I liked Imperator in some ways but I gave it a bad Steam review because while it has neat systems like the population promotion system (though I'd wish it was easier to emancipate your civilization's slaves even if that doesn't fit so much with the time era; with a tradeoff of course) it still feels like it could use some work.
I bought it on one of the early pandemic sales. I am glad they are still working on it, because I do think it has plenty of potential.
The thing I liked the least was the AI alliance making not being sensible. For example, as Rome, whoever Carthage allies to greatly determines your path. It makes sense for Carthage to block you, though not right at game start as Carthage's first alliiance. It would make sense once Rome starts ballooning (I save the Etruscans for later usually). Sometimes however Carthage offers it's first alliance to Rome, and I'm like why me? Why the backwater Italian province? How does that help Carthage when I don't have a navy to speak of? I should be completely off the radar so to speak for them. The Etruscans would have made much more sense if it had to be in Italy. Othertimes Carthage picks a one province power.
I do kind of like how easy it is to raise legions though it's much less challenging managing them than CK levies. The AI also didn't make the same kinds of doomstacks I was making as Rome either, even comparable powers early game such as the Etruscans, Carthage or bigger Italiot alliances.
I also REALLY disliked that Rome has a national decisions or whatnot (can't remembe what it's called in this one) tree that has a peaceful unification path, but it seems to function in that it's absolutely impossible to bribe, befriend, cajole or threaten 100% of Italy because it seems to be scripted to force you to fight at least one of the proposed alliance targets; which also seems to be somewhat random which will reject your offers if you've increaed their opinion on each as much as you can. Even if you can manage to get them all to positive relations before triggering the decision, at least one will always reject you and you'll have to fight them.
I guess the point is getting a whole bunch of alliance, not a complete unification, but it's so costly compared to the conquer path.
This is frustrating because going the peaceful path is actually much, much more time consuming and resource expensive than just building a legion doomstack and DoW neighbors. The conquer tree also has some nice positives.
Also wasn't a fan of all the post victory executions; I'd rather not have to adopt them as new politicians most of the time (unless they are pretty great; I found bloating your politics with foreign cultures can cause minor problems later; I assume if I had built more theaters and culture related buildings that would reduce as they convert to Roman culture) but don't want to murder them either.
I did have some good times though; once my Rome had ballooned and wanted I think Sardinia. Carthage was allied with them, and had many boats. I snuck a small army to Sardinia before the Carthaginian navy arrived. Then I moved my doomstack to Carthage's furthest East territory and rampaged West all the way to Carthage. I kept going long after 100% warscore because of all the loot and populations I was taking. I had to stop or face a revolt from long war penalties. Good times.
EDIT: I also tried a short Tribal game, and I was amazed how fast Tribals gain technology compared to the Romans. It's so much cheaper, though limited to a lower tier. As Rome it felt like I unlock maybe one or two per tier before the next tier is reached. With Tribal I could have unocked the whole first tier because their tech as a one county/province power is like 5 gold or something compared to Rome's being many times that even at game start.
In other words, technology felt very expensive as Rome.
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Topic: Imperator: Rome - Paradox in Togas?! (Read 25927 times)