Revive this game cowards

Rome wasn't built in one update.

At 60 hours in the game, I think I have played it enough to have a reasonable understanding of how it works. I will break this into five pros and ten cons.

Pros:
1) It is set in a really fascinating time period. The Wars of the Diadochi and the rise of the Roman Republic is a really cool time, and few games cover the period.
2) The scale is incredible: you can play as a single city-state, and rise to rule an entire continent. It is really impressive, and you feel cool doing it.
3) Land warfare is complex, and that's a good thing. Elephants, chariots, horse-archers... all have pros and cons, and you need to take that into account in wars. Plus you need certain resources to build certain things... don't have horses? Can't train cavalry.
4) Trade is fascinating. You gain bonuses both from importing AND exporting, which is nice.
5) I love the music, and rest of the sound design. When you click a button, it sounds like you're placing a slab of granite in place, and that's fun. It fits the period.

Cons:
1) Much of what you do is dependent on "mana," which is an abstract representation of your "diplomatic power," or "military power," or "religious power," or "civic power." These are used to purchase various things, from converting people to your religion, to fabricating claims on foreign lands, to changing governor policies. Mana is only acquired by either selling your wealth, or by slowly waiting for your Leader to produce it. This essentially means that much of what you want to do is dependent on simply... waiting. Whether you wait for money to buy mana, or wait for it to naturally grow, you will wait... a lot. Mana is essentially nothing more than a timer, which you must wait to tick down before doing what you want.
2) Pops are... annoying. I've promoted people from slavery to being freemen of my empire... only to have their opinion and happiness decrease. That's right, I've ended slavery... only to piss off my now freed slaves.
3) There are no penalties for... most any actions, actually. Forcibly convert all the Jews to Zoroastrianism? No penalties. Actually, the Jews will be HAPPIER now. Same if you force all the tribesmen of Etruria to become urbanites... actually, if you're civilized, they'll thank you for it. If you force all Greeks to speak Persian? They'll be much happier, and you will suffer no consequences for your genocide.
4) It doesn't really represent the period all too historically. Rome only has one Consul, the Social Wars are nearly impossible to recreate, as Rome simply outright conquers all the other Italian cities, the Punic Wars are unlikely... Rome usually focuses on Gaul, and Carthage really only cares about North Africa and Iberia, Persia seems unlikely as either the Mauryans conquer the region or the Seleucids never collapse, the Gallic Migrations in Greece only happen if the player forces them to, religious syncretism is unheard of, and instead there are outright mass forced conversions of huge swaths of territory, and the entire economy is built on slavery, with no income coming from free laborers or farmers... I understand that some artistic license needs to be taken to keep the game playable, but come on... if you're going to make a game that tries so hard to be "historical," why not try a little harder?
5) There is nothing to do in peacetime. War is the only guaranteed way to gain resources, acquire slaves, and really the only thing fun to do. I know that the game is Imperator: Rome, and Rome certainly conquered many people in the period... but if you're playing a historical Egypt, or Macedon, there is really nothing else to do beyond war. If I wanted a game only about painting maps, I'd just boot up MS Paint.
6) The game is BUGGY. I can't close the game entirely, it always continues running in the background. If I try to boot up a new game, Steam tells me that Imperator: Rome is still running, and I can't play until i quit the first game. The only fix is to restart my computer... which is kinda annoying.
7) The game is HUGE... which means that when you zoom out all the way, it lags severely. My frame rate tanks every time i zoom out all the way, and the music skips a lot... now my computer is nothing special, but I can run Total War Rome II on high settings, and it NEVER gives me any troubles like this.
8) As of writing this, naval combat is a joke. There is only one type of ship, and only two types of tactic that can be selected... one gives increased attack, the other increased defense. This means that naval battles ALWAYS simply go to whoever hired more ships. If you churn out a dozen ships, you will win if your enemy only has six. So much for strategy, right?
9) I've had the game crash to desktop easily four or five times, when I load a save game. This wouldn't be a problem... if the game didn't take 5-10 minutes to load. Seriously, it got old after the first time.
10) As far as the "diverse populations" of the game go... they're not there. Gallic tribes play EXACTLY the same as Germanic tribes... to the point that they can take the same military traditions. All civilized nations play roughly the same, just as all tribal nations play the same too. I played as the Tectosages and went to Galatia, and then got bored and decided to play as Saba, a tribe in Yemen... there was no difference in the political spheres. A tribe of Celts playing exactly like a tribe of Arabs? Yeah, sure. Same as when I played as Maurya. You'd think a massive empire based out of India would be completely different than Phrygia, a huge Greek empire... but you'd be wrong.

In short, I can't recommend the game. I love the time period, and there are scarcely few games that are set in it (I can really only think of Rome II Total War off the top of my head.) But that being said, I don't really enjoy the game. Most nations play the same, historical realism is forsaken almost entirely, peacetime makes the game just BORING, and the "diverse populations" can be dealt with by genocide with no real consequences. I want to like the game, and I even pre-ordered it. But I can't recommend it. I love the idea... but not the result.

Revive this game cowards

I pre-ordered this game, and played it at launch.

At launch it was horrible virtually unplayable and was extremely empty lacked depth and engagement.

Re-installed and played it again a week ago.

Cant stop playing it, as a man who loves and studied this era of antiquity history, this game is after many patches and changes finally is shaping up to what was promised and just scratching the surface of its potential.

Very promising future and I cant wait to see what comes next. The game right now is very fun and virtually a completely different game then at launch.

Give it a try!

WILL YOU GIVE THIS ABANDONED PARADOX GAME A SECOND CHANCE?

Okay, so if you're here, you're probably wondering if the game is any good. Perhaps you've heard of people calling it one of the worst paradox games back in the day, or perhaps you played it on release and didn't like it. Well, for the longest time, I used to bang on the same drum. I played it on release and wasn't impressed. But things have changed.

So, what is Imperator: Rome, why didn't people like it and what changed?

Imperator is actually the sequel to a little-known old paradox game called Europa Universalis: Rome. It's kind of a mix between PDX's other titles. It takes the empire management from Europa Universalis, the character interactions from Crusader Kings and the population system from Victoria. It adds a few of it's own twists and packages it up into a game set in classical antiquity.

So, that sounds fairly promising, why did it flop on release? Well, the general consensus was that it had four major issues.

The first and most important issue was mana. "Mana" in PDX games reffers to abstract resources that are spontaneously generated (usually by national leaders), that are used to enact various actions. Most grand strategy players aren't huge fans of mana systems and Imperator on release had a terrible case of them. Mana wasn't just a game mechanic. Mana was THE game mechanic. Everything in the game was tied around how much mana you had. You felt less like a Roman ruler and more like a God, limited only by his mana pool. Researching technologies? Mana. Buildings? Mana. Want to convert a given province's population? Happens instantly with mana. How about teleporting them across the map? All doable with mana. While you had mana, you could instantly alter the fabric of reality. While you were out of mana, you were reduced to a passive observer of the game, waiting patiently for your mana to regenerate. This not only lacked realism and failed to create immersion, it was simply boring. You'd watch the game play itself until you got the mana to magically spawn in whatever you wanted.

The second issue had to do with the Roman political system - it wasn't accurately represented. Most controversially, the Roman Republic only had one Consul, even though the Romans were very particular about there always being two. In most other games - this would have been a nitpick. However, when you're making a political game called Imperator: ROME, getting the Roman political system wrong is a non-starter.

The third had to do with the interface - many found it confusing and unhelpful. I personally thought it was just OK, but then again I was used to EU: Rome, which many hadn't played.

Lastly, the game felt like a skeleton devoid of content. There was little differentiating playing Rome, versus Carthage, versus Egypt, versus a random Germanic tribe.

Well, players complaned and, to their credit, Paradox listened. Imperator 2.0, as they called it, completely overhuled the game. The interface was completely redesigned into what I believe to be one of the best and most beautiful grand strategy interfaces of all time. Rome got it's co-consul. New flavour was added. Lastly and most importantly - the mana met the fasces at the chopping block. I didn't believe it at first. It was so intrinsic to the game, and they did away with it.

Better - they didn't just remove it, they replaced it with the kinds of systems grand strategy players love - intricate systems, based off real, interactable elements that make the player feel like this world is more than just an excel spreadsheet. Technology now had it's very own tech trees, with progress tied to the abilities of characters you appont to certain posts, with certain technologies requiring you to have enacted specific policies or fulfiling specific conditions. Would you choose to appoint those that are most able, risking potential political issues and perhaps even treason, or those most loyal - sacrificing scientific progress in the name of stability? Well, those are the kinds of questions the new Imperator will pose to you.

Your pops are also no longer subject to your divine orders. They now acted how they should. If you wanted to convert a given population's culture or religion, you couldn't just press a button and have it done instantly. They would convert slowly and over time, if you provided them with both opportunities and incentives to do so. You could choose to integrate cultures, perserving their specificities, which would make them happy, but piss off all the other already integrated cultures, or try to assimilate them into your dominant culture. The success or failure of these policies depends on their size, geographic spread and your policies. You can encourage one or the other, but you can't force it. If you want to move a given population - guess what, you can't just magically teleport them. You can encourage or discourage immigration to and from given provinces, but you can't just beam half of Rome into Gaul with your magical powers. You would have to provide good enough conditions for them to wish to begin migrating - and then wait out as the process happens naturally. A locally dominant culture in a far away province won't just accept Romanitas. You'll either have to integrate them, or try and create colonies to attempt and get your own culture in there. The locals won't let you do this easily.

I could go on and on. The game is now nothing like it was. So how is it in general oday?

Put simply? Fun. If you like grand strategy, you should try Imperator. If you like other PDX games - you HAVE to try Imperator. Nowadays, it's a great game. If it had launched in this state, as opposed to the way it did, it would likely have been a major success. Sadly, it appears that most PDX fans didn't give this game the redemption it deserved. And so, Paradox axed it. Imperator is no longer officially supported...

..by paradox. But what if I told you that this game has an active modding community that is helping Imperator not just survive, but thrive? Well, it does. There are many mods for this game, but above and beyond all of them I would recommend the Invictus mod. It adds to many things to the game, while still staying true to the original vision and time period. Playing with Invictus, which still gets regular and beefy updates, makes you feel like Imperator is still actively being developed.

And perhaps that isn't as far away from the truth as might appear on the surface. Paradox dropped an update for Imperator in 2023, several years after officially announcing that they were dropping the game. Although they specifically cautioned that this didn't mean it was back into active develpment, we can see that PDX still has some interest in the game. Counting this, and with a loyal modding community to boot, Imperator still might have a bright future yet.

With that, and with this being one of the best-looking (seriously, it's beautiful) grand strategy games out there, Imperator: Rome is an easy recommendation for any grand strategy fan looking for his new fix. For players interested in getting into grand strategies, but wondering if they should finally go for it - Imperator is actually a pretty good place to start. It frequently goes on sale for very deep discounts, has a great tooltip system to help you understand what's going on and moreover, the starting condition of the game, in which there are few major powers on the map, allows you to have a pretty easy start by controlling a nation with just a few small provinces, which you will inevitably guide to great conquests later on in the game.

So, for both grand strategy players and those curious to the ganre being a solid "recommend", all that's left is for you to answer the question that we started out with..

WILL YOU GIVE THIS ABANDONED PARADOX GAME A SECOND CHANCE?

I know I did. And I didn't regret it. Not for a moment.

Even as an avid Paradox player, with many thousands of hours of their games played, I sadly cannot recommend getting this game for this price.

As of now, the game has many problems:
- Too low difficulty. Play as any tiny nation and blob up without really doing much to the point where nothing can challenge you. On my very first attempt I united Britain as the smallest tribe in the region and have a bigger army than anyone else.

- Very bad AI - even by Paradox standards - that constantly abandons sieges or runs in circles. Since sieges take a long time, get abandoned instantly by any move-command and cause massive attritions, this is quite bad. The only thing that balances this out, is that your allies are doing the same thing, causing wars to drag out forever.

- Very messy User Interface that should not have been passing pre-Alpha. For example: Events refer to persons by their first name but the tooltip to the right portraying them has their surname below it. So you have to hover over them to figure out who they are talking about. Since this isn't always very informative (wait... is he a tribal leader or somebody else important?) you have often to check around other tabs to compare characters.

- A ton of small errors that let you doubt whether they had any sort of Quality Assurance.
Certain windows do not close when you open others, so you have to manually close them to acess the one you opened.

- Tooltips that are so overstuffed, they take up half the screen.
Many of these value aren't that interesting. A simple "hold shift while hover to see detailled" would work wonders, but no, even if you just want to know what position this guy has, you get this persons whole life story.

- Complete lack of "Quality of Life" features
Want to know how that culture assimilation is going? Well, you can't without acessing multiple menus, memorizing region outliners and clicking ten buttons! HAHA! Fun!

- There is literally nothing to do. Wage wars, wait out truces, repeat.
Seriously, even Stellaris on Release had more to do. At least it kept you busy spamming building stations.

- Only fake decision-making: One course of action is always obviously better than the other.

- I had a few crashes starting up.
Even the "Crash Reporter" crashed. What the hell.


There are also a few positives:
- Map is neat
- When you start as a nation, you seamlessly launch with it.
- It has "Rome" in the name

This is not to say that this game won't be a great title eventually - but right now, it just isn't. It's barebone. I'll keep an eye on the patches and will update this review once I seen a real change. However, I am thinking that this will be only a proper game if you buy a load of expansions first.

This game has so much potential, and for 99% of the time I'm loving life.

I've managed to get a hang of the mechanics, sure they are different to other Paradox games but I like that. In my first game I didn't pay attention to my provinces (Rome obviously) I just wanted to paint the map red. Civil war warning? (Nice the revolt gives me a warning) no worries, I'll deal with that. That was a mistake. My mistake. I got crushed by Severus Scipio and the rest of my annoyed and disloyal senators. My mistake, I'm fine with that, I'll learn.

This time I'm paying real close attention to the likes of Scipio, and Julius, and all the rest f the scheming Romans. I'm bribing. I'm making friends. I'm building courts of law to increase loyalty. I'm expanding carefully, I'm sacrificing to the Gods to increase my stability. Yeah it's going good. Real good. I fight Carthage. I lose, no worries, I'll go east anyway. I'm having a good time.

Then there's a pop up, some Senator is annoyed he's been passed over for Consul. He's got 0 popularity, and the pop ups that follow seem to indicate to me he's a bit of a loser. 3 years later he still has no popularity, and I'm warring Gauls up North, every province real loyal, legions real happy fighting Gauls. Rome is good, real good.

Then boom, old Lucius has started a revolt. Ok I say, considering he had 0 popularity and was a bit of a joke, he probably has a tiny army. Then I check, oh I see, he has half of my small empire on his side. With 0 popularity. Yet half of my senators have gone to him and apparently half of my provinces.

It's stuff like this which is annoying, and why in it's current state I can't recommend. It's artificial difficulty. I get it, if he's a popular Senator, he commands a few legions etc, I totally get it. But he wasn't, and doesn't, and it just makes me not want to play - because it's not fun. There was no civil war countdown, no disloyalty from the provinces. Just a stupid random pop up meant half my Empire was now at war with me, and it makes no sense.

This is my favourite time period in history, but compared to CK2 and EU4, this game is no where near the quality of them, and needs to be improved a lot.

For those concerned about the reviews for this game, there are two things to consider.

1. A lot of negative reviews are from early in this game's development life. I:R has gone through a series of major rehauls and updates to its core game mechanics which have substantially improved it's game play, making many past reviews no longer applicable. Since the 2.0 Marius update, I:R has actually gotten a substantial amount of praise from players due to the massive improvements to the game.

2. Two major events happened around Late-April/Early-May of 2021 which have caused a cascade of review bombing that are unrelated to how the game plays. First is the EU4 release of the Leviathan DLC which caused a massive blowback from the PDX playerbase and generated a large amount of animosity towards PDX (the company that owns the I:R IP). Second was the announcement that development was being paused on I:R in order to shift workers to other PDX studios for more important projects -- though most folks views this as code for the game being dropped entirely. As means of retaliation for both PDX disrespecting players in general with Leviathan and cancelling further development of I:R, players are using reviews as retaliation against PDX itself, not Imperator: Rome.

Those are two things to keep in mind with judging whether you should buy this game.

Overall, the game has matured to the point where I now regularly play I:R and consider it one of my favorite games. The current game mechanics are dynamic and immersive (with the exception of the trade system which is decidedly mediocre), both with strong RP potential and mechanical fun.

While I:R was mostly about conquering when it was first released, most of the fun now is in the civilization building aspect of the game. War is still enjoyable, in fact moreso, but the progression in peacetime activities is truly where this title shines.

If late antiquity is a historical period you find interesting and you have a love for grand strategy games, then I:R is definitely worth the buy. Unlike other PDX titles, most of its best content is within the base game itself, so no need to buy DLC to have a good experience.

See, I've went through the BS guys. I bought all the DLC for CK2, HOI3+IV, EU4, Stellaris, hell even Cities Skylines and Surviving Mars. Let me just let that stand as my credibility for what im going to say-- in other words, I know what I'm talking about here as I've witnessed it with each game they come out with.


Paradox's idea of business:

Make 30% of a game.

Ship it for full price.

Slowly update and fix the game over a period of 10 years.

Make each update between 10$-30$ a piece-- but don't call them 'updates' call them DLCs so people don't know that you're making them pay to fix your ♥♥♥♥♥♥ game.

After spending 300$+ on a game, a player will now finally be able to enjoy the full, intended experience that those poor devs actually wanted to give us but big daddy Paradox told them no and made them shill out their pride and joy for the sake of money.

The Devs arent at fault here, it's corporate, and it's plain for all to see. They've become so complacent in grabbing us by the balls that they don't even have the shame to try and hide it anymore.


So, in conclusion, I will not be buying anymore Paradox games unless some changes are made with how they do business. That's my own personal choice and I'm in no way calling for a boycott here, but I don't care. I'm sick of being treated like a cow and being milked till I'm dry and being shown no respect as a consumer.