ajarnlance wrote:I just finished ten hours with Imperator and I have gone back to playing Empires (beta tester). Paradox have missed the mark with this one. Imperator lacks the in-depth intrigue and skull-duggery of CKII and doesn't have the depth of EU4. It feels strangely flat. Empires is a much better game in almost every aspect and it is still in beta. Here's my summary comparison:
1) Tactical combat: Empires blows the other game away. More depth, historical realism, it's beautiful to look at, and yet doesn't take long to play out. Much more nuanced... planning ahead really pays off. Pdx battles are just a race to get the biggest stack into battle the quickest.
2) Historical realism and attention to detail: want Alexander's silver shields? Macedonian phalanxes? Seleucid war elephants? Cataphracts? Nomad steppe horse archers? The attention to detail and historical accuracy is everything you've come to expect from ageod and the units look gorgeous in the tactical battles. Pdx will give you 'heavy infantry' with just cosmetic differences between Roman legions and Seleucid phalanxes.
3) Trade and economy: Pdx has lots of micromanagement with trade and pops. In Empires trade takes place automatically, but the player has a lot of control with his building choices and population management.
4) Simulation of the rise and fall of empires. Empires has a unique culture/decadence system that does a beautiful job of elegantly simulating these historical realities. The player is forced to make tough choices over the direction he wants to take his nation. Pdx just have the usual +/- stability hits... yawn.
5) Diplomacy: here is where Empires has room to grow. Diplomacy works just fine but their is potential to make it more sophisticated.
6) Characters: this is where I thought Imperator would shine but actually the well-developed characters in the game don't actually have a lot to do. I would like to see Empires take onboard more character development in the future.
Overall, Empires is a more realistic, authentic, original and fascinating take on antiquity. It manages to be simple to get into but difficult to master. Most of all it is addictive as hell and lots of fun. Multiplayer is awesome with ageod's characteristic asynchronous wego turn-based system.
PS I have played paradox and ageod games for years so this analysis comes with a lot of experience. Nobody is paying me to make these comments. They are sincerely from my personal experience of hundreds of hours spent enjoying these games.
Myself i have as of yet only played a few hours at most. To me Imperator for now just seems like a uphotted version of
the Europa Universalis: Rome game that they released a few years ago which was far from finished.
I haven´t had the chance to test Empires as of yet! I applied for the beta but sadly didn´t get in :/ Which disturbs me a lot since it seems to be a really great game and its only in the beta phase. So hopefully it will get more improvements a long the way, and in the future we probably will have expansions and DLC`s.
And on the DLC´s, that´s probably where Paradox is going. Just like they did with EUIV and CKII. Releasing a base game with a limited amount of features and things to do and adding and releasing more stuff as the time goes, after
a couple of years you have spent a thousand dollars on the base game and all these damn DLC´s.
So even if i dont have had the chance to play Empires yet i think it outshines Imperator on these things as you point out (1-6) and i totally agree on these points.
But the release of Empires i slowly appearing on the horizon. And i will get it as soons it gets released, because i have never been disappointed with any AGEOD game as of yet, and the historical immersion these games have is incredible. And of course you want to support the survival of the small gaming companies.
On a note that Imperator MIGHT get really buffed is where the modders come in. They have already started and adding little stuffs that should have been in the game already (being able to change your capital city for one) and other things. And im sure some modders or modding team out there has started to work on a "realistic" and more historical approach for the game. As i said Imperator: Rome is more for the "masses" out there while Empires will be more focused for the real table chair wargamer.
Is Empires gonna be moddable? Because if it is Imperator has really gotten itself some though competition.
In my view Paradox promised a lot on this game and delivered just a base platform. Which tells me they surely already have a couple of DLC´s in the making and soon to be released to make more money, i hate this trend with endless DLC´s.
Well it became a lot of text but i hope it gave some understanding on my view of both games. Im not favouring any of them at the moment, and since i haven´t played Empires at all but only read the dev diaries i can´t speak so much about it.
Happy Wargaming!
On a side note, Paradox is currently developing a patch which will be released that improves some of the things. Like adding more features like, more character interactions, improved combat mechanics, eliminating bugs, multiplayer out-of-sync fix etc etc. So its a coming...
Maybe they now Empires is on the way and are getting a little nervous people will abandon the game, haha
Also, is the map moddable? For example, could I add more regions?
