Thread 2135877

I still don't get how Legions are supposed to be better than Levies.
Sure, Legions don't take pops away from your jobs and your research, but they cost a lot, cannot pillage cities (and pillaging cities makes MAD dosh), aren't any bigger than Levies because they take troops from the very same region, and they're not any stronger either because Levies receive the same technology buffs.

I don't fucking get it. Why not stick with Levies for the entire game?

Anyways Imperator thread

I won't pretend to know how this game works but I do know that I enjoy conquering land and assimilating the native pops to my primary culture.
Yes, I do start in Ireland.

>>2135877 (OP)
You can move legions freely, while levies are more tied to the province. It starts to matter, when you have proper empire and you need to march your army from Babylonia to Italy.
>they're not any stronger either because Levies receive the same technology buffs.
Legions get distinctions, and you can stack many of them on each legion, making them better at combat.
Still, you can run pure levies, if you want to. Fighting against giga Rome that way might be quite a task. Not sure which one is more economically viable, but I'm guessing legions, since high pop places make the economy.

>>2135877 (OP)
My biggest gripe with the game is how 80% of the map is literally who.
Rome, Etruria, Carthage, Epyrus, Greece, Egypt, Thrace, Macedon, the Antigonids... yes, all kino, but then the rest might as well be fantasy races.

>>2135928
>Fighting against giga Rome that way might be quite a task
Fighting against giga Rome is always a daunting task, no matter the way.
That's why the best way to defeat Rome is to crush them when they're still tiny. Nip it in the bud.

I almost defeated giga Rome as Syracusae by racking a lot of money through pillaging and paying off a ton of mercs, but my money ran out halfway and they stomped me

>>2135945
That is just a sad reality of playing in this setting. Many of these nations could barely write stuff down and the little they could write down would probably be destroyed by invading nations.

>>2135945
Ptolemy will remember that.

>>2135877 (OP)
From the top of my head:
-You can choose their composition. You can put supply trains and engineers in it wich are essential for long sieges. And in this game stuff like heavy infantry and elephants are king. Plus some kind of units might synergize better with your countries military tradition. Carthage for example can get a shitton of elephants and then a military tradition who makes those elephants extremely cheap.
-You can drill them. This makes them take less damage in battle and provides you with steady military tradition.
-They build roads for as cheap as 10 gold per tile. This are fundamental if you have a large empire plus give you a number of bonuses. Including import routes in your capital.
On top of that you don't get war exhaustion with them unlike with levies, they can get distinction wich makes them better and you can choose their own generals with the better martial stat while the governor of the province can be chosen for his finesse to keep the province loyal.

>>2135951
>while the governor of the province can be chosen for his finesse to keep the province loyal.
Now that you mention it, when I choose a governor for a province the game shows me two stats: Finesse and Martial.
Why is this?
I think it's the only place in the entire game where two stats seem to matter. Usually it's just one.

Do I just ignore Martial for governors?

>>2135928
Beating giga-Rome is no problem because as soon as they conquer some place it's not their culture the whole republic enters a civil war every 10 years.

>>2135953
When you raise a levy the governor acts as the commander of the stack. So early game you want a balance of the two or maybe a higher martial governor, but later as I said you can focus on finesse if you have a dedicated professional army.

>>2135956
>When you raise a levy the governor acts as the commander of the stack
o shit
I did not realize that.
Thanks anon

>>2135957
No problem.
I think it's a pretty interesting system. And it's somehow similar to the military in EU V.

>>2135877 (OP)
>Legions can't pillage cities
what the fuck? Is this true? Paradox is so fucking retarded

>>2135961
They do pillage them, but you only get the
>1 pop moves to YourCity as Slave, 1 pop killed
thing. You don't get the popup where you choose if you want to go easy on them, or fuck them up etc.

That one you only get if it's a levy AND the commander of that levy is the current ruler of your country (aka your character) AND his army was the one that had the biggest impact in capturing the city.

>>2135965
So yeah if you sack all of the cities in the delta of the Nile with levies, you leave a rich man.
You sack them with legions... you get a couple more pops and that's it.

>>2135967
>sack all of the cities in the delta of the Nile with levies, you leave a rich man.
So obviously you take advantage of this and game the system. This retarded bullshit is why the game is shit.

>>2136153
How is doing something good gaming the system? You're raiding cities, and making money off it. It makes sense.
And it's not like it's risk-free. You're still going to war with the Ptolemaics, and they have a fuckhuge navy to mess with your naval landing.

I don't think you played the game. I think you're talking out of your ass because you're a disagreeable midwit.

>>2136217
>I like being a childish bitch called out for gaming the system
>I will now proceed to seethe miserably while pressing the "I win" button!
>REEEEEE!

>>2136227
Yeah you didn't play it

>>2136230
>REEEE!

>>2136244
>shitposting

>>2135877 (OP)
>I still don't get how Legions are supposed to be better than Levies.
Translation: I have no fucking clue how combat works in this game

>>2137899
>send levies to sack cities
>make shittons of money
>pay mercenaries

Literally WHY have legions?

What is the rationale behind not allowing legions to plunder cities for money? They did it all the time.

>>2137911
BECAUSE LEGIONS CAN WIPE THE FLOOR WITH LEVIES,YOU DUMB SHIT
A single fucking legion can wipe out 10x its size of levies and also sieges much fucking faster. And sieging is what wins you wars.

You dumb fucking moron
Have even played this game for more than an hour?

>>2137942
One word: mercs.

>>2137929
They do it, but keep the money for themselves. I think that's the in-lore reason.
I believe the general commanding it even gets more personal wealth. Even if it's your ruler (aka you) with legions it goes to his personal wealth, not the gubbment

>>2137951
Which are levies with insane upkeep. Literally the worst thing possible.
Legions are superior to any other army type, you dumb shit
It's 2025. What's your excuse you still don't know how combat works in this game?

>>2137957
>can only raise 1 legion unless you invest literally all the way down one research tree
>the bonus of legions is shit like engineers, but if you add them they take up manpower AKA you'll have less attacking troops

Also literally the only enemy that requires massive stacks is post mid-game Rome, and if you can take them then your economy is strong enough to handle a couple of 21k mercs plus your levies.

Legions are stronger for a couple aspects, and weaker for a ton more. Just have one tiny ass legion to build roads and farm exp and you're good. Let the levies and mercs handle the rest.

>b-but money!
Lmao no wonder you have money troubles. You can't sack cities!

>>2137958
lol, just lol if you don't strictly use the capital region's legion exclusively, and populationmaxx the capital region, and stack every single legion award on your entire army, which is hundreds of units, so that you can easily afford luxuries like engineers and rotating supply trains

>>2137975
teach me to populationmaxx

>>2135965
>>2135961
I could have sworn that you still got the popup if the legion commander was your heir in a monarchy

>>2137951
One word: meh
Mercs are just paid levies that are useful if you have low population and thus can't exactly get enough levies to beat your neighbours.
And if they are anything else than Scythians, they are shit-tier by design.
Speaking of Scythians: it's the only culture that has usable levies without any tricks or cheese. Everyone else is hauling between 40 to 70% of utterly useless, shit-tier units.
If you aren't Scythian, it's either getting a capital legion ASAP, or you are fucked. Especially if you are small, a well-made legion (HCav+HInf with LCav flanks works for almost all cultures you will be facing) allows you to go from a small fry with 26 territories to 2-3 regions within 20 years, suffering virtually no losses on your side. And ever since Marius made playing tall virtually impossible, you kinda have to expand across few regions.
With levies, you'd fuck your population into oblivion and pretty much have to plunder to stay afloat, decreasing value of land you are conquering and effectively being at a loss in the end.

As a side note - if population is your concern, play as Greekoids or at least a culture that can assimilate their traditions. Piracy is completely busted and if you know what you are doing, you can effortlessly farm just silly amount of slaves from all across the coastal territories (ALL of them, from Scotland to Bengal), without having to deal with pop-loss, since unlike plunder, piracy is a 1:1 deal. If only managing slaves wasn't so much of busywork micro, it would probably be the dominant strategy ever since ports can be build in each and every territory

>>2138342
I'll do a playthrough keeping these things in mind, but playing tall is absolutely doable (as long as "tall" doesn't mean you're a literal city-state).
You conquer your entire region, maybe another one, then get a decently sized levy. It works ONLY with levies, because the main income earner will be to sail those levies on a merc navy (or your own if you have it) and declaring war on people at the very edge of your diplomatic range.

Even better if you're allied with someone far away and they declare war with someone veeery far from your diplomatic range, because then it's free real estate: you sack their unwalled cities first, then the walled ones. If a big army shows up you fuck off back to your shipis and sail somewhere else. Slave raiding helps too.

>>2138346
>but playing tall is absolutely doable (
"Doable" and "workable" aren't the same. Pre-Marius, you could deliberately stay as a local power, and yet have your fun with it, while being able to fend off anything thrown at you. It also allowed you to keep a net of alliance of other local powers, so it was both fun to play and great RP tool.
Post-Marius, you either are a regional power (and thus have capital legion), or it's a counting clock until you get conquered. And once you are regional power, you might as well conquer your starting region whole, because you are not getting any benefits local power would have.
>You conquer your entire region
That's not tall, you dingus. Pre-Marius, you could be literal city state and still manage.

>>2138346
>>2138374
And speaking about how much Marius ruined Imperator:
Pre-Marius
>You're a rich and prosperous city state or a small, but compact power
>So are your allies
>You have a large league of similar subjects
>Whoever declares war on you, has to deal with the fact that you've got a large army (thanks to your population. it's concentration and wealth you are making from both of those)
>And your numerous allies, who can do the same
>Every strat is good, because going wide also works and you can still conquer and manouver around leagues
Post-Marius
>Hehe, map goes blob!
>Leagues are utterly fucking useless, leading to defeat in depth

Imperator has ONE thing going for itself: it was the only PDX game allowing for tall. And they've fucked it.
Deliberately so..
You don't blob post-Marius? You die.

>>2138380
I consider owning only one region to be "tall".
If you can't play tall as a single fucking city state I'm fine with that.
Imperator is the only PDX game where blobbing is fun, anyway.

And, again, I can play tall just fine with one region.

>>2138380
Classic blobbing is way more fun than alliance blobbing.
>Oh yeah I'm just going to sit here and watch numbers go up all game while hiding behind my horde of NPC allies!
>Expansion? Conquest? Developing new regions? That's called blobbing sweety and it's highly illegal!

>>2135960
euv seems like an extension of Imperator Rome. It makes sense since EU3 used mechanics first tested in Rome Universalis

>>2138014
>teach me to populationmaxx
Aqueducts give a flat amount of population capacity (less than 10) but use a building slot
For every 10 population, you get an additional building slot
Use the province improvements that add a multiplier for population capacity, such that aqueducts become self-supporting (each one provides 10 or more population capacity)
Then spam aqueducts.
Eventually you'll need to spam the province improvement to increase trade routes, because you'll need to import food.

>>2138507
>euv seems like an extension of Imperator Rome
This is why I'm excited for it.

>>2138507
And let's not forget it's literally called Project Caesar.

>>2138507
If you have played some Imperator:Rome you knen from they 1 they showed gameplay footage that EUV is basically a extremely heavely overahuled mod for I:V.

>>2135877 (OP)
Are people still playing Imperator? I'm a Paradox autist and I love classical history so this game name my dick hard and I'll never stop being mad that they dropped it so early. It was basically shit at release, even by Paradox standards, but then that one big update really had things looking like they were going somewhere, but it was still incomplete as shit.

>>2138527
"Incomplete" is meaningless when the other more complete games are no fucking fun at all

>>2138532
I love EU and CK. I need to try Vicky 2 again.

>>2135877 (OP)
>cannot pillage cities
Why not? They constantly pillaged.

>>2138527
You know they went back and patched it not long ago and most people think its good now? What do you need to actually finish it? Adding finnish and proto slavic tribes?

>>2138605
All armies, including legions, can pillage cities and settlements (where you enslave several pops and haul them away)
OP is referring to a specific event that fires when a levy commanded by your ruler (i.e. the capital regions levy) sacks a city (not a settlement) where you get several options as to how to badly to loot, giving you a decent bonus straight to your treasury. This event is separate from the chance to enslave some pops.
It’s nice early game, and is a big reason why I don’t spend my starting inventions on beelining for the legion law (I go for the theater and temple and foundry, then legion law), but legions are absolutely better and I’d never continue to use levies once legions are available.

Can we now move slaves from/to islands?

>>2138624
>You know
I did NOT know. I thought they'd said "fuck all y'all" and were never coming back to it.

>>2138983
>I did NOT know. I thought they'd said "fuck all y'all" and were never coming back to it.
This is true, but there's like one guy at Paradox that's been working on some minor patches for the last two years ago in his spare time. Mostly small bug fixes, and adding functionality for modders.
>t. Imperator enjoyer

>>2138380
Every paradox game is fundamentally a game about blobbing. Supporting blobing and making it engaging should be the purpose of the game's design.

>>2138527
Paradox games were always at their best after only a couple of years of "support" anyway.
When the core systems were set up and fleshed out, before they started ripping the game apart and randomly replacing mechanics with new ones.

>>2137942
>OMG I AM GOING TO HAVE ANOTHER MENTAL BREAKDOWN!
The post.

>>2138983
2.0 was a huge update m8.
There's also the invictus mod but imo it's overrated as hell

>>2139015
This.
I like Imperator because it's unabashedly about blobbing, and has mechanics to make it interesting.
Then you have games like CK3 that try really hard to pretend they're not about blobbing, yet it's the only thing to do really

>>2139056
Invictus adds a lot more buttons to click and sliders to look at which for lots of people enjoy greatly but others, like you and me, don't care a lot about.


>>2139057
I might be autistic as hell but I like just uniting all of Britannica and building it up while Rome blobs all across Europe

>>2139056
Nice what kind of shit did it add?

>>2139110
Look it up yourself faggot

>>2139072
>Invictus adds a lot more buttons to click and sliders to look at
wut
Did you actually play it?
99% of the mod is mission trees for countries that didn't have them, and the 1% is some innovations changed place in the research tree

>>2139237
:(