Thread 2124895

What was Imperator Rome missing?

>>2124895 (OP)
Funding.

>>2124897
>>2124895 (OP)
fun

The game should’ve missed Johans influence.

>>2124895 (OP)
A good setting.
You post a picture of Caesar but Caesar wasn't born for 200 years after Imperator's start date.
All the iconic shit everyone knows about Rome couldn't be added to the game because it was still centuries off. But if they moved the date later you'd lose the Punic wars.
it's just not a good setting for a map game.

>>2125034
I guess that's why Late Antiquity mods are so popular for CK3

>>2125034
They needed to make Imperator a custom setting instead with all kinds of ancient civilizations that existed hundreds or thousands of years apart thrown together on one map. Would've been more interesting than faithfully depicting diadochi that always play the same, random undocumented tribes #1-4959, and the obligatory India blob.

The mechanics are too flowcharted and rigid. It's hard to roleplay when everything practically plays the same and there's no real incentive to just not paint the entire map.

>>2125034
>All the iconic shit everyone knows about Rome couldn't be added to the game because it was still centuries off
The Samnite Wars? Pyrrhus invasion? Hannibal ad Portas?

>>2124895 (OP)
Players

>>2125920
It sold ok. They just thought they couldnt sell enough dlcs with it, and roped it right after players were starting to coming back.

>>2125037
Fuck a bronze age game would have been fun

>>2125992
The Bronze Age mod for imperator was pretty good, the dev stopped because he didn't get enough Patreons. He tried to move the mod to ck3 but I didn't really play that too much. Making cities in Imperator just works better.

Also the issue was that all tribes felt the same, and the cultures weren't broken up enough. But yeah, lack of flavor killed it.

>>2124895 (OP)
Any kind of workable mechanics
Then a coherent vision where they want to take the resulting clusterfuck.
Having neither, it eventually was a pet project for a literal handful of people.

>>2125989
>roped it right after players were starting to coming back.
Which actually never happened, but keep pretending otherwise
I:R is the epitome of "new patch dropped, the 500 people that still care join the 700 people that still play, check out the patch and fuck off, since nothing was actually improved"
>imb4 muh Marius
Marius update made AI incapable of figthing wars. At fucking all. It also completely removed ability to play tall, in a game that had prior excellent tall mechanics.
So no, it didn't improve shit. The only weird thing is that PDX tried for so long to unfuck something that was FUBAR right from the start

>>2125872
You realize most normal fags know about Julius Caesar (but they combine him with Augustus), the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, and something about their gay orgies and eating parties leading to a barbarian invasion.
Yes us History NEETS know all about the quirky republican things but the unwashed masses don't even know what Carthage was let alone Hannibal, Pyrrhus, or the Samnites

>>2125872
Ah yes all things normies know about

>>2127674
Hannibal is relatively well known thoughever

>>2127727
the game lacked meaningful content. Especially as non-Rome. It was released at least a year too early. And people warned PDX about it, because the dev diaries didn't instill confidence in the game.

>>2124895 (OP)
A schizo spamming shit threads

>>2124895 (OP)
Sex

>>2127728
There is no way normalfags have any idea who that is but I'm willing to just assume you're a shut in NEET who might never interact with normalfags

>>2127728
>Hannibal is relatively well known
You mean the maneater?

>>2127849
I don't think Imperator was even remotely playable before Livy's bug-fixes, so that was 9 months after premiere. It wasn't until bug-fixes of Archimedes (so 15 months after premiere) the game could be confidently called "playable" and had enough functional mechanics to work at all.
It's been 6 years since Imperator premiered and I'm still baffled what the fuck they were doing and what the fuck they were thinking. This game was fucked from the start (who the fuck thought remaking EU:Rome is a good idea, rather than making a new game from a scratch?) and they did their very best to deliver a fucking piece of shit.
Was this some sort of inner power play in the dev section or what? Or just monumental hubris on Johan's side?

I am the only person who enjoyed vanilla Imperator right at release. If anything those first couple patches added annoying bugs (can’t take islands in peace deals) that weren’t in 1.0

>>2127728
when you ask them who hannibal is they'll say mads miklsen

>>2124895 (OP)
What was Imperator Rome missing?
Historicity

I lost nearly all interest when all the dev diaries pre release were just
>look at the map!!!
>look at all the imaginary people who might have lived here somewhere between 400-100 BC
>we even gave them imaginary flags!!
>now go care about it!
I simply couldn't care about it. And neither did the devs or they would have found another approach other than making shit up.

Of course I played the game eventually when it flopped so hard they gave us a free WEEK (not just a weekend) half a year after release but my judgement was absolutely correct and after playing every major (most of which are Diadochi) and on or two barbarian tribes you have seen it all.

>>2128185
their fault for staging one of their paradox games in a period that has limited to zero historical documentation

How do you depict a faction which was only described twice by a single greek writer ? etc

>>2124895 (OP)
Competent devs

>>2128185
>>2128719
This wouldn't even be a problem if they simply made a functional game, rather than an empty shell of a DLC platform to be filled with flavour content.
They really lost their way with CK2 release and are struggling with shit that used to be their trademark.

It has some interesting parts, but there's only really one play style which is map painting.
The start point is terrible too. 20 years after Alexander but ends right before the Roman Empire came about.

>>2124895 (OP)
>A few big empires in Europe are the only really playable nations
>Everyone else is an irrelevant tribe
It's like playing eu4 if there was only France and the UK and the new world. Eu4 is fun because it's a rare instance in history where there's a ton of rising powers at once

>>2131724
I usually mod the end date to be 117 AD, it’s just one line in the defines. But you can get those borders by the vanilla end date if you rush and don’t relax.

>>2128815
yea but they've always made simplistic cookie clicker games, which functioned on roleplaying and "flavor" individually created for each faction

But thats alot of work making tens of thousands of events

>>2125872
anon normalfags don't know what "pyrrhic victory" means, never mind why it's named that

>>2124914
*ding*

>>2132357
>>2132367
>>2127674
>>2127727
Are normies really that unaware? After all everyone knows the word subjugate (which ultimately comes from the literal "passing under the yoke" ritual - famously commonplace during the Samnites wars), and the term "pyrrhic victory" can't be that rare? I see politicians and the like using it from time to time. And aren't Hannibal and his elephant(s) well known?

>>2132422
>Are normies really that unaware?
outside of maybe half a dozen points mostly reinforced by repetition in pop culture, normies don't know the history or current status of their own country, let alone shit that happened on the other side of the world two millennia ago

>everyone knows the word subjugate
if I used that in a work email I would get a quiet talking to about using language everyone can understand & if they knew the word themselves maybe a warning against using anything that may trigger someone on top of that
as someone who does know/use the word & knows a decent amount of Rome shit, I had no idea about the origin

>politicians
may be fucking dumb a lot of the time but are almost universally well-educated compared to any randomly selected person, let alone normies as a class

>well known
yes, amongst people who encounter it in media and bother to look it up or people who read history for fun at some point in their lives
neither of these tracks well to normies - they don't look things up & they don't read, let alone read history
the normie cannot digest & retain history even in documentary form, aside from scattered half-remembrances or low info big picture descriptions reinforced in pop culture everywhere like "Lincoln freed the slaves" or Henry VIII was a big fat bastard
even then the second one probably drops off by half or more amongst normies the second you leave England

>>2124895 (OP)
>>2125034
>>2125035
>>2126138
They should have made it a character-based game like Crusader Kings. That would make way more sense for a game about republican-era Rome.
But the reason they didn't do is that it was actually just a demo for EU5. When they saw the negative reaction the game got, they scratched what they had and returned to the drawing board, which is why EU5 took so long to come out. Shame, there is potential there had they fully embraced the classical-era setting.

>>2132422
>i'll die alone and virgin

>>2133097
I am happily not a robot, so nah.

>>2131724
I think it ends where it does because the babby jesus was also born around then and didn't want to upset christ cucks

>>2132422
Normalfags unironically don't even know what the Soviet Union was. Historical literacy is at the lowest it's ever been in human history.

>>2124895 (OP)
Right now it's only missing DLCs that add stuff.
It's literally the perfect grand strat game atm, but it could use more

>>2125034
Start later and the entirety of europe is just Rome, you dumb fuck.
You didn't play the game btw

>>2124895 (OP)
I prefer the game without Invictus

>>2124895 (OP)
Add more granular pops and a proper market system for trade like Vicky or EU5 and it would be a pretty good game.

The game feels like it doesn't have a "mass" to it. It's very lifeless when you play it, if you know what I mean.
Maybe it's the sterile, marble UI, which feels the most spreadsheety of all Paradox games, in a bad way.
But it's more likely what everyone says - the time period just isn't compelling. You play as Rome once, you kill Carthage twice, and then blob through hordes of nameless Eurasian tribes until you can go down the tech tree enough to become an Empire. Awesome.
Ironically it would have benefitted from a lot more railroading.

>>2135340
You gotta railroad yourself, chief. Autistically conquer provinces only in the historical sequence and historical timeframe.

Did the revamp this game got at the beginning of this year (or was it last year...) invalidate all the tutorial videos on youtube or are they still valid?

>>2135427
Depends how old the videos are. Probably partly applicable but outdated. The three big mechanical overhauls I can think of along the way were nuking the different colored mana in favor of “political influence”, buildings got overhauled significantly, and armies were split up into temporary levies vs persistent legions.

>>2135095
Invictus is the most overrated thing in history. Oh boy mission trees for a dead game.
The best mod is the Crisis of the Third Century one. Actually puts some challenge into the game.

>>2124895 (OP)
A reason to play it

Needed more bookmarks. I would have loved some later start dates, at least Civil War and Crisis of the Third Century.

>>2127849
>Especially as non-Rome
If anything, the bulk of the content was non-Rome. The game systems seem much better suited to the reality of the Hellenistic East and honestly I feel the game would have been better served by centering it on the Diadochi conflicts. Contract the map and have the start date set just a little after Alexander's death and there you have the focus and setting for a far greater game.

Gaul should have had massive content

If even the main antagonist doesnt have content what's the point

>>2137382
>I feel the game would have been better served by centering it on the Diadochi conflicts
Did we not play the same game

>>2127727
Whether or not normies get it isn't the core criteria for making a game. It's a historical game and things like the punic wars and phyrrus are pretty entry level. Most people that play these games or want to play these games have at least a basic knowledge of ancient Rome and probably want to learn more if they don't. It's not like Imperator was aiming for the COD audience. It's a very niche title.

>>2127674
>>2127728
>>2127988
The problem is there's varying levels of normalfags. You're going to find vastly varying levels of knowledge between
>Educated professional
>Random blue collar worker
>College student that is always watching radom shit on youtube
>Woman
etc.

There are going to be many times more people who know who Hannibal is than who would even recognize the word "Samnite". Random strategy game players are probably mostly in this group.

>>2134045
It's the same reason they'll never make a game covering the 600's, just replace Jesus with Muhammad.

>>2124895 (OP)
It lacked players with imagination. Imperator Rome has the best mechanics of all gsgs but not much flavor so the player has to roleplay and imagine stuff. Too much asked when half the player base needs mission trees,achievements and other gay shit.

>>2132422
I made a random joke that involved the habsburgs to a female friend and she said
>Who?
We were both studying humanities (not history). Normalfags are really bad about knowing anything outside of gay pop-culture shit.

>>2139367
>Normalfags are really bad about knowing anything outside of gay pop-culture shit
And when it comes to history most normies only know about WW2. Unless you count that as "gay pop-culture shit" which would be fair.

>>2124895 (OP)
Roman court politics, should have been less like eu4 and mire like ck2

>>2139450
She also at one point said
>So when did this cold war thing you mentioned happen? Like where was that war?
I geniuenly doubt she could say more about even WWII then it happenned. She's not retarded, she jus does not know jack shit about history. But she could tell you all about the machinations in Game of Thrones. It's kind of fucking bizzare.

>>2124895 (OP)
Nothing, it's my favorite game. Best thing paradox ever did was abandon it.

>>2141310
>Best thing paradox ever did was abandon it.
Fuck… you might be right. Never thought about it that way. Been reflecting on how all the nu-Paradox games I used to like eventually got killed with bloated DLC spam.

>>2134311
>Historical literacy is at the lowest it's ever been in human history
it's actually at its highest, you just get to see that not only the majority of your local community is historically illiterate but so is rest of the world

>>2124895 (OP)
Like all parashit games, any kind of mechanics that reflect on why some countries were able to blob historically and others couldn't, and why some blobs were able to fall. IR has one of the most disgusting late game maps out of any parashit games with the world getting divided into retarded massive barbarian blobs completely ruining any sort of immersion.

>>2139367
My understanding was that even normies are aware of the Habsburgs nowadays (if only through the pop history memes about their chins). Also, was the joke good?

>>2141716
>any kind of mechanics that reflect on why some countries were able to blob historically and others couldn't
You mean some of them having more people in a single province than quarter of Europe together? Yeah, tell us more how you never played it.
>massive barbarian blobs
Literally impossible to happen. At best, you gonna have a semi-unified Britain.

>>2132422
I'' reply to you like this:
There is such a little weird book, titled Household Gods. It's about a normalfag femoid that literally drinks herself into Roman times. And the whole book is confrontation of her normalfaggotry with what you would assume to be common knowledge. The best part? She isn't exaggerated, Tarr, who wrote the book ,simply made a survey on her alma mater and used the results for her main character.
Also, it's a neat collection of all the classic Roman bits, so what not to like.

>>2142646
No, even though the sense of humour between the two of us was dry as hell, I threw that one out when she was talking about Game of Thrones and Targ incest.
This was around the time that season 8 was coming out I think. She could tell you all about the political intrigue and house shit in that show, but when I asked "why don't you try reading up on real history that inspired it" she just said that it was putting her to sleep in school. I just gave up on making historical references with her after that and her asking what the Cold War was (we live in eastern europe).

>>2124895 (OP)
>2124895
Too much EU IV, not enough CK2. Starting date should had been right before the First Punic war too

It missed a developer that would fix the game. It had an unfortunately bare bones release, and that killed any hope of it becoming better. It's a shame, because it wasn't that bad in the end. The mechanics were solid, it just needed some work of any kind.

>>2124895 (OP)
It's a solid game after 2.0 and Johan stopped fucking it up.
The only thing it needed to become popular is a couple dozen DLCs with alt-his scenario so Paradrones slurp it up like little good goys.

>>2127674
Normal fags are not the target audience for a fucking paradox game.

>>2144606
they were for ck3

>>2142808
I want you to know that I pirated and read this book based on this post.
It wasn't terrible, so thanks.
The main character is pretty insufferable half the time, though. She's meant to be, so that's fine.

>>2139367
Post her tits