Imperator: Rome, a sequel to Europa Universalis: Rome

At last, after so many years Paradox Interactive has decided to push out a new Grand Strategy game in the Roman Era, their previous development was called Europa Universalis: Rome and the expansion, Rome – Vae Victis, sure added something to the game but at the time I felt it lacking, needing much love and a revamp of some of the awkward mechanics inherited, from my own perspective, from an earlier version of Europa Universalis III and a limited engine, if memory does not fail me there was this great improvement on the Europa Universalis III engine that made it look fantastic from the original blob it presented itself like.

Something that stroke me as interesting when trying Crusader Kings II back when it came out was the fact that it shared some of the mechanics of the Rome game, it had individuals with their own goals and ambitions which could lead an army, govern, rebel, plot murder, all the goody stuff CK2 players enjoy so much nowadays was inherited and polished (after a couple of expansions, mechanic revamps and other things in between) to what we know today of it. From the side of Europa Universalis, I am unsure how much it was inherited but I can be sure that with the current version that is coming out, Imperator: Rome will greatly benefit from the Europa Universalis IV mechanics and the now polished Crusader Kings 2 mechanics.

At the time the images that have shown up look great and remind me so much of the original Rome games, there is no need to go for battles such as Total War, Total War is there for those huge epic battles on the ground that you can enjoy from the shoulder of the Legions you send down to cause havoc, no, we are here to enjoy the massive intricacies of the military (with hopefully improved upgrade mechanics that do not tie you to one update whenever the game feels like it and research that was arbitrary as hell), political (I can already see the civic faction breaking oh so many games, they broke so many of mine and caused so many rebellions I would change the people in power five times before I got to understand how the hell anything worked), diplomatic (hopefully as Rome you can get some sweet casus belli to expand your Empire all the way to Asia and also interesting decisions with your neighbors so they don’t eat you alive from the get go such as that little devil Pyrrhus breaking hell all over the shores of southern Italy) and religious system (some of the bonuses were really broken and the fact that you could get the total opposite to what you wished really made you think if you should even consider it on your to-do list but if you did not do it then you were asking for the religious faction on breaking your back every single time) of the Roman Empire.

Other mechanics that are coming back to my mind were the Legions your provincial Governors or Legate would command a Legion which in turn would start to become loyal to him, on one side this would be good because your treasury would be released from the much needed money during the early state of the game, on the other hand these men had become loyal to him so in case he rebelled they would stand by him no matter what, this would lead to some very interesting battles in which Legions would be fighting on the same square against other members of the same Legion who had fought with them side by side.

The sea battles were horrible, and I could never understand why the Romans would not capture more ships once they had discovered the retractable arm they could throw onto other ships, in real life this would give the Romans the advantage they needed over their much larger Carthagian foes as their sailors were not ready to face the might of the Roman Legion from ship to ship. The mechanics were oddly clunky and I was always praying my transported troops would make it to wherever they had to go because losing one of my Legions, any Legion, could cost me a bunch of territory.

Those barbarian invasions were also a hell of an adventure to deal with, I would leave regional legions (attached them to a local Governor who could be so useless at times) to defend tracts of land such as northern Italy (the alps mostly and using the bonuses of the mountains to my advantage) and fight the massive mothballs of up to 100K barbarians, sure the slaves and money I would get from them would be absolutely great and with the right politics you could get freedman and citizens in a considerably breeze (quite some time to be honest) which would in turn help Civilization push further out and bring the rest of the territories into being gloriously Roman (because what else is better than to have 100 Civilization and be the center of all European civilization, eh?)

As a Historian with a formal education one of the things that drove me to study History were the Total War and Europa Universalis games, I was amazed by the Roman and Medieval eras and to this day they continue to be some of my interests as a Historian, I also believe that teaching through videogames is one of the best ways for the current generations to learn about the many interesting aspect of Humanity (even if this vision is eurocentrist).

Now, if only Paradox Interactive would take their time to rework that Sengoku game they made, I know that would be another really interesting period to visit and while we are at it, a Victoria 3 game, anyone?

My journey through Paradox Games

It’s funny to think about how I got into Paradox Interactive Games by pure accident, I had seen the original Europa Universalis game at a Circuit City, guess how old I am, and as I kid I was always thrilled to find more games like Civilization and this game looked like it, but something told me that this was not for me, at least not yet, and I ended up buying Half-Life Blue Shift that day, a game which I enjoyed for a short time and then I stashed away until I sold it at a discount price because Steam keys and all being digital nowadays.

Fast forward many years later and I was going through a neighbors collection of items he has for sale on a weekly basis, there I found it, Europa Universalis III -Wow, the franchise has gone out this far out? Gotta give this a try- and after paying a dollar for the game I went home and installed it, I found it to be very plain of a game, an interesting concept but the game felt dated as hell, something was telling me there had to be more and while looking I noticed that screenshots for the game looked oddly different than mine and they all referenced versions that were way ahead than mine, turns out Steam had it and I came to find the wonderful world of DLC galore that Paradox brings to the table with every game they release.

But lets go step by step on this, I put the key in, install the game and wow does the world and engine feel completely different, the mechanics were so complicated and then I saw that the DLCs would bring in a lot of flavor to the game, eventually I did buy all the DLCs for EUIII and started to enjoy the game but then I found out that there was a game called Europa Universalis: Rome and Vae Victis, the grandfather of the upcoming Imperator game, I was thrilled to play something related to the Roman Empire as I was just starting my long journey, eight years now, to get my degree in History.

Rome and Vae Victis felt oddly dated but I found something satisfying managing to survive as any nation, thrive and eventually colonize half of the world while crushing the rest of it, harder than it would seem seeing that civil wars seem to be cyclical in this game and some of the mechanics were broken to the point where it was a bit pointless sometimes to play through the campaign.

If I’m not mistaken at the time Paradox had announced that they were releasing a new game called Crusader Kings II, the thought of this being the second iteration made me wonder how good the game could be that it had to get a sequel, I tried the demo out when it came out and I could, for the life of me, not grasp all of the mechanics but they felt oddly familiar from the world of Rome and Vae Victis and not so much from EUIII, I was thrilled to know more, when the game came out I got myself a copy, I must admit here that I did not own a legal one but I redeemed myself and bought the game later on with all the DLCs up to Holy Fury and I have done so with almost all of Paradox games to date.

There was a slight problem with Crusader Kings II though, when I played the game back then on its first iteration it was good but it lacked something, I suspected that DLCs would come out throughout the months or years and I was right on this, not that I was proud of this or anything since this is a considerable cost when you sum all of this up and yet I still bought all of the DLCs. The interesting part of Crusader Kings II is that I have managed to understand, with time, all of the mechanics and some of the dirtier secrets on how to play real evil, so evil that I did notice that the AI would sometimes offer you matrilineal marriages and you would not notice this with all the things going on at the same time, clever girl!

I also got a friend to play Crusader Kings II with me, we did it locally and managed to form an enormous Russian Empire that spanned up to where the Holy Roman Empire was and then some, parts of France belonged to my family because of clever marriages and some plots, plots which were heavily abused also, and were fragmenting Europe to the point the Muslims were on the south of France and in Italy, the Tsarina, a character that started her reign at five years of age, would be one of the most memorable characters I have used to lead a dynasty, she managed to double the size of the Empire, crush rebellions, all enemies, was loved by everyone, had equally distributed land between vassals to avoid huge power struggles which had almost tore the Empire apart during its early formation, no sinful traits, the epitome of catholic religion, yes, Russia became catholic because we could not wait to become Christians and push forward technologically, building and troop wise, staying as pagans had some benefits but none that we would consider that useful on the long run; I have also created Empires from the island of Ireland that made Britannia rule as early as the Norse invasions to the islands, unified Italy under Italian rule, managed to expand the Byzantine Empire as a loyal vassal who in turn would become the de facto Imperial Family of the Empire for centuries to come, all of this and more stories I have from Crusader Kings II, a great game that is a bit hard to get into with all the mechanics going around but nonetheless highly addictive and recommended for anyone really interested in understanding Medieval history. While I suspect that CK2 is coming at the end of its lifetime I am unsure if we will be seeing another sequel to Crusader Kings, CK2 has some flaws but in general you can enjoy and completely make or break the game at will.

Europa Universalis IV has never been my thing, since it never was it has become a very strange game for me that while I have a grasp on I cannot get through with most of the things that are going on, I need to basically read and re-read a ton of mechanics that I missed out on, I find this strange because CK2 was not like this, with CK2 I stopped for a long while and when I came back the game, while changed, still made sense and the mechanics became obvious to me, with EUIV I still struggle to this day and the fact that the game requires a considerable amount of resources from my computer has not allowed me to get on with trying the game out the way I want it to, also I am missing a lot of the DLCs because, again, this is not a game that I was really into and only one person that I know personally has ever played the game to the point where he had some understanding of the game but was in the same place I find myself.

Victoria II, Vicky 2, whichever way you want to call it is a game that I consider personally was left wanting after only two DLCs were released for it, the game is excellent and the mechanics used in the game are very peculiar, at first I would have thought that war was the key element but after being reminded that this is the age of Imperialism and Industrialization I quickly understood why the market was a key component of having the right resources, the right territory and why scrambling for Africa and Asia was such a huge deal, we managed to play this with four people and got very far before the game continuously crashed on us, the highest moment for me was making Mexico a Great Power and keep it at number one, annexing Texas, not having the US hand me my ass in open warfare, expanding the country to half of South America, parts of Egypt and Abu Dhabi, conquering Dai Nam and parts of China and having a 100% literacy all around the country while owning the Panama and Suez canals, surviving a Great War and seeing how Europe tore itself completely apart.

Hearts of Iron III and IV are games that I tried but ultimately never really picked up hard upon, while I enjoy the whole idea of playing through World War II and have managed to survive the red tide of the Soviet Union as many countries, also China becoming a massive crazy super power, I do not feel like there is much there to talk about, there are some really interesting challenges that include playing as Luxemburg but after HoI3 it was not of much interest to me, I got HoI4 because I expected something completely different and well here is where we are.

I am taking note that for all of the previously mentioned games there are several Mods that can improve or completely change the way the game is played or the story in general, while I get this I am concentrating purely on what Paradox offers natively, I have also not mentioned the free updates which include some very interesting changes to the base game, if you do not own DLCs you can still enjoy a good portion of the game and years later Paradox will eventually start unlocking some of the aspects of other DLCs into the game, like with Crusader Kings II, but this is many years down into the game and DLC have been on the market.

Making a slight stop here at one of the lesser known games of Paradox, Sengoku, which while a good concept I felt that it was a bit hard to get into and while it intrigued me I left it be for a while, just right now I found out that it was on sale at about a dollar and had to snatch it, will probably play the hell out of it to find out if maybe I was too fast to dismiss the game and Paradox should revisit a game that had a lot of potential or if this was indeed better left alone, it intrigues me though because Rome/Vae Victis took a while to have a sequel done, which is still being worked upon, so I’m wondering if either Victoria or Sengoku will ever get a sequel pushed through.

The last game on the list is Stellaris, this is a strange one because having played it from the beginning I always felt that the game was heavily lacking on all fronts, a very good concept and one that Paradox was willing to throw itself behind of, with the latest 2.2 “Le Guin” update the game was completely revamped to the point it is a completely different game, I will actually have to write an entire review about it because I feel that the changes done to the way resources are handled, the new market, planetary distribution, districts and buildings, some of the technologies and the fact that you are now only stuck with hyperlane technology, which makes sense in a way but this is debatable, and considering I went all in with the DLCs, including the new MegaCorp DLC, I can say that changes are good but finding a balance in this new game has been complicated due to the way I used to play the game, also Corporations are absolutely broken by the way they work in general and the Criminal Heritage civic gives some insane energy bonuses, having 250+ energy before the end of the first century was something I was not expecting but it is part of finding ways of breaking some of the mechanics.

Did I mention I like breaking the mechanics of these games as much as possible?

Game Mechanics, an opinion

There has been a considerable shift in games throughout the years, nowadays I mostly focus on city building and grand strategy games, there are some first person shooters (I miss Ghost Recon [Racoon]: Phantoms even with all the damn Pay-to-Win) that have driven me back but nothing else that really catches my attention. One of the things that I believe everyone who has been playing for a while will notice is that there has been a real polish in some genres which favor end-user experience more than true mechanics or true playability, that is that you enjoy the game so much that you can replay it again (FPS have something that even though people hate on them they keep buying the next game, so that is that). Fine tuning mechanics is essential for great game-play, especially when doing online competitive gaming, so there are some cases that I can think of in which they were both a blessing and a curse, below are some points with considerations about the subject:

• The polishing and eventual simplification of mechanics makes the game flow faster and I would assume that in some way or form this also helps code work smoother and cause less bloat when performing some of the calculations (I can only imagine what goes behind the Crusader Kings II or Europa Universalis IV background). On the other hand this can feel as something valuable being lost in the process, while this is debatable it depends how big the change is and I can think of some considerable changes in gaming that brought so much commotion about a set of simple changes:
  
  • e.g.: Some of the Starcraft patches back in the day like patch 1.08, in which Zealots got their numbers moved around from 80 shield and HP to 60 shield and 100 HP, while this was not the only drastic change, on this same patch would see the cost of Battle Cruisers go from 8 to 6 supply which is a massive change also. Back with this patch the community of Starcraft went up in flames and was split up with the decision, this and other balancing efforts in the future would continue to provoke this behavior but this is expected when a community this large finds new ways to play the game and take advantages of the buffing or nerfing of whichever mechanic is/was broken/fixed.
    
  • e.g.: Civilization III combat, one of the main complaints about what was a great game (personal opinion) was that the combat mechanics were broken as hell, a barbarian warrior (the earliest type of unit in the game) with only two/three blocks of life could defeat a late age tank with five blocks of life, how this worked (or not worked) was a true mystery at times which drove players mad, the problem about having this little barbarian going around tearing your improvements up was that wasting tanks during what could be a tense period of the game meant risking it maybe twice of thrice to get that nuisance off your yard (yes, I lost three tanks once to a barbarian). Civilization IV did not suffer from these issues and they also fixed the problem with Saltpeter being a very rare mineral, if you did not have the expansions to bring in Guerilla fighters to the fray you were truly out of the contest with your peers or stronger opponents.
    
• Players may also not fully understand the reasoning behind some of the changes (or developers either do not wish to put too much on the table or are just bad at it, take your pick, not dissing anyone though) performed on the game mechanics. While balancing is mostly the reason to do this it is not the same to test it in a closed environment with a couple of players than test it on the wild (this is why some games will give you the option to beta test their new patches so that you can report on whatever bugs or issues you may find, even broken mechanics). While some balancing is performed due to exploits in the code (which is unavoidable) there is also the fact that some players will also find a way to break the current balance by performing X, Y, Z action to do so (not an exploit, more like number crunching and some hard thinking, for reference look at all the changes that World of Warcraft has gone through since Vanilla)
  
• Sometimes mechanics just don't work as intended or simply don't pickup as expected and this happens because the final product is not what was intended or the player base has a different understanding of what the whole thing is/was about, at times this is not the fault of either party as things change and these are no longer relevant in the game and either disappear or are changed for a different mechanic.
  
• New mechanics “are” (this is a very broad word) required with new improvements to the original game/expansion/DLC (does anyone do real expansions anymore or are we just calling them DLCs now?), again these mechanics can be broken as all hell or may not have a counter-mechanic to balance them, sometimes this is intended and inevitable so that the player must make their time due, not necessarily talking about time running out but some other factor that can either end the current game drastically or reduce the possibilities of the player enjoying the game, this leads me to the following point.
  
• The fact that the player always wins a game does not a fun game make, something that I like about Paradox games is the fact that I can make a stupid decision and feel the consequences rolling over immediately and for the next hundred years as other nations swallow me up, characters die, planets are burnt to a crisp and I find myself asking “What did I do wrong and how could I have avoided this?”. This in turn has made me stop caring about reloading a game when this happens, I just let it roll and see what is the end result of what actions I have taken as with real life you cannot take it back.