Will this be another I:R situation?

[cosmeIII]

I don't think it'll be an I:R situation because I:R was pretty much a new IP, so like Stellaris they had to nail down their vision on the game and IMO they are still doing so right now. I consider EU:Rome and I:R is to be totally different games, at least in my opinion, and the latter just can't be considered a 'sequel' to the former.

CK3 is the heir to a very successful game, so a lot of its mechanics and base gameplay is simply stripped from there with a few reworks and gimmicks like revised intrigue to make it feel different. I still hold true to my beliefs that CK3's characters just won't have the same personality as CK2 characters because of the railroaded way of life system, the dead-set personality system and the lack of uniqueness to the 3D model portraits (they're well done, but the characters look very samey to me).

The one thing that bothers me is that I can tell where the devs have 'cut' some development, very much so in the cultural department, where some CK2 cultures have just been done away with to be incorporated into broad cultures. Though the same has been done with some big cultures which were split into smaller ones. Still, they mentioned that a lot of the culture stuff they didn't include wasn't ready yet or was being 'discussed' (AKA being planned as a flavor pack for the area). All I can hope is that the flavor packs are something more than two or three cultural innovations and splitting up former cultures considering the $7 (and likely 7€) price tag AND that we're gonna have two of those in the first 4-6 months of the game. We're gonna be paying for the game all over again in just half a year after its release if we include the expansion into those prices, so I sure hope the DLCs are worth it.

 

[LordofLight]

I consider EU:Rome and I:R is to be totally different games, at least in my opinion, and the latter just can't be considered a 'sequel' to the former.

You are both right and wrong with that, at least going by a presentation they once had. Sadly this is the best I could find of it.

(But then again it says tight focused gameplay and focused is not how I would describe I:R but most people seem to not know what is the focus.)

The one thing that bothers me is that I can tell where the devs have 'cut' some development

Does anyone remember building roads in I:R? One. Province. At. A. Time. One. By. One.
It's like nobody tested the game, it had some awful issues at the very core of gameplay and also issues with just basic Quality of Life stuff. The game needed more time in the oven. Maybe a year or two.

 

[Ekyman]

The devs did say they saw it as a map-painter and laughed at people who said they wanted more than a mere-map painter.

IIRC, they also said that every PDS game is a map painter (possibly excepting CK). I don’t really disagree with that, but it means calling Imperator a map painter isn’t that informative.

And I do think Imperator is a map painter at its core, I just don’t think it did a good job of holding its focus on that one thing or on communicating that core.

 

[Zhetone]

IIRC, they also said that every PDS game is a map painter (possibly excepting CK). I don’t really disagree with that, but it means calling Imperator a map painter isn’t that informative.

And I do think Imperator is a map painter at its core, I just don’t think it did a good job of holding its focus on that one thing or on communicating that core.

with a new team, they've said the new focus is "civilization-building" and the creation of an immersive, evolving world within the classical period, which sounds a lot more focused and interesting than "it's a map-painter." unfortunately, this pivot will probably require a lot of development time, so it remains to be seen whether this new vision is ever fully realized.

 

[Ekyman]

with a new team, they've said the new focus is "civilization-building" and the creation of an immersive, evolving world within the classical period, which sounds a lot more focused and interesting than "it's a map-painter." unfortunately, this pivot will probably require a lot of development time, so it remains to be seen whether this new vision is ever fully realized.

Yeah, I‘be been intentionally trying to use past tense and should have said “was” there. Pretty much all the work post-release has pushed away from the map painter focus.

 

[Hiiri]

View attachment 580306

"A hardcore PDS title for strategy fans" lol

Can't quite recall last time I had to use my brains playing it. With all the bureaucrat assignments and invading neighbors who can't fight back it feels more like candy crush saga than hardcore strategy experience.

 

[LordofLight]

Considering the primary and... only way to play at launch required 0 strategy at most... you're not exactly wrong there. They knew their audience but didn't know how to get it (no mana).

 

[Father of Nations]

Does anyone remember building roads in I:R? One. Province. At. A. Time. One. By. One.
It's like nobody tested the game, it had some awful issues at the very core of gameplay and also issues with just basic Quality of Life stuff.

How about moving slaves, especially between cities in different provinces? I can’t remember EU:R having any mechanic that was as annoying as this one. In some way I:R is groundbreaking, especially the automation of armies is something I‘d love to see in every other PDX title, yet in other ways it was simply unplayable. The devs did a great job with the last update though, the only problem that I have with it right now is its compatibility with Mac. It seems that they’re unable, and maybe meanwhile also unwilling, to adapt it to OS X. So my greatest fear is that CK3 won’t work flawlessly on Macs either.

 

[LordofLight]

Considering the tiny player base for I:R, I wouldn't be surprised if there are like... 5 players tops (hyperbole but you get my point) who play it on MacOS so they just decided they have bigger issues to deal with than MacOS compatibility.

I also do love the automated army thing. Just declare war and have them kill the enemy for me. I guess the downside is its basically like auto-resolve in Total War games where you don't fight the battles. But boy is it useful. I hope its in CK3, I really do. But I don't think it is?

Personally I tried I:R recently due to all this talking about it, I still hate the research. You get options for research then just... instantly unlock it after paying. I wish it had a timer on it or something. Its funny playing tribal and just getting a ton of new inventions and innovations all in less than 1 day. I really don't like the research system of I:R. Essentially in roleplay terms spliting discovery and putting the discovery into practice.

 

[Volodio]

I consider EU:Rome and I:R is to be totally different games, at least in my opinion, and the latter just can't be considered a 'sequel' to the former.

I don't understand how you can say that unless you never played EU: Rome considering both games had (at the release of I:R) the same trade system with resources and provinces, the same warfare with different kind of troops, the same stability system, the same research system, the same political system, the same approach to characters, the same pop system, etc. Goddamn it, even some events were the exact same between both games, down to each word. They were so similar some people said I:R was more of a remaster than a sequel.

 

[Will Steel]

I don't think CK3 is going the Imperator route.

Imperator at release was a laughable, badly developed, untested, unfinished beta (with a great map and great visuals), made to make a quick cash-grab and exploit the gigantic playerbase hype for a great Hellenistic era game that had built up over ten years...a beta that players had to pay to test for the devs.

It has barely managed to reach the level it should have been at release only now, after more than one year of development. And is still missing an enormous number of basic features and UI fixes. And because most of the devs are working on CK3, nowadays only gets slow mini-patches that come at a glacial pace and don't always change much. It has still not fully recovered from the horrid map painter for dummies that it was originally released as.

CK3 on the other hand already seems to have a decent amount of content (by the older Paradox vanilla release standards at least), looking at the dev diaries. It will likely have a huge train of DLCs coming like CK2 did, but it also seems playable and fun at release like CK2 in 2012 was. It is already a far more complete game.

There is no point in comparing the gameplay of the two, since they are completely different games in that regard.

 

[treb]

Im going to go against the grain and defend I:R as it currently is, in my opinion it is a fun game, or at least I had fun playing it. Its not as bad as release, I personally got a refund. But after nabbing it on sale a few months back I had some really fun campaigns as the Selucids, Boihamia, a revived Minoan Crete and Caldonia.

 

[Will Steel]

Im going to go against the grain and defend I:R as it currently is, in my opinion it is a fun game, or at least I had fun playing it. Its not as bad as release, I personally got a refund. But after nabbing it on sale a few months back I had some really fun campaigns as the Selucids, Boihamia, a revived Minoan Crete and Caldonia.

Indeed, even with a lot of missing things it is very fun (with monarchies at least). It has come a long way since release.

What I'm saying is, contrary to what OP of this thread asked, CK3 isn't heading in Imperator's direction either. With Imperator it became apparent from dev diaries and previews many months before release that the game had little content (and Johan went ahead anyway), while CK3 dev diaries have shown that it will have a lot of content right from the beginning.

 

[EU3NOOB]

Indeed, even with a lot of missing things it is very fun (with monarchies at least). It has come a long way since release.

What I'm saying is, contrary to what OP of this thread asked, CK3 isn't heading in Imperator's direction either. With Imperator it became apparent from dev diaries and previews many months before release that the game had little content (and Johan went ahead anyway), while CK3 dev diaries have shown that it will have a lot of content right from the beginning.

Yeah, if CKIII fails it'll be for totally different reasons than Imperator.

 

[Red_warning]

Considering the primary and... only way to play at launch required 0 strategy at most... you're not exactly wrong there. They knew their audience but didn't know how to get it (no mana).

More like didn't want to get it

People have been complaining about mana since EU4 released in 2013, yet they decided to double down on that design choice with I:R. Lesson learned, I hope.

Edit: Just realised this thread is inactive since a month ago, oh well...

 

[Woifee]

There surely is one flaw I:R and CK3 share, it’s not Vic3

No srsly, I’m optimistic, Religions look great. But I’ll wait for a few Dlcs tough. As I do always.

 

[shigad]

I obviously want to preface this by saying that my impression is for one a.) completely subjective and b.) based only on all the footage and information released so far and that c.) I by no means claim that the devs are "lazy" or "bad" or w/e and that I want CK III to be the best it can be.

That being said from the top of my head here are some points I am concerned about:

1. While Religion as a mechanic has been reworked and the new foundation is fantastic and probably very easy to build upon I am disappointed to know that there wont be things like dynamic and historic councils in the game were certain aspects of a faith (i.e Catholicism) can be altered without immediately creating some sort of heresy.
2. To the same degree I also want to point out that "Religious Hostility" seems to be a VERY rigid form of relationship that can only be altered by changing religious doctrines (aka creating a new faith) and not by i.e events and decisions like for example burning down another faiths holy site etc.
3. I find it concerning that they did not bother finding a solution for faiths that have a mutual religious head i.e Insular & Catholic or the Sunni Schools. This is the type of stuff that I would genuinely expect in the base game from the get go..
4. I am NOT a fan of baronies being so strictly tied to counties and not being inheiretable outside of it, this really dampened some of my excitement in regards to the otherwise gorgeous map layout.

These are four of my personal, major and minor pain points that I could immediately come up with.. There is probably more but yeah.

I also want to end this by saying that there are also many great and awesome new things in CK III too.

I strongly agree about points 1 and 3, I think that like more options for feudal contracts, these are things that are expected to be there with the new amazing system. I really hope the devs find some way (and see the need) to address these points, like they have done really commendably with feudal contracts.
My suggestion is to create a tenet/doctrine for the different Sunni schools that makes all faith sharing the tenet have the same religion head. Though I don't know if this is at all feasible, with the current infrastructure of the religion system.
I also agree on points 2 and 4, though I've never given them much thought.

 

[Razmorg]

IIRC, they also said that every PDS game is a map painter (possibly excepting CK). I don’t really disagree with that, but it means calling Imperator a map painter isn’t that informative.

And I do think Imperator is a map painter at its core, I just don’t think it did a good job of holding its focus on that one thing or on communicating that core.

People call it a map painter when it gets boring, they don't feel challenged and internal management feels trivial. At least that's how I see it. I doubt people dislike the very idea of expansionism and conquest being a core focus of the games but just that sometimes they feel the game is too streamlined or easy in that route and wishes the game focused more on other areas. So insulting the game as being a map painter is something I'm sure can trigger designers who feel like that's all they've been doing since the very start and it's an odd thing to latch onto.

My take on Imperator is just that it was this short 1 year rushed project by Johan as he got excited by the CK3 engine and had the idea to give EU:Rome a facelift by porting the code over and improving it a bit. He toyed around with it some more and hoped people would like it but expectations was way different. At least that's my take based on the talk Johan had on it.

It's super clear CK3 isn't the same type of project. They have a very clear goal, very clear game direction, spent more time on it and a lot more ambition. But, obviously this could still mean that it fails in a fairly similar way. Maybe it will just feel rough and under-developed next to CK2? Combine that with tons of bugs and you might have people calling it Imperator 2.

I don't think that will happen and I don't think the projects are even close to the same ballpark in how they've been approached but it's hard to know. From all I've seen in the dev diaries it looks good though so here's hoping it won't take 1-2 years after release before it gets going.

 

[Samitte]

My take on Imperator is just that it was this short 1 year rushed project by Johan as he got excited by the CK3 engine and had the idea to give EU:Rome a facelift by porting the code over and improving it a bit. He toyed around with it some more and hoped people would like it but expectations was way different. At least that's my take based on the talk Johan had on it.

I think I:R also overestimated the amount of work the new map-scope would entail. EU:R was miniscule in its map scope, compared to I:R. Creating the map itself probably was a lot of work, but then doing all the research involved with actually filling it out with tags, pops, cultures, trade goods, cities, and other stuff I can imagine proved a giant hurdle. Then they had to make up names for a large part of the map as well, because we completely lack sources. And some parts of the map look (to me at least) very rushed, which I assume was because of this. The development time of the game was way too short to properly complete the map.

And thats just 1 aspect, I think they probably should have spent some more months, if not another year on it. Though that would create problems with the launch window for CKIII I think. Still really like it though.

 

[Jayavarman]

You are both right and wrong with that, at least going by a presentation they once had. Sadly this is the best I could find of it.
View attachment 580306
(But then again it says tight focused gameplay and focused is not how I would describe I:R but most people seem to not know what is the focus.)

Does anyone remember building roads in I:R? One. Province. At. A. Time. One. By. One.
It's like nobody tested the game, it had some awful issues at the very core of gameplay and also issues with just basic Quality of Life stuff. The game needed more time in the oven. Maybe a year or two.

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