Why Imperator Rome was going to be a far better game than other Paradox titles we have now

[wtrmute]

Problem with Bronze age is simple - we didnt find enough written stuff from that time and when you cant find enough archeological sites, there is no way to know more. Simple as that.

My problem with Bronze is not only we dont know that much about this period time but as I said, most of the map would have to be EMPTY.

That is not actually true. It is true that we would have to make a lot of stuff up, because our knowledge of these regions in these areas is fragmentary, but Northern and Western Europe and the Mediterranean were definitely not empty in those times.

Picking an arbitrary date of 1500 BC, we have throughout Southern Great Britain, Armorica, the Gulf of Biscay and the Northern and and the Atlantic Coast the predecessors of the Atlantic Bronze Age culture, which had bronze and quite developed sea trade networks.

Further inland in Central and Eastern France all the way through the Carpathians in Romania we have the Tumulus Culture, and Eastern Iberia has the predecessors of the Classical Iberians and Aquitanians, who are probably linguistically and culturally related to themselves and the Nuragic culture of Sardinia (and probably the Balearic Islands, too).

In mainland Italy we have the Etruscans and their cousins weathering Tumulus (and later their evolution, Urnfield) invasions which will yield colonies that will eventually become the Italic-speaking peoples of the Italian peninsula (among them the Romans).

Northern Africa probably has just Berbers practising agriculture in the Coastal plains and raising cattle in the drier lowlands, more-or-less exactly the same as they will continue to do up until the twentieth Century or so, and a transition to Egypt as we approach the Nile. In any case the coast has settled populations since at least the 5000 BCs or so, and metalworking since the 2500 BCs at least.

Southern Scandinavia and Jutland have the Nordic culture, which are the predecessors of the Germanic peoples. To their SE along the Baltic coast you have Balto-Slavic nomads sandwiched between the sea and the Tumulus. Further to the East you get into the Steppe and the Andronovo culture, which are probably Indo-Iranian and definitely herders.

We know all of that through archaeology, so stuff like language or religion would have to be basically extrapolated from Iron Age counterparts, but while you can claim we might not know enough to make a good strategy game about them, you could definitely not claim that these map regions should be empty.

 

[flowerpunkt]

That is not actually true. It is true that we would have to make a lot of stuff up, because our knowledge of these regions in these areas is fragmentary, but Northern and Western Europe and the Mediterranean were definitely not empty in those times.

Picking an arbitrary date of 1500 BC, we have throughout Southern Great Britain, Armorica, the Gulf of Biscay and the Northern and and the Atlantic Coast the predecessors of the Atlantic Bronze Age culture, which had bronze and quite developed sea trade networks.

Further inland in Central and Eastern France all the way through the Carpathians in Romania we have the Tumulus Culture, and Eastern Iberia has the predecessors of the Classical Iberians and Aquitanians, who are probably linguistically and culturally related to themselves and the Nuragic culture of Sardinia (and probably the Balearic Islands, too).

In mainland Italy we have the Etruscans and their cousins weathering Tumulus (and later their evolution, Urnfield) invasions which will yield colonies that will eventually become the Italic-speaking peoples of the Italian peninsula (among them the Romans).

Northern Africa probably has just Berbers practising agriculture in the Coastal plains and raising cattle in the drier lowlands, more-or-less exactly the same as they will continue to do up until the twentieth Century or so, and a transition to Egypt as we approach the Nile. In any case the coast has settled populations since at least the 5000 BCs or so, and metalworking since the 2500 BCs at least.

Southern Scandinavia and Jutland have the Nordic culture, which are the predecessors of the Germanic peoples. To their SE along the Baltic coast you have Balto-Slavic nomads sandwiched between the sea and the Tumulus. Further to the East you get into the Steppe and the Andronovo culture, which are probably Indo-Iranian and definitely herders.

We know all of that through archaeology, so stuff like language or religion would have to be basically extrapolated from Iron Age counterparts, but while you can claim we might not know enough to make a good strategy game about them, you could definitely not claim that these map regions should be empty.

Im not saying map would be empty cuz nobody was there, Im saying map would be empty because those cultures did not make any coherent society and left very little. You talk about tribes. They left almost nothing so we know nearly nothing about them... so I dont have idea how you would portray such a "nations" (tribes is more proper word)

For example - You talk about so-called Tumulus culture. Can you tell me what do we actually know about them? I think nearly nothing thats the reason why we have to name them Tumulus, because we know they built them..and thats pretty much it. We know nothing about structure of their society, we dont know any important characters, we can just guess (and as you say extrapolate some stuff). How do you identify yrself with such a culture, when you know nearly nothing about them?

Etruscans...I think we have almost 0 evidence of them in those times. Etruscans are more like 900BC.


Thats another problem with Bronze age..timeline is ridiculously long and you will have hard time to find good starting date.

 

[wtrmute]

Im not saying map would be empty cuz nobody was there, Im saying map would be empty because those cultures did not make any coherent society and left very little. You talk about tribes we know nearly nothing about them so I dont have idea how you would portray such a "nations" (tribes is more proper word)

For example - You talk about so-called Tumulus culture. Can you tell me what do we actually know about them? I think nearly nothing thats the reason why we have to name them Tumulus, because we know they build them..and thats pretty much it. We know nothing about structure of their society, we dont know any important characters, we can just guess (and as you say extrapolate some stuff). How do you identify yrself with such a culture, when you know nearly nothing about them?

Etruscans...I think we have almost 0 evidence of them in those times. Etruscans are more like 900BC.


Thats another problem with Bronze age..timeline is ridiculously long and you will have hard time to find good starting date.

My point is that while we do know very little about them, we do know they were cultures which built urban centres at least as advanced as the Aedui in the Iron Age. These aren't hunter-gatherers. They are farmers and workers of bronze, and partook in the international tin trade. The technological difference between them and the great empires of the Bronze Age is actually smaller than the difference between the barbarians, say, in Transalpine Gaul and the most advanced nations in the base game (Rome, Carthage, the Seleucids, Athens).

We know little about their religion and language, to be sure, but that kind of information has little relevance to a GSG. It's not like PDX didn't make up details about the smaller tribes throughout the map out of whole cloth. The Tumuli, particularly, were probably the pre-Celts, but that information is irrelevant. We do know that they had settlements like Reinecke and Gábor Sánta, they had a more dispersed, farmstead-like model in the north but also villages further south where the soil was arable, they had pottery, they had metalwork, they had cattle; we have no evidence that they had chariots, and they definitely wouldn't have had cavalry, so their military traditions are chalcolitic spear- and dagger-armed infantry. Their government type is tribal; possibly the northernmost polities could be more nomadic, and the southernmost ones settled. That's very nearly all we need for Imperator.

 

[Godd_Howard]

I expected to find more people saying "Free Imperator" but instead I get a read about Bronze age history. Kind of based and bronzepilled.

And yes Imperator desperately needed a nomadic rework so much. I hate that it's not in the game as it should be, becasue it's so important in the long run of history.

 

[Nak'Arosh]

I expected to find more people saying "Free Imperator" but instead I get a read about Bronze age history. Kind of based and bronzepilled.

And yes Imperator desperately needed a nomadic rework so much. I hate that it's not in the game as it should be, becasue it's so important in the long run of history.

Its to show how many thing you can add on Imperator. For me the biggest GSG of paradox, just loose to Stellaris, because Stellearis is SCI-fi and you can add many contents, is a never-ending history game heheh.

 

[flowerpunkt]

My point is that while we do know very little about them, we do know they were cultures which built urban centres at least as advanced as the Aedui in the Iron Age. These aren't hunter-gatherers. They are farmers and workers of bronze, and partook in the international tin trade. The technological difference between them and the great empires of the Bronze Age is actually smaller than the difference between the barbarians, say, in Transalpine Gaul and the most advanced nations in the base game (Rome, Carthage, the Seleucids, Athens).

We know little about their religion and language, to be sure, but that kind of information has little relevance to a GSG. It's not like PDX didn't make up details about the smaller tribes throughout the map out of whole cloth. The Tumuli, particularly, were probably the pre-Celts, but that information is irrelevant. We do know that they had settlements like Reinecke and Gábor Sánta, they had a more dispersed, farmstead-like model in the north but also villages further south where the soil was arable, they had pottery, they had metalwork, they had cattle; we have no evidence that they had chariots, and they definitely wouldn't have had cavalry, so their military traditions are chalcolitic spear- and dagger-armed infantry. Their government type is tribal; possibly the northernmost polities could be more nomadic, and the southernmost ones settled. That's very nearly all we need for Imperator.

"We know little about their religion and language, to be sure, but that kind of information has little relevance to a GSG. It's not like PDX didn't make up details about the smaller tribes throughout the map out of whole cloth."

Sure, you have to make up a lot of stuff even in antiqity times, my point is in case of Tumuli, you would have to make up everything except for the very basics (we know they were able to grew some plants, lived nomadic/tribal life, etc..). Religion had huge impact on history and can hardly be overrated, without religion there would be no civilization since it united people together (that changed in history, but thats for another topic)....so I would say that historical GSG should be able to portray it properly.

How much fun would be EU4 if we knew nothing about religion in those times? No pope, no schisma, no reformation etc...

The Tumuli is just name for bunch of tribes that were waging wars against each other. On several places (you had to be extremely lucky to find one) they were able to built some more time enduring settlements and the rest is your fantasy.

We know nearly nothing about them, there is exactly zero dynamics between them and more advanced civilizations and you just get whole continent of thousands tiny tribes.

You want to put historical GSG into enviroment that is kinda ahistorical for most of the part.

Can you make GSG from those times? Yes you can, but I cant see fun playing it.

 

[flowerpunkt]

I expected to find more people saying "Free Imperator" but instead I get a read about Bronze age history.

Why not. Might be insteresting talk on topic "Why do you like to play strategy games?." and I know I dont want to play certain timelines in history in GSG. However the one in Imperator is excellent, only needs to be stretched a bit.

 

[wtrmute]

"We know little about their religion and language, to be sure, but that kind of information has little relevance to a GSG. It's not like PDX didn't make up details about the smaller tribes throughout the map out of whole cloth."

Sure, you have to make up a lot of stuff even in antiqity times, my point is in case of Tumuli, you would have to make up everything except for the very basics (we know they were able to grew some plants, lived nomadic/tribal life, etc..). Religion had huge impact on history and can hardly be overrated, without religion there would be no civilization since it united people together (that changed in history, but thats for another topic)....so I would say that historical GSG should be able to portray it properly.

How much fun would be EU4 if we knew nothing about religion in those times? No pope, no schisma, no reformation etc...

The Tumuli is just name for bunch of tribes that were waging wars against each other. On several places (you had to be extremely lucky to find one) they were able to built some more time enduring settlements and the rest is your fantasy.

We know nearly nothing about them, there is exactly zero dynamics between them and more advanced civilizations and you just get whole continent of thousands tiny tribes.

You want to put historical GSG into enviroment that is kinda ahistorical for most of the part.

Can you make GSG from those times? Yes you can, but I cant see fun playing it.

The Tumuli are probably Proto-Celtic, or Proto-Italo-Celtic if you subscribe to that particular PIE grouping; so we know more about their religion than we would know about the Nuraghi out in Sardinia, for example, or even the Iberians in the base Iron Age game.

But I agree with you, we would have to make most of it up with only a basic sketch of what their culture was like, being informed by the archaeology. However, my original point wasn't that: it was that if you make a Bronze Age game, while you may know very little about the cultures which inhabited Western and Central Europe in those days, you definitely cannot set those provinces as empty because they were not. "We know nothing about their religion and mythology" is not an excuse to make their homelands empty provinces, as if they had never existed. This is what was implied in a previous post, and what I was reacting to.

 

[Jays298]

That was not the point I was arguing.

Lets say a game about WW2 comes out named "Dictator: Germany". It has some problems on launch, people are disapointed. But just as the devs start adding things like factories, divisions and equipment production along with events focused on the historical aspect of the game ranging from the annexation of Czechoslovakia to the invasion of the USSR in 41. How much of a let down would it be if management canned the game in order to save their own failing DLC spam for their older games? Would you be satisfied with a WW2 game with almost no WW2 in it? I wouldn't be.

Or a World war Ii era game where the focus is on a civil war in Russia in 1918, civil strife across Europe in that era, oh and a start date in 1918 because we only believe in one start date and this will make it more interesting.

You can still do the rise of Rome thing but HOI 4 has about four times more replayability than Imperator.

Imperator would be a good game if it was about real Roman characters and the rise of Rome and the conflict with Carthage and Gaul. Not a random simulation of random generated statistics fighting over Alexander's heirs.

 

[flowerpunkt]

you definitely cannot set those provinces as empty because they were not. "We know nothing about their religion and mythology" is not an excuse to make their homelands empty provinces, as if they had never existed. This is what was implied in a previous post, and what I was reacting to.

I would omit the whole continent since I cant see any reasonable way how to portray those hundreds of tribes on map. Sure you can look at wiki, see area painted by Tumuli and then do the same with the map...but I find it very silly since most of the province was actually empty, population was very thin and scattered. Most of the Europe waited to be colonized in those times*. Bronze age should focus on real majors - which means that only Greece, Minor Asia, Levant, Mesopotamia a Egypt would be on map and even there I have hard time to imagine how to portray it on game map since most of the people lived close to rivers and sea...and areas behind those sweet spots were just wilderness occupied by nobody.

To be absolutely clear - to me its just not wise design decision to make such a game as was suggested above.

*in antiquity most of the Europe was just forrests as well but tribes were much bigger and parts of territory they occupied were huge (we even know the exact figures from Romans - we talk about tribes that could have more than 40 000 people ). To put it simply - World in antiquity was much more connected and compact than in Bronze age.