Pretty much this. They were incredibly lazy when it came to I:R and they expected the modding community to add content.
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Still, the game would have had to be moddable in depth. The modding is very limited and I will repeat it again and again, the limitation of the Tag is a barrier that prevents a lot of things. Mods like invictus and the others have already had to touch certain fracturing events of tribal nations and revolts to give themselves some air, which removes the possibility of having anything other than large blocks.
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Invictus hasn't actually taken any measures to reduce tags from vanilla interactions. I did rewrite our own regional revolt escalations to produce less tags but in no way do we touch fracturing events or vanilla revolts. I think you vastly overestimate how much an issue the taglimit is. It can very easily be kept under control by removing tribal collapse if absolutely needed or just increasing civil war treshold for smaller tags. Most players only hit the taglimit in Invictus even using the previous regional rebellion script about 150 years after the game ends. The soonest i've seen the save hardlock because of the taglimit is 90 years after game-end.
Sidenote: the taglimit is more of an issue with generated tags, meaning scripts using create_country, rebellions and civil wars. Adding more countries is only an issue if they end up causing more rebellions/civil wars, but as i've stated before, simply increasing civil war treshold is a very easy and effective fix barely affecting player gameplay.
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Yes you limit the revolts remove the fragmentation of the tribes so that it does not crash. That's exactly what I said from the start.
But by limiting that you take the interest out of the game and you allow even more blobs.
After my problem with the tags also comes from the fact that my mod continues the chronology until 376 which is impossible at the moment without changing anything.
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Given the practice seems to be to have bigger/more provinces/TAGs over time, if they ever did come back for an Imperator II or whatever the third attempt at this time period would be called, do you guys think it would make sense to limit what you can play as? I seem to recall a lot of complaints here about barbarians having generic gameplay and not being unique enough, especially in modern France + UK.
Paradox games went from only major countries are playable (EU1) to every tag is playable and are recently starting to narrow again. CK II started locking certain tags behind DLC and Victoria III is locking most of Africa, etc (either for DLC later or because they have no idea how to make them play uniquely).
Would it have been better for Imperator if you could've only played as Rome for example at the start, but with really fleshed out mechanics and unique systems, and then the DLC would've added unique stuff again tailored for the Hellenistic powers & unlocked them?
Paradox games went from only major countries are playable (EU1) to every tag is playable and are recently starting to narrow again. CK II started locking certain tags behind DLC and Victoria III is locking most of Africa, etc (either for DLC later or because they have no idea how to make them play uniquely).
Would it have been better for Imperator if you could've only played as Rome for example at the start, but with really fleshed out mechanics and unique systems, and then the DLC would've added unique stuff again tailored for the Hellenistic powers & unlocked them?
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I think, that blocked countries are much more irritating than countries having same gameplay.
Complain about generic barbarians is actually a complain about core game loop itself: almost all paradox games have the same gameplay for everyone with quite minor differences: There is no gameplay difference between conquest of Cisalpine Gaul as Rome and conquest of RandomRegion as RandomTribe, but first one is more fun just because of associations you have with "roman conquest of cisalpine gaul". Missions capitalise on such associations, trying to add new associations to Conquests of RandomRegions. While playing as generic tribe with generic missions exposes flaws of core game loop, that it is not engaging enough for the playerbase.
Imo, focusing on few countries doesn't work well for paradox games and requires more "visual novel"-like approach and you simply have to have solid game loop because of how paradox game is structured - real time with simulation running in background while you make minor and major decisions once in a while. If this simulation and minor decisions (which are shared by all countries) are not fun enough, then even locking everyone except rome and giving it humongous tree of major decisions and window with some elaborate mechanic (Imagine playing some HOI4 dlc but without core simulation of warfare) doesn't really help. And if they are fun enough, then there is no reason to lock nations.
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That first paragraph makes a lot of sense, thanks!
That second part is because in the pre-pre-Imperator game (Pax Romana, which came even before EU:Rome), that's exactly how it worked. It was basically a game of EU2 where you could only play Rome, but there were very deep mechanics that made sense just for Rome. That game failed too, but still...
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The major problem with the game in my opinion is that it is basically, not a sequel of EU: Rome and nor a new game, but a remake of EU: Rome, and even if heavily patched it is still basically EU: Rome, a game that was just an experimental spin off of Europa Universalis, appreciated for what it was, but nothing special and very flawed. What they were thinking? If you do another Roman game years later, you can't just remake that old game... just with better map, sprites and characters... you need to do a proper game ready to engage people playing in 2018. Sometimes you can't just start so heavily from the base of a previous game, especially if it was not so breathtaking to begin with. Imperator Rome was a visually stunning old, flawed, already played, game.
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I think a lot of effort for Imparator post-release was damage limitation: patch the game up to defend PDX corporate brand.
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Interestingly enough, Imparator start was almost identical to Humankind and I know that is still in development. It will be interesting to see if Humankind ends up getting more development than Imparator did, since they are a new entrant whereas Imparator is made by an incumbent.
Comparison of Imparator and Humankind users from launch: https://steamdb.info/graph/?compare=859580,1124300&release
Comparison of Imparator, Humankind and Stellaris from launch: https://steamdb.info/graph/?compare=281990,859580,1124300&release
Sorry for not putting the graphs in directly, am away and phone is playing up.
Comparison of Imparator and Humankind users from launch: https://steamdb.info/graph/?compare=859580,1124300&release
Comparison of Imparator, Humankind and Stellaris from launch: https://steamdb.info/graph/?compare=281990,859580,1124300&release
Sorry for not putting the graphs in directly, am away and phone is playing up.
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The Problem here is that Humankind got an booming start because of its Civ like Playstyle and imperator didnt reach high publicity outside of the PDX fanbase
and Humankind is the only game that amplitude studios can make money out of it, imperator instead is one game that can make money but for a big company like PDX its not enough to still the cost of developing the game
sad but it is what it is
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In some ways I agree and others I disagree with you.
I think Humankind has been more of a dud then Imparator was in terms of active users. It was marketed as a potential alternative to see, I have been aware of it for years and so have my friends.
In terms of potential continued development, I do think Humankind is in a better position then Imparator. Beyond the reasons you've provided, the Civ space has been getting a lot of investment recently from new entrants, beyond Humankind, Microsoft is also developing Arc World History with ex-Civ devs.
Not being a dummy map painter intended for office multiplayer sessions, a shell shipped with zero depth or flavour, would've helped.
The biggest problem with Imperator at release was that it contained a floor base for everything a potentially greatest strategy game in the world could ever need...and it was bad at every part of it.
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It could've had a detailed political system (more detailed than any other PDS game, and I'm not even talking about 2 consuls thing). Instead there is a wonky, sad mess of a system where you manually appoint doctors and scientists in republics (or else their families get ANGRY!!11!!1!!), republics feel and work exactly like autocratic monarchies or barbarian tribes, just with unnecessary extra steps. The few events that drive politics aren't enough and sometimes don't connect well.
Its not like politics (which were a big part of the era) matter much in the game. Civil wars are hardcoded to end your game for no apparent reason. You cannot play Julius Caesar, because remember guys, Rome vanished into thin air when he rebelled and won. Somehow, the boring and broken EU4 civil wars/revolutions are more enjoyable than what we had here.
There could've been a fine diplomatic system. Things were looking up, due to how good the diplomacy and subject systems in EU4 are. Then the game released and we got a "diplomacy system" that was essentially dead on arrival. It was never improved because the focus shifted on giving Greeks all the mission trees lol.
There could've been a more detailed religious system. Instead on release we got "click button to gain modifier every 5 years". And it couldn't even fail and set you back like it could in EU-Rome. Very thrilling and feature isn't it. And the rework made it better but only slightly (how exciting it is to see Greeks burn down Delphi, right).
It could've had an economic system. Instead, there is a jarring clickfest trade system whose entire purpose is to stack modifiers. They did add auto trade in 2.0 thankfully, but I personally haven't seen it work so far (will have to look up more about it I guess). And there is no Silk Road, Indian imperial roads, Northern routes or great Mediterranean trade network that states of this era relied on.
The game at release was a manafest, which is hilarious because the way it worked was bad even by board game standards. There were 4 (four!) buildings that you could build at most. The pop system eventually got worked into a much better thing, but at release it was just unplayable nonsense.
There was no flavour. Playing a Celtic tribe in the far corners of Britannia is same as playing a Scythian nomadic warlord in central Asia. Playing in India is same as playing Rome. Out of 4 DLCs that came, 3 focused solely on the Greeks and giving them mission trees (a flawed feature in comparison to, say, the idea behind Victoria 3's journal system). The rest of the world never got the spice it needed. No wonder people began abandoning the game rapidly.
And unlike games set in later eras like CK, EU, Victoria and HoI, this era doesn't have large scale "familiarity" factor to save it from the lack of features. Even with EU4's kinda ghastly and boring mechanics, people know nations, cultures, city states and the fun alt-history gameplay of taking a minor state and turning it into an empire. EU4 can survive on that alone, despite having depth of a puddle. Imperator couldn't, because the far more detailed map of tribes, kingdoms, empires and cultures couldn't make up for complete lack of any interesting mecahnics and flavour.
Then there is the community legacy. CK2 is still going strong after a decade because its depth and great feature-set created a wonderful modding community that enjoyed working with the huge number of features the game handed them. The mods keep the player base hooked and people keep coming back to play and try more. Similar thing can be said for EU4 (which I keep around only for mods like Anbennar/Imperium Universalis/Voltaire's Nightmare now). Imperator didn't have enough features to make even mods interesting beyond a certain point...and there were instances like the guy who made the wonderful Bronze Age mod abandoning it rather too quickly.
For example - a late antiquity "Fall of Rome" mod would've been a wonderful setting if nomads, barbarians, famine and diseases had any halfway decent features in the game. But Imperator lacks those, so those mods and its playerbase went to CK3 and are thriving there instead.
Most importantly, Imperator could've had a potentially great character system with huge ideas for roleplaying, intrigue and such...that came out completely dead, and got borked even further with patches when the major/minor family system was introduced. There are just too many things wrong with it to list here, visually and mechanically. It didn't need to turn into CK, but it could've easily gotten close with already existing mechanics and event chains, and it never did.
And personally, the dead character system was the main reason I mostly stopped playing Imperator.
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Imperator was set up to be inferior at almost every element, so why would the game survive indeed?
The end result? People who enjoy map painting tried it out for a bit and went back to EU4 and HoI4. People who enjoy deeper, more meaningful gameplay and/or roleplaying, went back to CK2 and Vicky2. Player numbers hit the floor within a few months back in 2019.
By the time it began picking up steam, it was too late and the game was abandoned.
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Thats a long post @Will Steel , that could have been condensed to "Johan was too arrogant after doing about 20 succesful GSG's that he thought he know exaclty what he was doing at all times".
ANother question: which game that you ever designed were you the most satisfied with, especially when playing it yourself?
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tough question.
I felt really great with HoI2, with the new "movement-is-attack" system, battle scenarios and better UI.
Otherwise, Victoria 2 and EU4.
Any chance we might be seeing Imperator Rome at least get the no-ironman achievement thing like Vic 3 got? I don't like the whole idea of starting a game anew because the character you required for the achievement died out of some silly event or dice roll (like the Nikator achievement).
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To be honest, the NIA thing ruins the prestige-ness of achievements. The aim of achievements in the past is to play the game in a specific way, dodging AI moves without you cheating while you using your knowledge of the game. Now you can make a mod that freely gives you the achievements like consolation prizes at school sports competitions when you got a cramp after getting a start.
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