We’re finally at the heart of my suggestions to improve Imperator: Rome.  I’ve discussed how Republics are boring and aren’t differentiated from monarchies.  I’ve discussed how there’s nothing fun to do during peace-time.  I’ve also discussed how civil wars are too easy to avoid, and when they do happen they’re too easy to win. Now I’ll discuss how Imperator could make things better.

As I said in my first post, Republics in Imperator Rome are just short-term monarchies.  But they don’t have to be.  Wheeling and dealing was a big part of the Roman republic, and it should be a big thing here too.  

When the Consul of a Republic dies or ends his term in Imperator, another is elected in his place.  The new ruler always comes from one of the 3 main Republican factions: Democrats, Oligarchs, and Traditionalists, with each faction having its own bonuses and its own agendas that they want to get passed during the next Consular term.  The player has very little control over this process, and so sometimes the factions will demand goals that the player doesn’t want.

If a faction wins the election, the only way for the player to prevent them from implementing their party platform is to tank their Senate Support and gain a lot of Tyranny. But there are other times when the parties will want to implement something that the player also wants. The lack of player input during this process means you really can’t have any sort of strategy or planning around it, making it a poor mechanic for a strategy game. But maybe we could change that.

When an election is about to occur, why not let the player have some input on it, in exchange for tying their hands down the line.  I’m envisioning the equivalent of a 3-way treaty between the 3 Senate factions that the player can bring up at any time to influence the outcome of the election in exchange for making promises to the other factions. 

Say your Consul is a Traditionalist and it looks like a Democrat will be elected in his place.  You, the player, really don’t want the Democrats in power because their party plank is to implement shorter term lengths and you don’t like that.  So you bring up the 3-treaty and try to figure out “what can I do to avoid this?” 

The Democrats can’t be swayed to vote against their own party member, but perhaps you can change their agenda by offering some concessions.  What if you installed a Democrat as the Governor of Cisalpine Gaul?  You make it so that for the next term the Governor of that province will be a Democrat and you can’t remove him for any reason.  This placates the Democrats, and in exchange they’ll agree not to force shorter terms, and instead will work towards a Manumittance law which is also something they support. It just happens to be something you support too since it increases the number of Freemen pops and therefore the amount of manpower in the nation.

The Oligarchs then are incensed.  You’re giving things to the Democrats and not us!  We won’t stand for this!  Your Traditionalist allies also aren’t happy with this, so you need at least a little Oligarch support to get this one over the finish line.  So now you deal with the Oligarchs: what if they received the Governorship of Magna Graecia?  Fair’s fair, the Democrats receive a Governorship, the Oligarchs should too.  The Oligarchs say fine, but also next term they’ll demand that more land be handed out to their own people as well.

But now your traditionalist allies are angry.  You gave governorships to the other parties and left nothing for us!  So OK, you have to give something to them as well.  They already control most of the political positions that aren’t governors, but they’re demanding that their Party Platform from the last election be enforced.  They ran on a platform of stripping citizenship from the newly conquered Gauls.  Now, your predecessor gave citizenship to the Gauls in the first place so they could fight in your armies, and stripping their citizenship will greatly reduce your nation’s fighting power.  But the Traditionalists don’t care!  They ran on this platform, they’re demanding it.  So if you want your 3-way treaty to go through, then you’ll have to take away citizenship from the Gauls.

Strangely, stripping citizenship can actually be a useful tool of course. Citizenship is mostly useful for obtaining the military traditions associated with particular cultures, once you have those traditions you can revoke it with no consequences. And each additional culture you give citizenship to angers your primary culture, so if you plan to Romanize the barbarians anyway then keeping Romans happy at the expense of the Gauls just makes sense. So from the player’s perspective: this treaty actually enforces 2 things that they already wanted, that being a new law from the Democrats and new citizenship status from the Traditionalists, at the expense of giving out governorships that can’t be revokes. AND the player avoided a law that they really didn’t want, that being the Shorter Terms law that the Democrats wanted to pass.

You have a tentative treaty in place, but now you need to enforce it before the election happens.  The governors will be people you can’t replace during the next term, and some laws will change.  If you really want to limit this via game mechanics, you can even have the treaty cost Political Influence (PI) just like big treaties cost bird mana in EU4. I’d be ok with that as it seems realistic enough to equate PI with political capital in the modern sense.  You could also make the cost of the treaty scale with how many things are in it.  That would make Grand Bargains a rare thing, while smaller political agreements to hold power are the norm.  

In fact, maybe the above treaty is too big, costs too much PI, and gives away too much.  It ensures that a Democrat is elected, but prevents the Democrats from enforcing their favored agenda in exchange for giving out governorships and changing laws.  Maybe there’s a smaller scale solution?

Maybe instead of going to the factions, you could go to the family heads we spoke about earlier.  Each family has members in all 3 political parties, but the Family Head can likely wrangle their clan together to support a shared interests.  Maybe instead of some Grand Bargain, you can just bribe the family head? 

By letting the player also bargain with the family heads, instead of just the factions, you actually make the Great Families of this game matter. These are supposed to be part of the core concept and unique selling points of the game, that there are powerful families within it you need to keep on your side to maintain and expand your power. But they’re really somewhat meaningless as of now.

But in my system, I’d let you negotiate with the family head in order to get them to vote for a certain canddiate. With enough bribes of both money and holdings, you can get a nice Traditionalist elected, but be warned that giving out money and holdings makes that family more powerful down the line. The upside is you won’t have to give concessions to the other parties, or even to your own backbenchers who are making extreme demands. The downside is you’ve made one of the Great Families more powerful.  But that’s a problem for the future Consul.  Your current Consul then hands the reigns off to your chosen successor and you start playing as them.

If my system were implemented, I think Republics would have fun and interesting mechanics to deal with that sets them apart from Monarchies. The player would have to compromise with the other parties and maybe those compromises would bite them in the end.  Remember, the Grand Bargain discussed above would have appointed Governors of Cisalpine Gaul and Magna Gaecia who couldn’t be removed, even if they were disloyal.  The agreement with the Family head will give him more power, and he can never be removed.  Agreements like these would be powerful and would let you choose a successor and influence your Republic. But they can also set you up for civil war, and as I said, civil wars should be harder. 

Additionally, I think these changes would at least give Imperator: Rome something interesting to do during peacetime. Rather than ignoring policies, you could enact them whenever you wanted so long as you could bargain with the Senate. And rather than ignoring the Senate and removing disloyal governors whenever, you could have a system where gaining the support of the Senate sometimes requires making pacts with ambition people you’d rather not give power to.

I think in the 3-way treaty system I described above, everything in the game should be on the table for the player to give away or gain. Governorships, positions in the cabinet, laws and citizenship, maybe a forced war declaration on a neighbor. Maybe even changing your pantheon’s gods and building specific buildings. Wrangling the Senate should mean having to deal with powerful, conflicting forces, and it should require the occasional compromise to keep things working.

In exchange though, the player could use this system control the senate and pick their successor. Sometimes the Senate wants laws changed that the player also wants to change. But if the player changes it, it costs stability and PI, while doing it through this 3-way treaty should at least not cost stability. In fact, doing anything through the 3-way treaty should have its normal costs waived, as this would encourage players to use the treaties for their benefit while potentially setting them up with powerful enemies for later.

In this way, the Senate becomes an interesting and powerful mechanic for the players to deal with during peacetime. And likewise governors and cabinet members can’t be replaced with yesmen, because they’ll often get their positions through Senatorial compromise. I’ve now written a whole lot of words about a game I don’t really like, and even if all my changed were implemented Imperator would still not be a masterpiece. But I hope I’ve impressed upon you why the game isn’t good and why I feel these kinds changes would improve it. Hopefully next time Paradox tries to make a new IP, they’ll come up with interesting mechanics like these to put into it.