Glory of the Roman Empire
Review
In any other year, this game would be a welcome addition to the genre
by Sergio Brinkhuis
reviewed on PC
Sounds difficult! (cntd.)
Containing the riots (or better yet, making sure it never gets that far) is by far the most challenging part of the game, but not the only one. The second most difficult challenge -related to the first- is all about balance. Specifically, balancing your workforce with the volume and type of goods and services they require. While slaves are as plentiful as your gold supply will allow, citizens are more difficult to come by. It is almost impossible to set up a completely self-sufficient city in only one location. The only way to deal with this is to spread the production of goods over a number of neighborhoods (small towns really), each with its own specialty. Fun, but you'll need to plan ahead and keep track of each of your cities on the map.
Depth
The only place where the game is lacking somewhat is in its depth. Producing any given good only takes one basic ingredient, and many goods can be consumed straight away. The role of gold is, well... pretty much non-existent; It is only used to buy slaves. Building and producing requires no gold whatsoever.
Barbarian villages can be used to trade with or as a source of slaves. Your military (not required at all on most maps) can be sent out to raid neighboring villages and bring back slaves to work in your cities. A nice touch, but other than that, your soldiers hardly serve any purpose at all. Barbarians may attack from time to time but they are easily wiped off the map and once you've destroyed all barbarian towns, that's it. No more attacks and no more use for your military or your weapon production facilities. The actual fighting is done completely by the AI so there's no challenge there either. A missed opportunity; if this had been given just a little more attention, I can imagine that it would add a lot to the game.
There are other things I'm missing, however. Where is the random map generator, for instance. Sure, the game comes with a full campaign, and it does have both a sandbox and challenge mode, but the latter is little more than a mini-campaign. I want to push that button that has a big fat Generate Map on it, that builds me a map, that is truly unique, that I have never seen before -and- that I can explore and discover.
Still charming though
Looking back, my conclusion can only be that Glory of the Roman Empire is a good game that, if it were given a little more depth, would have been a great game. Stick in a random map generator, deepen the production path, put some more time in to work out how military can be an integral part of the game, and you have a fantastic product. It would have been that easy. But perhaps Haemimont wanted the game out before the competition arrived? CivCity Rome will come out a month from now, followed by Caesar IV in September.
So, does that mean you should skip this game? Unless you're on a tight budget, I'd answer that question with "no". Glory of the Roman Empire is definitely challenging and it has a truly unique feel to it. You always have to keep an eye on production, consumption and the happiness of your people. At one moment you're doing just fine, you allow yourself to become hypnotized by the ever charming graphics, and the next, everything seems to be falling apart. It may sound as a complaint but it really isn't. It's the kind of challenge a city manager needs to have.
7.0
fun score
No Pros and Cons at this time
