The real reason Imperator:Rome failed, and the secret to Caesar's success

[commune1945]

Johan once summed up the reason IR failed as "lack of content."
I think this perception is wrong.

The real reason IR failed is that "AI cannot create a world map like the historical one."
In other words, we were disappointed that AI Rome did not conquer the Mediterranean world.

We must not repeat this mistake with Caesar.
In other words,

・AI Ottoman must expand into the Eastern Mediterranean.

・AI Britain, AI France, AI Spain, and AI Portugal must create colonies all over the world.

・In the first place, AI Spain must be established with a probability of more than 80%.

・AI Persia and AI Mughal must be established.

・It is desirable for AI China to be unified by some force.

・Of course, there may be times when AI China and AI India are split, but that should not be the case all the time.

We want a solid AI nation to grow, not a world divided into small pieces.

 

[commune1945]

Needless to say, this world map cannot be realised by railroad.

 

[Mindel]

The reason why Imperator Rome failed was because Johan and the dev team had designed the game on outdated principles.

EU has its roots in a board game and the design shows. It was also the first game of its kind in many ways, so any lack of realism in its design could be forgiven in light of its pioneering status. This worked very well for some two decades.

Imperator followed in this design tradition, but by 2019 grand strategy players wanted more organic simulators with less button-clicky actions. In other words, something that feels more immersive and less like a board game.

Johan did not notice this shift in gaming tastes during the initial development of Imperator, and did not take it seriously until after the disastrous reception it got during release. To his credit (compare with the behavior of the CK3 dev team), he then took the criticisms to heart and reworked the foundations of the game to bring it more in line with player desires. But by that point, the popular interest in Imperator had died, and could not be revived.

So Imperator was "paused" by PDX, taken out back, and then quietly dispatched when they assumed nobody was looking.

 

[AivasTlamunus]

I agree that we don't want a world that's divided into small pieces due to AI incompetence, but otherwise I disagree.

I think Project Caeser should respect the contingency of historical developments, and not railroad or even push those developments to occur if it feels unnatural or forced.

What I want is a world where historical narratives develop naturally. If the Ottomans invade the Eastern Mediterranean, I want that to be for political or financial reasons that make sense within the context of the Ottoman state that exists within that playthrough, not because "well, this is what they did historically." Heck, I don't care if the Ottomans are the ones to unify Anatolia.

I want AI to be competent enough to create the large empires that we see during the timeframe of the game, but I want those empires to form organically and not by adherence to contingent historical events. Sure, Mughal India *could* form, but are we really saying that in 1337 that was in any way guaranteed? That doesn't strike me as true. I want there to be content to support that *possible* timeline, but not anything that pushes for it to happen.

I think that Imperator is an unfair comparison because the central historical development of that timeframe was the development of a massive Mediterranean-dominating empire. It's just pretty rare for that sort of thing to happen, so any sort of organic AI like the one that I'm talking about would likely create a world that feels flat and empty, like you're saying. Rome was one of one, so the Imperator universe feels dead without it.

The Project Caeser timeframe is different because it is shaped not by the unlikely domination of a single state, but by the competition between states experiencing similar forces of change. It doesn't really matter if England, France, Spain, or Portugal end up dominating the Americas, but it's true that it's likely that at least one of them does given the context of the timeframe. I think an AI that develops organically is a natural fit for these sorts of historical developments, but not for the emergence of Rome.

 

[Azgabeth]

The reason why Imperator Rome failed was because Johan and the dev team had designed the game on outdated principles.

EU has its roots in a board game and the design shows. It was also the first game of its kind in many ways, so any lack of realism in its design could be forgiven in light of its pioneering status. This worked very well for some two decades.

Imperator followed in this design tradition, but by 2019 grand strategy players wanted more organic simulators with less button-clicky actions. In other words, something that feels more immersive and less like a board game.

Johan did not notice this shift in gaming tastes during the initial development of Imperator, and did not take it seriously until after the disastrous reception it got during release. To his credit (compare with the behavior of the CK3 dev team), he then took the criticisms to heart and reworked the foundations of the game to bring it more in line with player desires. But by that point, the popular interest in Imperator had died, and could not be revived.

So Imperator was "paused" by PDX, taken out back, and then quietly dispatched when they assumed nobody was looking.

Yep pretty much.

Though on your comment about CK3.

While i agree with the sentiment the reality is that CK3 is a commercial success because of the huge influx of rpg players who want more rpg, it’s a repeating cycles and a concious decision by the devs.

 

[Rhaegar1]

Can't say I agree, the game had pretty big flaws, tried to do everything at once without having a good system to tie different mechanics (trace, characters, etc) together quiet well. The implementation of Mana and the overuse of click to do something gameplay hurt it quiet bad. especially since the amount of modifiers made any action lack impact and made it hard to keep in sight what really mattered.

Most importantly though, EU has the really really big advantage it it takes place in an age hat shaped the world as it is now. Far more nations, characters, events and wars are recognizable and the ability to reshape the rise of the western world, discovery of the Americas and buildout of world wide trade empires and wars is just tantalizing.

 

[matfer13]

I couldn't disagree more with you, at least not after the recent Tinto talks and Flavour, I am in favour of having AI countries be "smarter" in creating empires even if they don't last more than a century I want one of the Anatolian beyliks to triumph over the others and create an empire in the East Mediterranean but it doesn't have to be the Ottomans necessarily, it could be the Karamanids or the Eretnids specially considering that they are arguably in a better position than the Ottomans in 1337 but even then I don't want it to be railroaded to be always the case, Byzanthium or Bulgaria could make a comeback, Serbia whose empire historically lasted a few decades could unite the balkans and push east or north and be a threat in the same way that the Ottomans were in our world.
It's hard to say how likely these scenarios can occur since we don't have the game yet but after seeing the last TF and TT we know that tags like Novgorod have some major content and having them take over Muscow either with PU mechanics or through war and forming Russia thereafter can be a interesting change if you play as the Teutons or Sweden, having to fight a republican Russia who's maybe more focused on naval warfare and trade around the baltic, a Spain which is formed through a union between Castile and Portugal(Dod reference btw!) could be a beast in oversea expansion and trade, England winning the 100 years war becoming a military juggernaut with milions of pops in the early/mid game after uniting with France and so on, these can become fun and painful challenges to overcome that may completely change your game in a different direction than just trying to block Ottoman expansion in Europe in a specific way everytime because you know that they will in every game

 

[Mindel]

Yep pretty much.

Though on your comment about CK3.

While i agree with the sentiment the reality is that CK3 is a commercial success because of the huge influx of rpg players who want more rpg, it’s a repeating cycles and a concious decision by the devs.

Johan's reaction to criticism is to listen seriously and take those concerns to heart. It's obvious that Project Caesar today is benefiting from the hard lessons he received from Imperator and Leviathan. He is in regular contact with the forum all the time, and involves the player base in nearly every aspect of PC's initial development, where player input can have the most impact. He made a mistake ignoring player tastes before, so now he is careful to always keep an eye on player sentiment.

The CK3 team's reaction to criticism has been to double down, insist that they are really "working behind the scenes to improve the AI/mechanics/whatever" even though there are few results after many years (despite plenty of DLCs), and then finally to discontinue regular DDs altogether. The lessons were definitely meted out harshly by the player base, but they left no mark. Nothing was learned. Nothing was retained.

The modest level of commercial success CK3 has comes from the fact that it is literally the only option available in its genre. Old fans of CK2 have nowhere else to go. Even an extremely poorly designed game (not referring to any specific example) can achieve self-sustaining revenues if it holds a monopoly over its entire genre base. Nothing could be better for the future of feudal simulator games right now than the appearance of a serious competitor.

 

[Goblin Slave]

Can't say I agree, the game had pretty big flaws, tried to do everything at once without having a good system to tie different mechanics (trace, characters, etc) together quiet well. The implementation of Mana and the overuse of click to do something gameplay hurt it quiet bad. especially since the amount of modifiers made any action lack impact and made it hard to keep in sight what really mattered.

Most importantly though, EU has the really really big advantage it it takes place in an age hat shaped the world as it is now. Far more nations, characters, events and wars are recognizable and the ability to reshape the rise of the western world, discovery of the Americas and buildout of world wide trade empires and wars is just tantalizing.

Yep, just compare the two maps

 

[bokorthedust]

Nice try, Johan!

 

[Thrudgelmir2333]

The only mistake PDX has ever made with Imperator was that it stopped working on it.

 

[Aurelio123]

Is it crazy to say that ancient period is simply just not as interesting? If we were making a tier list it would be somewhere at bottom just because everything after feels much bigger, doesn't mean it's bad though.

 

[za3tarani]

Is it crazy to say that ancient period is simply just not as interesting? If we were making a tier list it would be somewhere at bottom just because everything after feels much bigger, doesn't mean it's bad though.

this is one of the major reason i was never able to get into imperator, that and the color ui (being almost washed, not easy to know wher buttons are). i forced myself to learn the game, and try it... and now i really love the mechanics in the game (except trade), but again, there are few fun starts because the time period is not interesting to me

 

[Billybobbill]

The real reason I:R failed for me was that diplomacy was utter garbage, with some actions simply impossible to use (gods the relative power calculation for vassalization was broken beyond repair on release, dunno if they ever changed it... I still remember an OPM with no army having a -80 for vassalization acceptation because of power difference, when I had the entirety of Italy; for reference the max attainable bonus through good relations was +20 or 25, smth like that)

Also peace treaties had almost no options beyond territorial and monetary gains...

 

[Azgabeth]

The only mistake PDX has ever made with Imperator that it stopped working on it.

Was it really a mistake if it meant we get PC faster?

 

[InvisibleBison]

Needless to say, this world map cannot be realised by railroad.

How can you guarantee specific outcomes without railroading?

 

[Thrudgelmir2333]

Was it really a mistake if it meant we get PC faster?

I dont mind at all. We'd get the game, eventually. Im patient.

 

[McEwanMaster]

+1 to a lot that's been said already.

Ontological history is boring, and so are repeated, prescribed experiences. If those events you listed happen in PC, I want them to happen because the game world displayed historically-modeled demographic, socio-economic, political, etc. dynamics that could apply organically to any number of other entities.

 

[tpapp157]

The reason IR failed is because it didn't have a singular cohesive vision for how the game should operate and how the player should interface with its systems. IR wasn't so much a game as it was just a disjointed jumble of mechanics. Once the novelty of the mechanics wore off, there was nothing compelling to keep you playing. You see this problem a lot especially in indie games.

When the game systems fail to have a cohesive vision, then they'll fail to build a narrative structure for the gameplay, and without a narrative structure they'll ultimately fail to empower the player to explore the stories and enact the fantasies they want. Franchises like CK and EU understand this, at least implicitly. They first ask "what are the stories/fantasies that our players want to pursue" and then from there "how do we design our systems to empower players to interact with those stories and experience a compelling narrative".

At the end of the day, none of the drama and fantasy of ancient history was present in IR. None of the stories and legends that you think about when someone mentions ancient Rome or Greece or Persia or wherever were there for players to explore and reimagine and reenact through the game systems.

The unfortunate part of IR was that the glimmer of a real game was there. I really think that if they had reoriented the entire game to focus on managing a noble family which was the true power block of the ancient world (your characters, your estates, your patronage network, your political alliances, etc) rather than the anachronistic notion of nations they could have found success.

 

[Promethium555]

Spicy Hot take but I think Imperator Rome simply doesn't have a good setting for a GSG. Outside or Rome, Carthage, Greece (which is past its Golden age), and Egypt (which isn't even the ancient Egypt people think of because of Greek rule), there aren't that many states that are both A) well-recorded and B) have strong pop culture influence. Compare this to EU4, where playing as say a random OPM in HRE, an OPM in Japan, or an OPM in North America all have completely unique gameplay mechanics, not to mention the bigger states, and it is easy to understand why the game that has almost objectively better core mechanics feels almost objectively less fun. This flavor problem could have been partially avoided if they made it a character-centric game like CK, but instead, they made it an EU clone with a character system that is so obnoxious it arguably makes the game worse. Classical Greece/the Iron age would be a much better setting for a GSG set in antiquity since you have a lot more variety of civilizations such as Egypt, Nubia, Greece at its peak, Scythia, Persia, Assyria, Babylon, Phoenicia, etc instead of a hyperfocus on Rome and Diadochi blobs.