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Glory of the Roman Empire Preview April 03, 2006 John JCal Callaham |
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Summary: We go hands-on with a beta build of the upcoming historical city builder game from publisher CDV.
 Introduction | Page:: ( 1 / 3 ) |
The game has you in charge of building impressive cities in the Roman Empire as a governor. The game begins with a tutorial that gives you the basics on using the user interface and the various issues you will have to deal with while building your city.
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In Glory of the Roman Empire you’ll start small with just a village, but as the game progresses you begin to create buildings and serve your ever-growing population. Your citizens will need to eat, so farms also need to be made to create the raw food, along with extra buildings to process the food. (Living quarters for your people are also needed in the game.) The game doesn't stray away from the real Roman Empire's use of slaves to do certain tasks like building the basic buildings in the game.
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While wood is needed for building farms and basic houses, more elaborate structures will need stone and clay to support them. Of course you have to gain those resources by building structures that can fashion the stone and clay that is needed. The trick is that those building can only be built in certain locations. Stone makers have to be built near geographical locations that have stone in them, while clay making structures have to be built near a body of water. Those locations are found via special dots on a mini-map on the right hand portion of the game's user interface.
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Your townspeople can also trade with neighbors and take part in over 50 different professions as your Roman town grows to a huge city, complete with statues, temples and, yes, a gladitorial arena.
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| Gameplay | Page:: ( 2 / 3 ) |
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Gameplay types
Finally there are challenge modes which give the player specific and special goal to achieve, such as keeping your people happy while they eat double the normal amount of food or being able to stage two gladiator fights in your local area. Unfortunately the game does not feature multiplayer, which could limit its replay value.
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Gameplay elements
One of the more interesting parts of Glory of the Roman Empire is the fact that your townspeople are not static. They actually grow older and wiser while new townspeople are born. As a result, you have to maintain a balance of young and old folks in your town. This is needed in order to keep the knowledge of certain tasks moving through the years. Of course, you can also choose to fight as well once you gain enough townspeople and experience to create a military force.
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While not designed to be a true RTS game like Rome: Total War, Glory of the Roman Empire does allow you build barracks to train Roman troops to take out your neighbors.
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| Graphics, UI | Page:: ( 3 / 3 ) |
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With that being said, there are some interesting effects available like the wind swaying the trees, a full day and night cycle, as well as some interesting water-effects, but on the whole Glory of the Roman Empire certainly doesn't compete in terms of looks with the mainline 3D RTS titles.
People expecting a fast-paced RTS game are likely to be disappointed as well; while you can vary the speed of the game, Glory of the Roman Empire is meant to be a slower-paced experience.
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User interface
The user interface is very well handled with easy access to building structures by left clicking on the screen and bringing up an icon menu that will allow the player to access buildings and other options needed to play the game.
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Our beta build of the game was admittedly buggy (it crashed our desktop on more than one occasion) but fans of historical city sim building games will want to keep an eye out for Glory of the Roman Empire, with its combination of constructing a viable Roman city with military strategy thrown in. CDV plans to release the game with its co-publisher Enlight in June.
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