Today to something completely different.
About many hours in I think I can finally give a verdict about the new Paradox title Imperator: Rome.
Is the game cool?
Well, sort of.
Will I play it again?
If I'd still be a gamer then the answer would be: maybe
But I reeeeallly would have loved for this game to be great!
As to my background. I played maany paradox games since HOI 1. I like the company despite their (former) partially horrible DLC policy.
I dig their games. I think they enriched the gaming industry.
But actually sort of I quit playing computer games a few years ago.
Why did I make an exception for I.R.? And why make the exception now?
Two main reasons.
For one: I ALWAYS wanted to be able to play carthage. ALWAYS:
When I was FOUR years old I got a Teddy Bear that I named Hannibal. Named him after the great carthagian general, nemesis of rome.
Yup, I was four. Go figure. Granted, I was probably mostly impressed that he crossed the alps with elephants and not because of his tactical genius.
I love Rome, but Carthage was always my favorite. The cool underdog. And there are not too many games in that era and even less so that let you play as carthage.
The second reason: now corona happened and i had time on my hands....
Impressions about the game:
I first did the tutorial with Rome, finished that, then I immediately started a game as carthage.
I love the era, and the game catches it a bit. Unfortunately only a bit....
Positives:
* battles feel much better to me than in other paradox titles. the units you take are more important for the outcome.
* the "generals" system with the loyality and disloyality feels great! also the idea that cohorts can become loyal to a general.
* like already said: there are not many games for that era
* i like the simple system with slaves, freemen, tribesmen and citizens
* overall i feel like the game got a lot of negative press, but not rightly so. imho v1.0 delivered what it communicated it would deliver. at it communicated that very clearly.
Negatives:
* clumsy UI: for example... one of my families is shunned, but I cannot easily filter for a candidate of that family. there are many examples like this.
* Carthage and Rome "feel" very much the same. The events are just the same... that is quite sad! I have read that the game lacks "content" but the advertisments said the first updates should have remified this for carthage and rome.
* by the above mentioned point it does not feel immersive to play. when i played CK2 or stellaris I FELT like I was leading a nation or that i was a ruler of a nation. here? not that much so. i never "felt" with the leader. the idea with the great families is nice, but it feels more like a minigame to keep all of them content.
* its right now hard to get a good understanding how the game WORKS: the game is not good at EXPLAINING itself. yes, there are tooltips, but like in most Paradox games, at some point you MUST go into the great wide web and search how a certain mechanic works. that is FINE with me! i ACCEPT and even LIKE that. but that is VERY hard with I:R right now! why? because the game changed MASSIVELY in the last year since release, so the info you find is mostly outdated! this frustrated me big time quite a few times...
* some systems like the casus belli system feel lacking/frustrating. you can construct a casus belli on a nation for a certain province. but that province does not need to be part of the peace deal. but what i find much worse: once you have a CB: no way to get rid of it! this is bad, because if you try to win over a nation via diplomatic means you now are screwed with their opinion penalty! that could be ok if it was only YOU who decided that you want to fabricate a CB in the first place, but this ties into another game mechanic:
* the "mission" system feels weird. you can take on missions to improve a certain region. if you take those on, the game will tell you sth like: conquer that territory, build a granary here, seize control of that region. if you do that, then each of those will give you a small or sometimes also considerable BONUS. sounds fine. my problem is that often i started a mission tree for some part of my territory that was already DEVELOPED. i had more than once the situation that the missions required me to for example "build 3 temples in province X", but unfortunately I had already used up all building slots. mind you, when i started the mission tree, i cannot not KNOW which missions will be part of the tree. but in order to get to the juicy rewards you sometimes first need to fulfill certain missions prior, you cannot skip those. this is quite frustrating. sometimes the "reward" can also be that you get a casus belli on a nation. but maybe i do not want that, because i want to make them a client state? well tough luck, because in order to get to some cool rewards for some successive mission i also have to accept the "reward" of a CB... frustrating
* getting other nations to agree to become a client state also feels like a tedious mini-game to me. influence them, befriend their leader, give them a present and then just get them to agree. if they dont, build a few units that you can disband after they have agreed. plus... where do i see quickly how many more diplomatic relations i may take without penality? (another GUI issue)
* i never had any problem to avoid a civil war. i constantly had somebody discontent, but after 50 hours I wondered why this system is in place.
* bugs: the game is out for a year and for that amount of time i had expected a smoother experience. I had 2 crashes to desktop. well that is fine, for that you have auto-save. what i hated however are some bugs i found. i had an event fire that some carthagan general of a great family should have spawned in a city of mine. however: that family had already "died" and there was no general. another even more frustrating for me is the ship building. as carthage, the mighty naval power, i wanted to build the heavy Octere ships. however, the tooltip tells me i must import wood. so i import wood. i still cannot build the Octere. I import a surplus of wood, in both the province as well as in the capital. the tooltip still tells me i lack the required wood. should carthage be allowed to build Octeres? i do not know for sure: if i google it, it looks like no. but who knows, that info could be outdated with the updates. plus, there was an apparently carthagian event that fired where i received 5 Octere ships. so i do HAVE them but cannot build more. whatever the case, there is the bug that the game shouldnt tell me that i lack WOOD!
* when I played as carthage, i quite early on prepared for my epic battle against Rome which I knew would come eventually. my alliances were set up accordingly. i had an army in waiting. after i was in a satisfactory position, i prepared an army and waited for rome to go into a war. what I found was that rome had started to expand into macedonia which got shattered quite early on. they early on got quite many holdings in greece. when they had another war with macedon i acted quickly, mobilized my army and declared war. i had a client state in the north of italy and from there and from sicily 3 armies altogether marched into roman territory. boosted by two more mercenary armies as a proper carthagan invasion should have. they marched and... met no resistance at all. none. no roman armies in sight. not only that, but also no fortresses. 3 smaller armies from italian client states to rome finally started to defend, but i quickly crushed them. those client states were also the only ones to have fortresses... i quickly sacked rome, then made peace and took massive amounts of land. well... that was NOT the epic fight i had expected. even more so because in the tutorial when i attacked carthage TWICE i got beaten back quite seriously. so when rome did not put up a fight i was pretty depressed. still: i had sacked rome, but i hadnt conquered it yet. my second punic war was still pending. i prepare for the next war and 35 years later it is time again. rome goes to war in greece (where it gained even more territory in the meantime) and i declare war on rome again. once again... NO ROMAN ARMIES opposing my troops. no forts in my way except for a few of roman client states. and that was my epic story how carthage conquered rome. when i finally demanded peace, i this time also demanded the province of rome. rome accepted the peace agreement. if you know your history then you might know that when rome sacked their arch-enemy carthage in the third punic war, they RAZED they city. like: they REALLY made sure that the city was destroyed and couldnt be rebuilt. they SALTED the earth carthage was standing on so noone could grow any crops there anymore! they REALLY made an effort. i would have thought paradox would have some cool event like that fire for me as carthage conquering rome too... nope. there was a decision all right. i could kill 1/3rd of the population. the popup was more or less the same like when you take the capital of syracause... disappointment again. well and for that i spent multiple hours of my time?! :(
So would I buy this game again?
Well, yes, but probably after another major patch or maybe two. When it is on sale.
There is a chance I will continue playing my carthage campaign just to COMPLETELY wipe rome from the map. but i actually doubt it. still, i thank paradox for the game. the suspension during my build-up for my war was nice, even though the game failed to deliver the pitched war.
About many hours in I think I can finally give a verdict about the new Paradox title Imperator: Rome.
Is the game cool?
Well, sort of.
Will I play it again?
If I'd still be a gamer then the answer would be: maybe
But I reeeeallly would have loved for this game to be great!
As to my background. I played maany paradox games since HOI 1. I like the company despite their (former) partially horrible DLC policy.
I dig their games. I think they enriched the gaming industry.
But actually sort of I quit playing computer games a few years ago.
Why did I make an exception for I.R.? And why make the exception now?
Two main reasons.
For one: I ALWAYS wanted to be able to play carthage. ALWAYS:
When I was FOUR years old I got a Teddy Bear that I named Hannibal. Named him after the great carthagian general, nemesis of rome.
Yup, I was four. Go figure. Granted, I was probably mostly impressed that he crossed the alps with elephants and not because of his tactical genius.
I love Rome, but Carthage was always my favorite. The cool underdog. And there are not too many games in that era and even less so that let you play as carthage.
The second reason: now corona happened and i had time on my hands....
Impressions about the game:
I first did the tutorial with Rome, finished that, then I immediately started a game as carthage.
I love the era, and the game catches it a bit. Unfortunately only a bit....
Positives:
* battles feel much better to me than in other paradox titles. the units you take are more important for the outcome.
* the "generals" system with the loyality and disloyality feels great! also the idea that cohorts can become loyal to a general.
* like already said: there are not many games for that era
* i like the simple system with slaves, freemen, tribesmen and citizens
* overall i feel like the game got a lot of negative press, but not rightly so. imho v1.0 delivered what it communicated it would deliver. at it communicated that very clearly.
Negatives:
* clumsy UI: for example... one of my families is shunned, but I cannot easily filter for a candidate of that family. there are many examples like this.
* Carthage and Rome "feel" very much the same. The events are just the same... that is quite sad! I have read that the game lacks "content" but the advertisments said the first updates should have remified this for carthage and rome.
* by the above mentioned point it does not feel immersive to play. when i played CK2 or stellaris I FELT like I was leading a nation or that i was a ruler of a nation. here? not that much so. i never "felt" with the leader. the idea with the great families is nice, but it feels more like a minigame to keep all of them content.
* its right now hard to get a good understanding how the game WORKS: the game is not good at EXPLAINING itself. yes, there are tooltips, but like in most Paradox games, at some point you MUST go into the great wide web and search how a certain mechanic works. that is FINE with me! i ACCEPT and even LIKE that. but that is VERY hard with I:R right now! why? because the game changed MASSIVELY in the last year since release, so the info you find is mostly outdated! this frustrated me big time quite a few times...
* some systems like the casus belli system feel lacking/frustrating. you can construct a casus belli on a nation for a certain province. but that province does not need to be part of the peace deal. but what i find much worse: once you have a CB: no way to get rid of it! this is bad, because if you try to win over a nation via diplomatic means you now are screwed with their opinion penalty! that could be ok if it was only YOU who decided that you want to fabricate a CB in the first place, but this ties into another game mechanic:
* the "mission" system feels weird. you can take on missions to improve a certain region. if you take those on, the game will tell you sth like: conquer that territory, build a granary here, seize control of that region. if you do that, then each of those will give you a small or sometimes also considerable BONUS. sounds fine. my problem is that often i started a mission tree for some part of my territory that was already DEVELOPED. i had more than once the situation that the missions required me to for example "build 3 temples in province X", but unfortunately I had already used up all building slots. mind you, when i started the mission tree, i cannot not KNOW which missions will be part of the tree. but in order to get to the juicy rewards you sometimes first need to fulfill certain missions prior, you cannot skip those. this is quite frustrating. sometimes the "reward" can also be that you get a casus belli on a nation. but maybe i do not want that, because i want to make them a client state? well tough luck, because in order to get to some cool rewards for some successive mission i also have to accept the "reward" of a CB... frustrating
* getting other nations to agree to become a client state also feels like a tedious mini-game to me. influence them, befriend their leader, give them a present and then just get them to agree. if they dont, build a few units that you can disband after they have agreed. plus... where do i see quickly how many more diplomatic relations i may take without penality? (another GUI issue)
* i never had any problem to avoid a civil war. i constantly had somebody discontent, but after 50 hours I wondered why this system is in place.
* bugs: the game is out for a year and for that amount of time i had expected a smoother experience. I had 2 crashes to desktop. well that is fine, for that you have auto-save. what i hated however are some bugs i found. i had an event fire that some carthagan general of a great family should have spawned in a city of mine. however: that family had already "died" and there was no general. another even more frustrating for me is the ship building. as carthage, the mighty naval power, i wanted to build the heavy Octere ships. however, the tooltip tells me i must import wood. so i import wood. i still cannot build the Octere. I import a surplus of wood, in both the province as well as in the capital. the tooltip still tells me i lack the required wood. should carthage be allowed to build Octeres? i do not know for sure: if i google it, it looks like no. but who knows, that info could be outdated with the updates. plus, there was an apparently carthagian event that fired where i received 5 Octere ships. so i do HAVE them but cannot build more. whatever the case, there is the bug that the game shouldnt tell me that i lack WOOD!
* when I played as carthage, i quite early on prepared for my epic battle against Rome which I knew would come eventually. my alliances were set up accordingly. i had an army in waiting. after i was in a satisfactory position, i prepared an army and waited for rome to go into a war. what I found was that rome had started to expand into macedonia which got shattered quite early on. they early on got quite many holdings in greece. when they had another war with macedon i acted quickly, mobilized my army and declared war. i had a client state in the north of italy and from there and from sicily 3 armies altogether marched into roman territory. boosted by two more mercenary armies as a proper carthagan invasion should have. they marched and... met no resistance at all. none. no roman armies in sight. not only that, but also no fortresses. 3 smaller armies from italian client states to rome finally started to defend, but i quickly crushed them. those client states were also the only ones to have fortresses... i quickly sacked rome, then made peace and took massive amounts of land. well... that was NOT the epic fight i had expected. even more so because in the tutorial when i attacked carthage TWICE i got beaten back quite seriously. so when rome did not put up a fight i was pretty depressed. still: i had sacked rome, but i hadnt conquered it yet. my second punic war was still pending. i prepare for the next war and 35 years later it is time again. rome goes to war in greece (where it gained even more territory in the meantime) and i declare war on rome again. once again... NO ROMAN ARMIES opposing my troops. no forts in my way except for a few of roman client states. and that was my epic story how carthage conquered rome. when i finally demanded peace, i this time also demanded the province of rome. rome accepted the peace agreement. if you know your history then you might know that when rome sacked their arch-enemy carthage in the third punic war, they RAZED they city. like: they REALLY made sure that the city was destroyed and couldnt be rebuilt. they SALTED the earth carthage was standing on so noone could grow any crops there anymore! they REALLY made an effort. i would have thought paradox would have some cool event like that fire for me as carthage conquering rome too... nope. there was a decision all right. i could kill 1/3rd of the population. the popup was more or less the same like when you take the capital of syracause... disappointment again. well and for that i spent multiple hours of my time?! :(
So would I buy this game again?
Well, yes, but probably after another major patch or maybe two. When it is on sale.
There is a chance I will continue playing my carthage campaign just to COMPLETELY wipe rome from the map. but i actually doubt it. still, i thank paradox for the game. the suspension during my build-up for my war was nice, even though the game failed to deliver the pitched war.
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