Rise of the Roman Empire 2.8.0
Rise of the Roman Empire: City Builder & Strategy is not about the popular memory of Rome. It’s not about the close-knit ranks of crimson-cloaked legionnaires and the stoics at their head. It is not about the roar of the crowds in the arena or the Machiavellian maneuvers of geriatric senators trying to rule the world without being changed by it.
It is about the details of the Roman conquest.
It’s about battles won because one side still had food and the other didn’t, about how infrastructure pumps the blood of the empire and robs it of its vitality. It is about having too many enemies and too few friends, and never enough money or human resources to deal with both. And it is about the utter absurdity of waging war for hundreds of miles with armies that can only move at foot speed, where the distance between the two fronts can be almost a season’s march. Victory is far from inevitable. It requires a great deal of planning and patience. You build new supply lines and warehouses to keep your armies fed and motivated as they go to war. You close old forts and supply lines that no longer serve a purpose. You slowly move your armies into position, trying to guess how many troops you will need to get the job done. After all, there is always a turbulent frontier to guard with a few more soldiers – your cavalry moves out into enemy territory looking for cities, armies, and paths to attack. Finally, when the forward supply depots are fully manned and your invasion forces are assembled, you march.
The units become tiny and turn into counters. The battlefield disappears on a parchment map of the entire province with cities and supply lines crossing it. Then you scroll back further and the province shrinks to the size of your fingertip and you see a map of France from the English Channel to the Alps, from the Pyrenees to Germany. What you can see from the line of sight are nothing but tiny pockets of illumination. The rest of the map is obscured by unknown territory. The campaign even exacerbates these problems because of the artificial boundaries it puts around you. Every ten minutes you may be attacked by the same group of Belgians, but you can’t cross the magic line to put an end to their crap once and for all. Instead, you’re dealing with constant harassment.
Divide and conquer.
Do it right, and gradually, piece by piece, Gaul will come under your power. Do it wrong, and your borders will crumble as your overstretched armies are crushed by the onslaught of your enemies, and you will have to retreat to safety. Then, after licking your wounds, you’ll have to rebuild. There’s a lot to say about Rise of the Roman Empire: City Builder & Strategy, and sometimes simple tasks do become more interesting when viewed on a larger scale. But a truly great strategy game should never be this repetitive, even if the Romans loved their conquests, which were beautiful and methodically predictable.
