Why Imperator Rome was going to be a far better game than other Paradox titles we have now

[Godd_Howard]

Friends, Romans, map painters. Lend me your eyes. I come not to bury Imperator but to praise him... The noble Paradox hath told you Imperator was underperforming in player numbers, if it was so it was a grievous fault and grievously hath Imperator answer'd it. Here under leave of Paradox and the map painting community. For Paradox is an honourable publisher.

Compared to older games such as EU4, Stellaris, HoI4 and CK2 Imperator has stunning visuals that could bring it forward to more people. It also is a game about one of the most popular periods of history - the rise of Rome. It is true Imperator's playerbase was rather small. But is that not the fault of Paradox releasing a game that had nothing going for it before the last couple of patches? Now I don't mean to bash CK3 but it's not exactly a masterpiece sequel to CK2 right now. Yet it has more players due to it having a better more polished structure on which the developers can build on rather than trying to build that sturcture form the ground up like Imperator had to do.
I love HoI4 but it gets stale very fast with only so many countries even having focus trees(Italy not included sadly) but when you play Imperator you have much more options even if there is close to 0 content on that region you are playing in. It's still fun playing in Tibet trying to build up a mountain empire and protect against he Bactrians and Mauryans.
I bought every Imperator DLC not just because it had new content I wanted to try but also becasue I knew that would incentivize the Publisher to continue to work on the game, I guess I was wrong in more ways than one. But I can only imagine on how much interesting things we will be missing out on due to them stopping development. (I was waiting for those Horse/Elephant/Camel unit models btw, what a shame my horse archer army still has to march on foot)

My only tip to Paradox Interactive is - don't do any more games with eagles on the cover.

 

[Jernau_]

Players have talked about Imperator as a joke and warned others not to even try the game. It was never as bad as some claimed and its been steadily improved through patches and DLC's.

Every time imperator got some patch that improved it, people still claimed it was a joke of a game and kept warning people to stay away and gave bad reviews.

And now that the game is one of the better GSG games people reviewbomb it to make sure that paradox wont bother recruiting more devs to work on it.

And still some wonders why development was put on hold.

 

[Godd_Howard]

Players have talked about Imperator as a joke and warned others not to even try the game. It was never as bad as some claimed and its been steadily improved through patches and DLC's.

Every time imperator got some patch that improved it, people still claimed it was a joke of a game and kept warning people to stay away and gave bad reviews.

And now that the game is one of the better GSG games people reviewbomb it to make sure that paradox wont bother recruiting more devs to work on it.

And still some wonders why development was put on hold.

Shame. Shame on the map game community for such barbarity.

 

[Koba133]

Players have talked about Imperator as a joke and warned others not to even try the game. It was never as bad as some claimed and its been steadily improved through patches and DLC's.

Every time imperator got some patch that improved it, people still claimed it was a joke of a game and kept warning people to stay away and gave bad reviews.

And now that the game is one of the better GSG games people reviewbomb it to make sure that paradox wont bother recruiting more devs to work on it.

And still some wonders why development was put on hold.

It was bad though, the incredibly bad decision to copy 1 to 1 EU universalis rome as a basis for 1.0 was what killed the game.

 

[Godd_Howard]

It was bad though, the incredibly bad decision to copy 1 to 1 EU universalis rome as a basis for 1.0 was what killed the game.

That's exactly what I was saying. There was basically no game on launch - just a tech demo with very nice graphics. But just as the devs started shaping it into a game the management pulled the plug.

 

[Lamisatr]

Players have talked about Imperator as a joke and warned others not to even try the game. It was never as bad as some claimed and its been steadily improved through patches and DLC's.

Every time imperator got some patch that improved it, people still claimed it was a joke of a game and kept warning people to stay away and gave bad reviews.

And now that the game is one of the better GSG games people reviewbomb it to make sure that paradox wont bother recruiting more devs to work on it.

And still some wonders why development was put on hold.

They stopped dev before the review bombing, so that's that theory blown out the water. The game has been shuttered because Paradox screwed up the launch. it's nothing to so with the community at all. The community helped improve the game.

It was DOA. And I say that while thinking it's the best PDX game right now. The future is with modders, not with Paradox,. they can't be trusted with IR.

 

[Godd_Howard]

They stopped dev before the review bombing, so that's that theory blown out the water. The game has been shuttered because Paradox screwed up the launch. it's nothing to so with the community at all. The community helped improve the game.

It was DOA. And I say that while thinking it's the best PDX game right now. The future is with modders, not with Paradox,. they can't be trusted with IR.

I agree on the point of Paradox not giving in the attention it needed. But as someone who doesn't usually play mods for Paradox games I say that no matter how great of a mod(and there are some great mods) a game has the amount of polish and work that a full time committed development team can do for a game dwarves even the best user created content and IMO 2.0 Imperator is the best example for that.

 

[Lamisatr]

I agree on the point of Paradox not giving in the attention it needed. But as someone who doesn't usually play mods for Paradox games I say that no matter how great of a mod(and there are some great mods) a game has the ammount of polish and work that a full time committed development team can do for a game dwarves even the best user created content and IMO 2.0 Imperator is the best example for that.

But they're not committed, they're the exact opposite of committed, and in any case, deep overhaul mods can rival the work of dev teams, EB, Rome Surrectum, Medieval 1212, MEIOU and Taxes etc

I think the content produced is much closer in quality than you imagine, plus with Paradox out the way modders have a stable base to work on. They're not coming back to this game to do anything other than a few bug fixes, and QOL improvements etc, there's no IR 3.0 coming, because there's no player-base, sad but that's how it is.

 

[Godd_Howard]

there's no IR 3.0 coming, because there's no player-base, sad but that's how it is.

And that is why I blame Paradox and am not going to buy another new release from them unless it's somehow a miracle perfect game with 0 bugs and amazing gameplay. Imperator deserved better, we deserved better.

 

[Rossigil]

unless it's somehow a miracle perfect game with 0 bugs and amazing gameplay

...without need of dozens DLCs in upcoming five years to make the game complete (more or less) Ah, these sweet dreams...

P.S. ...without need of dozens DLCs in upcoming five years that would mess things over in attempt to implement new features mere for the sake of implementing those features (because DLCs without new features are hard to be sold for 20/30 bucks each)

 

[Marcin6669]

It's better than other pdx games because they got rid of You-Know-Who and his stupid ideas fairly quickly, but still too late to save this game

 

[Bleek]

After sinking 100 hours in to v2.0, all I can say is I'm glad I came back. This is a grossly underrated game.

 

[Godd_Howard]

It's better than other pdx games because they got rid of You-Know-Who and his stupid ideas fairly quickly, but still too late to save this game

At least you have the balls to say it.

Fans: NO! You can't artificially inflate resources by printing more buttons! You are distorting the natural rate of bonuses!
<You-Know-Who>: haha bonus printer go brrrrrr
2021

The exact reason I hate playing EU4 right now(Even without taking all the bugs into account)

 

[Lamisatr]

And that is why I blame Paradox and am not going to buy another new release from them unless it's somehow a miracle perfect game with 0 bugs and amazing gameplay. Imperator deserved better, we deserved better.

I completely agree.

 

[Syroc]

Eh, there is a small benefit of PDS stopping development: the modding community can go crazy without worrying about the next update breaking everything.

Y'know, if they hang around.

 

[Lamisatr]

Players have talked about Imperator as a joke and warned others not to even try the game. It was never as bad as some claimed and its been steadily improved through patches and DLC's.

Every time imperator got some patch that improved it, people still claimed it was a joke of a game and kept warning people to stay away and gave bad reviews.

And now that the game is one of the better GSG games people reviewbomb it to make sure that paradox wont bother recruiting more devs to work on it.

And still some wonders why development was put on hold.

I suppose the players are to blame for Emperor and Leviathan too...

 

[scriptkiddy]

And still some wonders why development was put on hold

Most people have got the wrong impression that I:R was meant to become more than it currently is. I doubt that though. Its rather uncommon DLC policy as well as a mix between GSG and RPG elements indicates that it was merely a testing ground for different game mechanics, price models and developers‘ experience. Lessons learned on these matters would then be applied to other titles that are more focused on one genre, especially CK3 and EU5.

 

[apg]

Ultimately it's Johan's fault for the direction development took before release. If Arheo would have developed it and released it with meaningful systems in place, perhaps the game would have started on an upward trend of popularity. It was crap when it was first released. Now it is pretty good.

Maybe im wrong? It always seemed though that Johan was pursuing an uninspired development for the game. Arheo however has been interesting and vocal about developing the game in a way which actually seems involved and challenging.

 

[Bleek]

Let's face it, Arheo was streets ahead of Johan. The wrong guy was leading it from the start.

That's not personal or an attack. It's just the reality of v1.0 Vs 2.0.

 

[ashbery76]

At least this will not be killed by bloat ala CK4,EU4.