What si the problem with Imperator?

[Skyhunteren]

So I have just tried Imperator for a few hours and since I have played a lot of Paradox games it came pretty easy to me.

In many way the game seem great. Like they took the pops from victoria and stellaris. Combined with characters in CK and empire building of EU4 and slapped what seems like an interresting trade system on top of it.

It seems great, so why are so few playing it?

 

[svalan_i_dalen]

Wonder the same. It's the only paradox game i enjoy playing at the moment. Maybe it is a little harder to get into since the gameplay is not as focused on one aspect as the other games.

 

[Alojzius Pend.]

I got it in April and it waited. I tried few times but didnt like it. But now I can't stop and loved the game.

 

[Todie]

So I have just tried Imperator for a few hours and since I have played a lot of Paradox games it came pretty easy to me.

In many way the game seem great. Like they took the pops from victoria and stellaris. Combined with characters in CK and empire building of EU4 and slapped what seems like an interresting trade system on top of it.

It seems great, so why are so few playing it?

It's complicated. expectations were high on release and they are still very high now. much of the would-be playerbase is quite invested in the other paradox grand strategy games that they have played more and bought more DLC for, and that arguably have a tighter and more "complete" design to them

Imperator has improved a lot since release, but it's not easy to open one's mind to this and to play through it patiently and ask enough questions with enough humility to learn the game and like the experience of playing it.

There seems to be more and more new / returning players stepping forward to share a positive experience as you do. that's really nice. Welcome!


.... I think a lot of players who own the game and others who are interested in it, are waiting. knowing there's another big patch around the corner, and then another...

 

[Staffy50]

Alot of people read it was shallow, jumped in without learning any mechanics , quit cause they could work out how to influence or do things then parrot that it is shallow.

You see loads of posts with people complaining that you cant do x and y, when in fact it is possible to do when you learn the game more.

 

[yezhanquan]

The game lost alot of good will during release.

 

[Todie]

Alot of people read it was shallow, jumped in without learning any mechanics , quit cause they could work out how to influence or do things then parrot that it is shallow.

You see loads of posts with people complaining that you cant do x and y, when in fact it is possible to do when you learn the game more.

for example after 1.5.2 some people were still saying you can achieve historic roman borders with the changes to agressive expansion. a few weeks later, someone has done world conquest with roman Empire on 1.5, and I'm pretty much taking all of northern Europe and brittain with Roman republic.

 

[Trunting]

Ok, what this game needs:

- Different mechanics for different government types
- Flavour for single nations
- more pop types
- a different trade system
- a better building system (here I really hope it comes with Vitruvius)
- rework of military to make it more interesting
- inclusion of philosophical schools of the era
- a better tech system, which is nonlinear
- all these mechanics working together in a useful way

However, I am certain that Imperator will reach these at a certain point of its development.

 

[Jiben]

if you ask 10 people you'll likely get 10 different answers. Most people who visit these forums like the game and agrees with you.

Some people want the game to move towards ck2/ck3 with characters being the focus.

Some people want more regional flavor cultural/religous mechanics, more unique mission trees. Think eu4 where most regions in the game have been reworked and given unique mechanics.

Some people want a solid core experience and point towards vic 2 which has a super advanced pop system but you don't have any unique religious/cultural mechanics and is a fun game nontheless.

And most people is a mix between them.

 

[KBKDB]

I have said this before and will continue to say this - Imperator is probably the most underrated Paradox strategy game right now.

Once the core mechanics get refined and solidified and more flavour gets added to the different cultures/governments (like unique units, buildings etc.) then this will easily be the best game, at least in my eyes.

 

[RonBurgundy]

As I said in another post, I'm just coming back to this game after abandoning it shortly after it launched and I absolutely love it. The thing is, I rediscovered IR on a whim and I think that's why many players haven't come back

With Stellaris, they had a big, flashy "Stellaris 2.0" announcement and an update with sweeping changes that signalled to the community that it's safe to dive back into it. IR has not had anything like that even though we can consider it a 2.0 by now. There's been no claxon call to PDX fans to come back to the game. We've seen some pretty dramatic changes to the game but instead of it coming in one giant update, it's coming along the course of several smaller updates. That's just not as dramatic as what Stellaris did.

IR needs to market the game as a re-release of the game to inspire those who have moved on to give it another shot

 

[Marcus Pica]

As I said in another post, I'm just coming back to this game after abandoning it shortly after it launched and I absolutely love it. The thing is, I rediscovered IR on a whim and I think that's why many players haven't come back

With Stellaris, they had a big, flashy "Stellaris 2.0" announcement and an update with sweeping changes that signalled to the community that it's safe to dive back into it. IR has not had anything like that even though we can consider it a 2.0 by now. There's been no claxon call to PDX fans to come back to the game. We've seen some pretty dramatic changes to the game but instead of it coming in one giant update, it's coming along the course of several smaller updates. That's just not as dramatic as what Stellaris did.

IR needs to market the game as a re-release of the game to inspire those who have moved on to give it another shot

Perhaps you are right, but they should do it e.g. at christmass after CK3 hype expires, people buy more and after we get the mystical update and DLC developed by PDS Tinto as well the Winter of war update.

 

[DukeLeto42]

Problem identified between chair and keyboard.

 

[herrickrcw2]

The game would be a 10/10 FOR ME if it would bring more variety in factions + a trade/war update.

 

[Charlie15842]

Actually a valid point. Just complaining that it is not what I had hoped for is not really helpful. Well maybe a bit for me to get it off my heart .
I think antiquity comes down to two things: politics and expansion.
so painting the map as Roman Empire should be possible as this is what really happened. Maybe remove the war score to that point that I can and everything I have occupied? There still is aggressive expansion as a limit after all and it seems absurd to return Carthage to its owner because it „was too expensive“ to keep.
And as for politics: I am aware that it is not going to become ck.
but thinking of Roman politics brings me to the HBO series. There was so much going on but you cannot really roleplay or try to push someone or something as you play a republic with constantly changing actors. It is just impossible to get invested in anyone here. I really don’t care that my current leader has a son and what his name would be. A few ticks later he is history.
I don’t know how to change that but this should have been in the game designright from the beginning. In the end politics was what they where showing in their trailers.

 

[Todie]

so painting the map as Roman Empire should be possible

it is. you can even doa world conquest with rome in 1.5, there's been pics and stories shared on reddit.

my related recent expereince is this:

having said that, I've come to agree with some of the criticism levelled against the warscore system and the restrictions on what you can do under 30 stability. but its not a big deal. bigger is providing challanging obstacles as a game goes longer and a players conquest go wider. abundant manpower, exessive trade-micro and lack of consistently compelling choices in expenditure of gold on inventions and buildings.

 

[curtadams]

having said that, i've come to agree with some of the critisism elveld agianst the warscore system and tehe restrictions on what you can do under 30 stability. but its not a big deal. bigger is providing challanging obstacles as a game goes longer and a players conquest go wider. abundant manpower, exessive trade-micro and lack of consistently compelling choices in expenditure of gold on inventions and buildings.

I think the solution would be making holding together a large empire intrinsically more difficult, rather than making the process of conquest slower (and more tedious as well with the current AE settings). That would provide less annoyance mid-game and more challenge late-game.

IR actually provides a good mechanism, holdings, for simulating the actual problems Rome had with its own expansion, which was tremendous increases in the wealth of the uppermost classes destabilizing the political compromises which had previously held the society together. If conquests result (directly, or indirectly through governorship corruption) in great families gaining huge holdings, that can reduce their loyalty and incline them to rebellion, eventually making internal stability more of a challenge than external conquest (as happened in Rome). Ideally I think a large empire should be expected to face multiple civil wars - the Romans had quite a few in their last century. Obviously the process of entering and fighting a civil war needs to be more satisfying than the current one, which produces lots of complaints.

 

[heliostellar]

I feel like the game is floundering on what it wants to be. The trade system is awful. Techs costing money? Wtf? The mission trees are half-baked with some objectives impossible to complete. Civil wars don't feel like a crisis because you're teetering so much on civil war all the time that whenever you fall into one its because you fell behind on grinding out those bribes... lame--not fun. There's just SO MUCH of the game that needs major revamping. I only occasionally check in on these forums to see if there's any sign of life, but it's been pretty disappointing.

CK3 has some issues, but it's mostly about tweaks and balance. It's not like entire portions of the game need complete rewriting. The basic systems seem sound.

 

[Todie]

There's just SO MUCH of the game that needs major revamping.

There's a lot of room for improvment / redesign in many areas, yes but there's also a lot of good stuff in already - a lot of game well worth playing.

[...]Civil wars don't feel like a crisis because you're teetering so much on civil war all the time that whenever you fall into one its because you fell behind on grinding out those bribes... lame--not fun.[...]

This seems to be a common sentiment among some of the games loudest critics. "grinding out bribes" is a way that the game can be played, I agree that is not fun, but then, why play it that way? ... I think it's symptomatic of wanting to rush ahead toward some goal like winning a war, painting the map in a certain way "now" or trying to complete a mission tree. That makes players sometimes feel compelled to disregard some aspects of the game, like other cogwheels at work in the Character / Loyalty / Powerbase systems, that also have interlockings with the economies for gold and political influence.

Generally speaking, I think, in order to avoid such "lame-- not fun" situations, players need to be made more compelled to engage with the game's systems, cut corners and plan ahead.

This comes back to my previous reply here:

providing challanging obstacles as a game goes longer and a players conquest go wider. abundant manpower, exessive trade-micro and lack of consistently compelling choices in expenditure of gold on inventions and buildings

... to be clear, we can find a lot of this in the game as-is, given a starting location and difficulty-setting that challenges you. I was on the edge of my seat in the first 50-100 years of my games with Rome and Epirus - on normal difficulty. But as an experienced player, playing Rome on normal in the lategame, I can't help but notice a lack of compelling obstacles to overcome - no reason to be stringent with my bribes and other influence expenditure and eventually not even with my gold and never ever with my manpower. (I would have started a new game already, but I want to finish painting and view / record the timelapse / replay that is available through console)


It's also possible that new /returning players tend to more easily fall into short-sighted habits like handing out bribes because the alternatives and their advantages haven't been made clear to them. (this echoes through all GSG's I think - throughout various iterations of estates in EU4, novice players may have been told to just keep their estates content by the simplest means possible...)

(for reference, regarding bribes, in my ongoing Rome game I've kept my eyes on the horizon somewhat consistently, tried to avoid handing out bribes to save PI, and probably didn't do it more than 5-10 times total until the games end)

 

[Atomcreator]

This is one PDX game I am going to hold out on and wait until the general consensus is that it is a very good game. I've played a free demo and just couldn't figure it out for some reason. Was very busy at the time with covid and just couldn't be bothered either.