Imperator - Sunday Morning Design Corner - May 5th 2019

[Kuantum]

@Dnote , @Johan and @Trin Tragula Thanks for answering our questions, that's very nice of you.

I now have about 15 hours in game. I've played Sparta. Ignored families. Conquered south Greece, Crete and a region next to Egypt. I have no Agressive Expantion or instability. The only thing i did all this time was wait for 182 mana and choose what country to attack and accept requests for exporting goods.

I got a cool war declaration from Macedon when i was fighting a country in North Africa, followed by a war declaration from a northern naibor trying to take a stab at me when i was a bit weak, I thought I would lose that war, that was nice, and seems to me that AI is getting better.

Also with 1.0.2, the game got an amazing improvement in performance.

Ok. This is, apparently, very hard to comprehend, judging from the fact that you consider this to be "the best game ever made", but i'll try to explain once more.

In EU IV, depending on what region we are in, or what religion or political system we have, we must think about which direction our country can take.

If I play Portugal I can't expand in Europe, so I take an Exploration direction, if I want to expand to North Africa, I take Religion or Humanist, if i'm Holland I take trade, if I'm a HRE minor I take Diplomacy or Influence and establish a network of relations, if I'm Kongo I probably wait to Embrace Institutions, if i'm a Native American i have to migrate, if I'm Mayan I must be afraid of the Gods, if I'm Prussian i should expand carefuly, if I'm Ming i demand from my tributaries, if i'm Japan I conquer with my vassals, if i'm a republic I must decide if I keep my leader, if i'm a Monarchy I can end up in a Personal Union. And so many other things...

Then we have all the little things that make mana more connected to the game, I spend mana to become Papal Controller or build a Spy Network, or Influence a nation - it's a continuous interaction, not an instant mindless button press.

This, for me is flavour, and what makes EU such a great game. And then we get into the "best game ever made", and we do nothing. And people are somehow perplexed with the negative reviews.

You have years of experience and have grown into a big company because of the games you made, and people expect better. But I really hope I:R becomes a great game.

Have a nice rest of Sunday, and thanks again for listening.

 

[Mindel]

No,it's especially than some persons are tired of the argument "But Paradox is a little studio,they won't have enough resources" to justify the dlc policy with a game cost 300 $;the release bugged..When you see our financial reports,Paradox shows no signs of decline.But naturally,it's easier to silence critics than admit you are wrong.

Do yourself a favor and try to turn this into a coherent paragraph. Then maybe someone will bother to interpret it.

 

[LeSingeAffame]

Also I can suggest a thing @Johan , for the mana "problem"
Maybe instead of get an instant result spending a currency, like for convert POPs, we can some kind of progress bar or something that feels like a process and not magic trick. This is valid for everything involving spending mana.
We could still have instant conversion with some random events, like the "freeman appears in province" events you already implemented

I think for that, the power cost is supposed to be prohibitive. If you have one or two pops to convert, then making it take time isn't really interesting (as you'd have to wait until it's done and come back). Instead you're supposed to use the governor interaction if you have dozens of pops to convert

 

[Thrashes]

This looks good! I agree that the AI isn't bad. It can be improved, but it still puts on a challenge if you play a small country. (of course as Rome you'll find the AI easy).

I think people need to be a little bit patient and wait until 1.1 as well as mods (HOI4 replayability was improved a lot by mods, I believe in ParadoxCon it was mentioned that 50% of players played with mods or something like that?)

While the game needs some improvement like most new games, it absolutely doesn't deserve the negative review bombing that's happening. But it'll eventually disappear as more updates come from the development team and more mods start popping up.

Speaking of feedback, there is some feedback that's reasonable, like moving pops. I feel it can be tedious to micromanage pops. I think you should consider adding a dynamic immigration system.

It's something that's moddable anyway, and I'm personally working on a mod that implements it. But it would be cool if there's some form of dynamic immigration in the vanilla game. Here's an example (it can be something like reducing taxation on a certain pop type to encourage foreign pops to migrate to that province overtime rather than having to move them one by one:

Yea, the AI actually gangbangs you if you ar ein a bad situation. Had 3 seperate AI claim my territory right before a civil war and 2 of them attacked me at the same time (And the 3d had a good reason not to as they were in a bad diplomatic sitation!). Never see that in EU4 or even HOI4 (a game that should have this!). The AI however is not perfect as it either is overly protective against you or completely ignore you.

 

[Reaperdamo]

I think what concerns me the most is the admission that this took the code from EU:Rome and built on it. To me this explains why so many "standard " features that i have come to expect are missing. It also feels like a bit of a shortcut and a missed opportunity, and why so many players feel it is missing so much. It's not a brand new game bringing together all the best bits of your flagship titles into a spectacular game for 2019. But old code with lots of bits added on, and more complex mechanics.

Essentially this explains how you were able to bring it to market so quickly, and for me explains why so many think this game is missing so much.

I would say it appears lazy but I'm sure just adding too and refining code is a mammoth task, but for me it explains alot.

 

[WorldWarIV]

Which one was better at 1.0?

You keep saying that like it should mean something to me. It's weird and it's a really weak defense. I've started buying your games when EUIV published the Cossacks, so what about three years ago? I've never bought one of your game on day one. I:Rome was the first one and I pre-ordered the Deluxe edition. I played it for a couple of hours and I found it lacking. I just didn't understand why I was playing as Rome and didn't feel MIGHTY, just bored. So I refunded. Why should I give you a pass because you think this launch is less worse than some of your other launches I never experienced?

 

[Sunbro BigBoss]

Imperator is engaging enough in the early game, it just loses most challenge once you reach critical mass. It has characters and powerbases and internal politics but they are too easy to avoid.

 

[TropeSage]

https://imperator.paradoxwikis.com/Imperator_Rome

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...development-diary-1-28th-of-may-2018.1101600/

lots of interviews around announcement etc

https://www.polygon.com/2018/5/19/17371952/imperator-rome-windows-pc

Even the wiki calls it a spiritual successor not a sequel, if it this was supposed to be a true sequel that right there is evidence that paradox failed to clearly communicate that. To be clear is Imperator a sequel or a spiritual successor to eu:rome? In my experience there tends to be significant differences between the two.

 

[Thrashes]

Looks great you have a roadmap on this. I'm willing to wait and invest to have a deeper experience.

Just a couple of suggestions:
This era was characterized by syncretism since you are adding bonus to religions why not getting a syncretism feature where you integrates other pantheons and eventually get their bonuses.
Rome should start with their own religion Dei Consentes instead of being just Hellenic.

More building to have, aqueducts, baths, libraries to improve, civilization level, pops happiness and tech speed.

A happiness building is desperately needed, especially as a tribe.

 

[Cablenexus]

I'm with PDX here and the post voices my opinion as well.

Some of the feedback I simply do not understand. I expected a grand Rome game and they delivered a huge grand Rome game.
It's not stripped, it's not casual, it's not a clikfest, it does not contain a subscription service and no microtransactions.
Actually just a game what I always hope for and less companies interested to make.

Good luck with the development. Maybe print the thousands of nice reviews of players who enjoy the game and cover your walls with them.

 

[LeSingeAffame]

A happiness building is desperately needed, especially as a tribe.

Tribesmen base happiness is 100%, and until you get a high enough civilization level you aren't supposed to have many citizens / freemen

 

[wiggly1993]

Thank you Johan for that update! It is very good to hear from you and see that you are reading the feedback yourself. Don't mind the haters this game is fun even though I agree it is kind of shallow. One point you haven't adressed which I was missing is internal progression. To this day I believe the conclave DLC of ck2 was the best (with Holy Fury) ever made. It gave you things to do internally while you were not expanding. Because this is what I feel lacks in the game the most: There is very little to do between wars.

I would LOVE to see mechanics like these in imperator: rome. For example give us progression of laws (a bit like crown authority in ck2) and maybe more meaningful character interactions.

So to sum up things worth considering going from most to least important
- Stuff to do between wars
- Surprsingly my favourite thing to do is building roads. I believe every 'culture group' should have 1-3 unique abilites to give to their troops such that troops are more than just stacks you throw at your enemy. If you have a standing army might aswell use it, right?
- Mana spending is weird. I like mana but I feel like it needs proper balancing. I have thousands of oratory or sun mana but 0 leaf mana. (How about we make Inventions cost all mana types and not just green mana? Like a military invention would cost 50 military mana and 50 green mana instead of 100 green mana 0 military?)
- I'd rework how technology/research work. As it is right now I can almost always completely ignore it, put some random dude into it and I will be fine. There is no decision makeing like in Eu4.
- More unique 'ideas' to smaller tribe groups such that they feel distinct to each other (but this one you've mentioned already so thanks for that)
- Make it possible to move big chunks of pops across the map without having to micro manage single pops 10x to move them from point A to point B.
- Give us more diplo annex options
- Finally....I like the idea of personal rivals but as of right now they don't seem to have a real purpose. Maybe the game could borrow from Eu4 in that sense that you could see the rivals of any nation and as such use the 'The enemy of my enemy is my friend' rule which is great.

 

[atredies]

I’m surprised you didn’t expect people to compare to your recent titles, eu:Rome is a distant memory and it wasn’t a hugely popular game at the time afaik.

 

[LWE]

I'm with PDX here and the post voices my opinion as well.

Some of the feedback I simply do not understand. I expected a grand Rome game and they delivered a huge grand Rome game.
It's not stripped, it's not casual, it's not a clikfest, it does not contain a subscription service and no microtransactions.

How dare you praise this stripped casual clickfest for idiots that love microtransactions /s

 

[TropeSage]

And what is the difference you like between lets say Saxony and Aragon in EU4 that you can't find between Tartessos and Suionia in Imperator?

I'm genuinely curious.

Saxony is both part of the hre and an elector of it. Giving it extra mechanics at least at the start that Aragon doesn't have. Can the same be said about Tartessos and Suionia?

 

[CountKino]

- Generals: the game forces us to use them due to the massive morale penalty to the army which is fine I guess. What is not fine is not having a way to auto assigning (very loyal) generals to armies where the general just died due to whatever reason. This is not a big deal when we have 3 armies but it is a massive PITA when we have for example 30.

- Governors: Same thing as generals, not having a way to auto assign them is a massive pain especially because the game rules force us to use them at least early on.

- Government/researchers: It is also a problem that characters can’t be auto assigned when the country already has >100 characters employed in one way or another.

I really don't get these particular problems. You get a notification to tell you there's an open spot in government or on your armies, you click it and it takes it right to the correct army/tab/whatever. Generals and Governors aren't dying left right and centre, they last a fairly long time. In fact, it's quite handy to know when a governor dies, since you will potentially need to change some of the province policies, having one just automatically replaced with a governor who decides to bleed them dry would be more problematic than helpful! Even 30 armies, if you assume you give each one to a 30 year old and they die at 60, you're only replacing a general once per year, which is hardly "a massive pain"...

 

[Kliwarrior]

Eventually, not for 1.1 , not for 1.2 , perhaps for 2.0 could you think to modify the POPs , which already have a religion and a culture, giving them different social status and civil rights ?
So we can really have (speaking for Rome, but the same could be for Athens or any other country) , true "citizens" as well as "socii" ?
This would lead to interesting mechanism inside a country ( see the Social War, where all the italic peoples de facto gained roman full citizenship ).
To further explain, I'd post a little screenshot from another game you know well..

 

[Johan]

If you're building on an 11 year old codebase and design instead of learning from everything that's come after, it's no wonder you're in this mess. And you did not make EU: Rome 2, you made Imperator: Rome, which comes with different player expectations..

the codebase is the newest around.. its just that we copied features 1 by 1 to have a great base.

 

[Johan]

Art is reluctant? What kind of special privileges do you give your artists that they can reject doing their work?

because of the size of the units, and how combat animations work, the RoI is kinda bad compared to what else they could do.

 

[performer]

Religion should defenitely work different than in CK and EU. Ancient times were the times of syncretism ... for polytheistic religions, it was not a big deal to worship a greek, roman or egypt god at the same time. Nobody would have "convert" other believers to his/her own pantheon. (Of course, the monotheistic religions like Zoroastrism are a bit different.)
So, the Imp: Rome mechanism to convert the POPS via a simple CLICK, is really anticlimatic.