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Also, the game is getting always a good discount, check steamdb. I think -80% -75%.
Start with Rome, and then decide if you like or not the game, Rome is one of the best start.
If you are not playing as Rome, Rome is like the crisis in Stellaris: or you get destroyed by Rome, or you destroy Rome, or you try your best not to anger them and to be their allies, or you are so far away that you will never hear from them.
The game is challenging because you need to pay attention to what happen in your nation, civil wars can occurs mostly because characters are just to be annoying and push their agenda. It's not like CK that you can overpower them easily. Obviously after playing for many hours, you know what to do.
Alliance is an important mechanic. Combat is really good, the fort system make the game more dynamic.
The most important thing is to manage the population and how to not anger and how to make them more your primary culture/religion.
Yeah there is replayability mostly because the AI act differently every match. You rarely see Rome go down, but it could happen, in one match Antigonus lived more than 100 years and destroyed the others Diadochis... etc
Rome and Carthage have their own National missions. It's a free DLC. And you can spend many hours playing as them.
If you liked playing as Rome or Carthage, then it might be worth it buying the others DLC specially Heirs of Alexander, it's about the Diodachis they get Mission trees. That's why I said that there are not many interesting nations.
But again, you could start anywhere, as tribes or some other republic or monarchy. It's still fun. And not that easy.
Check if you like the pop management it's the most important thing in this game, it's really fun.
It will take you a while to learn it without watching youtube, but Ill admit I did enjoy learning it more so than after I had learnt it.
Its biggest problem is lack of variety and its cyclic, click fest nature.
Id say playing and managing small to medium nations is more enjoyable than snow balling, it just takes too much time to do everything you should be and oh so repetitive.
Then you get the techs later that remove the management needs, then its just map painting and suddenly the game ends.
Could have been a great game, but they listened to the idiots and banned people like me who were giving honest advice.
Whatever $10-$20 AUD equivalent its worth getting.
You could have got it for free a while ago.
While that isn't completely atypical for a Paradox GSG, Imperator probably is about the worst offender and has an exceptionally bad UI.
If you wonder why most people get about 40h of gameplay in then never touch it again, it's because 40h is about the amount of time it takes to learn and figure out the mechanics and get through one campaign before coming to the realization that it's still a boring mess of disjointed mechanics and anachronicity.
Maybe you'll be one of those tiny minority of players that like the game, but more likely you just got conned into wasting your money on abandoned garbage.
The structure of the game is pop management and warfare. basically what you have to understand is this: integrating cultures will make the integrate cultures less happy but you get an easy way to get citizens (or I won't suggest to have another culture that can become noble.) To integrate a culture you have to give them the right to become Citizens or Nobles.
The other way which takes more time but in the long run is more beneficiary is to assimilates pops? How first if the pops has another religion it's going to really crazy difficult to assimilate them, therefore the first thing that you take into account if a region has your religion or ways to make them believe the same religion that your primary culture has( using great temples is the more expensive way but the best way).
Then you have to assimilate them, the more expensive way but in the end the easiest way is with grand theater.
So search in tech or in the wiki how to build those two buildings. If not take into consideration that there are others cheapest way, like Library, Marketplace, then you have Governor policies, if a place does not have your own religion force Religious Conversion in that place. if they have already your own religion the choose cultural Assimilation.
After that it's just knowing how to manage pops, I recommend to have at least a city in every province, that way you can assimilate them faster.
Character management, is the easiest part of the game. Don't worry it's not like CK3 sometime they want things that you don't want and you will have to concede, specially if you play as a Republic.
Wars it's a bit more complicate, take into account attrition, terrain etc Also one of the best thing about this game is the Legion system, it's like a Xcom unit with it's own story etc, that you pay them not like levies that you raise them. If I'm not mistaken, with levies not only you are loosing research and others benefits but if the unit dies, a pop can die. Legions can have easily the monarchs, and with republics you just need to follow a route in the research system.
At last Civil war, try not to angry too much the families. Many players don't pay attention to the loyalty system.
Have fun!
Side tip: You can automate trade for your provinces in F1 + Administration tab; if your nation is fairly big it helps reduce a redundant part of micromanaging and might help secure a trade resource you might want for your capital later on.
Now, the good stuff below:
As mentioned by others, it shares much in common with other Paradox GSG, but I agree the UI is probably the single worst aspect of the game. If you're new to these kinds of titles and still figuring it out: right-click on character portraits as well; you don't have to obsess over all characters like in CK2, but still need to keep an eye on families' loyalty and ensure enough jobs are allocated to their members. Civil wars are pretty much the worse thing as it can take forever to quell for empires, while they can leave you with nearly no characters when playing a smaller nation.
Government forms do change up the gameplay quite a bit. IMO Rome is a good start for learning on the conquest/strategy/pop management front, but government-wise, Republics are the most complex form to manage in the game. If you find yourself too mired up in internal struggles/rebellions + are constantly broke without being sure why, it's likely that tyranny and corruption sky-rocketed (tied to senate approval, a Republics-only mechanic).
Whenever you go for another play-through, I will strongly suggest going for a monarchy, as the government mechanics and laws are much more straightforward and will offer a better setting to grasp the implications and progress of these secondary-but-crucial modifiers (corruption,tyranny, along with the gov-specific senate approval/legitimacy/tribal centralization). Also, it lets you figure out character loyalty and holdings (which I'm sure many players ignore/are unaware of) since rulers don't change every 4-5 years.
Eventually you'll get to discover the MVP here: migratory tribes-> you actually can migrate quite far on the map despite supply limit, and once you're familiar enough with the mechanic, during war you can straight up take over an enemy's territory by settling enough tribesman in it, before a peace deal is even reached! Pro tip: it can also be a way to cheese assimilation, as everything is converted upon migration. The true cost is the fact tribes struggle with tech (which they can pillage from enemy cities to some degree) and low territory civilization (which affects pop cap in said territory); by late-game, your large hordes could outnumber e.g. Roman Legions, but will be like paper (even when using horse archers, aka the go-to counter against heavy infantry). Nevertheless, tribes start out with more options when determining their fate.
As you mention you were seeking more challenging gameplay, you have several options just based on tags' starting situations (e.g. Bactria and Parthia are overall spicy; a small kingdom in northern Sri Lanka will contend with a diverse and different culture group; myself, I actually struggled a lot playing as Judea; forming Gaul, Greater Iberia and Persia all took a few moments). Also, Starting as a client state to a larger power will get you focusing on diplomacy more. Frankly, I found all tags more fun to play than Rome, despite the game's focus and name. This said, late-game AI Rome will hit hard more likely than not, especially if you're in their path, have been playing as a tribe and have a large tech gap. If you want that full, undiluted experience, and don't want to wait until late game, try forming Illyria as a minor in the West Balkans and surviving more than ~50 years ^.^.
Of course, there are achievements as well, but you can also completely make up your own objectives. E.g.one of my faves is figuring out how to play tell, such as having highest score with only 99 territories by end date and starting as a random tribe. Like many mentioned, pop management is where the fun is because it's dynamic. For a desert kingdom in the Tarim basin, the greatest concern will be to keep everyone fed and control overpopulation when barbarians constantly settle. For the Seleucid empire, it's the fact you barely have any pops from your main culture in your empire at game start. For a Gaulish or Iberian tribe, it's the fact every neighbor is part of a defensive league and/or alliance networks; meanwhile a migratory tribe can effectively be wiped out if the last of their migrants are crushed on their way somewhere,and so on. The culture/religion/social class determine a lot of things for your pops and permeates other aspects of the game regardless of the tag you're playing (e.g. access to new traditions). The DLCs are indeed for flavour (mostly unique missions and special RNG pop-up events, and I think there are some skins for units); beyond this, the wonder system in Heirs of Alexander feels like a good answer to this situation: "I figured out how to jack up my nation and have tons of cash to burn. I semi-care about conquest because no one is a real threat. What now?"
As for mods, there are unfortunately nowhere near as many as, say, EUIV. Some of the overhaul ones (Bronze Age, The last Roman, A Broken World) have tremendous potential, but aren't exactly complete (and Bronze Age dev migrated to CK3). There's also Imperator Invictus which tweaks the game beautifully, but I would recommend nailing vanilla mechanics before jumping into these. Myself, I'm still waiting for the LOTR one to be updated to 2.0 ^.^
The second time I played it was as a migratory tribe. They are pretty cheesy with the migrations essentially converting foreign cultures and religion populations in territories nearly instantly, but it also makes your nation very unstable which has drawbacks. In addition, once you've spread out and assimilated as many pops as you can with the migrations, you will be way behind on buildings and technology compared to Rome for example; and you will have to change your laws and raise stability and whatever else to become something other than tribal. It seemed doable in the long term, but in the meantime I appeased Rome like crazy while trying to cut off it's expansion, but I realized I had waited too long to civilize probably and would start a new game eventually.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2635984758
Look at that gold stockpile though! I didn't build a dang thing as a tribal. All that was going into cities once I civilized; in fact I should maybe have invested in at least one early on for a capital. I managed to grab an independent city on the coast of Africa with migrations, but they rebelled and then Carthage took it from me to my indifference.
Not pictured: Venedian West Africa. You can snipe any territory not controlled by a nation with migrations as long as you settle the same number +1 of population there. Then you can call a second migration from that county and all are your culture and religion instantly. Resettle 1 pop in the now empty county and move to the next. That's why I didn't build anything: migrations destroy all the buildings.