Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[ZeroGravitas]

just listened to an interview with johan: https://play.acast.com/s/vicegamingsnewpodcast/onbeinganentertainerandmanasystems-aninterviewwithparadoxsjohananderson

so gratifying to hear him say that imperator was a failure and mana was a mistake

he typically doubles down so hard against any criticism

[Cruxador]

Mind summarizing? I won't be able to conveniently do audio for like a week.

[Hanzoku]

The thing that killed this game for me is that you can run out of leaders because none of the families produce heirs at any speed, or often, at all. This means that you can’t rely on your original families, you have to take in all the families from countries you conquer just to maintain a pool of characters.

[Stench Guzman]

Is there any reason to play Imperator if you've already played Crusader Kings, Europa Universalis and Victoria?

[Trolldefender99]

Is there any reason to play Imperator if you've already played Crusader Kings, Europa Universalis and Victoria?

Imperator isnt very good.

This is the strategy to do in every game in Imperator as anyone that isn't a barbarian. Works 100% of the time, no console commands or mods needed

Non-egypt strategy:
1.Befriend seleucids or antogonids (or if partly, lucky both, usually I can do both). Or just antogonids if seleucid and vice versa
2. Declare war on egypt, bring in seleucids or antogonids or both
3. Grats you got a huge portion of the nile, alexandria and a massive population. You are now a world power
4. Wait a while and get more of egypt. Better to not declare war right after just to have time to convert and what not.

Egypt strategy (a bit harder this)
1. Ally seleucids (easy to do since they start with friends with the ruler)
2. Declare war on antogonids
3. Grats you probably were able to conquer all the way to Syria region and able to take antogonids capital+the 2 mountain pass forts
Side note: May need mercenaries, depends how good seleucids do

If you are antogonids, ally egypt and take a ton of seleucids up to the capital region. Win the game. First make sure to get that one city in greece from macedon, its that one province in the middle part of the coast, west of athens I believe. You need that to get a special (positive) event for 10 years as antogonids.

Every game I do that and become a world power.

You can do this as sparta too, and take egypt. Athens. Anyone in greece and close enough to egypt or antogonids. No matter who you play (as long as they can interact with egypt), you can take egypt and gain very good land, amazing capital region and a ton of pop

Too easy. Sure you can choose to not do this, but this shows how easy the game is.

Eu4, CK2 and victoria 2 are much more difficult and can't be gamed like that (or I suck at them? But its much harder to do it than imperator even if I just suck at them)

[ZeroGravitas]

Mind summarizing? I won't be able to conveniently do audio for like a week.

imperator was a failure in johan's eyes: it was commercially successfully but the number of people playing dropped like a rock and never recovered

mostly because of design flaws: for example, mana was inserted late in development, so they tried to come up with a bunch of stuff to do with the mana, which didn't really fit the existing game well

generally, he just thinks the game wasn't complex and interesting enough to keep players around.

[Cruxador]

Mind summarizing? I won't be able to conveniently do audio for like a week.

imperator was a failure in johan's eyes: it was commercially successfully but the number of people playing dropped like a rock and never recovered

mostly because of design flaws: for example, mana was inserted late in development, so they tried to come up with a bunch of stuff to do with the mana, which didn't really fit the existing game well

generally, he just thinks the game wasn't complex and interesting enough to keep players around.

Seems like a level-headed and accurate take. Hopefully they are able to save the game and make it fun despite the botch. But having developed a reputation that their games are only good after a few years of development can't have done them any favors either.

[RazielReaver]

just listened to an interview with johan: https://play.acast.com/s/vicegamingsnewpodcast/onbeinganentertainerandmanasystems-aninterviewwithparadoxsjohananderson

so gratifying to hear him say that imperator was a failure and mana was a mistake

he typically doubles down so hard against any criticism

Johan did double down initially, and the outcry got even worse.
Oh funny that, I can't find the post he made on the Paradox forums anymore, I wonder why...



Edit: Found it

[Hanzoku]

Or to summarize:

Everyone: We don't like what you're doing!

Johan: I don't care.

[Greenbane]

Yeah... I'm not so sure.

From my point of view, it's gamers being gamers, and a developer who's taking it personal instead of putting the usual distance most devs do. There's a design vision, which is up to the design team, and that's it. One can adjust wildly unpopular features, but it doesn't make much sense to bend entirely to the will of a part of the community.

As I said earlier, I've yet to get Imperator, but to a significant extent the Paradox community's used to playing wildly expanded games like EU4 and CK2. Then a wild 1.0 comes around and a chunk of people rage because a launch-level game doesn't have nearly as much content as one with years worth of expansions under its belt. The co-star of this drama is the cynical fallacy that games are deliberately, conspiratorially released with less content, specifically cut to be sold afterwards as DLC, showing a blatant ignorance of how software development (and plain logic) works.

Or to summarize:

Everyone: We don't like what you're doing!

Johan: I don't care.

I suppose you can add this to the list of fallacies, that the vocal chunk is close to "everyone".

And every dev is entitled to think "I don't care". Perhaps Johan's mistake is saying it so overtly, without PR in the middle.

[Hanzoku]

Oh no, content isn’t cut to be sold later, companies have learned from the fallout of launch day DLC delivered on media. Core content isn’t developed or delivered until later because modern gamers are OK with games being delivered at full price while still being in beta or even alpha stage of development.

The vocal feedback from a supportive community (those who join and follow the Paradox forums) and the silent majority who voted with their wallets and attention that have left Imperator dead on steam gives my statement a certain weight.

[Teneb]

Oh no, content isn’t cut to be sold later, companies have learned from the fallout of launch day DLC delivered on media.

Oh I wish. Mind you, I haven't seen this happening with Pdox, but it totally does happen elsewhere.

[scriver]

Yeah... I'm not so sure.

From my point of view, it's gamers being gamers, and a developer who's taking it personal instead of putting the usual distance most devs do. There's a design vision, which is up to the design team, and that's it. One can adjust wildly unpopular features, but it doesn't make much sense to bend entirely to the will of a part of the community.

As I said earlier, I've yet to get Imperator, but to a significant extent the Paradox community's used to playing wildly expanded games like EU4 and CK2. Then a wild 1.0 comes around and a chunk of people rage because a launch-level game doesn't have nearly as much content as one with years worth of expansions under its belt. The co-star of this drama is the cynical fallacy that games are deliberately, conspiratorially released with less content, specifically cut to be sold afterwards as DLC, showing a blatant ignorance of how software development (and plain logic) works.

Or to summarize:

Everyone: We don't like what you're doing!

Johan: I don't care.

I suppose you can add this to the list of fallacies, that the vocal chunk is close to "everyone".

And every dev is entitled to think "I don't care". Perhaps Johan's mistake is saying it so overtly, without PR in the middle.

They -- Paradox themselves -- have literally confirmed that it's was nearly everyone. Imperator was commercially a success, however, people stopped playing it immediately, and the amount of players hasn't risen since. Sure, only a minority got vocal about it. But the vast majority of players bought it, tried it, and was so disappointed that they didn't try it out again. This by Paradox's own words.

[Urist McScoopbeard]

Id say thats accurate. Its just not that interesting of a game. Of all the Pdox games, its the most map-painter of them all. Even more than Stellaris which is dreadfully dull sans mods. (Even then, meh.)

[Greenbane]

Core content isn’t developed or delivered until later because modern gamers are OK with games being delivered at full price while still being in beta or even alpha stage of development.

Conspiracy theory + lack of knowledge about software development again. Bug-ridden trainwrecks are few: most often it's people foolishly expecting unrealistically perfect QA.

And yeah, full price is full price. I wonder in which parallel dimension companies would release games proportionately discounted according to the bugs/content they have, dictated by some divine oversight. Any criticism involving "full price" is largely a strawman anyway, considering the sales culture, regnant for years now. Don't like the current state of the game? Wait and see, and maybe get it when it's cheaper if it picks up.

It's hard not to sound like I'm defending Paradox, but I suppose I'm mainly tired of seeing the same old clichés cropping up again and again, demanding impossible standards because what do people know anyway.

They -- Paradox themselves -- have literally confirmed that it's was nearly everyone. Imperator was commercially a success, however, people stopped playing it immediately, and the amount of players hasn't risen since. Sure, only a minority got vocal about it. But the vast majority of players bought it, tried it, and was so disappointed that they didn't try it out again. This by Paradox's own words.

It'd seem Imperator crashed harder than other flagship PDX games, but player counts have been slowly rising. CK2 also started fairly small, being the sequel to a rather secondary game in the company's lineup, and slowly climbed in time as more content rolled out.

Stellaris went through a significant crash, and while it's never been able to hold me past the early game despite several attempts and increasing numbers of DLCs, its player count has risen over time and is now relatively close to CK2's.

Maybe it's the theme. Perhaps the Roman period (which doesn't even cover the Empire) is rather niché compared to the Middle Ages in general, the Age of Exploration, World War II and even a generic space opera.

It remains to be seen whether Paradox sticks to their guns and keeps improving/expanding Imperator, or determines it best to let it go the way of the likes of Sengoku and March of the Eagles.