them every few years). Also, if I turned on auto-trade for non-capital provinces, I wanted to disable the "you are no longer importing x good" messages without disabling the ones about empires canceling import agreements with my capital, but the setting appears to be all-or-nothing. I also wish I could turn the Queued Events into a popup because I'd often not notice them until too late (not the "cults established stuff", but the minor events like +tax vs +stability).
The mission trees felt underwhelming, but I only had the generic ones available. Some of the choices didn't even fit with my strategy (build a fort on three ports requires a lot of fort infra points and costs upkeep), so I essentially ignored the missions after completing the first couple trees.
Overall the game was decent and I think I'll do another playthrough, this time around with the Heirs of Alexander DLC. I wanted to jot down some thoughts below about systems from a first-time player perspective (though I've also played CK3 and Stellaris).
Things I liked
Military management (after 2.0.3). This one surprised me as normally the warfare side of games is the part I enjoy least, preferring to focus on building up my empire's economy. But I liked the levy and legion composition system. I only had one legion via Royal Guards (no great power status for legion law), but I did have to scale my army up and down and adjust composition a few times depending on what strategic resources where available to me and what I was fighting.
The culture system, which is a lot more involved than CK3. Early game I had to give some concessions to conquered pops to deal with unrest, and later on I was integrating cultures to unlock additional military traditions. The tradition trees also gave me some conquest goals and pushed me to fight more than I normally would have in order to get enough pops of the requisite cultures.
The innovation trees. Yes there are a lot of tiny modifiers and a few innovations that seem underpowered compared to others of that type, but I do appreciate the ability to improve almost every aspect of my empire in some way in almost any order. (Though I never could get the search feature to work for me, so finding specific innovations or bonuses was a challenge.)
I liked being able to automate a number of things, especially later in the game where I got big enough it didn't matter. More specifically, the trade and military orders automation was nice.
Things that could use improvement
The UI. Most of the main windows were fine and easy enough to navigate, but there are definitely some annoyances here and there that would be nice to have ironed out. For example, character management involved a lot of reopening and closing the character window when I wanted to marry off people from my family, because the back button on a character's screen sometimes wouldn't go to the previous window that launched the character as I expected, but rather a character I had looked at previously (even if it was some time ago), which was much less useful. Another annoyance is when disbanding levies, the disband button on the army is disabled with a note that I have to disband from the military screen. I assume that's to prevent disbanding only a portion of a province's levies, but it would be nice if the button would just take me to that levy on military screen then, instead of forcing me to close and open another window. It also was incredibly confusing to figure out how to move artifacts from a conquered province to my holy sites - having to do so from the holy site list rather than the reliquary or the city screen itself, even though the artifacts are shown on both of those windows.
I also think more information needs to be clarified in-game. There are a lot of innovations that give +bonus to something without describing what that bonus does. Mechanics I had to go out of game to figure out include discipline, naval range (what's the penalty for being out of range for ships?), army weight, how many boats I need to carry all my troops, how many siege engineers I need for a bonus against a certain fort, siege ability, research efficiency, the outcome of certain major decisions (e.g. build the pharos lighthouse, which doesn't tell you what it is until after you've built it), and more.
I remember from the Marius DDs that the CK3-style nested tooltips were a recent addition, and they're great when they work, but most of the blue text indicating a mechanical bonus in a tooltip does not. E.g. if I try to look at the details of an innovation, usually the only thing that supports a nested tooltip is the line containing the innovation I'm already looking at, which isn't the part I wanted a nested tooltip for. I'm also still not really sure how the score is calculated (and was disappointed there wasn't a breakdown comparing how I did to the top 10 nations on the game over screen like with Stellaris).
A number of systems also feel overly obscure. I generate a number of research points that is then converted into a percentage, then normalized to a percentage out of 100 to calculate how many months until I get the next tech. Or in some cases I have to make a choice between e.g. +X Happiness and +X Output, where Happiness also impacts output (but I assume happiness is also capped at 100%) and thus don't really know how much gold/research points/manpower I'm getting from either choice until the monthly tick after I make it.
The peace screen overall was okay (and I liked how you could negotiate non-wargoal demands unlike CK3/Stellaris), but I definitely hit a number of issues with the UI when trying to negotiate partial acquisition of a province. In some cases, clicking on a territory to remove it from the demands would reset the entire list. I guess only one of the provinces in my demand can be a partial province?
Systems I didn't like
The events. The minor ones are okay and I liked choosing between gold and influence, but the major events got really old fast. There seem to be about 12 events for a monarchy and they fire all the time. I'd be off doing something interesting only for yet another popup about how my governor threw a lavish party (regardless of corruption, traits, skill levels, etc.), a granary caught fire, a building collapsed on my slaves, someone built an offensive statue, I apparently sired an illegitimate heir, the people want a trial for a governor, etc. Pretty much every major event was a "oh, you wanted to build up your empire? too bad, now pay lots of gold and/or suffer a loyalty/stability hit" and even just 50 years into the game I wanted the events to go away.
Diplomacy was a pretty big letdown. Early on I was attempting to conquer in one direction and diplomatically acquire subjects/alliances in the other (carefully managing my AE to avoid any relation penalties). I don't like going to war against everyone, but even with max relations and gifts and such, diplomatic conquest/tributaries doesn't seem to be possible until you get half the oratory tree. And by the time you have that many innovations it doesn't matter anymore because it's faster and easier to fall back to conquest anyway. Later on, I wanted to team up with a great power to take on a different and more powerful great power that had been attacking both of us, but none of them were interested. Either I was too weak or by the time I was on their level they didn't want to listen because I was then a threat. In Stellaris, the enemy of my enemy can become my friend (especially if we're both rivaling the same empire), but I haven't figured out how to make that work in IR.
The character loyalty system. I get why it's there, and it was definitely easier to handle later in the game (either because of my techs or because I figured out how to manage family prestige better), but there were a lot of annoyances early on trying to prevent my first non-capital region governor from rebelling. Not to mention the worthless upstart character that would pop up and demand a job or they'll make your other employees upset (by the way, outside the event window it's impossible to figure out which character wanted a job since it's apparently not listed in the message log, and it doesn't help that many characters have similar names). It's basically just a tax on fun. (I'm okay with the scorned family mechanic and cohort loyalty. If I had to be more specific, I think governor loyalty is what I found most annoying.)
If you end a war while your army is invading overseas for warscore, your army gets exiled but your ships don't. So you can't dock at a port to pick them up and they have to walk the long way home.
Miscellaneous
This is the first PDX game I've played that has message settings, and I was simultaneously impressed by the number of options and disappointed that it didn't give me the options I wanted. I don't care about civil wars concluding in empires across the world from me (Maurya seemed to have them every few years). Also, if I turned on auto-trade for non-capital provinces, I wanted to disable the "you are no longer importing x good" messages without disabling the ones about empires canceling import agreements with my capital, but the setting appears to be all-or-nothing. I also wish I could turn the Queued Events into a popup because I'd often not notice them until too late (not the "cults established stuff", but the minor events like +tax vs +stability).
The mission trees felt underwhelming, but I only had the generic ones available. Some of the choices didn't even fit with my strategy (build a fort on three ports requires a lot of fort infra points and costs upkeep), so I essentially ignored the missions after completing the first couple trees.
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