So as any of you who frequent IRC probably know, my Rome boner pierces the heavens on a calm day. I've got a few thousand hours in Paradox's other games, so this is some next level hype.

Map looks like some kind of mix between Europa Universalis and Civilization. It has a Crusader Kings style character system. 7000 cities, large map, and it starts in 304 BC, right after Alexander's death. Screenshots. Map includes Mauryan India and a good chunk of Africa as well.

Here's the twitch stream of the announcement at PDXcon

Release date is 2019.

 

I've never gotten in to grand strategy games before, but this one just may be the thing to do it. It looks pretty baller, so I'm very likely going to at least give it a shot.

 

The map reminds me of Hegemony III, not that matters.

Character and Empire building with culture that matters. This is the shit.

 

color me interested. One of the things I dislike about some of the recent Paradox games is the lack of character development. A return to that like CK2 is welcomed.

 

Looks great in terms of map, mechanics etc. I do wonder about replayability though. One of the main factors in CK2 and EU4 in making you want to replay is wanting to play other countries. In this era, I can think of five main campaigns:

1. As Rome, create the Roman Empire.

2. As Carthage, destroy Rome and take its place in history.

3. As a Greek culture nation, recreate Alexander's empire.

4. Unite Germanic tribes and sack Rome 1000 years early.

5. Celtic superpower.

Once you have done those, your other choices are mainly small tribes that no one has ever heard of. Achievement hunters will no doubt still have plenty to do, but historical role players like myself will quickly run out of ideas.

However, it may be that the character and population system come to the rescue. If internal management is sufficiently varied and interesting, then you could play multiple Rome games that all go very differently.

 

The map looks like it extends pretty far, so I wouldn't rule out some serious Persian and Indian gameplay either. Though you might have to wait for an expansion or two...

In any case, while this definitely feels like the different playable states will be a lot less porous than in CK2 (changing alliance between countries seems rather unlikely) I still hope the primary focus is on player character, heir, managing relations, etc rather than a more EU4 style experience.

 

Any chance that the base game will be good from the get go or still meh until a few addons have rolled in like with most paradox games?

Still, pretty psyched to hear about this.

 

Hmm. This would not quite make sense - Rome was not feudal. I suspect it is still state focused, only with a cast of characters to give government flavour. I really hope that you get to play Roman politics in a fairly deep way, because:

A) It will add a lot of replayability, as even if you conquer the same territory, your internal politics will be very different, and

B) Once Rome had beaten Carthage, its most interesting history relates to its internal politics, not its wars of conquest.

 

Not to mention internal politics has always been a bit of a weak spot for Paradox games. It's why EU 4 and CK 2 tend to end up with large and entirely too stable mega-nations slowly blobbing over the map. I know most of my games petered out once I'd gotten so big that nobody could really challenge me, unless I started coming up with weird random goals to amuse myself.

 

Some more details coming out.

Apparently the map is convex:



Also some details on pops and trade goods:



Apparently more trade goods (up to 40) will be added in the final game.

Looking at that map, two things strike me:

1. They need a better colour for Egypt.

2. This game needs to have mechanics to let established empires fail and collapse, or else every game will be a Seleucid curbstomp.

 

Looks like they've done a good job of combining political and terrain map modes.

 

So this is coming out on 25 April. There's some early "let's plays" out there from select YouTubers given advance access and it's looking pretty good. Some early thoughts based on what I've seen:

Pros

- The game is beautiful.

- The trade goods system has been done well, with a lot of different resources. Not only does having access to certain goods give you certain bonuses, but trade goods are required to build certain units and must be traded for if you don't have access to them. This is a nice simulation of real life, though I wish the system had gone further. The only real issue with the trade system is the way it is organised by province rather than city, which doesn't really seem realistic.

- There seems to be a good balance between CK2 style character-based gameplay and EU4 style state building. In particular, the civil war system looks pretty good, with soldiers becoming loyal to their generals, and if the generals became disloyal to the state you can have a civil war on your hands.

- There's a lot of interesting starting nations that you will want to try (at least if you are interested in this period of history), giving a lot of scope for replayability.

Cons

- The building system is very shallow and there's very little in the game to simulate the construction of the infrastructure of the ancient world. The Romans may have been known for building aqueducts, sewers, monuments etc. but you won't be doing any of that. As for roads, only Italian cultures can build them, which is a bit wtf.

- No dynamic population. Pops don't change culture or religion on their own over time. All conversion has to be done manually. As far as I'm aware, pops also don't migrate dynamically but rather must be moved around manually.

- Beyond the starting positions of the nations (in terms of geographical position, territory, population), there's not much to distinguish nations, especially nations of the same culture group. Stuff like military traditions are open to all nations of that culture group. So any Italian nation can unlock Roman military traditions. The lack of unique playstyles for particular nations I think significantly undermines the replayability value.

 

Yeah this looks good but can you seduce your sister while desecrating a church, punch Cthulu in the face and get impregnated by a horse?

Best. Game. Ever.

 

Sounds like Paradox is releasing a base game that can then have all the DLCs to make it better...

 

From what I understand, this is basically their go to strategy.

I've only played Stellaris, but that's certainly what they did there.

 

Not so Hot Take: Paradox is the EA of strategy games.

 

Nah man, if they were EA we would be on CK9 by now and HOI8 would feature lootboxes with bonus regiments.

 

Kinda sorta. The difference is that Paradox games are (generally) satisfying, complete experiences without the DLC. The DLC just improves on it.

EA, on the other hand, sell you half of a satisfying experience and then charge you as much or more for the rest of it.

 

Nah, I disagree with that comparison. EA does this explicitly, the only goal being to make money.

Paradox price their games extremely reasonably. Stellaris + all DLC is just over one AAA in price. But you get the update regardless of whether you buy the DLC or not. The DLC is just some specific features. Eg, I don’t care about cyborgs or corporations, so I haven’t bought 2 of the DLCs, but I still get the benefit of the large amount of time and effort they’ve put in to optimise the game.

I reckon the people at Paradox care about their games far more than those at EA do.

 

Yeah, Paradox model is how I wish all games were made. Release a satisfying base-game and then work to add new features to it for several years, funded by optional DLC's as the "subscription" model.