Primarily a city building and management game, Imperium Romanum takes you from the days of the Roman Republic - building early settlements and expansion - to around the peak of the Roman Empire, gathering wealth and resources. The main focus is on building your cities and keeping the local economy and populace in good health.
As soon as Imperium Romanum launched, it looked very familiar. The developer previous created Glory of the Roman Empire back in 2006. It would seem the intention was to release Glory of the Roman Empire II, but as it’s no longer the same publisher, Imperium Romanum was born. So anyone who’s previously played Glory of the Roman Empire will be immediately familiar with both the graphics, control system and most of the game mechanics, but there are a few differences. More on those later.
For anyone new to the game, it follows a tried and tested format for a city building title. A simple to use right-click building menu - with various panels around the edge of the screen containing resources and other important information - centre around the main game window. It’s an uncluttered layout, leaving plenty of space to be able to view the city below.
The view itself is the usual fully 3D, third person perspective with the ability to scroll, rotate and zoom; giving you the ability to look at your city from just about any angle you want and any zoom level. Zoom back as far as you can and the sounds of high altitude winds can be heard blowing past as you view a large section of your city below. Zoom all the way in and you get an eye level view, where you can look at street level, with the horizon in the distance, watching your settlers going about their daily business.
The game itself looks very nice, with trees and grass blowing in the breeze, flocks of birds flying through the air and clear reflective water in the rivers and on the coast. The type of landscape changes from dry, arid locations to lush green meadows and large forests, all depending on where you are in the Empire.
The build menu is simple to use; right-click anywhere on the main screen to open a circular menu of building categories. Click a category to see the buildings, click a building to select it, use the scroll-wheel to rotate and left-click to place when you want on the ground. One nice touch here is if you hover your mouse over a category, a mini menu appears around it with smaller icons for the buildings, allowing you to select a building without selecting the category first. There are the usual keyboard shortcuts, so you can do away with the menu altogether if that’s your style.
There are many types of buildings, from woodcutters and quarries for building materials; farms for wheat, meat, flax and grapes; bakers and butchers to produce food; and markets and taverns to sell the produce. Then you have Alters and Temples for religious needs and theatres, Coliseum and the huge Circus Maximus for entertainment. There are also special buildings, such as temples to specific Gods, which grant certain boosts to your city, such as a higher income of money.
Talking of money (or more specifically Denarii), use of a currency is a new feature. Your city now has a real economy, and your population earns money from working to spend on various goods. You can earn some money from taxes, but trading is a much better option, which can be done by building trading posts or ports.
Your settlers can become rich themselves and so improve their homes; assuming their neighbourhood is nice enough, of course. Conversely, if a household becomes poor, this can lead to family members turning to crime. If you have the money to spare, you can donate some to the household to help alleviate the problem, until a better solution can be found (such as creating new jobs in the area).
Homes start as basic Magalias (a simple wooden house) then become Casas, Domuses and finally a top of the range Villa. The houses upgrade automatically when the time is right, so there’sno need to relocate like in other games.
The heart of your city is the Forum, which acts as a store and houses your initial twenty slaves who do all the fetching, carrying and building. The Forum is part of a larger area, which initially starts off looking like a large formal garden or plaza in front. As you expand your city, the forum can be upgraded, at a cost. The first upgrade gives you two Alters and an extra ten slaves, and as subsequent upgrades are purchased you get more and more improvements. By the time you’re at level eight (the highest level) you have two Alters, two Temples, a Neptune’s fountain, lots more extra slaves and building only uses half as much material. With all these upgrades, the Forum really does become the heart of your city.
There are military buildings as well, including wooden and stone walls for protection; including towers that attack your enemies. But your enemies do have catapults to counter this, which are shot at your walls outside the range of the towers. Once your walls have been breached, your enemies come storming through, so the best defence here is an offence, which brings us nicely onto the military units.
There are three military unit types, each with an associated building. Hastati infantry, archers and finally the Equites, or cavalry. Each building can only hold one unit, so if you need multiple units you have to build multiple buildings. Barracks, Archeries or Stables come with a half strength unit automatically. To increase to full strength, the building needs to be provided with various supplies. These supplies are also needed to replenish your units after suffering losses during battle.
Some fans of Glory of the Roman Empire have expressed concerns that Imperium Romanum was heading towards being more of a RTS game, although this isn’t the case as it turns out. There have been some enhancements to the military control system, but the controls are still simplistic. You have a ‘Deploy Squad’ button to send units to a specific location on the map, by placing a banner on the game window. Your unit then marches dutifully to the banner’s location. Select the unit and click ‘Attack’, and they head off to assail the nearest enemy unit or village - whichever is closest.
Another addition is formations, with each unit having two to choose from. Archers can use a line formation, which is weaker in attack, but longer in range, which also serves to demoralise enemy troops. Infantry can then adopt a wedge formation to smash demoralised enemies. The cavalry can use a flanking formation, which splits the regiment into two smaller units to hit the sides of the troop they’re attacking.
There are four different sections of the game to play: Tutorials, Scenarios, History and Rome.
Tutorials are self explanatory, so we won’t waste words on those. Scenarios, are a mixture of twelve locations of differing difficulty levels that are “free build” rounds with no specific tasks to accomplish. They offer different challenges, some due to resource issues, others due to hostile barbarian tribes, and so forth.
History is a branching timeline mode starting in 509BC and ending in 120AD. These levels have specific tasks to accomplish, revealed by selecting up to three Tablets at a time. These Tablets can be tasks (build ten houses etc.), something beneficial (such as a gift from Rome), detrimental (such as a demand by Rome for resources) or even turning all friendly barbarian tribes into enemies. Completing all tasks completes the level, which then unlocks the next in the timeline. There are sixteen missions in all; some long, some short.
Rome is, well… Rome. Unusually, in this section of the game, the city is well established, and needs specific tasks fulfilling. Unfortunately for you there’s a bit of a challenge here, as there is no means of gathering raw materials. Instead you have to buy it all by trading. Luckily you do have lots of money (as you’re in command of all Rome) so you have lots of income coming in from throughout the Empire.
Imperium Romanum doesn’t really do anything new, but what it does, it does well. It looks good, it plays easily and there’s enough here to keep you busy for many hours. If you’re a fan of city-building games (especially Glory of the Roman Empire) then this is a title not to be missed.
