History VideoGame / ImperatorRome

* ApatheticCitizens: Nope. If pops are unhappy, they ''will'' be unproductive at best, and rebellious if conditions don't improve. In ''Imperator'', how much land you control is secondary for the most part; what is primary is how many pops you control and how happy they are.

** Also, the game has a hard limit of 2049 nations at any one time (including factions created during civil wars). If the 2050th appears, the game will crash. This becomes an issue with mods that expand either the timeline or the map. Patch 2.04 fixed this issue.

** Also, the game has a hard limit of 2049 nations at any one time (including factions created during civil wars). If the 2050th appears, the game will crash. This becomes an issue with mods that expand either the timeline or the map.

In May 2021, Paradox announced that there would be no new content for ''Imperator'' for the remainder of 2021, putting the future of the series in doubt.

** Only pre-defined settlements can operate as ports and count toward trade-related mechanics. That tiny harbour animation isn't just for show, but aside from it, there is no other indication which settlement can work as a port.

* LoadsAndLoadsOfCharacters: The map has hundreds of playable states - most of them being primitive tribes. In turn, each of these states has about a dozen characters involved in running its day-to-day affairs, plus assorted generals, family members, and possibly assorted other characters.

** Fleets will take ''months'' to get from one side of Mediterranean to another, despite it being a two week-long trip ''at worst'', solely because it takes armies weeks to cross from one settlement to another. The logical conclusion from real life to load troops on ships and move them to their destination just doesn't work, partially due to how easy it is to amass huge fleets and how much troops they can move.

** Carthage. At the game start, it's bleeding money, controls a lot of expensive to maintain, but completely unprofitable footholds all across Western Mediterranean Sea, has abysmal manpower and is surrounded by hostile nations, while being a member of an unique culture ''and'' following a religion foreign to its region. And Rome is heavily railroaded into war with Carthage. However, by playing both short and long diplomatic game, along with integrating surrounding cultures, Carthage can eventually curb (or outright destroy) Rome and be the only meaningful power west of Greece, raking huge pile of gold from its trade and numerous provinces.

** There is also Syracuse, which is almost literally between Scylla and Charybdis given their location, with Rome expanding from north and Carthage trying to take over Sicily from south-east. You have the capacity to resist both, and then eventually ''replace'' them as the dominant Mediterranean power, but surviving first 70 or so years is an achievement all by itself.

* WarForFunAndProfit: The economy is literally run by slaves, and you need a lot of them to get things done. Since there is no actual slave market in-game, your main source of slaves is going to come from wars. The weaker and more numerous the enemies, the better, because that means just running around their land and throwing pops into shackles. Depopulated entire settlements in the process? No sweat, just colonise it with your own people once the war is over, preferably with your war veterans.

* SoldierVsWarrior: Various events, policies and decisions are about deciding if your armed forces should be just rowing bands, ad-hoc citizen militia or noble hosts ''or'' a professionals that are paid wage for their service, in turn put through extensive training and fighting for the state, rather than personal reasons. Most evident in tribal nations, where non-ruling families, instead of playing a political game, simply have their own troops, that are ''always'' loyal to specific clan, rather than the ruling one (as the concept of a state is absent for them entirely). More civilised nations have instead more or less soldier ethos, but the troops can still pledge their allegiance to their leaders if one isn't careful.

* VideoGameCrueltyPotential: The very back-bone of your economy are slaves[[note]]To the point of freemen being "demoted" to slaves if you don't have enough of them[[/note]], with full encouragement of capturing more, with all means possible. Harsh treatment of conquered lands, desacrating of holy sites and outright murder of your enemies are all perfectly fine and provide direct benefits, often greatly outweighting more peaceful or open-minded approach. Prior to introduction of integration mechanics, it was also perfectly fine to trample "foreign" cultures and religions within your borders, as the game was automatically aiming to assimilate everyone into the ruling elite - even if said elite is ''the only members of that particular culture''. And this is all presented as a norm of the time period.
** VideoGameCrueltyPunishment: There is however a sharp divide between what's socially acceptable for the time period the game covers and simply doing things ForTheEvulz. Tyranny, aggressive expansion, popularity and loyalty are directly tied with how awful your ruler and country are, both internally and to other nations. Go too deep on being a blood-thirsty tyrant and you will end up with world ganging on your country, while the entire court will be plotting against you and your family.

** In case the player still hasn't received the memo, they are to try avoiding this trope as much as possible, as it is how many pops they control and how happy these pops are which is crucial; territory is rather secondary in ''Imperator''. This is reinforced in nation tier levels: a nation only requires 100 territories to be rated a "Major Power" (second highest tier), but needs ''500'' to be rated a "Great Power".

''Imperator: Rome'' is a historical [[RealTimeStrategy real-time]] grand strategy game developed by Creator/ParadoxInteractive, released on 25 April 2019. It is a spiritual successor of sorts to ''[[VideoGame/EuropaUniversalis Europa Universalis: Rome]]'', taking place after the collapse of Alexander the Great's empire and during the rise of UsefulNotes/TheRomanRepublic, using an advanced version of the Clausewitz engine used since ''[[VideoGame/EuropaUniversalis Europa Universalis III]]''.

* QuantityVsQuality: The better the unit is in combat, the more expensive it is to train or build and the more exotic resources it takes to make it in the first place. Inventions, which increase further troops capabilities, are expensive. This leads to situation where one can either muster hordes of [[CannonFodder light infantry and archers]] or instead rise a token force of just few cohorts of [[EliteMooks heavy infantry and cavalry]]. And it is rarely advisable to do both.

* UnstableEquilibrium: Research speed is tied with number of citizens vs. total number of pops and prices of inventions increase with size of the country. If those two factors are properly tuned to each other, research ''explodes'', while costing pocket change to implement results.

** With Italic traditions, they upgrade to LightningBruisers due to the sheer number of bonuses in the tradition tree.

* MadeASlave: You can do this to imprisoned characters; prisoners captured during combat count as well. On a larger scale, grabbing pops as slaves is a desirable goal during wars. Greeks and Indians also are capable of performing outright slave raids during peace-time, snatching unfortunate pops and regardless of their prior strata, turning them into slave pops instead.

* BoringButPractical: Having any non-city territory with population divisible by 6, cities with population divisible by 22 and metropolises divisible at 17. This allows the local population to stabilise in their classes and fulfill the desired ratio, thus avoiding the endless demotion and promotion cycles caused by not fulfilling minimal quotas of any given class.

* MyRulesAreNotYourRules: Averted, and with disastrous results. Marius update introduced an overhaul of military system, making it that standing army requires a combination of specific laws and innovations to be present, or else the country is stuck with levies, which are just flat-out inferior. On top of that, innovation system have been reworked. Which this provides a lot of immersion for player and makes it ''somewhat'' challenging to get a solid, standing army, AI absolutely can't use the related mechanics, for it will never reach the required innovations[[note]]A human player can bee-line for first tier of standing armies in form of one for the capital region at the game start without any issue, but AI will instead spread its innovation points all over the place, which means it won't reach the tech level needed until late mid-game[[/note]] nor pass the related laws[[note]]AI recognises standing army as a "big" expense and thus will try to avoid it at all cost, while in the same time laws that make levies (a "free" army) bigger automatically block ability to have standing one[[/note]]. And the few countries that ''do'' start with standing army, have it as a carbon copy of a levy they could rise in that same province, meaning they have a subpar combat unit that costs abnormal amount of money and no clue how to upgrade or arrange it. The end result is every single AI army being a PaperTiger, for it is just second-rate levies and a random legion that's on par with said levies due to bad unit composition. Pre-Marius, none of this was an issue, for as long as AI had manpower and money to spare, it was just building more and more units, so even if they were bad, the sheer amount of them could wear down the player. Now a single, human-made legion can roll over any given opposition, ''without'' any gamey tactics involved.

* MortonsFork: Post-''Menander'' (v 1.5) changes to how republics operate means you can be asked by a faction to pass a law that will piss said faction off. This means you will lose approval of that faction in your Senate if you do nothing ''or'' when you will follow their exact wishes. And that without mentioning the fact the new law is likely to be counter-productive for your country and current situation. But wait, there is more! If you have weighted approval of all three factions below arbitrary set value of 60 (on a 0-100 scale), ''any'' action you will take will incur automatic tyranny, which will piss off all three factions, along with your generals and other members of your ruling clique. This includes taking actions that would please any given faction, thus on paper, rising their approval. So no matter what you do, you end up in a bad spot. This change, along with extreme simplification of the previous republican mechanics, was the main source of complaints for the Menander patch, as it turned any given republic (including Rome) into a chore to play, with non-stop tyranny for doing just about ''anything''. Thankfully, republics were eventually reworked. [[note]]Notability, the threshold for incurring tyranny when going against a Senate vote is reduced to 51, with the amount of tyranny gained reduced the higher your support in the Senate is. Also, passing a law now guarantees increased support from the faction.[[note]]

Unlike its predecessor, Imperator fleshes out the non-Roman states that ruled Eurasia during this time period, with a concave map that stretches from Iberia to India. The game begins in 450 [[AbUrbeCondita A.U.C]] (304 BCE), with the Roman Republic as merely one power among many [[note]]In fact, [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samnite_Wars Rome had just concluded the Second Samnite War.]][[/note]], and the player is challenged to either repeat Rome's ascendancy or guide another power to the greatness that Rome possessed in our timeline. The game itself combines mechanics from VideoGame/EuropaUniversalis, [[VideoGame/VictoriaAnEmpireUnderTheSun the Victoria series]], and VideoGame/CrusaderKings, featuring population mechanics, with [=POPs=] divided by culture, religion, and class, trade mechanics and trade goods, and fleshed out characters and character interaction, allowing for the simulation of both economic growth and political intrigue. The map is the largest yet for a Paradox game, containing over 9000 provinces and numerous cultures, tribes, and states. The game launched with three political systems: Roman-style republics, authoritarian monarchies, and tribal clans. Probably unique to ''Imperator'' among PDS games, the smallest unit of land on the map is not a "province", but a territory (a rural settlement, city or metropolis); "provinces" here are groupings of territories.

* EndOfAnEra: Most of the Diadochi are approaching their old age by the time the game begins, with Seleucus I Nicator as the youngest. Highlighted by two events, the first grants every Diadochus a claim to ALL the former lands of Alexander's Empire, and the second removes them on that ruler's death.