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)
We should be happy the map doesn't look like this!
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bd/Karte_Pomponius_Mela.jpg)
I wonder; a map like that could be rather stylish. Maybe something that rips off Posidonius (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a4/Worldmaphedo.jpg) or Ptolemy (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e9/Ptolemy-World_Vat_Urb_82.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)
So instead I started as Qing China. Playing consecutively day after day, I refined my strategy until I found the method which worked. Each time I failed for different reasons. Sometimes the Qing government was too powerful, many times I would be carved up by Russia or Britain, even Japan. When I at last managed to get population consciousness just right and the circumstances of the civil war perfectly, I found to my horror that it was bugged. It should be the case that whoever wins the war inherits all the reforms and substates held by the other, but it actually sets all the substates free and sets the Heavenly Kingdom back to square 1 - no reforms, no cores on all of China. This meant my task would become immensely more difficult.
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)
Complete Westernization helped drive my population consciousness up and annexed all the substates (Tibet as a vassal was not annexed). Gradually I began amassing an army comprised of Nanfaren and Beifaren infantry from the Taiping core lands, whilst decreasing the size of my Manchu units, until the Qing dynasty was dependent upon Taiping brigades for its physical security.
(https://i.imgur.com/pHJaeCe.jpg)
When at last the Taiping Heavenly Rebellion broke out, I had a rather daunting task at hand, but I had the best chance I'd ever get. I had 15,000 infantry in Burma, 15,000 infantry in Vietnam, 15,000 infantry in Korea, the rest of my 354,000 infantry were poised to seize the capital and the big population centres in the heartland of China. Resistance was fierce, with the Qing able to amass 180,000 Western-standard soldiers in the Southwest of the Empire, around Chongqing and Vietnam. My Vietnam brigades were defeated almost immediately, but managed to retreat to join the main force. The Burma brigades were considerably more successful, tying down 2x their number in the mountains. With 45,000 troops taking the North and Korea, everyone else focused on pushing Westwards. Time was on the side of the Qing, as the more time they could buy the more their qualitative superiority and higher population would inevitably wear my forces down. Subsequently every time the Qing forces attacked, I diverted my attention towards defeating their stacks. It was painful, as I had 2 generals to split between all my armies, and I'd always end up losing at least 2x more troops than the Qing in every battle. Nevertheless it ensured I never lost momentum in sieging down the Qing Empire.
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)
As before, as today, I lost a lot of my territories to various Western powers, but gained more land in central Asia. These are the borders I kept for the rest of the game. One issue is that I had no cores for everything, so in order to core it all I had to become a great power. Upon Westernizing my #1 priority was researching nationalism & industry, in short order my Heavenly Kingdom was building railways everywhere and flooding the world with cheap iron, coal and agricultural produce. Under the auspices of the Reactionary Faction I built up cement and steel factories everywhere, distinctly aware that I was entering into the world market and the industrialisation game horrendously late. Fortunately I had sufficient, vastly overwhelming stores of wealth from tariffs alone, that I could amass a gargantuan army (rapidly becoming the #1 military power, above Britain) whilst subsidizing a whole swathe of unprofitable factories - at least, unprofitable at first. As a low ranking civilised nation I had little access to world markets, so had to rely upon China's own vast wealth. I had sulphur, iron, coal, silk, and subsequently became world leader in luxury clothes productions once my own domestic cotton industry kicked off. Once I had enough stores of processed and raw materials, a sizeable industrial base and a growing population of craftsmen, I switched to the conservative faction to let them expand industry at their own leisure - only switching back once in order to build up my automobile and electronics industry.
(https://i.imgur.com/8g6YBYV.jpg)
It was just before WWI that I broke into Great Power status. My industry began to skyrocket whilst my military expansion increased at an unabated rate - for efficiency's sake I'd increase my army in batches of 600 brigades, bringing them all into Taiping before crudely sorting them mixed regiments of infantry, dragoons, artillery and engineers. I rapidly began coring most of my country, which at this point was just flooding with Chinese people, who made coring even Korea, Mongolia, Vietnam and Central Asia a trivial task.
(https://i.imgur.com/ngMQckq.png)
With my industry and economy of scale overwhelming my competitors, my industrial science catching up and exceeding my rivals, the European powers ravaged by Great Wars - it opened up the opportunity for America & Japan to sphere much of the world. The Americans, Japanese and British had far too much influence on countries bordering me, so I decided to change that by challenging them all on their turf. I could flood countries with so much foreign investment that the other Great Powers couldn't match, so it resulted in things like a quarter of South America falling under my sphere of influence. Challenging America and Britain was a mistake, at least that early on. Although my industry surpassed them, my Navy was still using sailships and my army was not a match for either. When I annexed Tibet the British and Americans joined forces to enforce the status quo; I learned quickly that my forces were still no match for Britain's. Fortunately I got away intact, ending the war early by releasing Tibet under the American sphere. In the meantime I fortified China and modernised my army.
(https://i.imgur.com/u2RmwLa.jpg)
During the Second World War, I figured the other Great Powers would be to busy to notice me annexing Tibet. I was right, however it pushed my just slightly above 25 infamy. Two years after the Second World War ended, the British invaded, in the British war to contain the Heavenly Kingdom. This time however, they found my troops dug in, within trenches, Fortresses, with artillery and machine guns, engineers and limitless reserves more than a match for their own. I was capable of sending hundreds upon hundreds of brigades without ever having to underman my core or my Russian borders, and if I absolutely had to I could recruit thousands or mobilize 5,000+ brigades. As far as land wars were concerned I had at last reached the point where defensively I was mostly secure.
...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)
While this may look like a lot of rebels, I usually swung between 5-7 million active soldiers who would use the railway networks to crush rebellions of this size within 1-2 weeks. Also notable in the pic, is that it was my first use of my armoured brigades - my tanks effortlessly crushed the rebels and soon accosted the British, confirming their fall and my ascent as the world's foremost power. At this point I tried to see if I could make my Navy as strong as my Army, but while I got up to steamships I realised I'd never get a Japanese or British navy in time before the game ended, I contented myself with making a large air force and armoured brigades, especially once all the Middle Eastern oil fell under my sphere of influence. I occasionally intervened in European politics - my favourite one being when I made Germany win WWII by flooding them with war subsidies, making their war go from -70 to victory, cutting subsidies once they outlived their usefulness.
(https://i.imgur.com/7YSCx1M.png)
By the end my power was confirmed; when it came to industry or land power, everyone else was fighting for second place. And while my prestige wasn't as good as my industry or military, I was rather pleased that the more prestigious powers like Germany continued to bleed prestige in disastrous wars. With even Spain, Turkey and Portugal under my sphere of influence, the Western Indian states allied with me against British Imperialism, I had at last built up a force which could actually overcome British defences and liberate India.
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)
Germany grew some, Germany lost some. Most signifcantly they won lots of Netherlands, all of Alsace-Lorraine and Bohemia in the Great War, but they lost it all (and then France shoved a boot down their throat) in subsequent wars. Note American Morocco and American Suez, while for all of the Ottoman Empire's problems, Turkey actually did pretty well for itself in spite of Russian or Western interventions. Russia tended to seesaw between irrelevance and stunning supremacy pretty regularly, so you could never tell how powerful they really were at any one moment - at this point, they were very powerful. Tiny Krakow is still alive, sandwiched between Germany and Austria-Hungary.
(https://i.imgur.com/T14JtEP.jpg)
The Scramble for Africa was weird, largely owing to the Turkish Empire retaining great power status long enough to continue colonising, while the Belgians were destroyed in Europe. The Americans grabbed a small slice, while the rest was split between the British, Germans, Dutch, Turks and the French in the Congo. Note as well, that the Japanese have territory on the African coast (southeast corner, by Turkish Africa), which is occupied by the British. Meanwhile in the top right, the British lands in Arabia are occupied by Japan. Towards the end the British Royal Navy and Imperial Japanese Navy were the world's foremost naval powers (besides the USA) and were fighting an inconclusive war for dominance in the seas.
(https://i.imgur.com/0GXdt9s.jpg)
Despite the fall of the European continental Dutch lands, the Dutch African lands served as a suitable government to flee too, besides the other two Dutch African Republics. South America is pretty unremarkable besides Chile taking much of Argentina, while America linked Alaska to the rest of the USA by land in a pretty disgusting looking fashion.
If anyone buys a Paradox game without expecting the Paradox standard that's on them. The fact that they're pushing out so soon tells me either:
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.