Imperator: Rome: Tips for Beginners

• Citizens are the only source of research points.
• Your capital city, province and region each provide a serious, stacking modifier to citizen output, so getting a lot of citizens close or in your very capital, making them happy and then showering them with further research point bonuses is a good way to boost your tech.
• Same goes for other provinces with a lot of citizens – importing some papyrus there can do wonders.
• Most important value for research is Research Efficiency – a ratio of research points produced in the country in a year to the total number of pops in it.
• Research Efficiency tooltip is confusing. The 1st number is a yearly research output which is just Research Points (as shown to the left of it) multiplied by 12.
• That in turn gives a Monthly Research value which is then affected by research speed multipliers as shown next to every research type.
• Most effective bonuses are usually Research Point ones (since they ten to have higher values), then global research speed bonuses and finally ones affecting only one of advances.
• Make sure to periodically check your assigned researchers – every single point of the ability in question gives you additional 10% speed – an amount difficult to come by using other means.
• Each level of advances gives the stacking bonus in its field (hover over “Current level: x” and a green bar for details).
• Each level also gives access to 3 predefined inventions.
• Inventions can be picked up for a base cost of 100 oratory power each.
• As of 1.0 only 3 inventions per advance type are accessible with the recently unlocked replacing the older, unpicked ones.
• To be able to pick the older inventions you need to “dig” for them by selecting the newer ones until you reach the ones you want.
• Depending on your research speed and(to lesser extent) oratory power income you may struggle to keep up with the torrent of new inventions.
• Value of inventions varies a lot, both situationally and objectively, so choose them wisely and cherish every point of civic power, especially if your research speed is up to par.
• You can get “ahead of time” in your research resulting in increased cost of new advances and serious diminishing returns.
• Still – bonuses provided by each level are powerful, especially the military one.
• In general smaller and slower to expand nations will research more quickly while more expansionist ones and bigger may struggle. Especially if they’re tribes that have difficulty keeping their citizens happy.

• Cities produce predefined trade goods at base rate of 1 per city
• For every 15 slaves in the city (base value) that city will produce another “copy” of its trade good.
• In some situations it may be worth it to move some slaves in order to produce a surplus of a key resource. (See: Pops)
• Trade goods are managed on the level of provinces.
• First copy of every trade good produced in the province will stay there and provide local bonuses to all the cities in that province.
• Subsequent copies of a trade good make up a surplus that provides additional, albeit smaller bonuses for every copy present.
• Surplus trade goods can be exported both internally to your different provinces and extrenally.
• First copy of every trade good exported abroad provides a unique country-wide bonus.
• First surplus in the capital province also provides a unique country-wide bonus, usually even more powerful one.
• You can block other countries from requesting your capital surplus goods by switching a toggle in the top right corner of the Trade screen (F9).
• Specific bonuses are of very different value depending on the country and the situation.
• Both importing and exporting goods provides you with commerce value.
• Commerce income provided by trading goods tends to scale much faster with expansion than tax income.
• To import goods a province needs to have a free trading route available. Those are created by laws, inventions, achieving a power rank, governor policies other country modifiers and even events.
• Creating a trade route costs base 25 civic power, but that cost can be lowered by selecting a mercantile diplomatic stance on diplomacy screen (F7)
• Capital province trade routes are by far the most important and almost always worth spending the civic power to utilize.
• You can only import goods from countries in your diplomatic range. It gets bigger as you climb the power ranking.
• Diplomatic range can be seen both using a diplomacy mapmode and by selecting a trade route from the province menu. It is shown as the lighter shade of gray.
• As of 1.0 diplomatic range seems borderline broken in some places so your milage may vary.
• Import request from other countries are based on their diplomatic range, not yours.
• Non-capital trade routes can be very useful as well, but I’d advice restrain considering their cost.
• As of 1.0 AI tends NOT to break trades when they start hating you, but they’ll be automatically canceled when you end up at war with your partner, or the city that produced the good you import changes hands. It may end up costing you quite a lot of civic power if you aren’t careful.
• At the same time high aggressive expansion resulting in lowered opinion will prevent you from establishing new international trade routes. It may be wise to let it tick down and/or to improve relations with key future partners (*cough
• Egypt *cough*) between the series of wars.
• Importing from other provinces to your capital is often a good idea. You may review your current exports in trade tab (F9) and possibly cancel an export agreement of something you need there as it will not show up on the province trade route screen.
• Both high and low commerce taxation settings in Economy tab (F6) can be quite useful especially early on.
• Additional import routes provided by “Free Trade” setting will easily provide enough income to pay for that -15% debuff few times over, but you need to have both goods to import and civic power to burn. Use with caution and trade route cost discounts.
• “Transaction Taxation” on the other hand gives a basically free +15% commerce income to countries that are nowhere near getting 15 slaves in one of their provinces.
• If a military unit requires an access to a trade resource to be built, you won’t be able to reinforce it if you lose access to it.

• Countries are ranked by the number of cities they control: City State, Local Power, Regional Power, Major Power and Great Power.
• Diplomacy is limited by diplomatic range. You can extend it via inventions and by climbing the ranks as world’s power. As of 1.0 it seems to be off at times, especially on the eastern side of the map.
• Diplomatic options available to you change with your rank.
• Only countries of the same rank can be allies. For example a Regional Power can’t ally with a Local Power, it can only guarantee it.
• Opinion penalty given to you by aggressive expansion will be the main limiting factor in your diplomacy.
• Aggressive expansion decays over time by 0.20% of its current value when you’re at peace. It may be a lot or very little depending on how much of it you have.
• Additional aggressive expansion decay can be provided by your government officials, inventions or even trade goods. That kind works both at peace and at war.
• You can slowly improve opinion of other country by up to base 50 points by paying a base cost of 50 oratory cost. Both the amount and the cost can be changed via various modifiers.
• Increasing improve opinion maximum also increases the pace in which the opinion is gained.
• Increasing opinion is twice as effective towards your subjects.
• You can also improve opinion by 25 by sending a gift, but keep in mind that it is capped at 25 so subsequent gifts will only refresh the bonus.
• There is number of subject types providing different bonuses, but keep in mind that neither Tributaries not Tribal Vassals can be integrated.
• Other subject can be integrated after 10 years and reaching 190 opinion.
• Integration takes at base speed 4 months per every pop in the subject country.
• Base integration speed can be doubled by picking Subjugative Stance and for every 5 points of Diplomatic Reputation.
• Each point of Diplomatic Reputation increases the likelihood that out diplomatic offer will be accepted by 1. It’s not nearly as powerful as in EU4. It also speeds up subject integration.
• Each country has a diplomatic stance that can be change for the base cost of 100 oratory power in the Diplomacy tab (F6).
• Bellicose Stance will allow you to save 20 oratory power on claim creation, but it’s main use is lowering the warscore cost in peace deals which may allow you to take more land at the same time. Keep that option in mind when putting together a peace deal.
• Appeasing Stance doubles your innate aggressive expansion decay (it only happens at peace!) and lowers the cost of improving relations by 12 oratory power a piece. It seems most useful after a long conquering spree when we want to be able to do trade with the world again.
• Mercantile Stance significantly increase the commerce income and allows to save 7 points of civic power per trade route created while it’s active. Good choice when we’re struggling with money and outright necessery one if we plan on creating a lot of trade routes (See: Trade).
• Subjugative Stance, as mentioned above, doubles the base speed of subject integration.
• You can fabricate a claim on a province for the base cost of 200 oratory power.
• You can declare a war without a claim, but it will cost you 2 stability. It can be worth if oratory power is more valuable to you than the religious one (it usually is).
• “Show Superiority” cassus belli will make all the land taken in the peace deal cost 3 times the normal amount of warscore.
• Taking land of a subject state in a war costs double to warscore.
• Declaring the war with a claim lowers the warscore cost by 25%.
• You need at least 10 warscore to be able to demand anything in a peace deal.
• “Length of the war” will make peacing out quickly difficult, unless you achieve total victory.
• To be able to demand a province in a peace deal you need to conquer its capital (marked by a white column and mentioned on the peace deal screen) and all the forts in it. You don’t need to conquer any other city.
• You can also demand single cities, but you need to directly control all of them.
• You cannot demand territory you won’t be able to reach via land or sea (military access and subjects or allies do NOT count).
• You cannot fabricate a claim on such lands either, otherwise you’re just limited by diplomatic range.
  **Military**
• Each country follows one of the military traditions. Few countries can change those via scripted events, but the vast majority is stuck with what they got.
• Each tradition provides a starting bonus you can check by hovering over a picture in the top right corner of the Military tab (F3).
• You can only select a tradition of the one above it has been taken. You don’t have to focus on a single column tho.
• Base cost of the tradition is 800 military points and increases by 50% for every tradition already selected.
• Each level of Military Advances (See: Research) lowers the cost of military traditions by 25%, so it may be wise to stockpile military points for a longer while if the bonuses aren’t immediately needed.
• Traditions on top of various combat bonuses provide access to unique abilities and tactics for our armies.
• Armies are made of various cohorts, each with different cost, requirements, statistics, abilities and combat match-ups vs. one-another.
• Some cohorts require specific resources or even traditions to recruit.
• If you lack the required trade resource needed to recruit a cohort you won’t be able to replenish the ones you already have.
• Armies move at the speed of its slowest units, so and army of 10 light cavalry will move at the speed of 4 while the same army with 1 additional light infantry will move at speed of 2.
• Maneuver determines how many tiles to the side a cohort can attack during the battle. Unit with maneuver of 1 will only be able to fight enemy right in front of it as well as its neighbors on both sides, while a cohort with maneuver of 5 can reach up to 11 enemy cohorts (1 in front and 5 on each side).
• More numerous army with high maneuver units on the flanks can quickly overwhelm a superior but shorter enemy line.
• Keep in mind the bonuses and debuffs different cohorts suffer against other unit types. Your heavy infantry may laugh at enemy light infantry, but their horse archers is an entirely different thing.
• In the top right corner of the army screen you can switch a tactic used by that army.
• Each nation has access to 5+ tactics and new ones can be sometimes unlocked via traditions.
• Try to counter an enemy tactic or at least not allow an enemy to counter yours – it may turn a potential win into a costly defeat.
• You can hover over tactic effectiveness number below the tactic’s icon to see what constitutes it.
• Tactic effectiveness is of secondary importance as it only comes into effect if you managed to counter and is utterly worthless in 2 other cases.
• Keep an eye on river crossings and terrain, those can cause harsh penalties for the attacker in combat.
• An army besieging a fort is considered an attacker in every battle in the province.
• You need to have at least 5000 men per level of the fort to besiege it. Keep attrition in mind.
• Check if the enemy fort isn’t undermanned. Sometimes assaulting it (base cost: 20 military power) may be a better option.
• Only certain unit types can assault the city.
• Forts provide a zone of control to all cities around themselves. Those can be viewed using fortification mapmode (Ctrl+T).
• An army in a zone of control can only move the the adjacent fort or back to the city it came from.
• Battle result indicators on the map can be useful, but they aren’t always right.
• Army (and navy) without an assigned commander will suffer a 25% morale penalty.
• Military skill of the commander is extremely important. 3 point difference in commander skill with offset attacking across the river into mountains.
• Only 1, best commander will actually lead in the battle,

• Economy tab (F6) provides a lot of useful information so make sure to give it a read
• All of the economic policies can be switched in an instant for free so feel free to use them.
• But keep in mind that armies, forts and fleets will not replenish their lost men or morale in an instant.
• Deficit will give you nasty modifiers as well as periodic bad events – avoid as much as possible.
• Most of your income is a result of pop and trade management so look for clues there.

• Religious power is used for stability, omens, manual pop conversion and in some events. It’s usually one of the more plentiful powers.
• Each religion has the same omens, just named differently.
• You should usually judge omens based on how difficult to obtain that kind of boost would be by other means.
• By that the two most powerful ones are a pop growth one (for a long term) as well as a national unrest one (when risking a civil war due to disloyal provinces) and the discipline one (when in a really tough war).
• Others can be situationally useful as well, but should be approached with some reserve.
• Base omen duration is 5 years and can be increased with modifiers
• That being said longer omen duration locks us out of changing the omen when we may need it for a small benefit of saving a bit of religious power.
• Omen power is based on religious unity so it’s nice to convert your pops, but it’s not nearly as important as assimilation so focus on that one first.

Written by Emnel