I'm playing Imperator Rome again. There was a new update that changed a lot.

The biggest change is the removal of standing armies as standard, now you start with levies which are based on the integrated population of a governor's province. To get a standing army you have to unlock the legion law which I have not done yet(as barbarian you have to reform first and that is what I am playing as right now). There are still mercenaries though. They also made it so when you capture a province capital the rest of the province auto captures itself like with forts.

So now Mercenaries are overpowered. Also you have to have the population of a province integrated which can cause some issues. Though it has not bothered me as I use mercenaries mainly, but as a Spanish tribe I defeated Carthage simply because they couldn't raise much against me in Spain. Partly due to that but also due to my mercenaries and the new province capture system I am rapidly expanding with not much difficulty.

They have also changed how senates work, instead of the old system where the senate would approve an action based on what the action was and what the party was and how your relation is with them now it's just a senate approval percentage and if you are below 60% then they dislike any action you take, this is annoying on it's own but added to that it is to impossible to have every faction like you. The non ruling party approval will decay and there is very little you can do about it, even what you can do will not actually stop it. It's ruined senate based governments now. Oh apart from governments with a co consul as in that case two parties can have a ruler so the approval only decays in one party.

There was a huge rework to the UI which makes everything weird and annoying to get used to again, I wish they would not have done that.