Imperium Romanum

[Ja'chyra]

Can you control the battles in this game?

And if not is there any of this type of game our there that allows you to do both, city building and tactical battles?

[frogbeastegg]

Yes, you can. They're simplistic and a bit rubbish, as per the sad usual for city builders.

In a nutshell, you build a barracks and supply it with the right types of goods. Slowly it will train soldiers until the unit reaches 36 men. You can deploy the unit by clicking on an incon in the barracks. Stick the flag down wherever you want the unit to move to. The soldiers will automatically attack any enemies within close range. Alternately you can click on the attack icon, and they will head off after the closest enemy or enemy village. You have 2 formations to choose from, and 3 troop types. The formations add different bonuses to your units, the troop types function in a rock-paper-scissors fashion.

There's a rudimentary morale system. As soldiers die the unit loses morale. I think the enemy troop type has an impact on this too, and the number of enemy dead. If morale reaches breaking point the unit will break and rout. It's possible to have a battered unit with high morale if the battle goes your way, so it's not too much a case of numbers=morale.

[The Marcher Lord]

Must admit I am quite liking the demo, it reminds me a lot of the style of gameplay in Stronghold 2, which is the only other citybuilder type game I have played, although IR has less emphasis on troop production and more on stable economy and community building.

Played through the main scenario and expanded in the freeplay that continues when you finish it to see what happens, so far everything is stable although i'm running short on the denarii and need to slow down the expansion somewhat (too used to the fast expansion in TW games ) The tablet system is OK but seems a bit easy, maybe thats just the demo though. Battles are very basic, but not really meant to be the meat of this game in any case. There seems to be plenty of scope for experimenting with interesting building and expansion strategies and the historic timeline scenarios look like they will be fun, varied and challenging. Graphics look good, plenty of things to build, lots of different environments tackled in the maps and more maps/scenarios on the way in future addon packs (some new stuff coming this week with the patch! ). It runs fine on my two year old system. All in all, unless I find some horrors in the rest of the demo, I will be getting this one.

Found a very good forum where there is plenty of lively discussion and help here http://www.citybuildergames.com/inde...ard,170.0.html

[woad&fangs]

It took a couple of campaigns before Pharaoh (the best of the Impressions games IMO)...

Hey, I used to play that game Would I enjoy IR if I enjoyed that game?

[Mouzafphaerre]

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I like Pharaoh quite a lot but IMHO Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdom is the best.
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[frogbeastegg]

Hey, I used to play that game Would I enjoy IR if I enjoyed that game?

I don't see why not. It's the same type of game.

I like Pharaoh quite a lot but IMHO Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdom is the best.

It's a very close call, and I'd happily play either.

Zeus deserves much love too. It shouldn't be possible for a city builder to be funny, and that one was in abundance. If it had been more challenging overall and hadn't featured that nasty whale whistle sound effect whenever you had ocean on your screen it would have been my favourite. I hated that sound effect and there was a lot of ocean.

[Artorius Maximus]

This looks interesting. I only hope that they would have changed the name of the game, if you know what I mean. It's incorrect Latin. It should be Imperium Romanorum, not Imperium Romanum.

[Ja'chyra]

I gave the demo a go but without decent battles it seems a waste to me.

The city builder side is quite good, but it all seems to have been done before. I would like it to run more like governing a city state where you could build up your military, design your own troop types, initiate diplomacy, and conquer other cities. Almost like a cross between this game, TW, EU with some extras added.

I would even pay double the cost of a normal game if it was done well.

edit: Oh and it's not supposed to be proper latin, it's a game title, it's supposed to appeal to gamers kind of like Roma Victor.

Languages are bastardised all the time, just look at US English :(, why should latin be an exception?