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

[Mortmal]

So this game has the same issues as Stellaris and HoIIV on release? You'd think Paradox would have learned something from those two trainwrecks.

No, not same issues, much worse.. You need to put a few more hours in to see the trouble. Once you get major power you snowball so easily its ridiculous, there's mercenaries waiting for you in every major cities,proportional to pop size, which you have in large quantities as you drag slaves in. only requirement is having enough gold to potentially pay them, not even to pay them ! Just have enough in coffers. So guess what, pick the huge strongest army, just throw them at Rome without any strategy, get them killed, you only pay a few months of their gold. Buy the next doomstack waiting for you, it pop instantly and just need a few days to charge. The good thing is you can automate the armies and let them conquer on their own.

 

[AwesomeButton]

Once you get major power you snowball so easily its ridiculous

What else can you expect, when you control scores of cities while the AI controls hundreds of OPMs which stay OPMs.

 

[Life of the Party]

Wow Rimmy not being an unbearable cunt. Now I've seen everything.

This is the forum post he quoted. The bolded part is a really good point.

The issue with mana points (esp. in EU4) is not that they exist, but how you get them.

Admin, diplo, mil, and money are all currencies in EU4, but the players have no problems with money, because you get it from logical, realistic, controllable sources - trade, taxation, conquest (indemnities), diplomatic gifts, etc. If a player invests his/her effort into having a better economy, they will gain more money.

However, mana doesn't work like that. Firstly, you get it just from the passage of time (3/month base + extra from rulers, etc.) which makes little sense - its not like it becomes easier to run an empire just because you've waited some months without making any decisions. Ruler stats aren't something you can control, making these 'currencies' seem more arbitrary and abstract than money.

Ideally, mana should come from related, controllable actions. So for example, mil points could be gained from investing in and maintaining a powerful army - staying at force limit, having maintainance maxed, drilling, fighting wars of conquest, answering calls to arms, etc.; diplo from maintaining alliances, having your dynasty on foreign thrones, etc.; admin from low unrest, running a budget surplus, being debt free, having lots of accepted cultures, etc.

TL;DR - mana is fine if it comes from things related to building powerful militaries, beaurocracies, etc. and not just time/having a good ruler.

 

[Zeriel]

lol, seems like every nation casts the same spells with slightly different names.

I myself rely heavily on the tax spell when I hire mercenaries.

Its even worse than that, with basic modding you can't add new blessings, so you're stuck with the same generic blessings no matter what paint you give them with localization files. I'm sure its possible to change them with GUI modding, but if you're going to go that far you might as well rip out the whole mechanic and start over.

 

[Mortmal]

Once you get major power you snowball so easily its ridiculous

What else can you expect, when you control scores of cities while the AI controls hundreds of OPMs which stay OPMs.

i dont know.. Something challenging, some interesting character development like in ck2, feuds and rivalry internal trouble .They should have copied more CK2 for this but in fact its not even EU4 they took inspiration but march of the eagles.

 

[Fedora Master]

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

Paradox doesn't lack talent. Doommark designed CK2, which is perhaps the best game of that studio. Wiz salvaged Stellaris into something that's actually playable.

Doomdark named himself in honor of the villain of the classic game The Lords of Midnight and its sequel Doomdark's Revenge. Didn't know that he designed CK2.

 

[ZeniBot]

My reason for calling Rimmy an unbearable cunt has to do with his Arma videos. He can be a really asshole to his fans. He starts blaming them when its clear his own playstyle is what is getting everyone killed. A well played arma game is where very few people die because everyones watching each other's back and the commander is constantly aware of the situation- Rimmy is a VERY bad commander and someone who I wouldn't ever want in my squad little alone commanding.

That said he is 100% right about Imperator, though he was also 100% right about Man the Guns as well and yet Paradox still hasn't addressed any of Rimmy's well documented bugs.

 

[Wulfric Pinewood]

Go masturbate.

 

[troz]

 

[Zeriel]

So I read back through the thread... and a funny thing is a lot of the stuff people are talking about with regards to them adding it in patches already exists as mods. Someone whipped up a ledger in a day. Same for moving capital. Really makes you wonder what the scripters were doing for all these years. Like I understand the actual competent coders have to do stuff like build systems and capabilities, but surely the script-monkeys who threw together this awful UI could have handled what modders did in a day.

 

[ZeniBot]

Which is why Modding is always going to produce superior results to actual developers. The second though you do a paid mod scheme you're basically turning them into the same shit.
Money is the problem.

 

[AwesomeButton]

Wow Rimmy not being an unbearable cunt. Now I've seen everything.

This is the forum post he quoted. The bolded part is a really good point.

The issue with mana points (esp. in EU4) is not that they exist, but how you get them.

Admin, diplo, mil, and money are all currencies in EU4, but the players have no problems with money, because you get it from logical, realistic, controllable sources - trade, taxation, conquest (indemnities), diplomatic gifts, etc. If a player invests his/her effort into having a better economy, they will gain more money.

However, mana doesn't work like that. Firstly, you get it just from the passage of time (3/month base + extra from rulers, etc.) which makes little sense - its not like it becomes easier to run an empire just because you've waited some months without making any decisions. Ruler stats aren't something you can control, making these 'currencies' seem more arbitrary and abstract than money.

Ideally, mana should come from related, controllable actions. So for example, mil points could be gained from investing in and maintaining a powerful army - staying at force limit, having maintainance maxed, drilling, fighting wars of conquest, answering calls to arms, etc.; diplo from maintaining alliances, having your dynasty on foreign thrones, etc.; admin from low unrest, running a budget surplus, being debt free, having lots of accepted cultures, etc.

TL;DR - mana is fine if it comes from things related to building powerful militaries, beaurocracies, etc. and not just time/having a good ruler.

We are coming very close to the realisaton that mana is not in the games because it makes them more fun, but because it's easier for the AI to manage. Imagine a strategy game where the AI would stay at force limit because it knows this way it will gain military points, or keep alliances in order to gain diplomatic points, or look for dynastic marriages etc. Unless I'm mistaken this kind of reasoning is beyond EU's AI.

 

[Average Manatee]

We are coming very close to the realisaton that mana is not in the games because it makes them more fun, but because it's easier for the AI to manage. Imagine a strategy game where the AI would stay at force limit because it knows this way it will gain military points, or keep alliances in order to gain diplomatic points, or look for dynastic marriages etc. Unless I'm mistaken this kind of reasoning is beyond EU's AI.

Doubtful. The AI is awful at managing mana.

The reason mana is in the game is to make it easier for the devs to balance. Good players are restrained from being too good and poor players get a surplus of stuff to carry them along. Nu-Paradox games are designed with highly OP instant actions, for which the only way to balance is to sharply limit their application irrelevant of anything the player does. Everyone gets roughly the same amount of mana, therefore everyone gets roughly the same amount of awesome buttons to press. Every game that Paradox has designed for multiplayer (EU4/Stellaris/HoI4/I:R) has had mana for this very reason, because if they tied these things to some non-manalike resource (like cash), then anyone above average in skill with the game would quickly snowball into an unstoppable lead through generating this resource more efficiently than other players.

 

[Fedora Master]

Reman do what Florry don't.

e: Say it with me... WE

 

[Raghar]

Marco Antonio just talked about mercenaries: "They are like zombies, you kill them, and because AI don't pay upfront cost they would be here back in few turns later. And you'd do it over and over and over and over and over and over and over again."

He also said he's not ranting.

 

[Hoggypare]

We are coming very close to the realisaton that mana is not in the games because it makes them more fun, but because it's easier for the AI to manage. Imagine a strategy game where the AI would stay at force limit because it knows this way it will gain military points, or keep alliances in order to gain diplomatic points, or look for dynastic marriages etc. Unless I'm mistaken this kind of reasoning is beyond EU's AI.

Doubtful. The AI is awful at managing mana.

The reason mana is in the game is to make it easier for the devs to balance. Good players are restrained from being too good and poor players get a surplus of stuff to carry them along. Nu-Paradox games are designed with highly OP instant actions, for which the only way to balance is to sharply limit their application irrelevant of anything the player does. Everyone gets roughly the same amount of mana, therefore everyone gets roughly the same amount of awesome buttons to press. Every game that Paradox has designed for multiplayer (EU4/Stellaris/HoI4/I:R) has had mana for this very reason, because if they tied these things to some non-manalike resource (like cash), then anyone above average in skill with the game would quickly snowball into an unstoppable lead through generating this resource more efficiently than other players.

Not only it is easier to balance, it is also easier to design, and that might be the sad reason for why Paradox clinges to it so hard. When You have mana You have absolutely no need to design any kind of continuity or developement of strategic situations. Any continous mechanics can be thrown out of the window, they don't have to care about any pacing or compatibility between systems, because everything relies on instantenous effect of a "press button - stuff happens" system.

 

[Zeriel]

It's lazy, and not just at the level of designing resources. Anyone can sit down and think of complicated and interesting systems that use Paradox mana without changing anything at the fundamental level. To use an example I think of a lot, old Heroes games had 4-5~ different types of resources used for buildings and units and it was fine. Sure they're not being used for instant powers, but Paradox mana doesn't have to be either, having a bunch of different resources is not inherently bad, its how they are limited and how they are used. Execution is everything, and Johan applying the same dumbed-down, metric-based (i.e we want players to only do this per tick of time) approach of design to a non-mana system could suck just as bad.

 

[ZeniBot]

Reman do what Florry don't.

e: Say it with me... WE

Disappointed he didn't change the nation's name to Wakanda.

 

[Agame]

It's lazy, and not just at the level of designing resources. Anyone can sit down and think of complicated and interesting systems that use Paradox mana without changing anything at the fundamental level. To use an example I think of a lot, old Heroes games had 4-5~ different types of resources used for buildings and units and it was fine. Sure they're not being used for instant powers, but Paradox mana doesn't have to be either, having a bunch of different resources is not inherently bad, its how they are limited and how they are used. Execution is everything, and Johan applying the same dumbed-down, metric-based (i.e we want players to only do this per tick of time, everything should be ) approach of design to a non-mana system could suck just as bad.

Great point, and sadly I think this is being completely obfuscated, for example there is a lot of debate about "Mana" on the official forums, but its degenerated into two camps, "Hur Dur Mana is bad because Mana" and "Hur Dur Mana is good because I like sucking Johans cock". As you say resources are fine and every single strategy game has them in some form or another. Like any game system its how you use it that matters, and with I:R they took a pretty ordinary system from EU4 and doubled down on it. So now we have this lazy hack job in I:R.

Im pretty sure given how "casual, map paint" I:R is that it will be 100% on consoles and probably even mobile phones. Civ 6 is on phones right? And we have Stellaris on console which is one more nail in the coffin for Paradox. I:R just stinks of casual "plays itself" console retardation. I would be shocked if Paradox wasnt trying to get in on the mobile market. Johan really is the great white leader they need to enter a brave new world of dumbed down mongoloid gameplay.

 

[Mortmal]

Marco Antonio just talked about mercenaries: "They are like zombies, you kill them, and because AI don't pay upfront cost they would be here back in few turns later. And you'd do it over and over and over and over and over and over and over again."

He also said he's not ranting.

Its easily exploitable, noticed they were ton of mercenaries in Egypt, just pick a coastal land with a small troupe, buy all the mercenaries , you dont even have to own the land they are in . They are now in exile, just move them to the coast line in the province you just conquered . You get 100K+ of them easily .

 

[Fedora Master]

With the current abysmal UI design no way in hell is it going to work on consoles.

 

[Fedora Master]

1.0.1 Demetrius Patchnotes

###################
# Gamebalance
###################
- Tweaked Mercenaries to be less numerous and a bit more spread out.
- Country Capital now has one extra building slot.
- Fortifications in capitals are now normal buildings, and not something that magically appear. First level is still free.

###################
# AI
###################
- Fixed disloyal generals being overly helpful and attacking enemy armies.
- Fixed AI not attacking rebels/barbarians.
- Fixed reserve objective behaving rather offensively.
- Reworked AI reconnaissance objective to patrol on borders rather than around a point.
- Army and fort maintenance is auto set to normal maintenance on outbreak of war.

###################
# Interface
###################
- Fix to naval combat interface martial skill icon overlap.
- Fixed top-right corner of topbar visually overlapping score indicator.
- Added truces to diplomatic mapmode.
- Tweaked Combat Prediction Indicator to be more accurate.
- Adjusted default UI scaling.
- Tactics view is now scrollable when it needs to be.

###################
# Performance
###################
- Optimized daily tick to improve stuttering
- Added option to run a benchmark. Use the launch options with ‘-benchmark’ to run a ~4 minute benchmark, testing GPU & CPU.


###################
# Bugfixes
###################
- The game will no longer resend all diplomatic messages to the player that has been saved, each time the game is loaded.
- You now get new inventions when you get new technology from events, unit abilities and other effects.
- Fixed Out of Syncs related to siege & combat.
- Fixed wrong type of apostrophe being used in English version.
- Barbarians no longer have "TRIBE" in their name.
- Fixed issue where mapicons were showing invalid state (such as ended combat or sieges) after a peace deal.
- Fixed rare crash if province was no longer owned while trying to build a fort.
- Fixed rare crash related to events.
- Saving now happens on a background thread, shows a message and will pause the game in multiplayer.
- Disabled pause menu interaction when saving.
- Fixed bug where in some cases a 'zero' navy or army could exist
- Game will now calculate surplus before removing extra trade routes, to prevent incorrectly removing a trade route.
- Can no longer remove disloyal commanders from their armies
- Combat dice rolls are between 1 and 6 now instead of 0 and 5
- Fixed bug where in some cases a 'zero' navy or army could exist.
- Fixed case where country name would contain unlocalized text.
- Fixed potential crash when returning to lobby in multiplayer.
- Fixed potential crash when unit constructions finishes.
- Permanent province Modifiers will no longer be removed on conquest.
- Stopped the Pharos Lighthouse event chain from occasionally concluding prematurely.
- Updated localization in French, Chinese, Spanish and Russian.
- Fixed party conviction being several magnitudes too large when loading an ironman save.
- Fixed incorrect popup when guarantee is upgraded to alliance.
- Fixed bug where clan chiefs could sometimes have count for more than one.
- Fixed bug where provinces couldn't be searched for when playing with Russian or Chinese language.
- Various fixes to the Paradox account creation interface.
- Fixed searching for lobbies in lobby browser menu
- Fixed ‘november’ crash due to not enough threads available for processing
- Fixed startup crash on windows 7
- Mare Nostrum achievement no longer requires a small part of the northern Spanish coast.
- Fixed bug with barbarian removal in impassables for minor and major spawn points.
- Fix potential oos caused by imprisoning dead characters.
- Fixed bug where the decision to form Kushan did not properly check the current tier of a country
- Forming Cyprus now requires you to be suitably small.
- Fixed ironman permitting different mods when loading save.

 

[AwesomeButton]

I pirated this a couple of days ago and started a game with Rome. Without concerning myself with any other mechanics, I immediately declared war on the Samniti (before unpausing) and in 3 years (playing at the default speed) took Lucania (I think that was the province) from them.

Not an Ancient Rome/Ancient period strategy at all. That's not the way they collected taxes, not the way they recruited armies, not the way armies would campaign, nothing in the mechanics is adapted to the historical period. Complete bollocks, vomit soup, a Frankestein monster of various Paradox games.

From what I remember, in reality the Samnite wars were a huge effort and strain on Rome and the opposed forces were pretty even.

The fact that I can win wars by just pingponging the enemy armies around the map, disregarding attrition and terrain, without paying attention to anything else tells you all you need to know about difficulty. I'm not even complaining about sieges lasting like ~400 days, that's already a hallmark of Paradox' games.

Also, it appears you can only gain full provinces (clusters of "cities" which corresponds to what "provinces" means in EU or Total War) in war, and you can't annex separate cities? Correct me if I'm mistaken, but if I'm not, then that's also rather disappointing.

 

[Catacombs]

With the current abysmal UI design no way in hell is it going to work on consoles.

I hope this is a joke.