The strategy game “Imperator: Rome” has received 97% positive reviews on Steam in the last 30 days, even though the developers, Paradox Interactive, actually abandoned the game back in 2021. But fans and an active modding scene simply won’t let it die. After 3 years with fewer than 1,000 average players on Steam, it surpassed the 1,000 mark again in March 2024.
What kind of game is it?
- Imperator: Rome takes place from 304 to 27 BC. This is the time when the Roman Empire was expanding. In 27 BC, Augustus, the heir of Caesar, was crowned the first Roman Emperor.
- It is a large 4x strategy game where you can choose from countless factions: from the powerful Rome itself, which at the start of the game consists of a few provinces around Rome, to Carthage, Egypt, or Sparta, it’s all included. You can also play as a tiny tribe in Ireland.
- You guide the fate of your country, decide on your army, the development of your cities, society, and the many different peoples that make up your empire: Should only Romans have power and all privileges, or do you grant the Etruscans and Corsicans the same rights?
Imperator: Rome is a mix of role-playing and strategy game, as every character in the game, every politician, every general and their families are simulated, having values and traits. Once you defeat a people, you can recruit their leading figures into your ranks, sell them into slavery, make them fight in gladiator battles for the entertainment of the people, or simply kill them.
The game sells well, gets good reviews – remains somewhat unloved
Why did Imperator: Rome flop? It didn’t really flop. The ratings at launch were okay at 76% on Metacritic, and sales were better than expected.
But: fan support was lacking at launch. Imperator: Rome had weak user scores and wasn’t received as well by fans as Paradox had hoped.
The reasons were many little things, as can be read in forum threads from 2021 (via paradox):
- You cannot control the characters directly, but only have indirect influence over them
- Players expected too much micromanagement. You quickly end up with many provinces, and the game became confusing
- The vanilla version suffered from too many bugs and was difficult
- The individual factions did not differ enough from one another (via paradox) – there was a lack of details and little things that distinguished each people from one another
Overall, the impression was that the launch was botched, and Imperator: Rome fell short of player expectations.
Many liked the idea of playing a strategy game in this epoch and following in Caesar’s footsteps, but compared to the long-established Europa Universalis or Crusader Kings games, Imperator: Rome fell too short.
That was Paradox’s decision: The developers at Paradox gave up on Imperator: Rome after just 2 years:
- In 2021, development stopped, and the last of four expansions, “Heirs of Alexander,” was released
- In June 2022, it was officially stated that development would be halted unless the game was taken over by another studio or there was “sudden renewed interest in the game”
- The mind behind the game, Johan Anderson, left the project: For some Paradox fans, Anderson is somewhat of an antichrist. Whenever he leaves a project, it suddenly performs better (via reddit)
Fans react to the end of development with defiance and Steam reviews
What happened next? Starting in 2022, a strange development emerged for Imperator: Rome. The developers’ announcement that they would only continue developing the game if interest in it reignited triggered a kind of defiance reaction.
Now, the remaining fans of Imperator: Rome desperately wanted Paradox to see what a gem they were overlooking and treating so poorly.
They shared their opinions with Paradox through reviews on Steam or in posts on social media.
Patch, a great mod, and suddenly players are back on Steam
Did that work? At least a little. They got the developers to work on a new patch 2.0.4 in April 2023, a year after the game was supposed to be dead. However, it wasn’t a real victory. The developers said something curt: while they were releasing a new patch, they remained firm in their decision not to continue developing the game.
However, this new patch served as a foundation for the modders behind the very good Invictus mod to revive the game.
This is the current state: Currently, the reviews on Steam present a particularly strange picture:
- Thanks to a surge of positive reviews, Imperator: Rome currently stands at “97 positive reviews” in the last 30 days
- Many of the reviews say things like: “Revive the game, you cowards” or
Bring it back!
And in March 2024, Imperator: Rome had more than 1,000 average players online on Steam again for the first time in 3 years (via steamcharts).
And is the game continuing now? No, they are still far from the renewed interest
that Paradox called for in 2022. Instead of 1,000 players on Steam, they would need about 4,000 again.
However, on April 1st, someone played a cruel April Fool’s joke: Patch 2.1 was finally coming.
The joke was somewhat cruel, as even former game director Johan Anderson remarked.
How good is Imperator: Rome really?
Does the game deserve the great reviews? I spent 43 hours in the last few days with Imperator: Rome, also with the current Invictus mod, and say: No, the current 97% positive reviews are more of a defiant reaction that Paradox “abandoned its best game.”
Imperator: Rome is significantly better now with the current mod and the patch than at release, but still suffers from many of the original problems.
It somehow feels fleshless and colorless. The games tend to choke on micromanagement.
A major issue remains the missions, which feel repetitive and force players into a kind of corset: when one starts a mission tree, the game often feels passive and as if one is following a boring plan that mainly consists of waiting for timers to run out.
So, provinces must be developed and one must wait many game months to have the required resources.
Aggressive expansion faces numerous gameplay hurdles that also force you to wait: first, you have to wait for the penalty for aggressive expansion to decrease, then wait for stability to increase, otherwise, you will have to deal with rebellious governors and the Roman Empire breaks apart easily.
Great idea, but the roots of the game are too twisted
Fundamentally, Imperator: Rome is an intriguing mix of interesting ideas and plays in a fascinating era, but despite all the fan protests and efforts, the roots of the game are so flawed that neither Paradox nor a magical wonder mod can fix it anymore.
No matter how much fans wish from Paradox: “Revive it again, you cowards.”
Ultimately, Imperator: Rome remains the wrong horse
– Paradox switched to the right one, Crusader Kings 3, 3 years ago. That was probably the right decision, as bitter as it may be for old Romans.
