Suggestions for Imperator II

[Johan]

Yes, but it was advertised as being one. I remember in development & I had doubts about the game, & Johan replied, saying at its heart it was a map painter.

One of the many things I regret saying during Imperators development.

One should never say that a game is only X. Everyone has their own fantasy of what a game is, and we should cater to that more.

 

[Johan]

Saying that game wasn't a map painter wouldn't make it any less of a map painter. The mechanics behind IR made it a map painter.

I meant. If I say "its a mappainter" from the start of development, then yes, it becomes a map painter. If I say "one of the fantasies we want to let people experience is painting the map" then the game shapes to be different.

Variation in playstyles and immersive flavor is the key for a game with good retention. Not just mechanics that fits together nicely.

 

[Johan]

My biggest pet peeve is the trade system. Even with automation, it is too arcade-y, and feels like playing civilization. Something more streamlined and less “collect the best power-ups.”

I completely agree. A full rework to make it more fun and realtistic would be great.

 

[Johan]

After what was done to imperator and the silence that has been going on for two years soon, do you honestly think that we will rush to buy the same games again and spit out some dough for the DLCs?
Imperator already exists, why wait for them to give us another one that will be just as fast as the previous one (Look how CK3 came out when CK2 had a lot of material that disappeared in Ck3 and we will be resold in DLC then should have been in the base game)?

Ironically, Imperator had the biggest "free" post-launch support ever for a Paradox in the hope of getting the playerbase back up.

 

[Johan]

However I think simply dropping the "Rome" and calling it "Imperator" only would suffice.

Ironically that was what I wanted to call the game. Rome was added to help out marketing the game. It was the same with EU: Rome, which I wanted to be called "Rome Victorious!", but we needed to add the EU name to it to make it easier to sell.

 

[Johan]

I think it could have worked if it was more than just one update followed by radio silence, e.g. announcing an expansion as well. It certainly reinvigorated me and my friends' interest, but seeing that "that was it" and tons of issues remained, most lost interest again. Without the Marius update though, I'd never buy the game at all.

one update? We did 6 major "expansion-sized" updates for Imperator.

The game was released in April 2019, and then we did the following. Of course each update contained far more tweaks and fixes than listed here.

1.1 - June 2019

• Major Naval Additions, with 6 naval units, navigable rivers, lots of new unit abilities for navies.
• Ledger added
• Deeper Holdings mechanics
• Government Actions like War Council etc.
• Province Actions
• Co-Consuls for Rome, and other dual-rulers mechanics.
• We split up omens to that each religion had their own omens.
• Heritages for countries, to make for different starts
• Volcanos & Storms added
• Improving stability, war exhaustion & legitimacy no longer instant, but over-time.
  

1.2 - Septeber 2019

• Major pop-rework. The player no longer manully handles them, but they promote, demote, migrate etc on their own.
• Complete removal of mana
• Military Experience gained from combat and training troops is now used for getting Military Traditions.
• Provinces are no longer all the same, and instead some are cities, which has different types of buildings than rural settlements.
• Food mechanics implemented, where you need rural lands to provide food.
• 16 more buildings added
• All laws changed to fit better for Monarchies, Republics and Tribes
  

1.3 - Septeber 2019

• The Mission system added
• Families reworked, with Great Families mechanics
• Map changes to places like Sicily, Greece etc.
• A mapmode manager similar to EU4
• Subject Interactions like EU4 has.
• New logistics system where armies have to gather and carry food for their campaigns.
• A free DLC "The Punic Wars" with Roman and Carthaginian missions and graphics.

Yeah, I can continue with the next 3 as well, but you get the point..

For more details go https://imperator.paradoxwikis.com/Patches

 

[Johan]

- Marriage system that gives the player more control. In I:R you can have 5+ women of child-bearing age who don't get married - unheard of in this era/age). You can end up with Tribal leaders who never married, and they're 60+ years old in game age.
- Married couples that only have 1-2 children. This game isn't set in 2020s modern day, it's old era. You had as many children as possible to enable future generations to succeed in the face of attrition from disease and wars. All Paradox games have this presentation issue, and it really should be reconsidered to more properly portray the child-bearing rates of the era, which were typically 4-6 children (and national leaders would often have 3-4 wives over time if a wife died bearing a child, is another point, that this system in I:R does not help portray).

These are limitations we add to our games with characters faily often, because without limitations on children and who can marry, the amount of characters to keep track of grows logaritmically.

 

[Johan]

Looking at player stats, the month of the Marius update was the month with the most players since launch, more so than previous updates. My point was that I believe the promise of more fixes and content (which is what the game suffers the most of) could have kept that momentum going. Word of mouth was spreading that Imperator was finally getting good (and why a lot of my friends and I decided to get it then and give it a shot), but when we realized that was it, most of us lost interest again.

I agree. It should have been a future planned at that point.

 

[Johan]

Johan, I am the anti-logarithmic force (or any Systems Engineer could help you through that problem).

It's all about how you manage and present "Attrition" in varying means.
- Mortality Rates aren't that difficult to code into the game. You were lucky, in this era, to live to a long adult life. Some regions, the average lifespan was only 29 years old!! So your current "lifespan" system is way off the mark compared to historic norms (I'm seeing tribal leaders who consistently live into their 70s without fail, statistically impossible in this era - tribal systems should have an even lower Mortality Rate, especially Nomadic types). Simply put more "normalcy" into the game, to include real Mortality Rate statistics, and you already have a start for a good, representative and somewhat "real" attrition system.
- Families bore 4-6 children in the face of these low Mortality Rates. So the "lucky ones" made it to adulthood and made it into power. Let's see that play out. You're throttling back the rate of child-bearing due to a data problem in either design and/or your Game Engine. Seems like Design and/or Game Engine improvement efforts need to get busy to "Save the Children."
- Disease could be used as yet another factor in culling the Families (and Pops). In CK2, you used Disease wandering around the map to cull children and adults. You already had another game that faced this problem and handled it well.
- And this is a "Short List" that could be expanded into upwards of 100 or more metrics and events that help keep the population "manageable" in I:R or any other Paradox Game. It's just a matter of bringing together good Design work with a tight Systems Engineering approach that has a well-oiled machine (Game Engine) to perform the heavy lifting work.
- I think this topic is also on the edge of the data/engine problems for your limitations on Provinces in a game. At some point, Paradox needs to get serious about improvements (if not already) in underlying systems, foundational work. I would assume that is ongoing, but the Player Community probably isn't well informed as to how these issues that limit design and more expansive gameplay, are being handled behind closed doors at Paradox.

This solves part of the minor problem of "how many living characters do we need to process".

It does not solve the "total amount of character ever living, which we need to keep track of for other mechanics".