Imperator: Rome - Part 4 - Fresh Blood

[@ragsporkjohnson4059]

31:03 "Yeah Sparta is going to win that one" -Proceeds to lose.

[@PostNukeProductions]

It's funny, too; they only started losing when he said that.

[@nicknevco215]

so if jon was a soothsayer in ancient times he would be a sacrifice

[@Hazlius]

If only there was, oh I don’t know, a *decision* of some sort you could make, say, after conquering inner Greece to form some sort of Arcadia, that could give you a manpower boost... if only that were a thing

[@jacquesmoody7904]

Isn't that what he is doing by the end of the video?

[@Hazlius]

Yes, but he’s too busy worrying about the trade mechanics which are small change in comparison to the flat bonuses and population boosts taking the decision gives you. Forming Arkadia as soon as possible is by far the better deal.

[@Hazlius]

In the early game, getting your population up as a Greek city state is one of the most important things you can do. Yes, the surplus resource bonuses are nice, but the biggest issue he’s facing right now is manpower. With the extra population and lower build costs/time, he’ll be able to get up some training camps, maybe some granaries to get more pop. He’s not “playing wrong” or whatever, I just disagree with his priorities.

[@BrutusSalad]

38:00 They automatically capture slaves during sieges, so places with low population are at risk of turning back into wilderness if there are too many wars in a short period of time

[@TGCommander]

Jon the reason that the mercs lost their exiled status is because they entered Macedonian territory and I believe that Macedon has given you military access

[@stevechilds1547]

I'd imagine it was more because Macedon was Guaranteeing Jon, so it was technically friendly territory.

[@dovalist6637]

Can we all apreciate the fact that Jon is no longer playing on speed 1

[@OblivionOtaku]

Back to Crete next time! Take us home, country boats!

[@lilalampenschirm3203]

OblivionOtaku Nice.😄

[@jonathanenciso]

Underrated comment here lol

[@highrezi]

Jon you should break down some empty (0 men) units to save on maintenance cost

[@highrezi]

@Teafunny all units have a maintenance cost it scales with strength but if your reinforcing without spare manpower it's more cost efficient to breakdown and rebuild later This is based on EU4 math but as far as I'm aware it still applies here

[@highrezi]

@@RobertoMaybe1 no there supposed to exist there there so you don't have to spend the creation cost again only the reinforce cost

[@highrezi]

@Florac Jon needed to save as much money as possible so he could defiantly disband those mercs

[@highrezi]

@Florac yeah I know I was talking about his regulars

[@highrezi]

@Florac You were saying there was no reason to save money i was saying that merc disband cost is an important factor here

[@BlueDragon257257]

I love how Jon thinks that he isn't a small 'empire'.

[@PLHarpoon]

Did you just broke truce less than a year before it ended? ;)

[@radordekeche947]

Forming Arcadia will also add a province bonus to megalopolis boosting pop growth, as well as applying a build cost and time down modifier. Worth taking just for that. Also, with how wars work, you could actually win against Macedon as long as you claim their territory on the island. You get a lot of war-score from fully sieging the target province.

[@french_bread4961]

Was gonna watch Game of Thrones, but this is better.

[@Magnificent_Mobius]

It's baaaaaaaaasically the same just with less dragons!

[@Noah_AWICB]

there's a starbucks coffee cup in the newest episode, right next to daenerys in the first 20 minutes of the ep lol

[@heronofalexandria91]

Noah Edwards hahaha saw that last night

[@1spartanelite]

@Noah Edwards Seriously? That's bloody hilarious! 😂 ... I want starbucks now...

[@Malovane77]

You should already have a fleet ready by now. If you can block a strait with a small fleet, you can either prevent enemies from entering, or - better yet - remove their capabilities of retreating. In the latter case, you could completely destroy Macedon if they can't get access through Phrygia. Used the same tactic in Ireland, defending against a giant tribe that controlled all of England, Scotland, and Wales, with well over a million casualties on their end. The AI is just that bad. Also, if you like civic policies, you can always shift the government form to Plutocracy. That gives you two Civic and one Religious idea slot.

[@aetryn1485]

Note that this only works if you own at least one side of the strait (or it's neutral, or whatever). If the enemy owns both sides blockading won't work. Capturing one side is good enough if you can get to it early enough.

[@thatguy3421]

Marcus the Gambler would be proud of this. R.I.P. you magnificent bastard!

[@courier6673]

Been waiting a long weekend for this!

[@ssa3101]

Too much wait for this video. What i like about you is that you actually discuss your war strategies and diplomatic maneuvers. Love it.

[@HaixThePro]

47:45 Yay, Hexamilion! That idea worked literally everytime it was used, didn't it...?

[@devonspence7055]

6:40 all those little city states are Rome's vassals

[@juliuszondag5515]

Living how quickly things change here, fun to watch!

[@DrDoom-ph4gi]

47:26 "We'll be able to deal with Sparta" said Jon, Xerxes, Pericles.... Get yourself a sacred band and then maybe.... I know we're well after Sparta's heyday, but still, it wasn't that long ago.... After subjugating northern Greece, Phillip II sent a letter to the Spartans, asking for submission, and whether he should come as friend or foe, the Spartans simply replied "Neither". This angered him, and he replied "Submit without delay, for if I come into your country, I shall destroy your fields, slay your people, and burn your cities!" To which the Spartans replied only "If". Which is why at the beginning of this game Sparta isn't part of Macedonia. Alexander would rather fight war elephants 2000 miles from home rather than Spartans in his backyard! Still, even then, they were but a shadow of their former glory... (although it may be that everyone else in Greece just finally got their act together a bit and Sparta was never really that good, just the only halfway competent fighting force in the area. Opinions differ)

[@ThePrinceofParthia]

Sparta was an economic and political backwater by this point, the cost of conquest wouldn't have been worth any benefits conquering a poor, unruly mountain state would have brought.

[@DrDoom-ph4gi]

Yeah, but I do like the way they talk... it’s like Clint Eastwood playing Batman.

[@TheGeekCupboard]

I'm playing as a tribe in the UK and I am so very jealous of all the gold and oratory...

[@radu0011]

I'm not sure but i think the reason you have problems with manpower is because you keep increasing national manpower (which i think is just the max manpower), and actually need to increase manpower recovery speed

[@piasecznik]

No, manpower recovery speed is a percentage of total manpower, so that's fine. Manpower gain is just incredibly slow in the game, something I'd anticipate them patching at some point. You basically need to get to 50+ cities and several feudatories to have anything resembling a functional manpower gain rate.

[@richardnorthcutt9356]

Manpower is fine, jons just bad at managing his pops and buildings :p plus hes tiny, a reasonably sized city in a capital province makes like, 20-80 each for me.

[@pliniomelo6295]

Nah its just that he doesnt sit back , he is always engaging on some war

[@aetryn1485]

It does increase manpower recovery speed. It's just designed to take 25 years for your manpower pool to completely refill, and Jon hasn't had the patience to sit around for enough time for that to happen. Honestly, I expect this to get tweaked. It kills the AI way worse than the human, you can cope with it, but the AI Seluicids tend to go 50k debt into manpower after their first couple of wars, rendering them irrelevant for decades. Even Egypt largely at peace will burn down its manpower switching its troop composition around repeatedly and marching up and down the Nile with too big of armies. And even for a human, it's not particularly fun to sit around for 20 years while your manpower refills when the game doesn't last that long anyway.

[@iain.sm.c]

Jon's basically making Sparta dig it's own grave.

[@icelandicfartpolice1206]

Siege leader is simply whoever starts it Jon. Aetolia was there first, it's their siege.

[@DanieleCapellini]

You can take over the siege though.

[@thoughtfulpug1333]

I get the feeling Anaxippos will be this series' Julianus Vatinius. He is gonna be noted in the books as Achaea/Elis/Arkadia's greatest citizen.

[@progamer1110]

I’m loving the play through, but would really like to see a return to ck2. Maybe you could do a Roman restoration run.

[@fishyface3940]

An incest only challenge is what I want to see. John makes a perfect mad monarch.

[@S3nn4h]

About Troizen, I might know what happened as it happened in one of my games. As you can see at 16:09 there is no pop. If they had very low pop like 1 citizen and one slave, conquering them, if the pops die or get enslave to capital it just becomes free as there is nobody there anymore. I was pretty pissed when it happened to me the first time, making a hole and actually cutting one of my provinces in 2.

[@TheHaloring7]

I'm loving this series, keep it up

[@cochemoche]

*sees new Imperator video at 2:20am* me: whelp it looks like 3:20am is my bedtime now!

[@shorewall]

I love how this is turning into a merchant play through. :D Buy Low, Sell High! :D

[@anumeon]

I watch this episode and it's deliciousness and hear the voice of Ron Perlman in my head saying. "Jon, Jon never changes" :D

[@fuhrab]

fantastic! Thank you

[@TheGrinningViking]

Is it just me or does influence range seem a bit off? I hope having borders touching and not being able to interact is patched. It seems like a focus on expansion with politics as an obstacle instead of a tool is a valid choice, (Jon will do well enough against the AI,) but he is likely going to overextend himself and have to deal with the fallout. That's fun to watch, but I do think he is missing out on some other interesting and useful mechanics by not having his leader make friends with and promote good possible successors, and pulling some assassinations to clear out the bad. Hopefully he catches on before the end of the series ☺️

[@ManyATrueNerd]

I'm GUESSING you get auto-diplomatic range if they're a neighbour, but technically Phrygia aren't, as Macedon is between us?

[@jimball6337]

@@ManyATrueNerd I've heard its a bug and building a building anywhere in your empire resets diplomatic range for some reason, I don't know if neighbour actually effects it but Im probably wrong.

[@TGCommander]

Knowing Paradox, diplomatic range is probably using an overly complicated formula that someone will use to break the game with in a couple of years.

[@joshbrown5842]

Bro I have a fucking big ass assignment due soon but these good fucking youtubers won’t stop posting

[@guillet.8962]

First time being part of early squad!

[@BrusierWeight]

6.66 on tyranny? Jon’s made a deal with the Devil.

[@burntbybrighteyes]

Your manpower only comes back slowly because you're very small. In my game as rome I had 4.3 Million Manpower.

[@burntbybrighteyes]

I appreciate you taking the time to write this long reply so please don't take it as an insult when I say I knew that already :) My comment was really only from a game meta pov not about real numbers. Still always nice to meet a fellow history buff.

[@JoshuaKevinPerry]

@Templar Knight I enjoyed reading it. ROME getting its ass kicked in battle and regrouping was remarkable.. Pyrrus noted that aspect as well.

[@nicolasbroaddus8819]

Being able to just ignore a -5 stability hit is so ridiculous. Omen power is used for so little that you can just ignore truces and alliances.

[@araxiel2051]

Well, it's all situational. If you are a large empire with tons of "wrong culture" pops, they very likely might rebel. Especially if you don't have the Religious Power to get the stability back. That said, a lot of things in Imperator need to be adjusted. But the game hasn't even been out for more than two weeks yet.

[@Malovane77]

Well, the stability is not the issue - the war exhaustion is. 5 War exhaustion is enough to cause revolts if you haven't spent a decent amount of time making provinces loyal. Military power is needed to rectify that, and it's a bit more valuable

[@Necrotic99]

If you have a mercenary with a leader of 1, you can just have a single troop of your run around with a higher rank and just follow them around, the higher rank will take over the battle.

[@GeertTheDestoyer]

Why does he care so much for money? It does not matter much in Imperator Rome, early game all that truly matters is manpower!!

[@bluerationality]

There are so many things that went wrong in this episode haha.

[@BauthorFowler]

30:10 It's a mistake! It's a mistake, it's a mistake!

[@PresentationM]

Amassing mana: the game

[@vangoth74]

It really boils down to this, quite disappointed. I expected better from Paradox.

[@DaWombatGaming]

This game has gotten a lot of hate/low reviews, but at least Jon makes it entertaining so I don't know the difference.

[@JoshuaKevinPerry]

It's really bare bones, which, after spending so much on ads...disappoints gamers and history fans immensely

[@SourceOfBeing]

If you owe a favour to a faction, does that favour stay only as long as the faction leader is alive?

[@kingjamestres]

Actually the favors seem to just last forever.

[@araxiel2051]

Yeah, they seem to last until "End of the Game" or until they are used in an event.

[@polishenglish8356]

Jon's empire looks so neat now!

[@Anya_khaos]

haven't played imperator myself; but it seems like manpower and attrition are too harsh... It's like a constant battle; on top of all the other "mana" stuff

[@TGCommander]

@@RobertoMaybe1 I'm pretty sure Mercs do use your manpower though. They at least count towards the attrition that your manpower takes.

[@TGCommander]

@@RobertoMaybe1 Isn't attrition first taken off your national manpower before your armies start taking damage? I was fighting a huge war in the deserts of Egypt recently where I was using both mercs and my own soldiers and my manpower had a big deficit each month from all the attrition I was taking from the deserts, sieges and low supply limit. It could have been that only my personal armies were the cause of that. Maybe mercs do give you attrition damage to your manpower but have their own reinforcement manpower? I haven't had the time and opportunity to delve into this game's mechanics so I could be wrong about any if not everything of this

[@araxiel2051]

@@TGCommander Each city has a "supply limit", that is a limit of how many soldiers can be in that city before starting to take attrition. So let's say if the limit is 16k and your army is 12k you take no attrition. As soon as more than 16k soldiers are in that city, every single army there starts taking attrition damage. So if your 12k army is being joined by any other army (even if it's a completely neutral third party with military access just happening to be walking through) both you and that other army are taking attrition. So let's say your 12k + someone else's 21k = 33k soldiers, vastly above the 16k supply limit -> everyone there taking attrition damage. Now to the manpower supply: (Nearly) all calculations happen at the end of the month. Reinforcements and reinforcement rate is how many of your men from your manpower pool is being moved to replenish the lost men in each cohort (separate from "manpower recovery" which is how many people are grown each month) Both Attrition damage and Reinforcements are calculated at the end of the month at the same time. So, let's say that 12k army is taking 230 attrition casualties, but you have plenty of manpower in your pool, and the reinforcement rate allows 610 soldiers to reach your army each month, this means that those 230 will be replaced on the same "turn", which in practice "makes it look like your pool is taking damage", but in game terms those guys are dying but also new ones are arriving at the same time. The same is true for mercenaries, but mercenaries have their "own separate manpower pool" (which is infinite and floating out in space somewhere), but they still are subject to everything, including having their own reinforcement rate. As a side note; Tribal Chief retinues are like mercenaries and have their own manpower pool. In general; if in the army view a cohort's background is red, you pay for them. If not, they're a special type, and in that case read the tooltip. I hope that clears up your understanding. Now, to get into a bit more detail; The math behind the attrition rate is x%, where x is 10/supply limit (up to a maximum of 5%). Armies that are besieging a city, take an additional +1%. Example: An army with 20 supply weight in a province with 17 supply limit would normally take (20 - 17)*(10/17) = 1.76% attrition each month. If that army were besieging a hostile province it would suffer (20 + 1 - 17)*10/17 = 2.35% attrition. Supply weight is how much supply a cohort uses, which actually depends on the unit type. In actual terms, a light infantry only has a "weight" of 0.5 but a heavy infantry uses 1.5 supply, heavy cavalry uses a whopping 2.0 supply, archers are sitting at 0.9 and war elephants are at an insane 3.0 supply. Example: If a province has a supply weight of 15, that means you can theoretically pile 30 light infantry into it and not suffer attrition, but 8 heavy infantry 1 elephant are already gonna hit that limit. Of course, like everything there are various modifiers like tech or import goods to improve/lower unit weights and attrition. The supply limit a city has is based on it's terrain and civilization level.

[@aetryn1485]

@@araxiel2051 Desert is also a hard 1% attrition, and I believe there's an invention or something that increases it for your enemies. Replenishment seems to be 10% in your owned territory, 5% in occupied territory, and ~1% in hostile territory. I haven't tested allied territory, but if it's like EU4, it will match occupied territory at 5%.

[@FwendlyMushwoom]

It's not actually that bad, Jon just needs to spend some time actually at peace for once.

[@chriswoodend2036]

Jon's going to be really sad when he figures out that "manpower recovery" is reinforcement rate. =( Total manpower determines the rate that additional manpower is generated each month.

[@araxiel2051]

No it is not. "Manpower recovery" does increase the amount of manpower that regrows every month. Reinforcement rate is labelled as such. They are two different things. The "Military Settlement Policy" Jon enacted does increase manpower recovery, exactly what he needs. Yes, total manpower determines the rate, but "manpower recovery" increases that rate.

[@EinFelsbrocken]

*OLIVES?* *_LITERALLY_* *_EVERYWHERE_*

[@devonspence7055]

Hey Jon did you change any settings to get your game running smoothly. I've been playing the the game since release but it crashes and lags bad. My PC should run it fine since I run all the other paradox games just fine.

[@ManyATrueNerd]

Nope - pretty much all on the highest settings - I get the odd stutter, but it seems mostly fine.

[@OstapKomaryanskyy]

The recent patch was supposed to reduce a lot of daily stutter

[@kingjamestres]

@@OstapKomaryanskyy It did but it still needs some serious improvement.

[@pliniomelo6295]

Jon , small advice here, can you just chill out for a couple of years and let your manpower recover? You dont need to be engaging on all out conquest every single second

[@michalschroeder2187]

NEW EPISODE!!!

[@Aragorn.Strider]

We all learned a lot with this video LOL

[@thumper8684]

Someone has made a trainspotting simulator. Will you review it? It is literally called "Trainspotting Simulator"

[@burntbybrighteyes]

but is it about actual trainspotting or a heroin junkie simulator?

[@thumper8684]

@@burntbybrighteyes The screenshot shows people, trains and serial numbers. There are no needles, giant babies or grotty toilets in sight.

[@unitor699industries]

great now i know there will be a civil war i just started macedon

[@JCW9823]

It's time to take Athens, Phrygia is weak!!!

[@leol6190]

Hey Jon!!

[@macquarrie3230]

Use space bar to pause instead of the button. It is a lot faster.

[@MST3Killa]

For the manpower issue... can't you increase manpower by investing in the cities via buildings?

[@sphinxherald7099]

Right, Jon if this paradox title plays the same as the others the person who controls a given siege should be the one who gets there first.

[@stevepirie8130]

Cool

[@SangoProductions213]

Manpower in this game is so borked. lol. Literally do everything in your power to optimize your manpower recovery....and you are still waiting around a year just to reinforce a single unit.

[@SangoProductions213]

I thought it was actually kinda a neat little change that Mercs are actual things out in the world you buy, rather than just a type of recruitment. But that unblackflag bug was horrible. Also...you can't tell mercs that you won't pay them if you don't have enough money. Wow. the logic in that.

[@derpdadouch3654]

20 comments and it's safe to say this eternal meme won't have his day, but before you give up just hear and know one day Jon will play Xcom 2 fo'sho.

[@bjornhellgate3985]

Yeeee only one view before me

[@danielkjm]

I like all your videos, but Imperator Rome is the Worst, its too shallow and quite dull.

[@BRUXXUS]

I don't mind it, but can definitely understand your point of view. He's not really creating stories or making it about the people as much as it's just a numbers game. Which can be fun, but less for videos. I think his knowledge of ancient history and explaining how things actually went down back then helps make up for it. But yeah... not sure I could name a single character from this run. Just a number game.

[@danielkjm]

@@BRUXXUS Yeap, and the big issue is that, caracthers dont matter, and the Combat Does not have even a phase system, Archer dont fire and Skirmish and then goes melee, and hard infantry barely Does diference vs Light infantry. There is soo Many issues and for a game that is all abouth war and combat they are Really BareBones

[@danielkjm]

@@BRUXXUS They need to fix the Combat, Add phases, Ammo, maybe Supply Boxes, and add a 2 lines of troops, and no fucking Dice Rolls. Because the current Army Combat is terrible... Here is a good way to start □ are units ○ are Flanks ○○ □□□□□ ○○ □□□□□ Vs □□□□□ ○○ □□□□□ ○○

[@Malovane77]

Yeah, it's a quite stale game overall, which leads one to do only one thing: conquest. There you find that the system is just awful. I think the worst part is that the tribals have a system that gives them virtually infinite manpower. Tribal chief retinues do not consume national manpower, and they usually consist of at least 75% of forces. Not a huge deal in small states, but I've seen tribes with 1500 cohorts in late game, which is absolutely insane. It's no wonder that Rome collapses in 95% of games.

[@danielkjm]

@@Malovane77 Wow, that is fucked up. This game is a huge mess

[@sethgilmore3220]

1st minuite squad

[@menom4278]

who else has gone back to eu4 by now?

[@Malovane77]

After watching Paradox mods spam bans on people in Steam forums for criticizing the game, I'm personally stepping away from their titles for a good long time.

[@beckermohammed6284]

First