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[Imperator Rome] Wasn't Built In A Day
Zavian
universal peace sounds better than forever warRegistered User regular
universal peace sounds better than forever warRegistered User regular
Imperator: Rome is a grand strategy title from Paradox Development Studio, the same developers as Crusader Kings and Europa Universalis. "Set in the tumultuous centuries from Alexander’s Successor Empires in the East to the foundation of the Roman Empire, Imperator: Rome invites you to relive the pageantry and challenges of empire building in the classical era. Manage your population, keep an eye out for treachery, and keep faith with your gods."
Having launched in April 2019 to mixed reception, Paradox has been working at fixing and rebalancing the game. There have been three major updates since launch, 'Pompey', 'Cicero', and 'Livy', which revamped the game considerably adding new dynamic missions, character/family revamps, etc., as well as a new Free-LC content pack, 'The Punic Wars'. There is also a 'Hellenic World Flavor Pack' available through the Deluxe Edition.
DLC:Character Management: A living world of characters with varying skills and traits that will change over time. They will lead your nation, govern your provinces and command your armies and fleets.
Diverse Populations: Citizens, freemen, tribesmen and slaves - each population with its own culture and religion. Whether they fill your armies, fill your coffers or fill your colonies, keep an eye on their happiness - your success depends on their satisfaction.
Battle Tactics: Choose your approach before battle to counter the stratagems of your foes.
Military Traditions: Each culture has a unique way of waging war. Romans and Celts have different options available to them. Unlock unique bonuses, abilities and units.
Different Government Types: Manage the senate in a Republic, hold your court together in a monarchy, answer to the clans in a tribal system.
Barbarians and Rebellions: Migrating barbarians may sack or settle your best land, while disloyal governors or generals can turn against you - taking their armies with them!
Trade: Goods provide bonuses to their home province. Will you take advantage of stockpiles for local strength or trade excess goods to spread the wealth around?
Provincial Improvement: Invest in buildings, roads and defenses to make your kingdom stronger and richer.
Hellenic World Flavor Pack - (Included in Deluxe Edition, upgrade for $18)
This pack adds new color to the Wars of the Diadochi, including new units models and game flavor.
4 New Army Models: Unique army designs for Macedonia, Phrygia, the Seleucids and Thrace.
4 New Ship Models: Unique warship designs for Egypt, Macedonia, Phrygia, and the Seleucids, including depictions of the famous Hellenistic superships.
Special On Map Monuments: The Mausoleum of Alexander, The Acropolis of Rhodes, The Acropolis of Pergamon, The Palace at Ay Khanum, The Library of Alexandria, The Argead Palace of Macedonia
Six Hellenistic Flavor Events: About the Legacy of Alexander, the veterans of Alexander's wars, the Spread of Hellenistic Culture, City Athletic Events, and Trade.
Alexander’s Body Event Chain: Try to steal the remains of Alexander the Great and erect a monument to his memory.
New Event Art: Dedicate new art for the included unique events.
New music: Special music composed specifically for the Hellenistic players.
The Punic Wars - FREE
Includes new events and units models to illustrate the greatest wars of the classical age - the superpower showdown between the nascent Roman Republic, and the established Carthaginian Empire.
Roman Mission Pack: 10 unique mission trees for the star of Imperator: Rome to guide your conquest of Italy and neighboring regions.
Carthaginian Mission Pack: 10 unique mission trees for the children of Tyre to help you plan your mercantile and military dominance of Africa, Spain and the rest of the west.
Numidian Unit Model: New army model for the Numidians, North Africans often hired as mercenaries by larger powers.
Carthaginian Ship Model: A unique ship design for Carthaginian navies.
New Music: 3 additional music tracks to soothe your conquering soul.
Magna Graecia - $7.99
Even after the collapse of Alexander’s empire, the Greek city states fought to maintain their independence and control their destiny. Athens and Sparta continued to assert their influence in the Aegean while the great city of Syracuse sought to dominate Sicily. In Magna Graecia, a new content pack for Imperator: Rome, you can relive this time of cities defying empires, as Rome grows, Carthage threatens and the heirs of Alexander gaze hungrily over the horizon.
New Greek Missions: New missions and interactions available for Athens, Sparta, and Syracuse.
New Deities: 12 new Greek deities tied to historical Holy Sites across the Greek world.
Apotheosis: A popular ruler from a prestigious family may choose to proclaim themselves, or a revered ancestor, as a god, and be welcomed into the State Pantheon. Elevate enough rulers and you may institute the Imperial Cult government form.
Sacred Treasures: A set of revered historical and divine relics with a hellenistic theme can be collected and placed in Holy Sites, providing powerful effects. If you sack an enemy’s Holy Sites or capital, there is a chance you might capture these special artifacts.
New Music and other art
Epirus - $3.99
As Rome’s power extended to the Greek colonies in Southern Italy, it was forced to do battle with one of the great generals of the classical world. Pyrrhus of Epirus, warlord of western Greece and claimant to the Macedonian throne, would become famous for the high cost of his victories against the Roman legions, but he left behind a legacy of military genius that Hannibal of Carthage considered second to only Alexander.
Unique Army Model for Epirus
Unique Ship Model for Epirus
Special Epirote Monument: the Oracle complex of Dodona
6 Event Chains related to the life of Pyrrhus of Epirus each with new art
3 Additional Epirus Event chains, new to Imperator: Rome
One new music track
Zavian on
+5
Posts
One of the more fun things so far was making a hybernian pritania. Picture of after I got done taking over Ireland which made britain proper easymode to conquest.
How did you manage to take over Ireland like that? I started as Ulutia and it's just been a slog (and very expensive) trying to colonize all of that land.
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
I don't know if they nerfed it in Livy though.
Disclaimer: I have no idea how it might differ from the Steam release. Additionally, the game files (while functionally identical) will be hidden which typically deters modding, if that matters to you.
Pretty much never does DLC get included in Game Pass proper, unless Game Pass picks up some sort of "ultimate edition"--which isn't the case here (it usually only happens with actual ultimate--as in final--editions, i.e. "GOTY editions"). The DLC is, in fact, available for purchase, and will work with the Game Pass game, and is discounted (everything on Game Pass is, though the discounts aren't very much). But it does mean buying the DLC, in any case...add, eventually, when the game is rotated out of Game Pass, you'll need to buy that too.
Food for thought, I suppose. Don't know about the state of Cross Play for this specifically, though there are examples of it happening--for example, Gears 5 has cross play because all multiplayer is handled on Xbox Live. Otherwise, it'd be the same five people playing with each other on Steam while the other +99.9% of the player base was pooled on console and Windows 10. Paradox can be weird about this sort of thing too.
Edit: This game is a lot sexier now. It still needs work but the missions additions, the character changes and the supply change making infantry a tide of death is just fun fun. I was not really a fan of the cav blobbing anyway.
Edit2: If you are going to iron man enable cloudsave on it. There is an ironman bug for local saves that causes them to not save after reload.
Bohemia being the sweet one so far.
I quit that one because I took the wrong second mission wanting to convert directly to a monarchy but not being ready at all with the civ level. Going to do another run this weekend where I grab the dev mission tree first.
Another favorite was Egypt.
Some additional thoughts:
Supply trains are amazing. There is a detach support button on the army. It can get a bit hectic reattaching them to the armies that need the supply but you get used to it. You can detach to speed up your army and bring the supply trains in from the side to sure up a siege or the like.
Merc spam is largely fixed from what I have seen.
Pirates are also less of an issue from what ive seen.
The lower character count has me recognizing people in my country and getting that bigger draw to interact with them.
Overall being someone that has seen what it has progressed from 1.0 to now I am really excited to see continued support for this game. Hopefully they keep along this same path and not try to get too samey with the other major games that some online are so arguing for.
So I am confused if I just need to wait for the next event to trigger? Or if the normal rules of having whatever percent of disloyal cohorts factors in? Or if I can assassinate them maybe? I have an option to bring them to trial but the chance of success is low...
Should I just start making more armies?
So I guess they were so intimidated by my superior armies that they never actually did anything. As soon as the loyalty malus the event gave them went away they started to go back up in loyalty and then I just bribed them and took their armies once they hit 40%. So I basically got 120k troops for the cost of a 1k in bribes.
patch notes
religion overhaul
omen overhaul
holy sites and treasures
trade overhaul
loyalty overhaul
game is also f2p on steam till the 5th.
This probably means I should at least give this game a go.
I just keep running up against the fact it looks very... Europa Universalis IV-ish. Distant and sterile.
Also, I don't care about Rome. Which I know is kind of irrational because you don't have to play as Rome in this game.
It is a blob sim for the most part still. But I enjoy it. When I start an EU4 run I still get the back of my head ugh aspects of the setup and then quit after nearing end game. Not so much in this game because hey its not as dense.
They have changed several aspects that make the game feel more era specific. Like largely static military modified by game based mods and not a tech tree or the like. I havent done much with treasure yet but I imagine many have discipline and other mods on them as well. The mission trees offer the same breadth of power now but also help in terms of infrastructure based gain and the like. The pop system can become monstrous late game but I like it. You can play the wait and watch game if you want but also move them specifically as well to maximize benefits or conversion ratios. The character system continues to improve with the most recent changes. You have to pay attention to loyalty now as people will rebel.
That said there is still some issues with template style gameplay. Heavy calvary is still largely worthless. Going big on a city is still probably the best economic route even with the nerfs (but not nearly as one sided as it was). And portions of the map are still really cookie cutter.
But that is also early Paradox grand strategy normalcy.
It took me awhile to get ahold of the mechanics but I've played a couple games I'd consider successes. I conquered Rome as Epirus, united greece as the minoans, formed Phoenicia as Byblos and almost got their achievement (my savegame broke with the update), and am currently playing a game as Heraklea Pontica trying to form Persia. I've got all of northern Anatolia and am working on taking the rest of the eastern coast of the Aegean so I can have that border secure. Currently in a war to take Ionia and southwest Anatolia from Thrace and the Selukids respectively. The Selukids are really big (they own not just Syria but over half of the southern coast of Anatolia) but they don't actually have a direct land access to their Aegean possessions thanks to an Antigonid rump state. So I can control the wargoal really easily and just have to defensively push them off my land on the eastern front. I'm using full calvary armies with heavy calvary backed by horse archers.
(The city of Babylon has over 300 pops. That's fine. That's totally normal.)
Finally though Rome's attention turned more towards the east and the let off of pressure allowed me grab central Iberia before the Carthaginians. (They owned all of the south, and all of the western coastal lowlands of Iberia minus Galicia) Carthage kept attacking me and I kept taking little chunks of land off of them. The turning point was when I managed to cut off the straight. (I never bothered even attempting to challenge Carthage on the sea, since Barb countries can't even get heavy ships.) From that point on it was me on the offensive and it only took me a couple more wars to kick them totally out of Iberia. (In one war I took 49 AE!) Then it was just matter of cleaning up the Galicians which only took two wars as they were mostly allied with one another. I might keep playing for a bit more, to take the Baleares and see if I might not grab all of Carthage.
Some view of how many cities I've ended up founding:
Other big issues are a chronic lack of manpower, almost everywhere you're going to expand into being wrong culture and religion, and a usually pretty consistently crappy starting political situation which will have you wracking up tons of early game tyranny if you want to expand at the rate that you pretty much have to. Still, it was fun. A big turning point was when Rome attacked Carthage (I was allied to both at the time.) and I used my navy and my elite light cav "horse marines" to sack every unfortified coastal Roman city multiple times, racking up several thousand gold which I used to hire mercenaries to fight multiple consecutive wars in Gaul. (Again, terrible manpower problems until very recently.) I might see if I can't clean up my borders a bit and form the Phocean League, teaching those upstart latins and Punics a lesson in the process.
That uh soured that game.
As Messapia. (This was a rough, rough start.) I got involved in the Diadochi wars and plundered them to field the huge mercenary armies I would inevitably need to knock back the Romans when they came to "defend" themselves from me.Then when I finally the romans out of southern italy and had just disbanded the mercenaries, Syracuse came knocking. Another rough war. Luckily Carthage starting their normal Sicillian stuff and I was able to kick Syracuse off the boot.
History part 1:
While fortunes on the peninsula seemed to continually arise new threats were approaching. The African power of Carthage had finally consolidated complete control of the island of Sicily, and soon eyed expansion into the profitable cities of Calabria. They even struck a deal with the remaining Latins. From the other direction the Epirots, one time allies with the Messapians against Macedonian, Latin, and Carthaginian influence in the Adriatic, had expanded and consolidated their position to begin having imperialist designs of their own. Conflict with the Carthaginians came to a head first in a series of long bloody wars that eventually saw the Carthaginians lose Sicily, the Latins once and for all conquered, and the Etruscans subjugated after they switched sides in the conflict. During these wars the Messapians heavily expanded their navy, but by the most charitable interpretation they could only be seen as at best achieving a stalemate on the seas with Carthage. On land, however, they dominated the Carthiganians and their allies through heavily armored cavalry. While often outnumbered, their superior quality plus defensive advantages led to disasters for many a Carthaginian army. Because of this Carthage was left bloodied, if hardly crippled.
Perhaps sensing weakness, the Epirots launched an invasion with Antigonid support. This went disastrously for both. The Messapian navy, built to challenge Carthage, was more than a match for Epirus' fleet, and soon they were the ones facing invasion. The Antigonids ended up being able to offer little long term support, as while their army and fleets were away they faced a civil war which eventually saw the dynasty thrown from power. The Messapians took Epirus' Illyrian colonies, and the Aikiads soon lost Epirus itself to the burgeoning peloponnesian power of Messenia. (The Aikiads would continue to survive deed in the Illyrian hinterlands) The Messapians founded a new city in Apollionia, heavily fortified port which came to serve as the western gate to Illyria. With a cosmopolititan culture mixing Epirot, Macedonian, Messapian, Illyrian, and Italic influences, it would prosper as both the first and largest Messapian port outside the Italian peninsula
Oh. Or a civil war and a war with the Seleucids at the same time. Alrighty then.