Imperator: Rome

I've put a lot of time into this game, and I've gone back and forth on trying to enjoy it. But it suffers the issue of being undersupported by Paradox to such an extent that the community has to keep it alive instead. Invictus is a great mod but it forces you into using a mod to have "new updates" rather than from official Paradox support. In a sentence... there's not a lot of variety outside of playing Rome. There's only so many playthroughs you can do before you get tired of fighting the one giant juggernaut every single game. It gets tiring and even with every advantage in the book you can still lose. Every other Paradox game as the advantage of having "lucky nations" and enough variety that the top dog won't always been known, or settings can be manipulated to encourage some alternative history. Not so much with Imperator -- the entire point is the miraculous rise and domination of Rome and every other nation falls over before it. The player is basically the one consistent force who can stop them (with mods, of course). I would recommend IR because it mixes advanced population, politics, and CK-style families mechanics that create a unique mix for a Paradox game you wouldn't otherwise find. Peacetime building is a real thing in IR, it's not just about constant war like EU4/HOI4. I thought I would stick around long term but the lack of any future support and highly repetitive 1-dimensional gameplay eventually killed it for me. IR definitely has the DNA to make it great and there's a couple modders trying to make it happen but it's an uphill battle and there's less than a handful that are able to keep regular updates. IR is great for a couple hundred hours at most but I think this is the last time I pick up the mental opioid that is a Paradox title. This company makes me sad that a potentially great title died on launch and has been limping ever since. I highly doubt Paradox will ever revive this title and it's going to continue being a community effort to keep it alive. Reminds me a lot of Victoria 2.

“When Growth Becomes a Punishment: The Design Failure of Imperator: Rome”** 1. Growth Should Be Rewarding, Not Punishing In most strategy games, growth opens new opportunities: More armies More resources More strategic depth That’s the core reward loop—and what keeps players engaged. But in Imperator: Rome, growth leads to: Lower manpower efficiency Disloyal governors and generals Cultural unrest and revolts Supply nightmares and administrative hell And the worst part? The AI is barely affected by these penalties. 2. Asymmetric Rules Make the Game Frustrating Challenging games are fine. Unfair games are not. Only the player is punished by: Harsh AE (Aggressive Expansion) penalties Severe manpower limits after adopting "Royal Armies" Supply attrition, loyalty juggling, and province micromanagement Meanwhile, AI empires like Rome and the Seleucids: Grow freely Ignore AE Field ahistorically massive armies This is not difficulty. This is a rigged system. 3. You Grow Stronger, Yet You Get Weaker The core design philosophy seems to be: > "The bigger you grow, the weaker you become." That’s a gameplay contradiction. Expansion should come with challenges, but also new powers, tools, and flexibility. In IR, it’s the opposite: Expansion shrinks your options It forces you to rely on mercenaries and band-aid mechanics It turns strategy into grinding maintenance 4. Why Do I Play, If Not to Grow? Players don’t engage strategy games just for pain. They play for: Progression Control Mastery But Imperator: Rome denies you all three. It says: > “You want to grow? Then suffer.” 5. If This Was Their Vision, It Failed If Paradox truly intended for IR to be about decline, decay, and punishment through power... …then they designed a game no one wants to play. Because in the end: > If expansion leads only to frustration, then what's the point of building an empire? Would you like this formatted into a PDF or posted somewhere as an open letter or article-style piece? I can also help polish or expand it further depending on your target (e.g., devs, players, forums, etc.).

Very nice experience nowadays, especially with the Invictus mod!

A good Game if you are a like Rome

The ambient sound for this game is the washing of the tides on Mediterranean shores, and that's a good description of the vibe of the game. It's Nice. It's a relaxing map painter, one that's not too demanding but still has enough stuff going on that it is quietly enjoyable to play and build in over extended runs. There's not that much challenge from the AI, and wars tend to be straightforward affairs, but the world is very big and there are many things to build and see in it. Despite being a kind of chill game design, Imperator does a number of things really well and which I appreciated. E.g. - the tech tree is great, in that it has many paths, and most of the paths are open to you from the start, and every path has really cool and appealing abilities, but you can really only focus on one thing (at least initially). So you can really customize your society by the techs you take, and then gradually open up new lines of improvement as the game progresses. Example: you can use techs to basically win sieges instantly, or to have much stronger armies, or to greatly increase your gold income, or to make your political figures loyal so you can avoid civil wars, or to make your people happy so that you can avoid the constant brushfires of provincial rebellion, or you can go heavy on religion and omen powers, or diplomatic guile, or shedding aggressive expansion so that you can quickly boom over the map, etc. etc. So you kind of always want all of these things, and the tech tree ends up being this bag of sweets where they are all delicious but you can only pick one or two or three of them to actually eat. One slight downside of this system is that as the game goes on, all societies start to converge, as they get more and more picks from this tech tree. The techs also tend to eliminate problems for you, such that your society becomes more and more stable and less and less interesting over time. - I liked the provincial levy system, where you gain a lot of strength/bonus points from using your levies, but you have to use them like the tides, summoning them up to sweep forward and win a border war, before letting them disband and go home to rest for the next conflict. It imposes a nice rhythm to the conflicts of the game. - The Military Tradition system is a fun extra layer; basically you can unlock new military upgrade trees, but to do so requires having a certain number of pops from certain cultures. So on top of everything else, there's a Gotta-Catch-Them-All system, where you want your Empire to collect so many Greeks, so many Gauls, so many Egyptians, that you can unlock their unique trees and start getting their upgrades. Anyway! Not a great game but certainly a fine one.

much better with invictus and after patches

It's hard to put this game down. I didn't play it when it first released as I heard it had many problems. Following patch 2.0 and the Invictus mod, this game is actually great. It has all the micro-strategy I was missing in Total War: Rome II, which (for me at least) makes it all the more fun. I hope Paradox revives this game, as there's so much more content that can be added in the future.