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Grand Strategy Imperator: Rome - the new grand strategy from Paradox

fantadomat

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I am just watching this dev stream....ant it seems retarded,elephants beat anything.....when they were pretty useless in many real world campaign. How the fuck horse archers will be weaker to elephants but stronger against archers....:retarded:


 

sser

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I agree - and I also imagine that so many players would consider that way too "stressful" and "demoralising", because they want to sit back, relax and win all the time. Paradox gamers should be history nerds who don't mind that at all, but one imagines that a lot of the relatively 'casual' segments of their audience would dissent.

If only they could maintain one spinoff franchise, some kind of hardcore EU, on minimal budget.

Vic2's greatest and fundamental problem is that the game is almost built around a kind of linear progression from feudal shitshow, through state capitalism to boostrap market economies, then to full liberalism (and then communism as a kind of bonus round). It's... not even dialectical!

Or just have it as an option. There really aren't enough stressors in many of the Paradox games after a certain point. You can sorta self-inflict one with Gavelkind in CK2 where every time your main guy dies everything blows apart.
 

Space Satan

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I will be satisfied with any outcome
Should it succeed - we'll have another grand strategy in roman setting, which is good.
Should it fail - Paradox will divert resources to what people asked for - Victoria III
 
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I agree - and I also imagine that so many players would consider that way too "stressful" and "demoralising", because they want to sit back, relax and win all the time. Paradox gamers should be history nerds who don't mind that at all, but one imagines that a lot of the relatively 'casual' segments of their audience would dissent.

If only they could maintain one spinoff franchise, some kind of hardcore EU, on minimal budget.

Vic2's greatest and fundamental problem is that the game is almost built around a kind of linear progression from feudal shitshow, through state capitalism to boostrap market economies, then to full liberalism (and then communism as a kind of bonus round). It's... not even dialectical!

EU:Rome kind of did this. It was very hard to be big without having loyalty issues SOMEWHERE that caused half the empire to break away because you wanted to unassign a general from an army. And the big AIs (mainly selucids) would absolutely brutalize you when you were weak while barbarians streamed in across the borders to push back your civilizing efforts and so on.

Have we seen any footage of a real Roman Empire-sized country to see if managing your own characters can actually be a challenge with a punishment for mistakes? Or are they disposable and ignorable?
 

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I am just watching this dev stream....ant it seems retarded,elephants beat anything.....when they were pretty useless in many real world campaign. How the fuck horse archers will be weaker to elephants but stronger against archers....:retarded:



They seem to hire actual diagnosed autists.
 

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Is there any politics, stuff like in Crusader Kings? The only thing showcased seem to be war. Might as well play Rome in that case.
 

Fedora Master

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I am just watching this dev stream....ant it seems retarded,elephants beat anything.....when they were pretty useless in many real world campaign. How the fuck horse archers will be weaker to elephants but stronger against archers....:retarded:

Changing the meta around which unit works best when spammed - That's perfectly in line with CK2.
 
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Hello and welcome to another development Diary for Imperator:Rome!

Today we will be talking about Families, what they are and how they can help or harm your country. We will also be looking at the map of Scandinavia, a region that will eventually be known for its great output of Grand Strategy Games.

Families

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In Imperator countries are the main actors while Characters in many ways present both the means to- and the difficulties in achieving your national ambitions. In history however, and in this era in particular, the family was also a very important political unit. In Imperator families will look after the interests of their members, and sometimes some families will end up very involved in the future of your country.

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All important characters in a country will belong to one of a limited number of families, each which has certain expectations on the state. Failing to deliver on these expectations will make them less loyal. In some instances you will be able to interact with the loyalty of all members of one family at once, rather than with each character one at a time. For instance, a marriage between your ruler (or his heir in a monarchy) will result in increased loyalty for all family members towards the state. Providing a member of a family a job will earn you loyalty with all of his kin, while confiscating the property of a person will have a negative effect on the loyalty of all of his family members.

This means that while it is in many ways beneficial for a country to acquire more characters, it is not always beneficial to acquire more important families, as these will all have expectations on you and your state.

Acquiring New Families

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As your country expands it might end up annexing other countries. Every time you do this you will be given a choice in how to deal with the local families of power. The conquering country can choose to receive up to four of the powerful families in the conquered country. Each foreign family you accept will cost you some Ruler Popularity, while making a public display of them can earn you some Popularity with the masses. You can also spare the foreign families, and allow them to flee to other countries, for a small Aggressive Expansion reduction.

Refugees and captives may also at times arrive in a country, but will then be considered non-citizens and not belong to any of the important families. Granting Citizenship to such foreigners will create a new family for them.

Citizenship

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When a foreign character arrives in your country, due to annexation, being captured and then let out of prison, as a refugee from a war, or any other means, this character will be unable to be employed by the state. In order for this character to gain the right to work as a salaried member of the state you will need to grant them citizenship. This will also establish their family in your country.

Family Prestige

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Each family has a prestige value, to which all its members contribute. Family Prestige signifies how important a family is and it grows mainly from the deeds, offices and income of its members.

While prestige has few direct effects it is a quick way to see how influential a family has been over the course of the game, and how important it is compared to other families in your country.

Head of Family

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Each family in a country has a head, this is one of the older and more distinguished members who consider themselves a spokesperson for the entire group. Apart from being the primary point of interaction with the family for the player the head of family will have a higher prominence, and chance of attracting loyal troops.

Scorned & Outraged Families

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As mentioned families also have expectations on you. Each family in the realm expects to have a certain amount of the state wages go to them. If at any time any important family receives less than 2% of the country income in wages they will be considered a Scorned Family. The only way to avoid this demand is if the family does not have enough people that could hold salaried positions.

A Scorned Family will see all its members get a ticking loyalty modifier, reducing their loyalty to their state over time, until you fulfill their needs. This is in itself a problem but as long as the family isn’t very influential, and is without any important positions, it may be tolerable.

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A Family that stays scorned long enough, and that is lead by a disloyal head of family, will sometimes raise their own army. This army will be loyal to the head of family and may contribute to a Civil War breaking out. If the head of family stops being disloyal (ie gets a loyalty above 33) the army will go away.

Scandinavia

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In the section on Germania I noted how hard it is to be able to say anything for certain about exactly what things were like there in 450 AUC (or 304 BCE). This is perhaps even more true for Scandinavia. Once again the lost works of Pytheas of Massilia could perhaps have been of help, he supposedly travelled even this far and described a land of Thule, but as they are lost to us all we have to go on are much later writers.

As is often the case though, lacking documentation does not mean that nothing was there. There is no lack of later authors that refer back to Scandinavia’s past. Nonetheless our setup here is by necessity a bit speculative, and makes liberal use of extrapolation from later testimony.

In 304 BCE Scandinavia is in some ways like the peninsula we know and love. It is densely forested, and it can often have quite harsh winters. Compared to most regions it is also quite sparsely populated and politically divided. All states that exist here are Tribal chiefdoms with very low starting centralization levels, making the area ideal for starting a tribal migration to greener pastures. Migrate is also what many of the tribes we have placed here historically did, sometimes just across the baltic sea, and sometimes far further.

At the start of the entire region will be very dynamic. There is nothing specifically to say that one of these tribes will triumph over the other, or that any specific one should migrate away. Most of these countries look deceptively extensive on a map, whereas very few pops actually live here, and all cities have very low Civilization levels.

Starting Countries

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  • Herulia: Germanic tribal chiefdom of uncertain origin. Would in time move south towards the Black Sea, making a name for itself as an enemy of the Roman Empire hundreds of years later.
  • Burgundia: Tribal chiefdom in modern Scania and on the island of Bornholm. Presumed to later have moved south into the sphere of the Roman Empire.
  • Dania: Scandinavian tribal chiefdom in what is today southern Sweden. Would in time migrate to the south west into the land controlled by the Herules and Burgundians at our start.
  • Leuonia: Western Germanic tribe later known as Geats. Supposed ancestors of one of the peoples tied to the formation of Sweden.
  • Guthonia: Tribal Chiefdom occupying the land between lake Vättern and the baltic sea. Later known as the eastern Geats. Thought by some to be the ancestors of the later day Goths.
  • Suionia: Thought to be the ancestors of the later day Swedes, the Suiones control the land around Lake Mälaren in what is today central Sweden.
  • Raumaricia: Tribal Chiefdom in what is today western Sweden and the region around modern Oslo.
  • Grania: Small Tribal chiefdom in southern Norway.
  • Aetelrugia: Tribal chiefdom in what is today western Norway, assumed to be distant relatives of the Rugians on the southern Baltic coast.
 

AwesomeButton

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Since I learned they won't even have two consuls and change them each year - I'm not wishing for implementing the whole Roman political system here, just consuls - I am no longer able to take this seriously. I mean, there is code reuse and asset reuse, there are blatant attempts to steal guillable children's milk money with DLCs, and in a post-Oblivion world, moral standards are just a joke. But naming your game "Imperator: Rome" and then going "Oh, it was too much work to implement mechanics which would allow you to properly differentiate between factions" is going too far. Fuck those retards and I hope their cash grab bombs hard.
 

Monocause

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I am just watching this dev stream....ant it seems retarded,elephants beat anything.....when they were pretty useless in many real world campaign. How the fuck horse archers will be weaker to elephants but stronger against archers....:retarded:


Well, it does make a bit of sense in terms of ancient campaigns. The biggest impacts of elephants was on enemy morale. Horses and men absolutely panicked at the sight of those hulkering beasts most of the time, especially horses and men not accustomed to the sight. Horse archers being more efficient vs archers also makes sense, since it's a rapidly moving target that flanks you, moves in and out of range, really hard to hit, could move and shoot.

They wouldn't run around in big clumps as they sometimes do in Total War games. They would spread out very loosely, so large volleys of enemy arrows would barely have a target. They would run circles around your position, and disperse when in trouble, only to run back when you were vulnerable again. While you're desperately trying to shoot anything with your men around you, you become easy pickings for enemy lancers and/or light horse who take you on when you're distracted.

Horse archers were a blight even during the Mongol invasion some 1500 years later, and IIRC it was the advent of gunpowder with really fast, quite penetrating projectiles - and artillery with its hugely superior range - that rendered them less of a terror on the battlefield. Before then, it was equivalent to trying to fend off fighter planes with handheld rifles.

Re: horse archers vs elephants - it would take a shitton of arrows to take an elephant down. Especially arrows shot from the less powerful bows horse archers sported (you needed a pretty small and/or flexible bow to be able to achieve a full draw on horseback, you're limited in how you can lean on horseback, another factor is that it's pretty much an art to hit anything with a bow from horseback at reasonable distance), which didn't have the kind of range and penetrating power you'd expect from fe. a longbow or a crossbow. IIRC the ranged weapon of choice against elephants were javelins or stuff that would start frightening the elephants themselves, like setting fire onto something. Even then, remember that horses really didn't like the smell and sight of elephants. So when you're trying to fire at an elephant that's surprisingly fast, and you need to get fairly close because of your small bow, your horse goes mental, runs away, throws you off target. Might even try to throw you off its back.
 
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Vaarna_Aarne

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I am just watching this dev stream....ant it seems retarded,elephants beat anything.....when they were pretty useless in many real world campaign. How the fuck horse archers will be weaker to elephants but stronger against archers....:retarded:


Well, it does make a bit of sense in terms of ancient campaigns. The biggest impacts of elephants was on enemy morale. Horses and men absolutely panicked at the sight of those hulkering beasts most of the time, especially horses and men not accustomed to the sight.
Horse archers being more efficient vs archers also makes sense, since it's a rapidly moving target that flanks you, moves in and out of range, really hard to hit, could move and shoot.

They wouldn't run around in big clumps as they sometimes do in Total War games. They would spread out very loosely, so large volleys of enemy arrows would barely have a target. They would run circles around your position, and disperse when in trouble, only to run back when you were vulnerable again. While you're desperately trying to shoot anything with your men around you, you become easy pickings for enemy lancers and/or light horse who take you on when you're distracted.

Horse archers were a blight even during the Mongol invasion some 1500 years later, and IIRC it was the advent of gunpowder with really fast, quite penetrating projectiles - and artillery with its hugely superior range - that rendered them less of a terror on the battlefield. Before then, it was equivalent to trying to fend off fighter planes with handheld rifles.

Re: horse archers vs elephants - it would take a shitton of arrows to take an elephant down. Especially arrows shot from the less powerful bows horse archers sported (you needed a pretty small and/or flexible bow to be able to achieve a full draw on horseback, you're limited in how you can lean on horseback, another factor is that it's pretty much an art to hit anything with a bow from horseback at reasonable distance), which didn't have the kind of range and penetrating power you'd expect from fe. a longbow or a crossbow. IIRC the ranged weapon of choice against elephants were javelins or stuff that would start frightening the elephants themselves, like setting fire onto something. Even then, remember that horses really didn't like the smell and sight of elephants. So when you're trying to fire at an elephant that's surprisingly fast, and you need to get fairly close because of your small bow, your horse goes mental, runs away, throws you off target. Might even try to throw you off its back.
It really bears emphasizing: Odds are that a given person in ancient times had no idea what the fuck an elephant was, or that things that big could exist.

It really distorts one's thinking a bit if one doesn't remember all the little conveniences one has today that were nowhere to be seen for vast majority of history. A very good example of this in regards to pre-modern warfare is just trying to picture commanding an army without radio. Or in case of elephants, living at a time before printing press much less the camera and internet so your information intake is severely bottlenecked.

A most valuable quote in regards to approaching pre-modern times is what the narrator says in Crécy: "These things are going to look primitive to you, but you have to remember that we're not stupid. We have the same intelligence as you. We simply don't have the same cumulative knowledge you do. So we apply our intelligence to what we have."
 

fantadomat

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I am just watching this dev stream....ant it seems retarded,elephants beat anything.....when they were pretty useless in many real world campaign. How the fuck horse archers will be weaker to elephants but stronger against archers....:retarded:


Well, it does make a bit of sense in terms of ancient campaigns. The biggest impacts of elephants was on enemy morale. Horses and men absolutely panicked at the sight of those hulkering beasts most of the time, especially horses and men not accustomed to the sight. Horse archers being more efficient vs archers also makes sense, since it's a rapidly moving target that flanks you, moves in and out of range, really hard to hit, could move and shoot.

They wouldn't run around in big clumps as they sometimes do in Total War games. They would spread out very loosely, so large volleys of enemy arrows would barely have a target. They would run circles around your position, and disperse when in trouble, only to run back when you were vulnerable again. While you're desperately trying to shoot anything with your men around you, you become easy pickings for enemy lancers and/or light horse who take you on when you're distracted.

Horse archers were a blight even during the Mongol invasion some 1500 years later, and IIRC it was the advent of gunpowder with really fast, quite penetrating projectiles - and artillery with its hugely superior range - that rendered them less of a terror on the battlefield. Before then, it was equivalent to trying to fend off fighter planes with handheld rifles.

Re: horse archers vs elephants - it would take a shitton of arrows to take an elephant down. Especially arrows shot from the less powerful bows horse archers sported (you needed a pretty small and/or flexible bow to be able to achieve a full draw on horseback, you're limited in how you can lean on horseback, another factor is that it's pretty much an art to hit anything with a bow from horseback at reasonable distance), which didn't have the kind of range and penetrating power you'd expect from fe. a longbow or a crossbow. IIRC the ranged weapon of choice against elephants were javelins or stuff that would start frightening the elephants themselves, like setting fire onto something. Even then, remember that horses really didn't like the smell and sight of elephants. So when you're trying to fire at an elephant that's surprisingly fast, and you need to get fairly close because of your small bow, your horse goes mental, runs away, throws you off target. Might even try to throw you off its back.
That is not entirely true,the elephants were a new thing during the Hanibal's war,at the midway they wore down their fear effect and became a problem for Cartage. They were easy to deal with and frequently could panic and fuck up their own troops. Also fucking horse archers could hit a elephant,we are not talking about the eye of a single soldier amongst many,we are talking about an animal big as building! The smell is also irrelevant,they are shooting it from 50-100 meters,not getting to it to snuff its armpits or whatever they are called. elephants are used mainly to break the tight Roman formations,thus against infantry. Arrows do deal damage to it,it is not like in the games where you have to lower its hp to zero to kill it. Imagine being poked with 100 needles at once,at very least it panics it.

Archers are the hard counter to horse archers.They were used as a front line,thus giving them extra range. They would pepper the skirmishing horse archers and then retreat behind the infantry line. Archers can use better and bigger bows,giving them extra range and accuracy. Horse archers as you pointed out are stuck with short bows.


Anyway,in reality there wasn't a +10% bonus damage against X unit type. It was all about army composition,terrain and tactics. You can't really put that in such a game,the closest thing that they managed was CK2. Those numbers just show they poor knowledge on such things and just their general laziness. You could easily make a system where the effectiveness of different units changes with time,and the enemy. A nation that have spend a decade fighting against x country that specialize in x type of units should have better skillz at killing them than someone else.
 

razvedchiki

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Well, it does make a bit of sense in terms of ancient campaigns. The biggest impacts of elephants was on enemy morale. Horses and men absolutely panicked at the sight of those hulkering beasts most of the time, especially horses and men not accustomed to the sight. Horse archers being more efficient vs archers also makes sense, since it's a rapidly moving target that flanks you, moves in and out of range, really hard to hit, could move and shoot.

They wouldn't run around in big clumps as they sometimes do in Total War games. They would spread out very loosely, so large volleys of enemy arrows would barely have a target. They would run circles around your position, and disperse when in trouble, only to run back when you were vulnerable again. While you're desperately trying to shoot anything with your men around you, you become easy pickings for enemy lancers and/or light horse who take you on when you're distracted.

Horse archers were a blight even during the Mongol invasion some 1500 years later, and IIRC it was the advent of gunpowder with really fast, quite penetrating projectiles - and artillery with its hugely superior range - that rendered them less of a terror on the battlefield. Before then, it was equivalent to trying to fend off fighter planes with handheld rifles.

Re: horse archers vs elephants - it would take a shitton of arrows to take an elephant down. Especially arrows shot from the less powerful bows horse archers sported (you needed a pretty small and/or flexible bow to be able to achieve a full draw on horseback, you're limited in how you can lean on horseback, another factor is that it's pretty much an art to hit anything with a bow from horseback at reasonable distance), which didn't have the kind of range and penetrating power you'd expect from fe. a longbow or a crossbow. IIRC the ranged weapon of choice against elephants were javelins or stuff that would start frightening the elephants themselves, like setting fire onto something. Even then, remember that horses really didn't like the smell and sight of elephants. So when you're trying to fire at an elephant that's surprisingly fast, and you need to get fairly close because of your small bow, your horse goes mental, runs away, throws you off target. Might even try to throw you off its back.

steady infantry supported by cavalry/light inf could repel horse archer based armies,the romans won or had draws against parthian/sassanid and later hunic armies.
 

Agame

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steady infantry supported by cavalry/light inf could repel horse archer based armies,the romans won or had draws against parthian/sassanid and later hunic armies.

A single field battle was only important in the context of a campaign, strategic concerns such as sieges, ability to supply armies and control vast territory could be just as important. But none of this stuff will ever be modeled in Paradox games due to the high level abstraction, and I think they have zero interest in developing complexity in their combat systems. The closest they got to simulation was HOI3 and that was overwhelmingly hated by the general Paradox community.

We will NEVER see anything beyond minor iterations on EU4/CK2 model for combat in Paradox games. Unless they suddenly hire a wargaming grognard who also gets into a top dev position.
 

razvedchiki

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pre ck2 paradox community didnt have many problems with hoi3,all the fucking casual retards who want to larp being a king that came with ck2 are the reason hoi4 became the mess it is.
 

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