Useful Resources

While I strive to cover the basics herein, when it comes to a complex game like Imperator there is little substitute for some research and references to help you get off the ground when a question on how to squash barbarians pops into your megalomaniacal head.

The Imperator Wiki is a good start for some details and number crunching when it comes to specific questions/topics and can generally be relied upon for the most up-to-date-info. The dev diaries and videos under "lastest news" in particular are a great resource for learning the ropes and understanding the game as it changes over time:

https://imperator.paradoxwikis.com/Imperator_Wiki

Watch some "let's play" YouTube videos, too to get a sense for how the game unfolds. Some great YouTubers who have streamed Imperator are Quill18, Arumba, RepublicOfPlay, and ISorrowProductions (if you are in the mood for a bit of a gas). Sadly there's not a ton of videos out there with the currently overhauled state of the game so hopefully this helps to fill in some of the gaps.



First Nation

Who to start as? I recommend a free, medium-sized Monarchy for the least overwhelming and complicated start. Some good things to look for in a starting nation are the following:

• Government. Are you a monarchy or something else? Rome seems to be the obvious choice but republic mechanics can be a bit intimidating for a first game. Are you a subject state? No thank you.
  
  
• Size. How is the relative size of the nation compared to it's neighbors, similar, slightly bigger, regionally larger? Bigger than most but not the biggest is a good place to start as mentioned above. It's good to know you can quickly get off the ground with a few useful smaller expansion targets without worrying about being immediately gobbled by a big guy.
  
  
• Geography. Are there natural geographical features that can help you defend against early threats, like rivers, islands, peninsulas, chokepoints, mountains, etc.?
  
  
• Cultural/Religious Situation. Are your neighbors of similar cultural/religious standing as you? Dropping into a new nation surrounded by (or worse, internally ridden with) pagan knuckle-draggers will be a tougher start.

Epirus meets these criteria fairly well being in the middle of a hellenic area with many smaller city states, with the mountains and sea at your back. was my first play-through and I had a lot of fun with it. Give them a try!

Before you go off on your vigorous little holiday across the ancient Mediterranean world, it is important to make sure your nation is in a good situation so when you are off to the races, you don't for instance suddenly end up with a rebellion, civil war, or worst, broke. There's an overwhelming amount of information provided by the game to help you along but not always well organised so i'll try to highlight the highlights.

Make sure to resolve any immediate or potential problems when you begin as discussed below, and as they develop as time goes on. These are often indicated in the pop-up banners at the top.


Check out the following tabs to see how you and the Bois are doing:


Nation Overview.



Choose your idea groups (1). Ideas that improve army performance, increase trade routes, increase character loyalty, and ruler popularity are a pretty good place to start.

Check out your cultural distribution pie chart while you're at it (2). This is a good indicator where you will need to spend some energy even early on. It is common for empires to have populations from a different culture group. This is very bad as your pops will be unhappy and perform poorly.

Check out your province loyalty using the filter options (3) as this is often a good indicator of cultural state and use the culture mapmode to help verify. Make sure to set your governor policy to "cultural assimilation" ASAP in any provinces that do not have a large predominant culture majority.

Government.

A well-positioned ruler and loyal, talented cabinet are very important to the stability, development and success of the nation. See how your ruler is doing per the below on the government tab. Is your ruler:

• Legitimate? Get popular and Hire a good philosopher to improve your legitimacy. In a pinch take the ambition to prove legitimacy and hit that "increase legitimacy" button.
  
  
• Popular? A popular ruler is considered legitimate and bad behavior will be better tolerated. Leaving character pay at a high level when the realm is at peace is a good policy to make sure most characters stay happy. Not popular? try holding some games.
  
  
• Powerful? Become the general of an army and grant yourself some holdings to increase your power base and protect against usurpers.
  
  
• Married (monarchies)? Get married to sustain your line of succession. Chose a spouse of suitable child-bearing age whose four attributes compliment your own weaknesses. It's just like real life.

Check out the offices tab too. See if you can get any better candidates in office and make sure they are loyal.

While I am not getting too much into the details of unique government types here, if you want to learn more about them, for now just check out the I:R wiki page:

https://imperator.paradoxwikis.com/Government


Check out the following tabs to see what's up in your nation:

Technology.

Early on prioritize inventions that increase your income, army performance, trade routes, and improve loyalty to and perception of your ruler. Inventions cost money. So try not to blow all your money right away on shiny technology on turn one. More on that below.

Try to maintain your research ratio/points as high as possible by promoting pops to citizens via province policies and buildings, and keeping them happy. If you have research problems you will also get a popup. If you have a bad research ratio, make this a priority.

Economy.

Are you making money? Many things can be solved and problems prevented by having some fat stacks in your treasury. Make sure you have a positive treasury balance (preferably at least 5 gold per turn).

Try to build and maintain a war chest (few hundred gold at all times for a small start is good). This can be accomplished by reducing army, fleet, and fort maintenance and pruning your military (do you really need all those ships and fancy cavalry?).

Further, if you can spare it, it is usually a good policy to maintain increased wages at all times for a loyalty boost so your generals, admirals and office holders stay loyal, lest they start to ignore you and do their own thing (if all else fails a quick bribe always helps).

Religion.

Are you stable and religiously unified? Much like culture, pops of a different religion will be unhappy and perform poorly (but not as badly as different cultures).



Religion - This tab shows your religious unity (1). If it's not quite high then you may want to go back to the nation overview to check out your province loyalty using the filter options and use the religion mapmode to help verify where the biggest religious offenders are chilling. Make sure to set your governor policy to "religious conversion" in any provinces that do not have a large predominant religion majority since they will otherwise be lousy citizens.

Stability - Along the top resource bar you will find your stability rating (2). Keeping this > 50.00 is super important to your nation including income, research, growth, chance for internal strife, and your own popularity and legitimacy! There is sadly not much you can do to improve stability in the short term. On this religion tab, you can "sacrifice to the gods (3) (piggy)" to temporarily boost your stability increase rate.

Trade Overview.

Importing (and later exporting and making your own) goods to your capital provides your nation with very strong bonuses. Exporting also gets you some more sweet dollas. These appear at the top of the tab. Click on your capital province to see your capital trade goods. You will want to try to get "+1" icon to appear on these cards showing you have at least a x1 surplus for a nationwide bonus.



In addition, when it comes to building a diverse and quality army, you will need at least one strategic resource of the associated kind to train the desired unit in an owned province. For instance, to create Roman Legionaires (heavy infantry), Rome will need at least one unit of iron either imported or owned in a province to begin the training. The latter is strongly preferred since trade relations can change.

Anyway, here are some good priority trade goods:

• Strategic Resources - Iron and Horses for your basic army choices (tip, you mainly just need these in your nation if you don't already have them; you dont have to put them in your capital. but double-plus good for that sweet iron surplus discipline!).
  
  
• Food - Grain for a booming population and livestock for promotion of pops.
  
  
• Population - Output resources (esp citizen) if your pops are the right religion and culture, happiness resources if they are not.
  
  
• Military - Furs when you are raising an army.
  
  
• Economy and Technology - These are pretty much all great. Papyrus for big research bonus. Gemstones and marble/glass are nice too depending if your nation already has a decent bankroll/is backwards and needs to get civilized.

While after all that pre-work jibber-jabber you are probably all ready to start knocking heads, not so fast--you may want to establish some relations and study your neighbors by reviewing the Diplomacy tab before jumping onto the battlefield. Having the right policy and neighbor opinions can help you ensure success when you are good and ready and finally do go to war.


Right-clicking a nation (including your own) on the world map will bring up the diplomacy tab. Right click on your nation and check your active diplomatic relations to see how many alliances and clients you can sustain (10). Do you have any subjects/alliances already (10)? Consider how these may support your next steps.


Right-click on your neighbors to see who's who.


Who are your friends and enemies (opinion of you [1])? Are you in the middle of any truces (2)? Do any enemies have a live Cassus Belli on you (3)? If so, you may need to prepare to defend.

At first it's usually a good idea to improve relations with big scary neighbors by improving opinion and sending gifts (4) so they hopefully spare you and go hurt someone else first. An added bonus is that you will be able to increase your options for importing trade goods from other nations which will improve the state of your provinces.

It is good to let the game run a couple months to see what sort of alliances form between the AI nations before getting too deep into international relations.

Begin sizing up your neighbors. Who are your best choices for expansion targets? Consider the following factors:

• Culture/Religion - Targets of your culture/religion are generally the best possible expansion targets and the first ones you will come across on your road to empire since they can be annexed or subjugated and integrated with little impact to your society. Check the mapmodes to find these guys.
  
  
• Relative Fleets/Cohorts (5) - Represents capability to carry out or defend against a decisive attack through overwhelming numbers on the field. Choose targets whose aggregated allied cohorts/fleets are less than your own.
  
  
• Relative Manpower (6) - More important for carrying out longer wars. Running out of manpower due to bad weather/terrain attrition and prolonged siege/combat will bring your invasion to an untimely end. Choose targets whose aggregated allied manpower are less than your own. For very long wars it's ideal to have a higher manpower recovery rate too.
  
  
• Geography and Fortification - Consider the effects of enemy terrain on how they may slow down your attack/wear your forces down. Can your forces easily attack over an open front or will they have to queue up through mountain passes to get to their targets? A militarily manageable foe with large tracts of deserts, mountains, and forts that will harm your armies over time will mean you better bring some extra manpower (think Russia).
  
  
• Resources - Do they have something that you want? Maybe some elephants? Papyrus? Check out the trade goods mapmode to see what you can grab that will help your cause.
  
  
• Cassus Belli (9)- You will need a Cassus Belli before you can do anything. Do you already have a reason to go to war with another nation?
  
  
• Finances (7) - Broke enemies are dead enemies. If they are very low or running a deficit and have poor earning capability they are in good shape for an attack.

When you have decided what you want to do check out the stances (8) for one that will support your immediate goals. Now you know who you want to go after, so it's time to build some relationships and fabricate Cassus Belli. Start improving relations with other neighbors that you do not intend to go to war with in the short term to help prevent incursions from the wrong direction. If you don't have the horsepower you need to do the job or you feel you are still at high risk to be invaded, then consider forming alliances with nations that are nearby enough to get interested but not in the direct path of your intended expansion that can help you attack and defend.


Consider the regional balance of power as you are developing your expansion strategy. This is key to a successful long-term game. You must secure your survival by preventing any one state from gaining enough military power to dominate your sphere of influence.

If you end up in a mano-a-mano situation with a big guy while you were off colonializing and scooping up tribesmen in the wilderness the whole game, it could be the end of the game for you. Further, as the game goes on empires consolidate their power through technology and social integration, making them ever more dangerous.

This means fighting against the urge to exclusively pick off small targets to increase your own power easily since this can allow a big power nearby to snowball out of control and leave you without friends.

To do this, plan to periodically take down regional powers similar to and larger than you in the short to mid--game. This type of warfare is different in that it is rarely effectively accomplished by direct annexation. You will usually need to break up their empire to succeed. Here are some tools at your disposal:

• Military Power - the enemy of your enemy is your friend. Make some alliances with nations that are likely to join you in a war against the big guy to balance your military power. Monitor the enemy and choose the best possible time to attack per the above discussed factors for setting expansion goals, particularly while or immediately after the nation is/was in a distracting/costly war.
  
  
• Attrition - wear down the enemy forces through defensive warfare tactics, forcing the enemy to fight piecemeal and in unfavorable terrain. If you can drop down their manpower then other neighbors may be more likely to succeed in knocking him down a few pegs if they decide to join the bandwagon separately.
  
  
• Diplomacy - when you win a victory choose terms that will fragment the enemy nation militarily and geographically such as demanding the release of subjects and states.
  
  
• Subterfuge - Consider supporting rebels in the target land to help break up their nation. You can see if they are at risk by checking them out in the diplomacy tab:
  
  
  
  What better ally against a big enemy than the enemy itself?

These wars may not always end in a spectacular victory for you but every little bit against a superpower will help your cause in the long run. If you can maintain all your neighbors in small squabbling factions through your influence, the end-game will be your oyster.

It is good to raise armies specialized for regular combat and siege warfare to win wars quickly and efficiently, explained below.


Bread-and-butter armies for field combat should generally be comprised of a diversified set of core infantry and sometimes supporting cavalry. These armies are generally larger and more expensive and are always led by a loyal general. Unit type diversity will allow you to respond to different types of threats effectively and make use of tactics.

The size of your regular armies should be dictated by the low-end average supply of the operating area. Maintaining smaller groups gives you operational flexibility and prevents attrition that occurs from overstacking forces on low supply areas that can drain your manpower.

Determine an appropriate army group size by clicking on one of your armies and then mousing over the desired operating area to see what the supply limits are, or using the supply mapmode, shown below. With the mapmode you will see areas of darkening green. Find the worst ones around:



It is good to target army sizes that are consistent with these areas of lower supply so your armies can move through them without attrition. In this scenario organize armies below or otherwise divisible by 20 (e.g. stacks of 10, 15, or 20) to prevent attrition.


Siege armies are useful when you have a lot of open ground to cover to focus on occupation while your regular armies sweep deep into enemy territory and take on the bigger threats. A nice side bonus of small siege armies is they can give your good-for-nothing scorned family members something to do besides complain.

These should make up a smaller proportion of your forces to spread out and siege down individual territories and can be comprised of inexpensive troops like archers and light infantry. Siege armies might take up ~10-20% of your forces as needed. Siege armies can be just one or two cohorts each to siege regular territories, depending on whether you are expecting to take terrain attrition (e.g. deserts), but keep in mind territory occupation requires no less than 1,000 men.


No less than 5,000 men are needed to siege level 1 fortified territories. As such you will need to stack 3-4 siege armies on a fortified territory to take it (or just use a regular army).

Pursuit Armies

If you have the money and inclination you may want to create armies dedicated to running down and destroying small/fleeing enemy armies. Horse Archers and Light Cavalry are a good choice for this army type given their speed. Use their superior speed and maneuver to catch and quickly destroy enemy armies.


Mercenaries are useful additions to your forces if you are good on cash but short on manpower. Use to help continue to carry out your expansion under this circumstance. Use of mercenaries is not preferred, however since it will cost you military experience which will slow your military tradition development, you can't control their size so they are often subject to a lot of attrition, and they are very expensive.

To help determine what types of troops you should train for your regular armies, go to the Diplomacy and Military tabs and assess your nation's troop strengths. This information can give you a general idea of what troops your nation will field most effectively.

Check the traditions illustration on the diplomacy tab to see what general bonuses your nation gets to certain unit types. on the Military tab check what military traditions will become available to you as you progress. Then you might choose 2-3 preferred unit types for an army template based on the troops that receive the most bonuses.

For instance, take Bactria:

Persian Traditions - immediate bonus to:

• heavy infantry
  
• horse archers

Bactrian Military Traditions - many bonuses to:

• heavy infantry
  
• horse archers
  
• heavy cavalry

As such the Bactrian player would would be wise to field armies comprised primarily of heavy infantry and cavalry, and horse archers.


One thing I spent a while thinking about was, wouldn't it be nice to have some super armies? What's the magic trick?? I concluded there really isnt one, and there's no perfect army, just perfect engagement conditions.

A reasonable standard starting ratio for infantry/cavalry composition depending on your finances and traditions might be 20-40% cavalry with a bit of variety for fun. Don't worry about getting it perfect--you can do the above and get away with it quite fine. There are other factors that play a similarly key role in how your armies will perform.

Flanking is a powerful factor that can influence the success of your battle which you should take advantage of if you can afford the numbers in your army design. For flanking you either need to outnumber the enemy (which may mean using cheaper units such as Light Infantry or Archers) or destroy the opposition very quickly (Heavy Cavalry vs Archers).

Have fun trying to min-max your armies but don't fret, just make sure you are using a combination of a few different unit types that synergize with your nation's traditions, and when in the field, don't pick tactic the enemy will counter!

Ok its almost time to hit the go button... STOP RIGHT THERE! You ready for battle? You sure? No you're not because you didn't read this part.


The best war is one that can be completed rapidly and with minimal loss. That means you need to do a little preparation before going ahead. Make sure you take all the necessary measures before you begin so you're not caught with your pants down. Here is a routine to review your readiness each time before hitting that declare war button.

Armies in position? Situate your armies near the border so they can enter enemy territory immediately as such:



These Roman legions are arranged in large groups along the border for a coordinated advance. They are followed closely behind by smaller siege cohorts to take territory as the legions push in to seek out and destroy the main enemy armies. This surprise blitz can be effective at taking armies before they are coordinated and consolidated.

Tactics and Organization set? In the example the target nation is Etruria which has Italic traditions. From experience I know they favor Envelopment tactics. I therefore set Shock Action as the primary tactic for the legions.

Organize your primary, secondary, and flanking cohorts. Here is a good resource from a guy Transatlantic Slave Trade that is helpful for this business:

https://sp.zhabite.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1749985337
According to the reference I set:

• Primary Cohort - Light Cavalry
  
• Secondary Cohort - Archers
  
• Flanking Cohort - Heavy Infantry

Some people advice putting heavier units as primary and lighter units as secondary but the only thing which matters is which enemies they face. For example Light Cavalry + Heavy Infantry vs Archers + Heavy Infantry. You want your Light Cavalry against their Archers.

Maintenance set? set your army maintenance to maximum to receive a combat morale bonus. Do the same for your fleets if applicable. Set your fort maintenance to regular. If you cannot cover your whole front to prevent any troops from getting around or behind, you may want to raise this to the maximum level as well. Note you will need to wait a month or more while the unit morale raises (yellow bar below the cohort size number).

Finance/Manpower OK? ensure you have a reasonable war chest saved to cover any unforseen costs during the war and that you are ideally at least turning a slight profit. Running out of money during battle is disastrous--it can result in major morale penalties, unfavorable events, and even defection! Theres no faster way to lose a war than having your best guy switch sides in the thick of it.

Generals loyal? Make sure your generals are loyal before you begin. if they have low loyalty replace them with someone more reliable, or bribe them if they can't be spared, since disloyal generals will not follow your orders.

Importing Strategic Goods? A number of trade goods will buff your armies. It is good to start importing these before war to get a surplus and reap the benefits for the ones that are applicable to your armies.

Military Omen Enacted? While I wouldn't hold off an invasion on account of an omen if the timing is convenient, there are some nice ones that will help your war.

Rearguard Ready? If you have multiple potentially hostile neighbors on other sides of your nation you may want to leave a rearguard near other borders. The AI is no fool and will attack if it finds out your armies are hundreds of miles away so a deterring force is useful. This force can be a useful reserve in a pinch, too.

Wars are won by achieving a sufficient warscore to convince your enemy to concede to your demands and depleting the enemy's enthusiasm to fight. The warscore is a measure of in whose favor the war goes. Identify a strategy and set of objectives that will help you achieve your wargoal and increase your warscore rapidly before you begin, especially in major wars over large areas.


Primary objective: take and hold the wargoal you choose as soon as possible. As long as wargoal province lands are contested, you will not be winning, that is, your warscore will not rise, even if you win every battle. holding the wargoal will provide you the fastest warscore rate.

Secondary objectives: strategically capture provincial capitals and forts near your wargoal province and chase down/"stackwipe" enemy armies to inflict massive casualties. These objectives will further your warscore moderately and make it easier to ensure the captured wargoal remains uncontested. These are big jobs for your main armies. Make sure you do not leave opportunities for the enemy to flank you and contest the wargoal territories as you move deeper into enemy territory.

Tertiary objectives: mop up other territories outside of the wargoal province. This is a job best left for your siege cohorts or not at all as claiming these empty lands doesn't go far toward your warscore. It will, however prevent your enemy from raising fresh cohorts in your rear areas.


One of the best ways to win a fairly evenly matched or war or one where you are outmached/outnumbered is to switch from an offensive posture for invasion to a defensive one when you have achieved your objective, using terrain to improve your ability to retain your wargoal and keep the warscore ticking in your favor. See the below section on formation defense tactics for details.


Take a sensible rather than absolute strategy to your conquests. Especially in massive wars against major powers, do not concern yourself with full annexation/obliteration of the enemy or getting a 100% warscore. You are more likely to do more damage to yourself than it's worth to you. Long wars deplete your resources and prevent you from moving on to the next opportunity.

Be realistic and cut your losses some times. Perhaps in the first 2 years of a given war you are able to take your wargoal with minimal casualties and the enemy is ready to hand it over. Yet you would love to grab just one more fort so you go for it. Shortly five doomstacks show up and kick your butt, now your warscore is going down. Next thing you know it, 4 more years have passed, maybe you've got the fort, but you've lost half your manpower fighting over it. Not worth it.

Many factors influence success during a tactical engagement. It's your job to stack as many in your favor as possible prior to engaging. The following factors under player control will influence your success during a battle:

• Unit quality. Traditions influence offense, defense, and discipline of specific units, which all impact the fighting ability of an individual cohort.
  
  
• Army Morale. The army with higher morale will stay in a fight longer before retreating.
  
  
• Army Experience. Reduces damage taken by cohorts, increased by combat and drilling.
  
  
• Army size and composition. These factors influence an army's ability to flank and counter individual enemy cohorts.
  
  
• Army tactics. Effective tactics will provide damage bonuses. Countered tactics will have a negative effective effect on your ability to deal damage whilst magnifying the enemy's damage against you, to the tune of 30% difference worst-case.
  
  
• Army organization. Cohort placement within the army will dictate where your units will be placed in the battle line relative to the enemy and therefore when and how units can engage opposing units. Units have strengths and weaknesses against other unit types.
  
  
• Terrain of the defending army. Attacking an enemy army across a river, on a hill or in a marsh or forest will somewhat penalize the attacks. Attacking an enemy army in a mountain, across a straight, or by landing will significantly penalize the attacks.
  
  
• General's skills. General martial skills and traits will influence army fighting ability.

Stacking these factors in your favor can be extremely powerful. As evidence for how this can work for you, here were the results from a series of two battles from our previous Rome v. Etrutia example in the earlier "Preparing for War" section. All these factors were leveraged to spectacular effect in a particular instance:



This little Roman army with a good defensive position, ideal counter tactics and organization, leadership, and morale defeated in consecutive order two enemy armies nearly 3x the total size despite having more quality units, and dealt 3x more casualties than were sustained to boot!


Use this technique to safely advance into enemy territory and achieve your goals:



The main armies move together into adjacent territories as they proceed. Notice they are covering all the territories between impassable terrain. At this moment if they are approached by an enemy army the rear army can move in to reinforce without interrupting your line. This approach will:

• Prevent attrition by overstacking
  
• Offer operational flexibility on the battlefield to respond to the enemy
  
• Enhance your control over where enemy armies can travel
  
• Reduce the impact of a massive counterattack during a tactical withdrawal by limiting the amount of your forces that could be caught by the advancing enemy

Use this technique to protect your wargoal during a defensive war, or your gains in an offensive one in which you are at a disadvantage:



The main defensive line (bottom green) is arranged along available defensive terrain (hills bottom left) and impassable terrain (bottom right) and is supported by an adjacent interior line of reserves (top green) such that a single army can deploy to various points in the main line as required (green arrows). In an emergency the next army in the main line can move to support the defending army against an attack (yellow arrows). The benefits of this tactic are as follows:

• strong ability to leverage defensive terrain and bottlenecks
  
• smaller forces can prevail against larger forces
  
• can bait enemy armies into an unfavorable attack
  
• flexible replacement of beleaguered positions
  
• control a large area
  
• eliminate attrition
  
• strategically positioned forts can replace the main army line, while defenders can hang behind and wait for the enemy to siege the fort attacking at will!

Here is how it works in this example:

1. Enemy army approaches a point in the defensive line.
2. Player checks the imminent battle tooltip to determine if the position can hold. Outcome is uncertain (yellow bubble):



3. Player waits until the army is locked into the attack (padlock next to enemy army info banner), then advances the reserve army.
4. Player checks if the predicted outcome is improved. If not, player moves the adjacent army in to support.
5. Battle concludes, player cycles the defending army into the reserve position to recover.


Use these abilities found on the unit card liberally:

Forced march is very useful in conjunction with army formation tactics as they will let you speed an army up to support another. It's also useful for fleeing or redeploying your forces quickly. Penalties are light; only increased potential attrition and slower morale recovery after battle (so be sure to turn it off again after you use it).

Unit Reorganization great to use for armies suffering after a big battle that need to be prioritized for quick recovery, like those you may have cycled into an interior reserve line. Penalties are increased maintenance and slower movement.

Select Unit Objective grants control of an army to the computer. This is really great in cases where you have strong superiority to blitz territory and can be a convenient way to put your siege armies to work without a lot of micromanagement. This ability is less useful on your main armies if the match is more even, and if battles are in a low supply area since the computer doesn't seem to mind stacking even small armies to take all kinds of attrition.


Sieges take a long time and are largely based on the assaulting general's martial, and a good dose of luck. A good way to help quickly conduct a war is to use the assault tactic during a siege, since fortress siege is one of the most time-consuming aspects of warfare. This will allow you to also gain warscore faster. Siege assaults are also particularly useful when attacking forts where during the siege your army would be subject to a strong attacker disadvantage against relieving enemy armies due to their position, for example, in mountainous terrain.

This will, however accelerate the siege at the expense of siege army casualties. It is important to wait until their garrison is a bit depleted before you attack or you will likely suffer tens of thousands of casualties! Conduct assaults if you are good on money and manpower and can easily replace the army in the event that an enemy army makes an appearance to contest your work shortly thereafter.

So you won the war. Now what? Here are your options in order of significance/integration, when you should consider them and what you can expect from them. Do be advised subjects have a loyalty value affected by the relation between subject and overlord, by the comparative army size of the overlord and its subjects of the same culture, the comparative population size and by things like laws, and the Overlord’s Aggressive Expansion, Tyranny and Stability. Take too many subjects and they will not be very well behaved.


Above all make sure to manage your AE during the peace deal, as this can cause huge unhappiness in your empire which will give you a hit to our national output.

No matter what you take in the deal, KEEP YOU AE < 50.

For example, I recently played a game where when I concluded a war at 68 AE and took a hugh swathe of land, my manpower pool actually DECREASED 60% due to resulting unhappiness penalties (when I repeated the deal taking 44 AE, my manpower pool INCERASED by 20%).


Subjects can be a great way to expand rapidly without hurting your research rate and can provide many bonuses and conveniences.

Tributaries and Tribal Vassals

Useful for remote border provinces of the wrong culture/religion, low civilization/population. Good for establishing secure buffer zones between you and the nowhere. Will provide cash money or manpower and some free meat shields if someone from the hinterlands gets uppity after them, but they won't come to help you out personally in your personal business. Don't plan to integrate later because you can't. Doesn't take up a diplomacy slot.

Feudatories

Excellent vassal option for small nations of your culture. Good for rapidly expanding your power base since they provide good AI military service as full allies. Will also provide manpower. Integrate later if you like, no big rush. Doesn't take up a diplomacy slot! It's never a really bad idea to take a Feudatory.

Satrapies and Client States

Larger, more long-term subjects that pay you good money. These can be a step up from tributaries and tribal vassals as options for expanding in places that you want to ultimately forget about and leave alone since they act as an ally, and/or places that are significantly culturally/religiously different that they would hurt your unity and research ratio badly to directly annex at the moment they capitulate, but you would like to gobble them eventually.

Disadvantages are that they take up a diplo slot so you cant have millions of them, and large states can take forever to integrate if you intend for the state to be a stepping stone to direct annexation.

Post-Peace Release of Client States

PPSSSST! Do you want to know a secret? After you directly annex the lands of your neighbors, you can create a client state from your own provinces or fragments of provinces if you like! Just go to the Nation Overview and look for the button with the flagpole, to release a province as a client.

The client government and primary culture will be derived from the characteristics of the local province. This may be a way you can accomplish the old "vassal feeding" technique. Alternatively client states make convenient allies to cover the borders of your more far-flung imperial lands It also allows you to make some province improvements (e.g. build some theaters/temples) to accelerate the assimilation process in the event that province that you are working with is not yet of the correct culture/religion.

Make sure you set up your client provinces that you want to expand for success before you release them. A couple theaters and a temple are good choices to help them quickly assimilate the province to the desired culture and religion for future annexation. Also if you are growing them using your conquests make sure to hit the "transfer occupation" button on the province popup before you enact the peace deal.


Full annexation is good when:

• The target is in your future path of expansion.
  
• The target is of your culture group and/or religion.
  
• Your core unity and research rate is already high.
  
• If the target is not of your culture group and/or religion, target is not so large it will destabilize your national unity and research rate.
  
• You can afford to take direct control of the development of the lands.
  
• You dont need extra cohorts/manpower quick.
  
• You just have to paint that spot imperial Roman Red.

As your nation begins to grow and expand into uncivilized territories, you will face new challenges and need to continuously develop your prioritization of managing and improving your realm with your limited resources. Below are some tips for things to think about in order of priority. In order to understand the prioritization, I have categorized provinces in order of national significance / development / integration as frontier, core, and capital provinces depending on their characteristics.


Policy implementation should be unique to each province's situation and follow a general order as follows. Always use governor policies to ensure full cultural and religious assimilation before moving on to annex new uncivilized places. This ensures happiness and therefore high rates of income, research, and manpower:

- Frontier Province Status -

local autonomy, target 80-100% loyalty. -->
cultural assimilation, target > 70-90% national culture. -->
religious conversion, target > 70-90% national religion. -->
civilization effort, target minimum 30 civilization. -->
centralize population, target ~15-20 city pops at player discretion. -->

- Core Province Status -

social mobility, target player discretion. -->
religious conversion / cultural assimilation, target > 90-100% -->
trade or wealth or borderlands policies


Tend to your core lands first and foremost, prioritizing your capital province. Here are things to consider in general chronological order.

1. Choose loyal, low corruption, high finesse governors.
2. Relocate your capital if there is a much better spot available with more pops, local bonuses, better land, better trade good (looking at you Bactria).
3. Import food goods and obtain a surplus to stimulate rapid growth.
4. Move slave pops into your province capital cities, prioritizing your nation capital to obtain nationwide bonuses (18-20 pops depending on the location).
5. Invest in city buildings that make your pops happy.
6. Invest in city buildings that grow your city.
7. Invest in city buildings that improve your city outputs.

Later in the game you may want to do things like:

• buy infrastructure investments
  
• found additional cities in your core provinces at sites of valuable trade goods
  
• convert your capital and biggest cities to megalopolis status

Frontier province development is similar but often presents some different challenges depending on how uncivilized your new subjects are since they will have some special needs.

Note developing frontier provinces past the first couple steps of integration should take a back seat investment-wise if your core lands are not yet in order, and if you are not actively developing your frontier provinces, you should probably not be directly annexing more since they will hurt your research ratio and unity.

Priorities should be as follows with more attention given to provinces of higher total population:

1. Choose decently talented, preferably zero-corruption governors.
2. Found a city if one does not yet exist and relocate the provincial capital as appropriate. Desirable city locations are as follows:

• coastal
  
• on farmlands, hills, or plains for growth bonuses
  
• have a useful non-food trade good (these get replaced on founding)
  
• have special modifiers (e.g. successor state Alexandrias)
  
• could be easily defended by a nearby fort or is a suitable location for fortifications itself

3. Refer to core province priorities step 4.

A great empire isn't just large, it's productive. As your empire grows and takes shape you will need to continuously develop and manage it to ensure you are getting the most out of your lands. There is relatively low value (other than the satisfaction of big painted areas) in having an empire of pops sitting on their asses and not procreating and producing, and will in the long-run slow your growth. The below sections give some recommendations for how to ensure they are doing so.


Sometimes it may make more sense for you to spend money on developing your core cities than on going out to conquer some new ones. The buildings in your province will have a big impact on the income and manpower you will yield from the region, and if you have a province with zero buildings, then you should invest a few stacks to get an adequate yield from what you already have before adding more land to your lazy empire.

So you got a lot of provinces but you don't got a lot of money. How to prioritize building construction? You should build buildings where 1. your well-governed pops are unhappy; 2. your capital province are undeveloped; and then 3. your province population is relatively high.

As with the implementation of provincial edicts, I also recommend a build order which I will explain a bit below using a decision tree approach. If the answer is yes to any question, move on to the next one.

1. Is your province disloyal due to lots of tribesmen/socio-cultural differences? Build settlement buildings in undeveloped territories that increase provincial loyalty and increase tribal happiness (if they are disloyal due to the governor then you should probably have a lower corruption one).
2. Is the populace predominantly of your culture and religion? If no, build city buildings that increase your assimilation (1st priority) and conversion speed (2nd priority).
3. Are your pops happy? If no, review the province and city information and see who's unhappy and why, and build buildings that will increase the happiness of the pops that are unhappy.
4. Is the province population growing? If no, see the overpopulation section for improvements to get the province population growing again.
5. Are you making more commerce or tax income? If the former, add commerce buildings. If the latter, add tax buildings.
6. Are you citizens happy? If yes, build some research output buildings. Do you have low national manpower? build some manpower-increasing buildings.


Place forts in ways that they will project your strategic lands and prevent acess to key areas. Here is an example of a good way to set up fortifications:



Key features of the fort placementes are as follows:

• near impassable terrain chokepoints that will not allow hostile armies to pass without capture
  
• overlapping zones of control (shaded blue) severly restricting enemy movement
  
• along roads to important destinations to speed up allied access
  
• proximal to cities to block their capture
  
• On hilly territory that will give a friendly army marching to relieve the siege a defender terrain advantage

Later in the game you will gain access to the ability to build roads with your armies that will help you move troops very quickly and defend your lands. Roads do cost a bit of money.

Take an "all roads lead to Rome" approach, using them to first connect your capital to capitals of surrounding provinces and cities. Use outer routes to connect provincial capitals together, and so on (please excuse the shameless use of MS Paint):



Since I don't have a real-life example of a full-blown road network at the moment, here's an example you Cities Skylines players our there might enjoy:



The best design is a sort of web with the major cities at the intersections, forts along the way, and minor cities at the ends of branches. Not only does it work great, it looks boss.

Try to place your forts along the roads (or roads along your forts) as well to integrate your static defense network. This will enable you to more easily shift forces to relieve an unexpected siege on the outskirts of your empire!


Food is important to keeping your populace happy and continuously increasing provincial output. As of Cicero food is managed at the provincial level. Each province consumes food according to the number of pops living there. Each province gains food primarily according to:

• cities on farmlands
  
• farming and slave buildings in province settlements
  
• type and quantity of food trade goods in the region including imports
  
• if the food edict is in effect

Sometimes your cities may become overpopulated. This can result in losing good pops that could be gaining you money, manpower, and research. If this happens you can:

• move slaves out into a food trade good-producing territory
  
• build city buildings that increase the pop capacity (e.g. aqueducts)
  
• use the food edict to raise food production
  
• build farming and slave buildings in province settlements
  
• import any food trade good
  
• reduce a provincial city to settlement status

A recurring problem in most empires is a “bad research ratio.” This means you are not generating the minimum expected research quota given your national population. Research ratio is affected by the volume of research points being generated compared to your overall population. This may put you behind pace with your neighbors which would be a disadvantage for your nation. This is mainly impacted by:

• Number of citizens in your empire
  
• Citizen output based on their happiness and any infrastructure modifiers applied to their output (e.g. the city building that increases research)
  
• Inventions that modify their research output

If you have covered these things another way to improve your research ratio is to minimize non-citizens in your empire by:

1. slowing down your expansion so tribal areas with few citizens can catch up through development (crappy) or
2. reliquishing your low-citizen ratio provinces (e.g. places with large proportions of tribesmen) to a client state (better than nothing).

Smart taking of subjects in general, as opposed to annexing everything that's not your religion/culture group, can be really helpful dealing with this.

Character management is one of the core mechanics which will influence what you can accomplish with your empire as a result of how well it's managed and how much trouble these knuckeheads will cause.

Always prioritize assigning functions to high-loyalty characters of a scorned family. These will help to keep your character pool happy and therefore better performing/less troublesome since scorned family characters will perpetually suffer from a negative loyalty modifier.

Generals/Admirals, Office-Holders, and Researchers

Choose high-relevant attribute characters for these roles. Low loyalty characters in these areas can lead to them lending you poor political influence or worse, taking arms against you. If their loyalty is low, befriend, bribe or replace them based on their value to you.

Governors

Choose high-finesse, high loyalty, low corruption characters for these roles. Low loyalty governors may go rogue. High corruption governors will piss off your pops, increasing their unrest.

Thanks for reading the guide--friendly reminder to thumbs up and favorite if you enjoyed reading as much as I did writing!

Imperator Rome is a very complex game so if you are a new player, research, practice and be patient. It can take a long time to get used to the game but it is rewarding when you get the hang of it!

I have really only scratched the surface with this high-level guide. You will learn new things all the time and have fun dealing with problems and events along the way I havent mentioned here that will require you to apply what you learned to persevere. As you get used to the game take the time to mouse over the tooltips, examine the data, and explore all the mechanics and function buttons all over the place to see what they can all do for you. There are dozens if not hundreds of them. When in doubt look it up or drop me a note. Have fun!

A big thanks to Paradox for another great strategy title and for listening to your ornery customers. Thanks for leading the way in the strategy games genre for us armchair generals out there. And for stealing hundreds of hours of my life.

Your courteous and constructive comments are welcome below. Good fortune in your conquests!