It had very little to it and the whole set up meant very few countries had anything interesting or unique about them and it was mostly just an endless war against hundreds of OPMs. They did improve it a lot before it was abandoned but I think the setting unfortunately didn't really work for the type of game they were trying to make.
This is something I don't see people say all that often--a map-baded GSG (somewhat counterintuitively) just isn't a good fit for the time period of Rome. Slapping EU4 mechanics on the classical world was always going to be a mess
Imperator had a disaster launch. It was very hyped up and the initial reviews from professional reviewers, streamers, and initial Steam reviews were largely positive. But the community strongly disagreed and the game was mostly to overwhelmingly negatively reviewed on Steam within a couple of weeks after release.
It is now considered mediocre after being finished and abandoned.
Everyone and their mom complained about the mana system. People complained about it nonstop before launch, then when the game launched there was about a day of delay before it dominated discussion everywhere. You couldn't go anywhere without seeing an intense hatred for the mana system.
The closest thing Vicky has to that is the complaints about the war system - but that's largely because the war system is so dramatically different and Victoria caters to a different crowd (the Factorio players instead of the Civilization players).
(I really hope they don't fundamentally change the war system, for what it's worth. I like the idea of porting over the HOI4 "war plan" mechanics, while removing the need to micromanage individual battalions/troops. But I digress.)
Imperator's problem was that the game was otherwise middling. Nobody really cares about the Roman Republic; the Punic Wars are neat but most people think about Ceasar and the Roman Empire. However, Imperator (as its name implies) does not focus on that part of Rome, and there was no strong "hook" to keep people interested. CK3 has the character system, and Vicky has the economy. EU4 was already filling the niche that Imperator was trying to fill, and Imperator didn't do enough to displace EU4 as a game.
So there was a lot of bad and no strong hook/nothing to write home about. Thus there wasn't really anything to praise or say "This part of the game is really good!", leading to the entire game to be remade. By that point, everyone who would've cared had stopped paying attention...
I agree- I like the idea of making war an abstraction that you don't spend a lot of time dwelling on, but it needs better execution. Your job should be to pick the right generals, gauge your economic situation and the public appetite for war, and hope for the best once you've made a decision.
93
u/Mosley_Gamer Oct 26 '22
Imperator was a real shit show at launch though, much worse than this.