What are /r/Imperator's favorite Products & Services?

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Hmm... decent but could use some work... some of these civilizations are spelled wrong or misplaced...

If we're assuming this game starts in the 300's BC as based on the screenshots, we don't have a lot of info from that time, but we do have some later stuff to work with:

https://www.academia.edu/29477825/2016_-_The_political_map_of_Arabia_and_the_Middle_East_in_the_third_century_AD_revealed_by_a_Sabaean_inscription._Arabian_Archaeology_and_Epigraphy_27.2_176-196

The game determines which colour an uninhabitable province should get based on who owns the majority of the bordering provinces. The problem here is that the game counts sea provinces equally as land provinces, even though the sea provinces don't can't be onwed.

These provinces border an equal number of sea provinces as land provinces. There can thus never be a majority "owner" of the province, and thus they don't get coloured.

These particular provinces, as well as some others around the map, can easily be fixed by changing a few borders (in this case of the adjecent sea provinces).

A while back I created a fix for these provinces and posted it to the forum. Paradox unfortunately didn't copy my fixes into the base game. This is the overlay file I created (https://gofile.io/d/fuw77U) and here is a new provinces.bmp file I quickly created with my overlay file: https://gofile.io/d/nfPugn

Note: I haven't actually tried to see if it works. It should, but 1.4 made the game a lot more tempremental when it comes to map and provinces editing. So there is a real risk that it wont work.

Old World is currently in early access. It's more like Civ, but with characters.

I like what they do with families. Each grants different bonuses, so it becomes an interesting decision which one to support. I'd love to see that in Imperator.

A neat thing they have is their events often have a wiki-link to the thing the event is based on. CK2 has this for characters, but I haven't seen it for events yet.

Their design is, interestingly, very mana-centric, but the system feels more.. tight. Every resource has its use.

Hmm there are many available sales though, you can get it the regular edition here for $30 if you use the code: SPQR25

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I used the code to get the deluxe edition cuz it was a steal honestly, brings the price down to almost the price of the base game.

I got it today on Green Man Gaming. If you enter the code "spqr25" during checkout, you get a 25% discount which puts the base game down to 30€ from the standard 40€.

I debated to get the Delux edition since it would cost the standard 40€ with the discount but in the end decided that the flavor pack for 10€ isn't worth it.

We're hard at work at addressing the multiplayer stability issues, and while it's not where we want it to be yet, it's already in a much better state than before (last dev clash was also on an old build).

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But yeah, playing on "hot code" will yield those kinds of issues. Worth nothing is that we also consider the dev clash multiplayer testing in itself, so it's not only for your entertainment 😉

Have you checked out the Europa Barbarorum 2 mod for Medieval Total War II? It’s a Rome conversion and it’s got a ton of Latin names/descriptions. Worth a look and closest I can think to a game with Latin: https://www.moddb.com/mods/europa-barbarorum-2

Podcasts about Carthage? No, not really.

But here's very good course about Rome from prof. Kenneth Harl I can recommend:

https://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/rome-and-the-barbarians.html

It sounds like you want an Ancient Rome setting, so you should definitely start with Imperator. Paradox GSGs generally get referred to as though they're all part of the same family, but the common mechanics are only really at the conceptual level. Playing something else probably won't get you much of a head start in playing Imperator, or at least not enough to justify buying a different game and playing it when you would rather be playing Imperator.

If you really want to get yourself into the Paradox GSG 'headspace' before stepping into Imperator, this is a good place to start. It isn't a Paradox game, but it's free, playable in your web browser, and has multiplayer.

Rome Enters the Greek East

This volume examines the period from Rome’s earliest involvement in the eastern Mediterranean to the creation of the first stage of Roman dominance over all the Greek states from the Adriatic Sea to Syria by the 180s BC. Applying modern political theory to ancient Mediterranean history, it takes a Realist approach to its analysis of the development of Roman involvement in the Greek Mediterranean and employs unipolarity theory to examine the earliest era of Roman geopolitical dominance over the Greek states. Focusing on the harsh nature of interactions among states under conditions of international anarchy, the book examines the conduct of both Rome and the Greek states during the period, and the beginning of the replacement of anarchy by a situation of hierarchy and unipolarity.

In addition to providing an overview of the entire revolutionary period between 230 and 170 BC, the volume focuses detailed discussion on the geopolitical crisis that convulsed the Greek world in the last decade of the third century bc. This crisis led first to the violent collapse of the traditional Greek state-system based on the three great powers of Macedon, Syria, and Egypt, then to a revolution in Greek diplomacy towards Rome (201–200 BC) as second-tier states pleaded for Roman intervention in the crisis, then to the beginning of Rome's permanent involvement in the high politics of the Greek Mediterranean, and finally to the creation of a situation of Roman unipolarity in the Greek Mediterranean. The first stage of that unipolarity (ca. 190–170 BC) is then analyzed in detail.

Thanks for going beyond the ancient texts and recommending secondary sources! It always kinda bugs me that most book recommendation posts just point people towards some 150 year old translations of the ancient historians. A while back I wrote a big long post over on r/WarCollege about the books I read during a university course on the Successors if anyone wants some of the heavy stuff.

But, since I'm currently much more Phoenician focused, I'll also throw in a recommendation for Carthage's Other Wars by Dexter Hoyos. For obvious reasons, the Punic Wars take up all the oxygen when it comes to Carthage's military history, but this is a really interesting look at Carthage's seldom talked about wars of expansion. Even though I have some small quibbles with it, I'd definitely recommend it for any Carthage stans out there.

here's the amazon link to Nero's book: https://smile.amazon.com/Neros-Killing-Machine-Remarkable-Legion-ebook/dp/B00DNL19QW/ref=pd_ybh_a_6?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=EAK8TZ6858VZNEJV0GGW

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It about the 14th Legion

You could try to contact Cody of AlternateHistoryHub. He has a book he wrote about it. I haven't read it, but I'm under the impression that it's pretty post-apocalyptic-y. You might be able to just make your mod based on his scenario.

I'm pretty sure he's into paradox games as well, so he might be interested in helping. Might be able to share some of his research with you at least.

Hmmm, at that price range, Acer Aspire E15 could work, although I am not sure how well its CPU performs in a game like Imperator.

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If you are willing to spend a little bit more, something like this: https://www.amazon.com/HP-15-6-inch-Anti-Glare-WLED-Backlit-15-cx0056wm/dp/B07KQXHP4M is still under $700, and should have no problem running any current PDX game.

I enjoyed both of these books. Enemies of Rome details a variety of foes that Rome had to deal with from the Republic up until the end of the Western Roman empire.

If you want to learn about the Diodachi, Alexanders generals who divided his empire after his death and fought in vain to recreate it, then try Dividing the Spoils: The war for Alexander the Great's Empire.