There is a store page with screenshots (https://www.paradoxplaza.com/imperator-rome/IMIM01GSK0000001-MASTER.html) of Imperator, for those wondering what it looks like.
Character Management: A living world of characters with varying skills and traits that will change over time. They will lead your nation, govern your provinces and command your armies and fleets. We also introduce our new, more human-like character art.
Diverse Populations: Citizens, freemen, tribesmen and slaves - each population with its own culture and religion. Whether they fill your armies, fill your coffers or fill your colonies, keep an eye on their happiness - your success depends on their satisfaction.
Battle Tactics: Choose your approach before battle to counter the stratagems of your foes.
Military Traditions: Each culture has a unique way of waging war. Romans and Celts have different options available to them. Unlock unique bonuses, abilities and units.
Different Government Types: Manage the senate in a Republic, hold your court together in a monarchy, answer to the clans in a tribal system.
Barbarians and Rebellions: Migrating barbarians may sack or settle your best land, while disloyal governors or generals can turn against you - taking their armies with them!
Trade: Goods provide bonuses to their home province. Will you take advantage of stockpiles for local strength or trade excess goods to spread the wealth around?
Provincial Improvement: Invest in buildings, roads and defences to make your kingdom stronger and richer.
(https://www.paradoxplaza.com/dw/image/v2/BBSX_PRD/on/demandware.static/-/Sites-paradox-catalog/default/dwb91f89cc/product-images/imperator-rome/pdxcon_imperator_screenshots_02_flat_map.jpg?sw=2000&sh=2000&sm=fit)
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bd/Karte_Pomponius_Mela.jpg)
(https://i.imgur.com/KYueat4.jpg)
EDIT: Actually, aesthetically speaking, I did like the old EU maps. I mean, even if the provinces or landforms weren't always the best...
Somebody counted the amount of nations/states in southern Italy and Greece:
(https://forumcontent.paradoxplaza.com/public/359247/5IzHmvDnHqL7qKmrox1vNQF7FAT7Mk1gn8Qp13KCzwg.png)
There are a couple of mistakes like counting Carthaginian colonies several times but yeah, 50-ish sovereign entities in the region.
This Rock Paper Shotgun article (https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2018/05/23/imperator-rome-has-a-world-ripe-for-conquest/) states that there are 7000 cities and 400 playable states which sounds awesome. It also seems from what I've gleamed from things said that "cities" might be the new baseline counties or provinces of the game, which feels fitting.
It also says: Though it has shed the name, Imperator is still a sequel to Europa Universalis: Rome, where nations are the focus, rather than dynasties. Instead of playing individuals across a bloodline, as you would in Crusader Kings, you’ll be taking command of city states, kingdoms and empires. In the south and east are superpowers and the legacies of Alexander, in the north there are countless squabbling tribes and then right in the middle of it all is the ambitious but initially weak Roman Republic.
“Countries not characters is my design philosophy,” says Andersson. “Henrik [Fåhraeus, Crusader Kings 2 game director] is more into characters.” That’s not to say that everything is abstracted or absent that human touch, however. These countries are still full of senators, generals, clan chiefs and various factions with special interests. While your end goal might be taking over as much of the world as you can, there’s still a lot of people management to do, whether that’s picking the best candidate for a governor position or dealing with your population of citizens and ethnic minorities.
...Which I am not as happy about. I feel that the proto-CK2 character aspect of EU:R was by far the best thing of the game and what made it stand out the most contra the EU3 it spun off of and what made the game fun. I have often thought to myself that you could see in EU:R the early stages of what would later be tried in Sengoku and applied in CK2.
It also feels like a bit of a slap against Fåhraeus because I remember how much he liked EU:R. I remember how he, after the the official development had been ceased on the game, he kept working to push out more patches in his off-work spare time just for the sake of the game (you see, EU:R was abandoned in an unfortunately shitty state where the latest patches had basically created a whole slew of fresh, game-breaking bugs). It felt a lot at the time like the game was his baby, so to speak.
First development diary out today (https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/imperator-development-diary-1-28th-of-may-2018.1101600/). Mostly just words (and words are wind), but it gives us some answers to your questions about Iberia:
(https://forumcontent.paradoxplaza.com/public/361060/2018_05_28_2.png)
That's a lot of tribes.
So akin to how the white paint on the map turned out to be just Terra Incognita for Iberia, and not "uncolonized land" or wasteland, the same could probably be said for the eastern european areas on the previous map. The difference in colour is probably just variation on the "terra incognita" map overlay itself- you can see it on the minimap in the corner as well - and might not mean anything.
- We’re removing characters as envoys, as that was a bad mechanic, and you primarily used to get rid of people.
- Omens and Religious Prestige were not very fun, and have been changed.
- Trade was lots of micromanagement, this have been reworked for a more interesting and fun mechanic.
edit: (https://i.imgur.com/Z22lI8x.jpg)
Several proto-norse tribes are in. Glory!
Thought you guys might appreciate some screencaps from a vicky 2 Greece game I ran today while putting off updating my netherlands lp (warning: big, but they're jpgs so its cool)
(https://i.imgur.com/aMGHWgK.jpg)
(https://i.imgur.com/9teBwKG.jpg)
also it's been 20+ years since these screenshots and I still haven't gotten an east macedonia crisis to fire, despite me going out of my way to keep the temperature as high as possible 24/7
(https://i.redditmedia.com/4icg0pBFolim_dQaz6YXI_M_pDs2lEP2s4cr-RrL0KI.jpg?w=582&s=6cece69c321ecdd51eb67238840c67d2)
Can't you just get into the sphere of UK or something, and let them deal with Qing?
Your population is too large for the UK to influence, coupled with the fact that it is impossible for you to be sphered in time before the Qing have sieged down all of your holdings - their troops start on your border and in sufficient quantity that at least half of your infantry have to retreat or will be immediately killed. To make matters worse, even if the UK was friendly, they cannot intervene in the civil war casus belli, the same way they cannot in the USA vs Confederacy war. I managed to do it by going back to the previous start date, before the rebellion begins. Thus I failed my original objective but my conclusion is that playing as the Taiping Heavenly Rebellion two months before they died is not enough time to alter the material circumstances, much in the same way that trying to win WWII as France when the Germans are in Paris is not exactly a likely prospect.
(https://i.imgur.com/bwzJdqQ.jpg)
My solution was to Westernize the Qing government and unify all of China, and then win the civil war as the Heavenly Kingdom. This itself presented some issues. The first was that this required a lot of research points, and my population literacy was abysmal, even with my best efforts to promote the clergy and education. The second was that after Westernizing, all of the substate armies would be disbanded, meaning I would need to have a powerful enough army to deter the usual suspects (UK, Russia & Japan) but not powerful enough to render the Taiping Heavenly Rebellion a hopeless endeavour. This would be especially pertinent, since the Qing armies would be partially westernized, whilst the Heavenly Kingdom armies would be worthless in direct combat.
Conquering Asian countries allowed me to vastly increase my Westernization process through the modernization of the Qing army. Annexing Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Burma, Brunei and so on rapidly brought my army up to scratch - not to any Western standard, but certainly enough to overwhelm all Asian peers. It did however bring me into conflict with Japan who became a Great Power (and indeed became one of the world's top industrial powers in short time, even bringing all of Western India into the sphere of influence, holding a colonial Empire from Africa to Borneo). Subsequently I lost much land to Great Power invasions, which was all right, since the land I lost still gave me truces with the Western powers whilst protecting the core Chinese lands. Borneo fell to the Dutch, Burma would fall later to Britain, while the Japanese would be repelled after a disastrous landing in Korea - reinforcements to my islands deterred any further attempt by Japan to annex me.
(https://i.imgur.com/bfloveN.png)
(https://i.imgur.com/pHJaeCe.jpg)
But after 3 years, it was at last over. I'd lost a lot of men, but the population I gained from the Qing Empire's collapse more than made up for it. At once I set about reforming the education system as I realised I had to Westernize all over again, and began amassing troops to garrison my borders with the UK and Russia. I stood no chance against either of them, but it did help give me some more peace of mind ;]
(https://i.imgur.com/qPJ30AS.jpg)
(https://i.imgur.com/8g6YBYV.jpg)
(https://i.imgur.com/ngMQckq.png)
(https://i.imgur.com/u2RmwLa.jpg)
...Mostly, I did nearly lose a war against Russia. The Italians dragged me into a war against the Austro-Hungarians, I ended the war by giving away Italian land and ended my alliance with the freeloaders. I could have easily won the war if I was willing to sacrifice my men against Russia but I had nothing to gain from making Italy more powerful at my expense, especially while I was making the transition into becoming the foremost industrial power in quantity AND quality.
(https://i.imgur.com/lJYV4M1.jpg)
(https://i.imgur.com/7YSCx1M.png)
Time to convert into Hearts of Iron? You could pick another nation and try to defeat the mighty celestial giant you've created, if it seems too easy. What does Europe look like, anyway? Did Germany get anything nice from winning that Great War?
Maybe, I'm not so good at Hoi IV so I think I'd still find a way to mess up lol
(https://i.imgur.com/9QDwL1d.jpg)
(https://i.imgur.com/T14JtEP.jpg)
(https://i.imgur.com/0GXdt9s.jpg)
1) They planned on including and were working on those systems but weren't able to get them working in time for release.
or
2) They were going to hold onto it as DLC, probably stuff that would've been part of the "free update" portion.
For reference to those with weak google-fu or, like I usually am, are the absolute laziest piece of shit, here's the post from the Paradox forum re: their current roadmap
Balancing of Technology Progress, Mercenaries, Shattered Retreat, Truce Breaking, Assassinations, Governors, War Exhaustion, and Legitimacy.
Improving the mechanics for Population Growth, Stability, and Barbarians.
Tweaks to Civil War mechanics, with new power-base mechanics.
Naval rework, with Naval Combat mechanics and multiple ship types, as well as navigable major rivers.
Deeper Holding mechanics for characters, where you can give characters holdings and they can purchase new ones as they grow in wealth.
More character interactions.
New Piracy mechanics.
Redesigning of functionality where instead of spending power for an instant result, you now spend power to nudge it towards that result over time.
Better abilities to play tall, including centralising trade, impacting specific cities, etc.
Tribes being able to decide what units their retinues should have.
Dual Ruler mechanics for Roman Republic, and Consorts for Monarchies.
Government Abilities for all government categories.
‘Quality of Life’ features like viewing all characters in a foreign country, new alerts, road building being a continuous action, and more.
Adding of features from previous PDS games like moving capitals and regnal numbers on monarchs
Much more modding support.
I'd say it was option b if it wasn't for the fact that some of that seems like things they'd have liked to include at launch. Sure you could break down what kind of DLCs all of that would've been attached to, but I like to have some faith in humanity.