I've only played Kush since I got this game years ago. I'd alternate between this and Victoria 2/3, this and Europa universalis 4 and 5, and listening to the history of rome podcast by Mike Duncan. And I finally understand it. And what I understand mostly is that in order to play this game properly all you need to do is read Roman history and do what the Romans did. Also utilizing legions will bankrupt you, l forcing you to keep going to war with your neighbors to pay for the legions. Just like Rome.

This game has so much potential I always feel bad thinking about what could have been. Right now every country is basically a special flavor of Rome and there could have been so much uniqueness brought to each nation. But alas but that will never be. All we could do is hope the modding community continues to develop this beautiful game.

Thanks modders

Thanks paradox

I will admit I am rather neewbie at IR, but I was pretty confident that Population = Legion/Levy size. Some one with a smaller population size then you should have a smaller army...that's what I thought, but I have 2k population and my legions are both 8ks and I got like 6k in levies how does Scandia who has a population of 800 have 52k+ levies? The only thing I can imagine is mercenaries but wouldn't it say [blank]'s mercenaries?

If you turn the entirety of the capital province into cities/metropolises, you could fill it with great wonders easily and benefit from the province-level effects. Is it a good idea though?

Started a campaign as Tayuan for the first time, dealt with the scythian nomads easily and was able to defeat Bactria after they broke free from the Seleukids, then i proceeded to conquer the Indus valley and the Himalayas, and after many wars with Parthia pushed all the way to the Mediterranean.

Last few years of the game have been spent on reclaiming my ancestral homeland from the most powerfull Rome i have ever seen the AI create, they have infinite manpower and the 2 wars so far have been brutal(300k causualties for me and 900k for Rome in the first war), i did manange to defeat them due to my elite cavalry legions and i have finally been able to restore the Ionian League.

I dont think im going to continue the campaign as the game is getting too slow and is stuttering constantly, and fighting Rome is super tedious. This campaign i was not focuzed on cultural or religious asssimilation and i integrated cultures instead. My capital in Alexandria Eschate is the biggest city i have ever built in Imperator.

Mods used: Imperator: 2.0 Better UI; Invictus; Timeline Extension for Invictus; INR - Invictus; Virtual Limes: Invictus; Fix Scorched Earth: Invictus; Alton´s Assimilation and Conversion Rebalance; Habitat Loss and Land Conversion; Elephants Avenged: Habitat and Extinction; Tribal Setllement and Resource Logic: Timleine Extended; Simple More Barbarian Hordes; Batlles Reward Military XP; Adopt Local Culture.

Thought y'all would get a laugh at this!

Goal: Make it to the end of the game without conquering a single territory.

All the light blue are tributaries or clients. With +48 diplomatic reputation and all the tributary innovations, even Carthage was down to join my union! I have spent the last 150 years hunting pirates and building roads everywhere.

Currently coasting toward 727 to put a cap on this run and I am pretty proud of this one. I doubt I'll get Egypt to join, as they are too big, so not much left to do but build more roads.

Vanilla - no mods.

So I've been going through it and I get to the Flowers of Inzak mission. I need 4 Chaldean Pantheons which I get since that's like Babylonian Gods but I don't start Chaldean and never had the ability to convert to it.(Yet hopefully) so unless I throw hands with the Seleukids I can't do about a quarter of my mission tree. It seems pretty poorly designed to make a mission tree where you have to interact with a faith you don't start as and reasonably have no way to convert to it. Was I suppose to somehow bum rush the left side of the tree which I'm trying to push now in hopes it will give me enough Chaldean pops to convert or am I just kind of cooked? Like even now I only have 4.3k max manpower and I need 7.5k so it is by no means an easy jump to make at the start of the game with my max 1.5k-2k manpower

I finsihed creating my own Roman Empire after a long time (took long time to manage puppets so that they look like they do rn).
I also tried to take puppets where they once were. I also send in my reference map:

I apologize for the poor image quality but, as you can see, I have 300+ Integrated Pops from the Samhan Culture group yet I still can't unlock the Yue Tradition (Terra Indomita), why is that?

Polygamy was a pretty large part of certain cultures in the ancient world, heck, it's even a technology for the Balkan culture groups! But one thing that had always bothered me is the fact that you could not marry more than one woman!

Now, granted, I'm not sure if you can slap onto a culture "anybody who is of this culture group has the ability to have extra wives" the same way that certain personality traits allow a man to have extra friends or enemies. But I am pretty sure that something can be done.

Is it possible for the lustful trait to make men have more than one spouse? I think that would be a good edit to the trait that would be at least a good first step towards this.

I recently got into Imperator and I'm saad I missed out on it since it has the potential to be one of my favorite Grand Strategy Gaame.

But I wasnt able to figure it out where I can see the army of the enemies.

Also is it possible to see your vasalls somewhere while playing?

I was playing as the indo-greek kingdom and decided to invade tibet. They had ~900 pops. Easy, right? Wrong. They, somehow, got almost 40k levies and defeat my 16k stack with my 18 martial general whit a 20k and a 3 martial one. On mountains. Defensively. Whit an army cinpose of heavy infantry and elephants. I don't kwon what the tibetians are doing there, but im scared if even the greek hannibal cannot defeat them.

this one kind of embarrassed me when it clicked because ive got hundreds of hours and was still doing it.

my whole approach to provinces was basically: open the province, see empty building slots, fill them. and id more or less copy whatever worked in my capital region into everywhere else. academies, markets, the lot. felt productive. province “developed”. and then half of them would just underperform or sit unhappy and id not really know why.

what finally reframed it for me is that a province is one connected system, not a pile of independent tiles. the cities eat the food the countryside produces. so if i urbanise a good farm tile because it had a slot free, ive just reduced the food that feeds the cities i already built. i was literally competing with myself for food and migrants and calling it development.

and buildings only amplify whats already there. dropping a research building into a province thats mostly freemen and slaves doesnt make it a research hub, theres no noble/citizen base for it to amplify. i did this constantly. wondered why the output was garbage.

the sequence that actually works, feed the province first (protect and improve the food tiles, dont build urban capacity you cant feed), then stabilize the capital, THEN specialize each city to one job. and a stability building isnt a waste just because it earns less tax, preventing unrest protects every other investment in the province, which i never thought about that way.

the line that stuck with me, the perfect province isnt fully urbanised, its balanced. one strong city with productive countryside behind it beats three half empty cities fighting over the same food.

also invictus seasons will absolutely turn a small food surplus into a shortage so a city plan that depends on a fragile import route is asking for it.

how do you all approach your capitals specifically. do you commit them to one thing or try to make them do a bit of everything. i still over-stuff my capital out of habit tbh

The first picture shows Alut at the beginning of my campaign, while the second shows how far I've come.

From building the great pyramids of Alut to turning Alwa into a thriving capital, this small Nubian kingdom has grown into a vast empire. I'm really proud of how far this campaign has come!

Besides that, the Middle East is now Hellenic in religion and Macedonian in culture. This is because, early in my expansion, Thrace somehow managed to expand massively despite the presence of larger powers in the region. It even took the Nile Delta from Ptolemaic Egypt, so I decided to conquer the rest of Egypt before Thrace could take it, then continue my expansion into the Delta.

As for the Romans, they're currently much stronger than I am. I'm doing my best to stay on their good side and establish marriage alliances with them. I'm even friends with the Roman Emperor himself!

I was inspired by the Egyptian pyramids, so I decided to build my own Alutian pyramids. I built five or more of them (I honestly don't remember the exact number), and their construction took decades. Hellenic is currently the largest culture in my empire and the first one I've integrated in the game.

I'm playing as Kush and I'm noticing that every time I look back at Egypt's population they are able to hellenize the population much faster than I am able to commitize my population. Am I missing some tactic or technique that would convert my population as fast?

First run I’ve posted here; this was my first time going for the Argead Empire and it was a ton of fun (if a lot slower than taking everything with the Legacy CB).

Had a strong start taking out Thrace and much of Antigonid Anatolia before buckling down for a long militaristic campaign (switched to Military Service for bigger levies). Biggest issue is running out of good governors when you’re always at 50+ AE, 6 or lower finesse is pretty cheeks (plus everyone has high corruption)

Photos by year
1: 635, current status
2: 469 (oldest save I have)
3: 491, Ptolemies I, kicked them out of Greece + little bit of the delta.
4: 500, all of Egypt
5: 522, more of Asia
6: 580, took Babylon, et al from Parthia + Armenia
7: 608 Beat Parthia 2x more, and Maka for the Persian gulf and Persis, Rome decided to butt in so I took some of Italia

Final Stats:
20717 Pops (3511 Macedonian, 1566 nobles, 3025 citizens, 5999 freeman, 3 tribesman, 10125 slaves)

Econ: +95.94/month (with taxes on lax, and minimal navy)

Other integrated cultures: Memphite, Aramaic

All accumulated bloodline traits (of current heir)

Blood of Agis + Blood of Euryphon (Sparta, red and gold respectively); Blood of Antigonos (Antigonid Kingdom); Blood of Antipatros (Macedon); Blood of the Argeads (Event, Diadochi victory); Blood of the Demosthenids (Athens); Blood of Teukros (Olbe)

Combined buffs:
-20% Found City Cost; +5% monthly military experience; -0.02 AE; -10% AE Impact; -10% Build Cost; +0.1 Legitimacy; +10% local fort defense; +10% garrison size; +10% cohort starting XP; +20% HCav Offense; +5% HCav Discipline; +20% Spearmen defense; +10% Archer offense; +130 Prominence; +1 Martial.

***Current version, Invictus up to date as well

My Youtube upload for a Mega Campaign!

This is where I'm at as of 599 AUC/155 BCE. Unfortunately Carthage allied Egypt and Egypt is still quite powerful militarily; Carthage I've beaten twice. I feel like I'm doing quite well in terms of development and stability but I have had so much trouble expanding considering everyone is allied with huge numbers of nearby states. Another war into France or Spain would involve me against basically every single state in those regions.

i started a game as persis and got the last surviving member of the achaemenids to be my king but when i formed persia it hasnt changed anything

just wondering if its still in invictus or do i need the dynasty name aswell