Imperator: Rome

Imperator: Rome

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Building Guide for 1.5
By Sadaurkar
This guide aims to determine what buildings are most optimal in Imperator Rome.
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Changes in 1.5
Buildings:
Population capacity & happiness bonuses were nerfed across the board.

Aqueducts no longer scale massively, meaning it's a lot harder to make super cities.

Markets now let you increase the number of trade routes in a city.

Training camps got nerfed again. (10% manpower now instead of 20%)

Court of Law got reworked to be the old Library. Libraries are now Noble buildings.


Pops:
Nobles generate research AND increase the number of trade routes.

Citizens now increase manpower.

Freemen now increase tax income.

Slaves output is no longer affected by happiness.

Governor conversion/assimilation policies were nerfed MASSIVELY.

Unrest no longer slows down assimilation/conversion for pops.
Territory Types
Every territory in Imperator is one of three types. Either a settlement, city or metropolis. Settlements represent rural and undeveloped areas, while cities and metropolises represent the urban hubs of the ancient world.

Settlement
Costs: 5 Tyranny to raze a city into a settlement
Population Capacity: +5
Slaves needed for Surplus: -5
Population Output: -25%
Migration Attraction: -3
Migration Speed: -75%

Settlements also only have 1 building slot.

Settlements aim to be populated mostly by Slaves.

^^^ The actual ratio in the Settlement will change according to your government type.


City
Costs: $200 and 50 political influence to build (+25% for settled tribes) (+50% for migratory tribes)
Population Capacity: +20
Building Slots: +2

Building a city increases the goods surplus by 1!

Cities aim to have a population ratio of 30% citizens, 40% freemen, 15% slaves, and 15% nobles.

^^^ The actual ratio in the city will change according to your government type.

Cities gain an additional building slot for every 10 pops in the city.


Metropolis Requires 80 pops to build
Costs: $400 and 100 political influence to build
Population Capacity: +30 & +10%
Building Slots: +4
Local Import Routes: +1
Holdings +2
Promotion Speed: +10%
Migration Attraction: +2

Building a metropolis increases the goods surplus by 2!

Metropoli aim to have a population ratio of 30% citizens, 30% freemen, 5% slaves, and 10% nobles.

^^^ The actual ratio in the Metropolis will change according to your government type.
Settlement Buildings
Settlements can only ever have one building in them at a time. If you want to change it, then you'll have to delete the old one. This includes forts.


Fortress
-Base Cost: $50.00
-Increases the fort level by 1

Territory forts can only be built to Level 1.

Useful for preventing enemy armies from slave raiding your territories.

Build them in your ports to protect against pirate raids. (A cheaper alternative is to just turn off the pirate notification :P )

Mountain forts are amazing since they give you a +2 to enemy dice rolls when you fight in a province with a friendly fort.



Barracks
-Base Cost: $120.00
-Population Capacity: +20%
-Local Manpower: +20%
-Local Freeman Happiness: +8%
-Local Freeman Ideal Fraction: +15%

Changes the desired ratio in the territory to be majority Freemen instead of Slaves.

Good if you find yourself with lots of money but little manpower.

HANDY TRICK: Combine this with the Social Mobility policy to quickly convert hordes of tribesmen into freemen.



Slave Estate
-Base Cost: $120.00
-Population Capacity: +20%
-Local Monthly Food Modifier: +50%
-Local Slave Output: +30%

Great for generating money. Build these instead of farms/mines where your population output is high.

Your capital region and province both add a bonus 10% to output, so build there first!

The food modifier will increase the monthly food enough to support 7-20 pops, depending on the terrain.

HANDY TRICK: Move slaves into existing Slave Estates before building new ones! It's way cheaper!



Mine
-Base Cost: $120.00
-Population Capacity: +20%
-Slaves needed for surplus: -5

Changes the number of slaves needed for a surplus from 15 down to 10.

Great in less productive locations or if you have a large amount of Commerce Income multipliers.



Farming Settlement
-Base Cost: $120.00
-Population Capacity: +20%
-Slaves needed for surplus: -5
-Local Monthly Food Modifier: +50%

Changes the number of slaves needed for a surplus from 15 down to 10.

Great in less productive locations or if you have a large amount of Commerce Income multipliers.

Also great if your cities are constantly starving and you can't get Imports.

The food modifier is enough to support 7-20 more pops, depending on the terrain.



Tribal Settlement
-Base Cost: $120.00
-Population Capacity: +20%
-Local Tribesmen Output: +30%
-Local Tribesmen Happiness: +8%

Don't bother building these, unless you're going full Tribal mode.



Provincial Legation
-Base Cost: $120.00
-Migration Speed: +75%
-Assimilation Speed: +0.2

Don't bother building these.

Negates the debuff that settlements get for migration. (Makes them migrate 4x quicker)

The assimilation buff is pathetic. Use Governor policies instead.

Might be useful for building colonies?
City/Metropolis Buildings
Cities are the backbone of a civilised society. What's more is that they're great to specialise with.


Training Camp
-Base Cost: $50.00
-Local Manpower: +10%



Fortress
-Base Cost: $50.00
-Fort Level: +1

Can be stacked to turn the city into an impenetrable super fortress.

Protects the city from being easily raided for slaves during a war.

Also protects the city (if a port) from pirate raids.



Foundry
-Base Cost: $50.00
-Population Output: +1%
-Starting Experience: +5%

Don't bother building these if the city's happiness isn't 100%.



Marketplace
-Base Cost: $50.00
-Local Base Trade Routes: +2.5%

Pretty handy since they increase the number of stuff you're allowed to import.

Don't bother building these if you don't have a lot of nobles/citizens.

HANDY TRICK: These are significantly more effective in cities that have a port and a road in them.



Tax Office
-Base Cost: $50.00
-Local Tax: +10%

Don't bother building these.

Build Slave Estates in settlements instead.

Slightly more useful in 1.5 now that Freemen produce tax.



Court of Law
-Base Cost: $50.00
-Citizen Happiness: +4%
-Citizen Ratio: +6%

Build these if you want a mix of manpower & research in your city.

These are what libraries used to be before 1.5



Academy
-Base Cost: $50.00
-Research Points: +7.5%
-Noble Ratio: +1%

Great for maxing out research in a city.

Boosts your noble/citizen efficiency, rather than increasing their pop ratios.



Granary
-Base Cost: $50.00
-Provincial Food Capacity: +200

Build enough to store 10x your yearly food consumption in a province and the population growth rate will skyrocket.



Library
-Base Cost: $50.00
-Noble Happiness: +20%
-Nobel Ratio: +10%

Build these if you want lots of research.

Boosts research MASSIVELY. Also boosts the number of imports you can have.

Great for keeping your nobles happy (since they have a -50% base happiness)



Forum
-Base Cost: $50.00
-Freemen Happiness: +4%
-Freemen Ratio: +6%

Build these if you only want manpower and don't care about research.

Okay at keeping your Freemen happy (since they have a -20% base happiness)



Mill
-Base Cost: $50.00
-Slave Output: +3%
-Slave Happiness: +4%
-Slave Ideal Fraction: +6%

Helps prevent slave revolts.

You're better off just moving slaves into the country side if you want to make money imo.



Temple
-Base Cost: $50.00
-State Religion Happiness: +3%
-Conversion Speed: +1.0

Makes pops convert SIGNIFICANTLY faster.

Build if you have lots of foreign slaves coming in.



Theatre
-Base Cost: $50.00
-Integrated Culture Happiness: +3%
-Assimilation Speed: +1.0

Makes pops assimilate SIGNIFICANTLY faster.

Build if you have lots of slaves with the same religion but wrong culture.



Aqueduct
-Base Cost: $50.00
-Population Capacity: +4

Always build these in your capital city to get that much desired metropolis.

HANDY TRICK: Pops output 30% more in your capital city, so make sure to move as many people there as possible.
Final Notes
I'd recommend you build at least one city in every province to help culture flip it over to yours. The AI will eventually turn it from slaves and tribesmen into something nice and useful.

Always occupy provinces with a leader in your army to maximise the number of slaves coming home. Additionally if you're a monarchy, make sure your king is the general whenever sacking cities. This gives you the Sack event where you can get a bunch of $$$$ in exchange for killing a few pops.

Remember that cities are the sole source of research in your country, and you should prioritise them as such.

Thanks for reading my guide.
28 Comments
Lukecis 23 Jul @ 6:16pm 
>never build foundry

lol, lmao.
Gibbogoh 11 Apr, 2021 @ 9:29am 
Please Update this for 2.0
Fozzforus 20 Jan, 2021 @ 9:43am 
I'm not understand some basic mechanics here. Why wouldn't you build tax offices? That seems to be the only building that actually gets you income? How else do you get income?

Is there any way to get more food?

Someone link me a guide to this game for new players.
Militia_28 7 Oct, 2020 @ 6:12pm 
this is a very general question but according to you guys, which version is the best to play in your opinion? (1.0-now)
Ranhome 16 Aug, 2020 @ 8:07pm 
I would just to thank you very much for all that you do for Imperator Rome. It is very hard to find good guides on this game that's constantly updated and having this and your other guide really do help alot for my gameplay experience
Sadaurkar  [author] 12 Aug, 2020 @ 8:04am 
Updated for 1.5 :)

also that mission lol. +$0.3 per tax office does sound tempting
UnknownVoid 26 Jan, 2020 @ 4:17pm 
Quick question (and great guide, really useful). I feel like Tax Office is really useful when combined with missions. For example, as Macedon I get a mission which gives a city (Trikka) permanent base tax of 3.0. It seems like just about the only great scenario for a Tax Office city, do you agree?
Dostav 7 Jan, 2020 @ 5:48am 
Hm, maybe it's better to have granaries in not a capital region, so people will grow there and then migrate to the capital region with a lot of buildings with modifiers.
Sadaurkar  [author] 7 Jan, 2020 @ 1:50am 
the investment is massive though.

for the roman capital province of latium (11 territories), they need 28 full granaries at the cost of 1400 to max out pop growth, and every 10 years they need to build a new granary.

to put into context for a large nation like the Seleucids (427 territories), they need 172 granaries at the cost of 8600 wealth. then to maintain it, every 10 years they need 36 new granaries at the cost of 1800.

keep in mind this doesn't include the time & resources needed to fill the granaries.
Sadaurkar  [author] 7 Jan, 2020 @ 1:50am 
the benefit however is that they will gain 427 pops every 14 years. if they had full granaries at the start of the game, and maintained it until the endgame, they will have grown 8232 pops for a total population of 11634.

this is why it's useful for playing tall, but not wide. if you're playing wide, you likely won't have enough resources to maintain the growth nationwide.

at 100 stability however, you get +0.5% population growth, which is the equivalent of having max granaries everywhere, and you can stack it with granaries as well. if you're going for a pop boom strategy, it's a lot easier to maintain a high stab, than full granaries.