Imperium Romanum

[professorspatula]

http://www.metacritic.com/games/plat...rium%20Romanum

Looks like an enjoyable if not overly brilliant game if that's your type of thing.

[frogbeastegg]

There's a demo. I'm downloading it now, with the faint hope of trying it tonight. Citybuilders have been very thin on the ground since Impressions stopped making them.

[Mouzafphaerre]

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Citybuilders have been very thin on the ground since Impressions stopped making them.

True. Precisely though, since Vivendi Universial removed Impressions from being at all.

Haven't tried CoN and Caesar IV by Tilted Mill, which is basically ex-Impressions crew yet.
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[SwordsMaster]

Borrowed it from a friend, played for a bit yesterday.

Graphics are very nice - the game has a self adjusting feature that keeps the game running smoothly by reducing the representation distance. Which isn't much of a problem since you're focused on a small are of the city anyway.

Controls are quite intuitive, even if a little awkward in execution, for example, a rightclick on an empty spot will bring up a list of all the things you can build classified by type: military, production, food, etc... but the icons for the actual buidlings are so small that they're very easy to miss.

Another interesting concept is the settlers. There is no point in building housing if there are no settlers willing to come. And settlers are only willing if all the jobs in the city are filled, etc.

Every building has a "range" that is, for houses, where those resindets will be able to look for jobs, water, markets, and so on, and for other buildings, the area in which they will recruit and the area they'll be willing to serve.

The military works in much the same way it did in the various Caesar incarnations, you train a squad, point at the enemy, and forget about it. On some maps there are also barbarian settlements that can be destroyed, but that will produce new enemies if they are not.

All in all, a very good looking game, very much in the spirit of the old citybuiders, that introduces an element of Age of Empires-like city "improvement" by being able to upgrade your forum in order to significantly alter your city's life (for example, not until the forum is at level 2 can you collect taxes). Some of the mechanics are streamlined and simplified from Caesar. (no need to build tax collectors, for example)

On the downside, the tutorials are way too simplistic to actually prepare you for the game, and the gap between tutorials and actual scenarios can be a bit steep if you never played a citybuilder before.

I will try and play some more, and write something more comprehensive.