own armies, and in most cases they
start out small and poor, though often
they’re surrounded by lots of
opportunities for expansion. They’re
perhaps the least developed of the
bunch, yet there’s still a lot going on,
from managing migrations to uniting
everyone against the superpowers.
Rome and its rivals are the stars, but
go off the beaten track and you’ll find
plenty of diversions.
DE ATH AND TA XES
No matter who you play, there are
certain constants: you’ll need to pass
laws, appeal to the gods, develop your
nation’s infrastructure in countless
different ways and crush rebellions.
Praying to Ceres (by spending
religious power, just as the ancients
did...) will net a bonus to population
growth, while building more
marketplaces will generate more
taxes. Then there are the faceless
masses to manage – your citizens
that generate research points, your
freemen that give you more
manpower – and they all come with
their own religions, cultures and
level of happiness.
Imperator is overflowing with
information on the most granular
stuff. Exploring it is confusing at first,
but then you start to see how all the
stats and crises fit together, leading
you to a solution over
the course of multiple
menus. I love it, but it
can also be frustrating.
With a tutorial that
glosses over most of the
important features and
no help system, you’ve
got to figure out
essentially a foreign
language – especially if this is your
first Paradox game – all on your
own. There’s no dearth of detail or
tooltips, but sometimes it’s so
condensed that the explanations can
get lost in translation.
It’s a lot, but everything you build
and tweak is connected to one of the
game’s pillars and eventually starts to
make sense. You need a bigger army?
Build more training camps and get
more freemen. Broke? Hike up taxes
and build more marketplaces. You
can make lots of changes very
quickly. Alternatively, you can go
through each province individually,
fine-tuning them, moving people
between cities, endlessly tweaking
until it’s 3am and when you close
your eyes all you can see are
demographics. And then you make a
mistake and you’ve got a revolt on
your hands. It’s great.
Imperator’s wars are some of
Paradox’s best. Once you’ve
fabricated claims on provinces and
found an excuse for war, you can
start marching your troops across the
border. That’s more complicated than
it sounds, however, because
Imperator’s map is full of obstacles.
Weather, rough terrain, fortresses –
they’ll inevitably cost you battles.
There are bottlenecks and dead ends
and whole regions cut in half by
massive mountain ranges, making
planning your army’s journey all the
more essential, as well as building
roads and defences
around the geography.TEAM BUILDING
You can recruit 12
different types of unit,
but they’re only
available if that city has
access to a specific
resource. You need
horses for cavalry, iron for heavy
infantry and obviously elephants for
war elephants. To make your perfect
army, you’ll need to expand and
trade. Composition matters, too, as it
makes your battle tactics more
effective. These can be selected
before battle, each with their own
benefits and counters, but picking
the right tactic won’t mean much
if you don’t have the appropriate
units to back it up.
Coupled with returning
complications like supply limits and
army morale, the additional attention
given to warfare means that
Imperator ventures into wargame
territory quite a lot, and largely with
success. It’s more tactically rich than
most of its predecessors and less
abstract, but it manages to avoidcrossing the line from complex to
needlessly complicated. The AI is less
aggressive and expansionist than I’d
expect, but this gives you more space
to deal with all the internal conflicts.
It ultimately balances out.
Imperator is a meaty game, but it
still feels like there are some gaps.
Navies are a bit ignored, for instance,
lacking the tactical options of ground
units and limited to a single type of
trireme. There’s just not much for
them do to beyond ferrying troops
and occasionally chasing pirates.
Imperator has a lot of water, so it
would be nice if interesting things
happened there. Thankfully, there’s
apparently an update on the cards
that aims to tackle boats.
While there are lots of playable
nations, only a handful seem to
have been given the bespoke
treatment. While each of them will
keep you busy for an extremely long
time, there are definitely places
where I could see an expansion
fleshing areas out, particularly the
migratory and settled tribes. It’s still
audaciously large, however, and
ridiculously time consuming.
But what’s the point in time if you
can’t spend it turning a once mighty
empire into a subservient client state
or dabbling in a spot of court
intrigue? Imperator is endlessly
fascinating and I expect to be digging
through it for ages. Give me four
more pages and I’d still have more to
write. In lieu of extra pages: it’s a
corker and you should probably
checkit out.92
Imperator: Rome is
huge, inventive and it is
the reason that I’m
now sleep deprived. It’s
that brilliant.VERDICTImperator’s
wars are
some of
Paradox’s
bestMY FAVOURITE ASSHOLES Meet the Roman Republic’s dream team
LUCIUS FABRICUS
I sent this guy to conquer
Carthage, which he did,
but when I politely asked
him to stop looting and
pillaging, he refused and
started a civil war.MARCUS
MARCNITHUR
While waiting for soldiers
to board his fleet, Admiral
Marcnithur “died in
flagrante delicto” and was
replaced by a teenager.LUCER
MARCNITHUR
I’m not trying to pick on
this one family here, but
just look at this dude. I
don’t know what he did,
but it’s probably awful.GNAEUS FLAVIUS
A chaste scholar who only
wanted to be content in
life, apparently, but he
still messed up my plans
for war and started
slagging off my leader.Imperator: Rome
REVIEW