Bret Devereaux

This is a really interesting question. I can't put a full answer to the question on twitter (but it has been on the blog's to-do list for a while), but I can discuss it in a little depth and give at least some idea for folks unfamiliar and seeing it show up w/ students. 1/xxhttps://twitter.com/njtmulder/status/1367127104102498304 …

Very insightful read. I recall @dave_the_prof and associates (whose twitter presence I'm unsure of!) drew some similar conclusions at the Great Lakes history conference a couple of years back.

Thanks! I keep meaning to write something substantial about Imperator - I'm a Roman historian by specialization - but it has felt like a bit of a moving (always improving!) target since release.

Quite so (though I anticipate such scrutiny by someone academically versed in the era with dread and fascination!). I cut my teeth on EU4, however, and I think this manner of appraisal serves well to inform our design decisions and continue innovating.

Yeah - EU4 is a lot more careful in its historical approach, I'd say, than EU3 or Vicky2 was (warning: I am one of those people who would celebrate in the streets if Vicky3 was announced) and Imperator actually includes devastation and population loss as key mechanics.

Though I might have built the social pyramid a little differently. It can obscure differences in social structure between different regions (e.g. Mesopotamian serfs, like the mushkenum of the Code of Hammurabi, get lumped in with Greek and Roman chattel slaves)

And because each pop type - for understandable design reasons - does different things, it pushes the player to reproduce a Late-Roman-Republic social system, which I think obscures that other systems were possible (freeholding farmers rather than latifundia, for instance)