The year is 304 BCE, and a scrappy Italian city-state called Rome has not yet begun to even dream of the greatness it will one day achieve. Paradox’s recently announced grand strategy game Imperator: Rome will allow you to rise to the challenge of that war-torn era. Surrounded by a roiling cauldron of barbarian tribes, the ascendant Mediterranean power of Carthage, and the squabbling successor states left behind by the untimely death of Alexander the Great - it's fair to say you'll have your work cut out for you leading Rome (or any of the over 400 playable nations) to dominance.

Paradox Development Studio (known for such grand strategy staples as Crusader Kings II and Stellaris) last tackled the Roman age back in 2008 with Europa Universalis: Rome. But while that was a spin-off, Imperator is the start of a new franchise with its own identity - even if it does borrow a lot from the studio’s other games.

I was immediately shocked by the scope, scale, and detail of the map. Paradox has come a long way in the graphics department since the days of Hearts of Iron 3 or even Crusader Kings II, offering the ability to zoom way down to the point that you can count the straps on a legionnaire's sandals and watch cities grow dynamically as their population increases. The hilly terrain of Italy and the sparkling blue waves that lap against its shores represent the best a Paradox strategy game has ever looked.

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Rome may be the star of the show, but the map sprawls from Ireland in the Northeast to the Horn of Africa in the far South to the entirety of India and parts of Tibet in the East, even encompassing a small part of Norway and Sweden in the extreme North. There are over 7000 distinct regions, far more than even Europa Universalis IV’s globe-spanning game board. This is grand strategy at a resolution we've never seen before.

“ Everyone from the Brigantes of Northern Britain to the Celtiberians in Spain to the Sogdians of Northeastern Persia will be playable.

It's populated by an absurd number of tribes - far more than I even knew we had names for as someone who studies ancient history. Everyone from the Brigantes of Northern Britain to the Celtiberians in Spain to the Sogdians of Northeastern Persia will be playable, along with major power players like the Seleucids, Carthage, and the Maurya Empire of India. Gameplay will vary in a number of ways depending on whether you play a kingdom, like Ptolemaic Egypt, a tribe, like the Celtic Arverni, or a republic, like Rome. There will also be ways to switch between them, such as a tribe settling down to form a kingdom or a republic being overthrown by a dictator in a civil war. It will also be possible for new barbarian foes to spawn in from the unplayable edges of the map.

The engine that runs everything is based on POPs - units of population that can grow when food is abundant, shrink when it's not, be relocated to colonize wild areas, and provide various resources to your empire. Each POP will have a culture, such as Roman, and a religion, such as Druidism, though the different cultures and religions don't directly provide bonuses or penalties. POPs also have a happiness value that determines how likely they are to cause trouble.

POPs in Imperator come in four types: Citizens, Freemen, Tribesmen, and Slaves. Citizens are the intellectual elite of your nation, facilitating commerce and giving you progress towards inventions and ideas that grant strong bonuses to your empire… but they're not the most economically productive group of people and they're hesitant to get blood on their togas. Freemen provide the bulk of the manpower for your armies and taxes to run your government, Slaves form the backbone of most ancient economies, and Tribesmen provide a small amount of tax and manpower, but not as much as Freemen who have been fully integrated into civilized society.

Imperator: Rome - Screenshots of Paradox's Next Grand Strategy Game 5 IMAGES

It's possible to use your Civic Power resource to grant a Freeman POP citizenship, but your economy will suffer if you hand out this privilege too readily without conquering new lands or acquiring more slaves to support the upper echelon. On the other hand, Freemen in your empire who have given their sons and their harvests to the Republic for too long are likely to become rebellious, echoing the destructive, real-world Social War that wracked ancient Rome over the question of citizenship for many of its disenfranchised ltalian subjects.

“ For an enterprising great power like Rome, it will eventually become possible to make deals with these barbarians, settling them as client kingdoms to provide more fodder for your military machine.

Out on the frontiers, many marginal societies will only have access to Tribesmen and Slaves, making it difficult for them to compete with the great Mediterranean empires unless they learn to adopt some of their civilized ways. Paradox wasn’t ready to go into detail about tribal mechanics yet, but said they're generally weaker but more flexible than the established empires and it will be fully possible to recreate such historical events as the Cimbri and the Teutons marching through the deep forests of Germany to ravage much of Spain and Italy in the 100s BCE.

Their gameplay will involve not just conquest, but raids into richer lands to acquire money and slaves before disappearing back beyond the mists. For an enterprising great power like Rome, it will eventually become possible to make deals with these barbarians, settling them as client kingdoms to provide more fodder for your military machine. If history can teach us anything, though, it's that such an arrangement might not necessarily last forever.

While POPs model the throngs of common people inhabiting your empire, important politicians, generals, and heads of state will be modeled by named characters with full 3D faces (a first for the studio) that age gradually over time. There's also a stat system that seems kind of like ‘Crusader Kings Lite,’ with characters having values for Martial, Charisma, Finesse, and Zeal that determine how effective they are at different jobs and actions - from leading armies to serving as governor of a province.

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These characters will often belong to important families that vie for power, as well as political factions in Republics such as Populists, Militarists, and Religious fanatics that will reward you for acting in line with their agendas and become upset if you act against them. There is nothing like the detailed opinion system of Crusader Kings II, but characters can come to regard each other as friends or rivals, which will affect their interactions. Notably, though, this system doesn't work like Crusader Kings: you will always play as the spirit of a nation, not as a family or faction.

“ Paradox is estimating campaigns will run for about 300 years and end in the early 1st Century CE, around the time Augustus was centralizing the empire.

The other way characters exert influence is through Prominence, Loyalty, and Corruption. As a character rises through the ranks of the republic, they will accrue Prominence, which is sort of a measure of how full of themselves they are. Prominent characters will expect more honorifics, more governorships, and more military commands, with their Loyalty likely to waver if they feel they aren't getting their dues. Corrupt characters will decrease your income by skimming some off the top to buy expensive wine and trendy skin care products. Characters with low Loyalty may start a civil war - especially if they have been in command of the same legions for a long time, as armies will gradually become more loyal to an effective commander than they are to the Senate or ruler. Normally, you will be forced to take the side of the status quo in these conflicts, but the devs assured me there was a way if a “Caesar-like character" emerges, you will be able to side with him and fight the civil war from that perspective.

Regarding how far into the story of Rome we'll be able to play, Paradox is estimating campaigns will run for about 300 years and end in the early 1st Century CE, around the time Augustus was centralizing the empire. No firm end date has been set, but given it has been confirmed Christianity will not be in at launch, it's fairly safe to say we won't be going beyond 32 CE. However, I fully expect Imperator to extend its timeline well into the Imperial era with DLC in the future. It would be odd to have a game called Imperator that only featured the time period of the very first Imperator, after all.

Combat seems like fairly standard Paradox fare, though distinguished by a larger variety of unit types than previous games in their stable. In addition to cavalry archers, and light and heavy infantry, you'll be able to train certain special units based on the military Traditions associated with your culture (and assuming you have access to the right resources). British tribes like the Iceni have access to chariots, for example, while nations that have access to camels or elephants can ride those into battle, and many Eastern cultures make use of horse archers. There will be a significant difference between what kind of military bonuses the Romans can unlock compared to Germanic barbarians, beyond special units, based on the different Traditions they have access to.

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Combat has also been deepened with the addition of rock-paper-scissors-style army stances that can grant you an edge if you predict which stance an enemy will use and pick one to counter it. Moving armies that have been in a scrape recently is also going to take a toll on them unless you regularly stop to rest or enter a reorganization stance that reduces their speed while increasing their recovery rate and upkeep cost. Luckily in Rome’s case, a military tradition allows their armies to build permanent roads, speeding up their movement by as much as 50 percent. Other parts of the Roman tradition set will be used to model the Marian army reforms that created the legions we're most familiar with today.

The final major mechanic I got to see was related to trade. Each area on the map will produce a trade good - anything from grain to wine to war elephants. Establishing trade routes allows you to bring more of a specific resource to the area where you need it most, or give specific areas access to resources they don't have. If you want your POPs in a specific area you've recently colonized to grow quickly, you might trade for grain from Egypt to establish a surplus there. In exchange, you might export some wine, which will increase the happiness of the receiving area's higher status POPs. Iron is a requirement to train certain military units and lumber is just as important for building a navy. And those are only a few of the available goods.

There's a lot to take in, even at this early alpha stage for Imperator: Rome. The omens say we may get to know more at Gamescom later this year, and Paradox is targeting early 2019 for release.