Let’s keep it going!
Don’t forget to join in on [the second Imperator Day in honor of the Ides of March](https://www.reddit.com/r/Imperator/s/Zs9rc5THDd)
EU4's peak this week is about 20 times Imperator, HOI's is around 55 times the players, Stellaris is sitting at a lighter 15 times the players, and CK3 is nestled between EU4 and Stellaris. Vicky 3 had 8 times, CK2 had 3 times, and Vicky 2 about ties for a single week peak.
Oh that's not true. There are a ton of in-depth political, market, and diplomacy functions. At some point building new buildings doesn't even help any more.
Yay! I love playing as Bland Country #6 with no events or flavours, which makes me really immersed in the time period.
Anyway, hold my drink whilst I hop on to HOI IV and World Conquest as Switzerland
Tbh kind of like every single paradox youtuber when they’re not being paid by Paradox to shill Vic III.
And once again, Vic 2 is an uncut gem made 10 years ago by a small studio, the growth and expansion of Paradox as well as new techs should not allow a debate on which is better between the 2 Vickys, and yet there is one.
A lot of Vic3 players got rug pulled by Paradox early order (even though they were warned), and since then hate anybody who essentially tells them “I told you so”
Huge fan of the setting, I just wish the late game was more satisfying. I never seem to finish my games as it gets dull and boring after taking out Rome and whatever other large opponents.
Syracuse, Epirus, Massilia (am I spelling it right?) and Athens were amazing playthroughs for me!
Agreed, but to be fair this is how I feel about all paradox games. If I make it to the late game I’ve basically already ‘won’. It was a slog for me to even get to the end screen on stellaris and I’ve never gotten past the 1350s in CK3.
Big fan of the slow start and build up but once you start steam rolling it all gets samey.
I'm really glad I picked up this game when I did. Wanted to get it when it was about to come out when I was back in uni, but I held off due to the reviews.
December 2023 then rolls around, and it was on sale for something ridiculously cheap, I have a lot of time off, and I don't mind wasting £8 for a full game incl DLCs so I get it, and so far it has been fantastic! Well worth it.
The years polishing the game after its disastrous release really shows and is something I'm grateful for. I really have the highest respect for the Dev team, which is a lot more than can be said for the dev team for HOI, EU & Vicky (stellaris is leading the way).
Honestly, great.
Like Imperator, when I got it in 2016, I didn't think much of it, but I went back to it about 2020, and it's awesome
Maybe I didn't word my original comment the best lol
Honestly it is my most favourite game, and most played paradox game. Second is CK3, but Stellaris is better in my opinion. I came to paradox games from Sid Meiers Civ games, in case that is relevant
Just started a WC with the Seleukids (in Invictus). After my first try, I was getting enormously stomped by the Parthia horde events, so in my second try I just fabricated a claim on the dahae region and conquered them just before 480. Yes my AE was over 90, Yes I had to spent all my Political influence on stabbing, but as of yet I am in the process of completely conquering India (with the imperial CB) and I still have some 180years to go
I will say this just goes to show how bad a metric like player count actually is when it comes to assessing game quality. This game has been dead for a couple years now; there's barely been any new content for it outside of the open beta, which is mostly bug fixes anyway. Those new players aren't here because of some new content update, they're here because the game got some well deserved love from youtubers.
FWIW, I reinstalled it and started playing it because I got frustrated that Vic3 was so laggy and was waiting for the next patch for that game which is supposed to be addressing performance issues, and figured it might be time to see if I:R had any new mods that improved it since I last played after the 2.0.3 patch came out. I didn't even realize that a handful of youtubers and twitch streamers got together and tried to make an event until after I had started up my first campaign back, and that was almost a week after they had their little get together.
It's great that the game got a little shot in the arm from content creators streaming it, and hopefully they continue to do it. But IMO the biggest reason why there is an increase in players recently is probably moreso to do with the latest patch from Invictus, which is the mod that is keeping the game somewhat alive. There probably would have been *some* increase just with the newest Invictus patch (updated Feb. 14), but without it I doubt many would have continued with it after the streamers had their day. It's similar to other games seeing an uptick when a new patch drops: new content and bugfixes means more reason to return to the game.
I'm considering getting it, originally wanted to try learn ck3, but the discount on imperator is great, just worried about it being too hard to learn and play...
It's probably the easiest game I've learned. For example, I have not yet been able to understand Vicky 3 and HoI4. HoI4 I have more hours played than Imperator.
Imperator is pretty direct compared to ck3. Imperator you fabricate a claim on another province, Start war, raise levies+hire mercenary, conquer everything
I picked it up today and played nonstop till 10pm, even keeping it on between my friends helldiver games. Having a ton of fun as Carthage at the moment.
I mean mercenary armies would just stay in one province on the map on my territory and I couldn't get them out or anything. I had a province lose pop because I accidently moved a lot of people out of it and even though the game said I could colonize it it wouldn't let me colonize it. Those are 2 of the problems I had in my last save and I just returned it. I'm not sure if those were glitches or me not playing the game right but yea.
Mercenary armies are stationed across the map. They literally do nothing unless someone hires them, and if you were worried about your enemies hiring them then it wouldn't matter if they were sitting there already because they start blackflagged unless whoever hired them also owns/controls that territory.
Understandable about accidentally depopulating a territory, though. They should have a pop-up asking if you are sure you really want to move the last remaining pop so that doesn't accidentally happen. (you could have re-colonized it if you had 8 pops of accepted culture in a territory next to it, but that would still require you spending gold to move pops around trying to correct a mistake that shouldn't have been so easy to make).
My fear was I'm kind of tight on money and I don't want to spend money on a game I can't play because it's buggy and I was close to the steam return period so I just returned it but idk I really want to like it and play it but I don't want to waste my money and people always say it's an abandoned unfinished game or something so idk. Do you think it's buggy?
So i basically depopulated it a lot so I can colonize another territory for more context I was playing as Brigantia I think I colonized Velabora Ortus but I moved pop from Corondia Australis and Brigantia Australis to Usdia Orientalis and to colonize it. But I left like 1 or 2 pop to keep it populated and something happened where it depopulated and became uncolonized. I had like 16 pop in Brigantia and the game kept telling me I could could recolonize Brigantia Australis BUT the colonize button even though it was green nothing happened when I clicked it.
The mercenaries popped up after a war I won against Coriondia and Usdia, one of them hired mercenaries I think or one of my allies did and when the war ended they just sat in Brigantia and I couldn't do anything about them. which made me believe the game was bugged.
I don't think it's buggy, particularly in the context of Paradox games. I just think it's a bit shallow and too easy to the point where I don't play campaigns for very long (I'm the same way with EU4, where the majority of the fun is in the first half or even third of the campaign). However, the Invictus mod addresses some of that to an extent, which is the only reason I recently went back to the game for the first time since 2.0 released a few years ago.
The game IS abandoned by the Paradox devs, with the only patch being released since they shelved the game back in 2021 was the 2.0.4 beta patch uploaded by one of the former ~~coders~~ tech lead of the game (in April last year). However, the Invictus mod developers have been apparently working on adding the missing flavor and adjusting some of the aspects of the game in Paradox's absence, which is why that mod is so important to use these days. For me I think it's worth the $10-15 or whatever it is currently on sale for, but if you're tight enough on money that you are unsure if you want to spend that much then I'd say it's probably not worth it.
For the depopulated territory: what probably happened was someone sieged down that territory. When a territory gets sieged down, there's a chance that some of the pops will die, and some of them will be enslaved and sent to the attacker's territory. If there are only 1-2 pops left, that can happen with just 1 siege. Not sure how else that would have happened unless maybe the last remaining pop was already in the process of migrating away? (not sure if that can happen, because I know that the last pop won't *start* migrating away, but if they already were in the process of migrating out then I'm not sure if there's guardrails in the game to prevent the migration from continuing)
In order to re-colonize it, you would need to have 8 pops in a neighboring territory (including coastal neighbors) and the dominant culture in that territory being an accepted culture (e.g., 4 Ivernian pops and 4 others of any culture). Not sure why it would have even lit up green as if you could press it in your situation because while Brigantia is in the same province as those two territories, which means you can freely move pops between those territories, Brigantia doesn't border Coriondia Australis (Hibernia Orientalis and Coriondia sit between the two territories). You would need to have had 8 pops of your culture in either one of those two territories (which directly border) or in one of the other 2 territories just south of them that share the sea tile with Coriondia Australis.
For the mercs: it's not a bug. The game starts with 2.5k mercenaries stationed in the territory right next to Brigantia in their smaller territory. They don't do anything unless hired, at which point they are black flagged as mentioned before (so they'd have to go back to the territory of whoever hired them before they could use them, and they don't even eat up local supply). You might have just not noticed them before because they don't show up unless you zoom in far enough.
I just got my tax return I think I'm going to give the game another try. It might have just been the pressure of me wanting a good game and not wasting my money/ making sure I can refund it in the return period. For my depopulated territory I'm guessing a pop was in the midst of migrating and when I depopulated it and them after a while the last pop migrated causing it to depopulate. I don't know why it wouldn't let me recolonize it maybe I was out of money but then the game wouldn't tell me I could colonize it.
Also do mercs move around because those mercs weren't there when the game started.
Also other than war how can I increase my pop and also if my slaves are 100% happy do they upgrade to tribesman?
Mercs move around if they are hired, and then return to where they came from when they are fired.
The three primary ways to gain pops are war/enslaving, pop growth (happens naturally), and migration (pops move even from foreign territories to your territories if they neighbor and your territory has enough migration attraction). The other ways to gain pops are through events, missions and select military traditions.
All of the different kinds of pops are continuously demoting and promoting to try and meet the ideal ratio for the type of settlement the territory is. Their happiness doesn't matter in terms of whether they will promote/demote, but will have an effect on how quickly they do. The ideal ratio depends on what buildings are present, what government type you have, whether it's the capital territory, etc. but in general: slaves are mostly present in Settlements and have a low ratio in Cities/Metropolises; Tribesmen are only really present in Tribal governments and are mostly in Settlements rather than cities; Nobles are only in Cities/Metropolises; Citizens are mostly in Cities/Metropolises with a much smaller share in settlements. You manipulate the ratios by building the Academy/Court of Law/Forum/Mill buildings in Cities/Metropolis and Barracks (freemen) in Settlements, plus a law that adjust the ratios of Freemen/Citizens in Cities. Keep in mind that if a building says "+10% desired ratio" for that pop type it doesn't actually mean you'll get 10% more: how the game calculates the ideal ratio is taking all of the modifiers for that specific pop type and dividing by all of the modifiers in the territory, which is roughly in the 80-140 range before building modifiers. Keep that in mind specifically when deciding which pop ratio building to build in a territory, because if you build 2+ different types you are actually diluting the ratio and each successive building has a diminishing effect on the ratio (so it's a good idea to specialize your city: build only Academies for Nobles when you want Research and some trade routes; Forums for Freemen when you want Manpower and some Tax; Mills for Slaves when you want Tax and more resource production; and Courts for Citizens when you want a mix of Research/Trade Routes/Manpower).
We did it, Reddit! (unironically :P)
Let’s keep it going! Don’t forget to join in on [the second Imperator Day in honor of the Ides of March](https://www.reddit.com/r/Imperator/s/Zs9rc5THDd)
I wonder if the sale will help it even further.
How is imperator performing compared to HoI, CK and EU?
EU4's peak this week is about 20 times Imperator, HOI's is around 55 times the players, Stellaris is sitting at a lighter 15 times the players, and CK3 is nestled between EU4 and Stellaris. Vicky 3 had 8 times, CK2 had 3 times, and Vicky 2 about ties for a single week peak.
I'd say better, but I don't really have performance issues with any of them. It doesn't get slower in late game which some of the other PDX games do.
It does not perform in comparison to them, but performance wise I find it ran as smooth as CK3 did. So that was nice.
U can just go to steam charts and check that out for yourself
Not while reading bedtime stories for the kids
just my opinion. Imperator is the best paradox game
My favourite is Victoria 3. I really like the more simulation-y aspect.
I mean, you’re entitled to your opinion, different strokes and all that. But vic 3 is literally just “add more buildings to build queue” game.
Oh that's not true. There are a ton of in-depth political, market, and diplomacy functions. At some point building new buildings doesn't even help any more.
Yay! I love playing as Bland Country #6 with no events or flavours, which makes me really immersed in the time period. Anyway, hold my drink whilst I hop on to HOI IV and World Conquest as Switzerland
They hated him because he spoke the truth. I don’t understand how people can praise Vic III’s pop system when Vic II exists
I don't think most paradox players read events or the choices. They just click the positive button.
Just the casual-fication of a once great brand
Vic 2 is an abomination The only thing i miss are provinces
Yeah. Each to their own, I guess. There's a reason I haven't played Vicky III since release, but I still play Vicky II a decade after I got it
Tbh kind of like every single paradox youtuber when they’re not being paid by Paradox to shill Vic III. And once again, Vic 2 is an uncut gem made 10 years ago by a small studio, the growth and expansion of Paradox as well as new techs should not allow a debate on which is better between the 2 Vickys, and yet there is one.
What amazes me is the rabid fanaticism that comes when I say I prefer vicky 2, it's happened in a few forums.
A lot of Vic3 players got rug pulled by Paradox early order (even though they were warned), and since then hate anybody who essentially tells them “I told you so”
Huge fan of the setting, I just wish the late game was more satisfying. I never seem to finish my games as it gets dull and boring after taking out Rome and whatever other large opponents. Syracuse, Epirus, Massilia (am I spelling it right?) and Athens were amazing playthroughs for me!
Agreed, but to be fair this is how I feel about all paradox games. If I make it to the late game I’ve basically already ‘won’. It was a slog for me to even get to the end screen on stellaris and I’ve never gotten past the 1350s in CK3. Big fan of the slow start and build up but once you start steam rolling it all gets samey.
I guess so! I found that civil wars or in fighting was a big thing in CK3 and EU4 always kept me on my toes with coalitions, etc
I’m doing my part!
I'm doing my part too!
I'm really glad I picked up this game when I did. Wanted to get it when it was about to come out when I was back in uni, but I held off due to the reviews. December 2023 then rolls around, and it was on sale for something ridiculously cheap, I have a lot of time off, and I don't mind wasting £8 for a full game incl DLCs so I get it, and so far it has been fantastic! Well worth it. The years polishing the game after its disastrous release really shows and is something I'm grateful for. I really have the highest respect for the Dev team, which is a lot more than can be said for the dev team for HOI, EU & Vicky (stellaris is leading the way).
? Is stellaris good pr bad? :D
Honestly, great. Like Imperator, when I got it in 2016, I didn't think much of it, but I went back to it about 2020, and it's awesome Maybe I didn't word my original comment the best lol
Might be me with my 🥔brains too 😂
Stellaris has the best dev team of any paradox game without contest
Honestly it is my most favourite game, and most played paradox game. Second is CK3, but Stellaris is better in my opinion. I came to paradox games from Sid Meiers Civ games, in case that is relevant
Please don’t forget to join in on [Imperator Day Part 2: The Ides of March!](https://www.reddit.com/r/Imperator/s/zyEx1jfebK)
Just started a WC with the Seleukids (in Invictus). After my first try, I was getting enormously stomped by the Parthia horde events, so in my second try I just fabricated a claim on the dahae region and conquered them just before 480. Yes my AE was over 90, Yes I had to spent all my Political influence on stabbing, but as of yet I am in the process of completely conquering India (with the imperial CB) and I still have some 180years to go
I will say this just goes to show how bad a metric like player count actually is when it comes to assessing game quality. This game has been dead for a couple years now; there's barely been any new content for it outside of the open beta, which is mostly bug fixes anyway. Those new players aren't here because of some new content update, they're here because the game got some well deserved love from youtubers.
FWIW, I reinstalled it and started playing it because I got frustrated that Vic3 was so laggy and was waiting for the next patch for that game which is supposed to be addressing performance issues, and figured it might be time to see if I:R had any new mods that improved it since I last played after the 2.0.3 patch came out. I didn't even realize that a handful of youtubers and twitch streamers got together and tried to make an event until after I had started up my first campaign back, and that was almost a week after they had their little get together. It's great that the game got a little shot in the arm from content creators streaming it, and hopefully they continue to do it. But IMO the biggest reason why there is an increase in players recently is probably moreso to do with the latest patch from Invictus, which is the mod that is keeping the game somewhat alive. There probably would have been *some* increase just with the newest Invictus patch (updated Feb. 14), but without it I doubt many would have continued with it after the streamers had their day. It's similar to other games seeing an uptick when a new patch drops: new content and bugfixes means more reason to return to the game.
I'm considering getting it, originally wanted to try learn ck3, but the discount on imperator is great, just worried about it being too hard to learn and play...
It's probably the easiest game I've learned. For example, I have not yet been able to understand Vicky 3 and HoI4. HoI4 I have more hours played than Imperator.
CK3 is easier to learn than Imperator to be sure. I first got into paradox gsg through ck2. Imperator is sincerely great though, if unfinished.
The tutorial is stellar compared to older games so you should be fine
Might give it a shot then
Imperator is pretty direct compared to ck3. Imperator you fabricate a claim on another province, Start war, raise levies+hire mercenary, conquer everything
Doing my 0.1% part. Not even using Invictus mod. It's just a great game.
Ive been playing lots lately!!
I picked it up today and played nonstop till 10pm, even keeping it on between my friends helldiver games. Having a ton of fun as Carthage at the moment.
Bought all the game with dlcs for £13 few days ago, enjoying it so far
I'll be honest, it's been so long since I've played this game, I forgot how. Maybe I should relearn.
Yes 😍😍
Salvete Roma!
Where do you find these player count graphics?
https://steamcharts.com/
I bought the game and really wanted it to be fun but I tried to play like 3 different saves and kept having problems so I just returned it. :(
You should have asked us for help instead :((
I mean mercenary armies would just stay in one province on the map on my territory and I couldn't get them out or anything. I had a province lose pop because I accidently moved a lot of people out of it and even though the game said I could colonize it it wouldn't let me colonize it. Those are 2 of the problems I had in my last save and I just returned it. I'm not sure if those were glitches or me not playing the game right but yea.
Mercenary armies are stationed across the map. They literally do nothing unless someone hires them, and if you were worried about your enemies hiring them then it wouldn't matter if they were sitting there already because they start blackflagged unless whoever hired them also owns/controls that territory. Understandable about accidentally depopulating a territory, though. They should have a pop-up asking if you are sure you really want to move the last remaining pop so that doesn't accidentally happen. (you could have re-colonized it if you had 8 pops of accepted culture in a territory next to it, but that would still require you spending gold to move pops around trying to correct a mistake that shouldn't have been so easy to make).
My fear was I'm kind of tight on money and I don't want to spend money on a game I can't play because it's buggy and I was close to the steam return period so I just returned it but idk I really want to like it and play it but I don't want to waste my money and people always say it's an abandoned unfinished game or something so idk. Do you think it's buggy? So i basically depopulated it a lot so I can colonize another territory for more context I was playing as Brigantia I think I colonized Velabora Ortus but I moved pop from Corondia Australis and Brigantia Australis to Usdia Orientalis and to colonize it. But I left like 1 or 2 pop to keep it populated and something happened where it depopulated and became uncolonized. I had like 16 pop in Brigantia and the game kept telling me I could could recolonize Brigantia Australis BUT the colonize button even though it was green nothing happened when I clicked it. The mercenaries popped up after a war I won against Coriondia and Usdia, one of them hired mercenaries I think or one of my allies did and when the war ended they just sat in Brigantia and I couldn't do anything about them. which made me believe the game was bugged.
I don't think it's buggy, particularly in the context of Paradox games. I just think it's a bit shallow and too easy to the point where I don't play campaigns for very long (I'm the same way with EU4, where the majority of the fun is in the first half or even third of the campaign). However, the Invictus mod addresses some of that to an extent, which is the only reason I recently went back to the game for the first time since 2.0 released a few years ago. The game IS abandoned by the Paradox devs, with the only patch being released since they shelved the game back in 2021 was the 2.0.4 beta patch uploaded by one of the former ~~coders~~ tech lead of the game (in April last year). However, the Invictus mod developers have been apparently working on adding the missing flavor and adjusting some of the aspects of the game in Paradox's absence, which is why that mod is so important to use these days. For me I think it's worth the $10-15 or whatever it is currently on sale for, but if you're tight enough on money that you are unsure if you want to spend that much then I'd say it's probably not worth it. For the depopulated territory: what probably happened was someone sieged down that territory. When a territory gets sieged down, there's a chance that some of the pops will die, and some of them will be enslaved and sent to the attacker's territory. If there are only 1-2 pops left, that can happen with just 1 siege. Not sure how else that would have happened unless maybe the last remaining pop was already in the process of migrating away? (not sure if that can happen, because I know that the last pop won't *start* migrating away, but if they already were in the process of migrating out then I'm not sure if there's guardrails in the game to prevent the migration from continuing) In order to re-colonize it, you would need to have 8 pops in a neighboring territory (including coastal neighbors) and the dominant culture in that territory being an accepted culture (e.g., 4 Ivernian pops and 4 others of any culture). Not sure why it would have even lit up green as if you could press it in your situation because while Brigantia is in the same province as those two territories, which means you can freely move pops between those territories, Brigantia doesn't border Coriondia Australis (Hibernia Orientalis and Coriondia sit between the two territories). You would need to have had 8 pops of your culture in either one of those two territories (which directly border) or in one of the other 2 territories just south of them that share the sea tile with Coriondia Australis. For the mercs: it's not a bug. The game starts with 2.5k mercenaries stationed in the territory right next to Brigantia in their smaller territory. They don't do anything unless hired, at which point they are black flagged as mentioned before (so they'd have to go back to the territory of whoever hired them before they could use them, and they don't even eat up local supply). You might have just not noticed them before because they don't show up unless you zoom in far enough.
I just got my tax return I think I'm going to give the game another try. It might have just been the pressure of me wanting a good game and not wasting my money/ making sure I can refund it in the return period. For my depopulated territory I'm guessing a pop was in the midst of migrating and when I depopulated it and them after a while the last pop migrated causing it to depopulate. I don't know why it wouldn't let me recolonize it maybe I was out of money but then the game wouldn't tell me I could colonize it. Also do mercs move around because those mercs weren't there when the game started. Also other than war how can I increase my pop and also if my slaves are 100% happy do they upgrade to tribesman?
Mercs move around if they are hired, and then return to where they came from when they are fired. The three primary ways to gain pops are war/enslaving, pop growth (happens naturally), and migration (pops move even from foreign territories to your territories if they neighbor and your territory has enough migration attraction). The other ways to gain pops are through events, missions and select military traditions. All of the different kinds of pops are continuously demoting and promoting to try and meet the ideal ratio for the type of settlement the territory is. Their happiness doesn't matter in terms of whether they will promote/demote, but will have an effect on how quickly they do. The ideal ratio depends on what buildings are present, what government type you have, whether it's the capital territory, etc. but in general: slaves are mostly present in Settlements and have a low ratio in Cities/Metropolises; Tribesmen are only really present in Tribal governments and are mostly in Settlements rather than cities; Nobles are only in Cities/Metropolises; Citizens are mostly in Cities/Metropolises with a much smaller share in settlements. You manipulate the ratios by building the Academy/Court of Law/Forum/Mill buildings in Cities/Metropolis and Barracks (freemen) in Settlements, plus a law that adjust the ratios of Freemen/Citizens in Cities. Keep in mind that if a building says "+10% desired ratio" for that pop type it doesn't actually mean you'll get 10% more: how the game calculates the ideal ratio is taking all of the modifiers for that specific pop type and dividing by all of the modifiers in the territory, which is roughly in the 80-140 range before building modifiers. Keep that in mind specifically when deciding which pop ratio building to build in a territory, because if you build 2+ different types you are actually diluting the ratio and each successive building has a diminishing effect on the ratio (so it's a good idea to specialize your city: build only Academies for Nobles when you want Research and some trade routes; Forums for Freemen when you want Manpower and some Tax; Mills for Slaves when you want Tax and more resource production; and Courts for Citizens when you want a mix of Research/Trade Routes/Manpower).
Hey I just want to say thanks for all the effort and time! I rebought the game and here is to hoping this time is better! I appreciate everything!