DLCs that will actually attract people back to IR

[Lamisatr]

I was been ironic. The problem with GSG like I:R is the using of scripts. Everything is done by your processor, EVE and other online game is a REQ and RES game, your computer just show you what is happening in the server he doesn't make any calculation.

I:R, Stellaris and CK3 they try to simulate with number,programing logic what is happening and gonna happen. Now with a 3D battle this gonna push much more of your Processor and Video Card, for me I:R has more battles than my game in Stellaris. And using the picture that @IsaacCAT show to us, seems to me a kind of Total War that would increasing even more the requirements for the game.
The difference of TW to GSG is just that is turn-based and has open-battle.

Ah ok, it was late sarcasm meter was on charge.

 

[Marcus Pica]

....No?
I actually say the exact opposite.

I said "That is the problem with historical games, once they are off the rails, events no longer happen the way they used to do."
My entire post was about the problem of Jesus appearing in Judea if it is not under control of a client king of the romans.

The headcanon idea is, partly, based on the butterfly-effect. One event (a meteorite) changes the cause of history and explains why a game of I:R does *not* go the way history went.

I mean, there are three events that change the course: A headwound, to explain how we control a leader, a comet, to explain why the mechanical differences between the jewish faith and the others are minimal, and an earthquake to ensure that there is no way history stays the same.

If history is predetermined, my entire post would not make sense.. oô

Emberfox's first section is merely pointing out one of the biggest issues I:R would face when pushing the timeline past Christ's life. Sure, the life of the Caesars and the Punic Wars are important events and all, and I:R virtually guarantees them going off the rails, but Christ's life is, quite literally, Gospel Truth for 2.4 billion of the world's 7.7 billion people. PDX tries to be fairly agnostic in its treatment of faith, and creating a game where the existence of Christ is easily preventable is the sort of thing that gets torches and pitchforks outside your office.

Christ and christianity are irrelevant at the scale of the game, even if timeline is extended till 200 AD. Dont get me wrong I love scripted events and characters and would love to see Jesus in the game. But we dont even have Caesar so why expect Jesus? However that torches and pirchforks argument is bullshit, I dont think than such fanatics represent any significant part of the playerbase of these games. I hope this doesnt come out as derogatory. I am a roman catholic with all the sacraments.

 

[DukeLeto42]

Christ and christianity are irrelevant at the scale of the game, even if timeline is extended till 200 AD. Dont get me wrong I love scripted events and characters and would love to see Jesus in the game. But we dont even have Caesar so why expect Jesus?

The challenge is that Christians are a notable enough group that Nero is scapegoating them for the fire in Rome during his reign (~64 CE), so ignoring them entirely would feel weird. In terms of scripted events, all the spreading conversion would really require is something along the lines of the "up to 10% of pops in these territories convert" events Indian nations get. However, it still requires something to fire it off.

However that torches and pirchforks argument is bullshit, I dont think than such fanatics represent any significant part of the playerbase of these games. I hope this doesnt come out as derogatory. I am a roman catholic with all the sacraments.

Let's just say that after I saw the request in Stellaris a couple years back of "please don't make fleet power numbers capable of being 666 it's the Devil's number" I just stopped making such assumptions.

I think you're right that they're a miniscule fraction of the playerbase, but there seems to be a company policy of keeping out of as many hairy theological questions as possible, if for no other reason than it keeps them from accidentally making a really, really bad take that gets them in hot water.

 

[Nostalgium]

The challenge is that Christians are a notable enough group that Nero is scapegoating them for the fire in Rome during his reign (~64 CE), so ignoring them entirely would feel weird.

I disagree here, because by the same token, they were unnoticeable enough that the next large-scale persecution of Christians took place under Decius, nearly 200 years later. Nero's scapegoating seems to rely more on the fact that they were new, proselytizing (therefore made themselves known) and foreign to Rome; not them being present in any kind of significant scale or having any real influence. If they were present in significant enough numbers that they warrant serious representation with their own religion, rather than representation through events if at all, you'd think that the prosecution would've been more or less persistent from 69-250, rather than a few instances of local governors writing the Emperor for advice on how to deal with them. The fire in Rome was also nearly 100 years after the game ends, so you know - you could still comfortably ignore them for most of that time.

Gameplay-wise, it'd also be quite moot to spend a lot of time introducing Christianity when there's a significant chance that Judea will be Hellenic by 0 AD anyway. Whatever else might influence the rise of Christianity, I think we can all safely say it wouldn't rise out of Hellenism, and would require Judaism to be the dominant religion of the area. The only way I can see this being interesting from a gameplay perspective is by significantly exaggerating its importance in its early years to either help with late-game instability or making it appealing to adopt to spread very, very fast. Either of these options aren't great for the timeframe of I:R unless you expand it by several hundred years, which would require an extensive rework of the game's mechanics in order to prevent even casual playthroughs resulting in a WC every time.

While Christianity would undoubtedly become one of the biggest influences on Western civilization (and potentially much of Eastern as well, considering how it and Judaism ties into Islam, and how much you want to tie the rise of that in with the Christianization of Rome), Apostolic-era Christianity just wasn't quite there yet.

 

[Herennius]

In fact, I:R is lacking many scripted events for the middle and end game.

Reading through the last posts of this thread, a very late game event could be about the infighting between the People's Front of Judea and the Judean Popular Front

 

[Maratha]

There are many periods to choose from. I really want a Roman-Parthian wars pack, or something like this

A new pack called: The Imperial Frontier

Where you fight as the Romans in single scenarios or as a whole - you'll have to fight off the Parthians, the Germanic Tribes, and Pictish raids.

You could even have the rise of the Norse - because if your empire doesn't convert to Christianity, they may start raiding historically as they did except in the lands of the Roman Empire - I mean in CKIII we have Vikings going to India for that matter (using an extended timeline ofc)

But what if we had DLC such as the Rise of Persia in this era. A resurgent Media Atropatane are wanting to reclaim the Persian Empire
An alternate DLC where Carthage has won against Rome - and is now going to conflict with Macedon
An alternate DLC where the Parthains rule Asia Minor
A DLC where you play as Kush and do many things

I really want a Sunset DLC style pack or something.

 

[Maratha]

Wouldn't it be cool if we got a mythology style expansion? Just for fun?

Lol would at least get players back xD

Paradox: Age of Mythology....xD

 

[Nak'Arosh]

About DLC, this game would be success if they follow my Rome guide DLC:

Rome DLC 1: Unit Hastari Pack Model Red
Rome DLC 2: Unit Hastari Pack Model Black
Rome DLC 3: Unit Hastari Pack Model Blue
Rome DLC 4: Unit Triarii Pack Model Red
Rome DLC 5: Unit Hastari Pack Model Black
Rome DLC 6: Unit Hastari Pack Model Blue
Rome DLC 7: Legion Eagle Cohort Rainbow Colors
Rome DLC 8: Rise of Rome on Italy
Rome DLC 9: Rise of Rome on Greek
Rome DLC 10: Rise of Rome on Greek 2
Rome DLC 11: Rise of Rome on Greek 3
Rome DLC 12: Rise of Rome over Macedon
Rome DLC 13: Rise of Rome on Gauls
Rome DLC 14: Rise of Rome over Avernia
Rome DLC 15:Alesia Battle
Rome Expansion 1: Coliseum - Rome Forever


Hahahhaah

 

[Jays298]

I like the first 3 start dates in CK2 before 1066 because they give you a diferent set up not just the ability to play longer. The iron century start date was a pleasant surprise and has some good things.

But in Imperator rome since the character system is not the main goal of the game I don't think adding historical figures will save the day. It needs more work on the battles and economy side of gameplay which are the main attraction.

That's where they really dropped the ball IMO. Generic characters are just an annoyance. They should have went the CK3 route maybe and added Historical ones that would be like the source of drama, spice, sometimes national direction.

Gallic wars, punic wars, Julius Caesar.

The game is already long enough it just doesn't have any content after the start date.

 

[Herennius]

That's where they really dropped the ball IMO. Generic characters are just an annoyance. They should have went the CK3 route maybe and added Historical ones that would be like the source of drama, spice, sometimes national direction.

Gallic wars, punic wars, Julius Caesar.

The game is already long enough it just doesn't have any content after the start date.

I don't think that is true. CK3 might have less generic characters by name, but if the traits e.g. are randomized (which does CK3 for the vast mass) it makes little difference. If IR has a problem with characters and what you call "drama", then it is that it lacks the entire deeper character system of CK3. I'm not sure if porting over the hole system would be desireable, but at least some elements would be nice. Another problem is the AI, which does not even use all of IRs tools here. It is nice to have a system which allows taking PoWs and the option to ransom them out - but what does it help if the AI never ever will try to get its 14-MA-General back?

 

[TinWiz]

Emberfox's first section is merely pointing out one of the biggest issues I:R would face when pushing the timeline past Christ's life. Sure, the life of the Caesars and the Punic Wars are important events and all, and I:R virtually guarantees them going off the rails, but Christ's life is, quite literally, Gospel Truth for 2.4 billion of the world's 7.7 billion people. PDX tries to be fairly agnostic in its treatment of faith, and creating a game where the existence of Christ is easily preventable is the sort of thing that gets torches and pitchforks outside your office.

Hopefully someone at PDS understands Christianity and Christians better than this. It's the rare fundamentalist who believes the life of Christ must have happened in every logically possible world exactly as it actually happened historically. In a grand strategy game there is a high level of abstraction, so to introduce Christianity, all that would be needed is an event at some point describing people believing in a resurrected Jewish man in some Jewish-majority province somewhere. Players could set parameters at the start of the campaign if they even want Christianity to "spawn" at all, and in what way. Of course if Judaism is wiped out beforehand, then that cancels it anyway. And sure, there could be an option for a player to railroad the gospel as close to actual history as possible in their timeline. There is plenty of room here for creativity without upsetting people (who probably are not in the target audience anyway).

 

[Godd_Howard]

Hopefully someone at PDS understands Christianity and Christians better than this. It's the rare fundamentalist who believes the life of Christ must have happened in every logically possible world exactly as it actually happened historically. In a grand strategy game there is a high level of abstraction, so to introduce Christianity, all that would be needed is an event at some point describing people believing in a resurrected Jewish man in some Jewish-majority province somewhere. Players could set parameters at the start of the campaign if they even want Christianity to "spawn" at all, and in what way. Of course if Judaism is wiped out beforehand, then that cancels it anyway. And sure, there could be an option for a player to railroad the gospel as close to actual history as possible in their timeline. There is plenty of room here for creativity without upsetting people (who probably are not in the target audience anyway).

The problem here isn't that there aren't people at Paradox capable of making a good rendition of the birth of christianity but that Imperator's gameplay loop doesn't support that as much as one would hope. Anything past Caesar vs Pompey is not going to fit in what the game is about.

That would require more of a CK like formula if I am being honest. And I would love a game like that. Focusing on a smaller period of time but centre the game on characters like Antony, Cleopatra and Octavian. Maybe have different start dates with lots of diferent Roman civil wars in the game. Would I like to restore Rome to it's glory by playing Aurelian? Why yes, take my money please.

But those are just dreams. It's far more profitable to spam DLCs for already released games that have a larger audience, HoI4, EU4, CK3. Good ideas don't sell as much as hype. Altough wikipedia also says this about Imperator: "Despite lower user ratings than they expected, the game's sales surpassed Paradox's expectations." So there may be hope yet. But with the Victoria3 hype train comming soon already leaving the station I wouldn't hold my breath.