Imperium Romanum

Rome wasn’t built in a day. But, David Hollingworth discovers, some elements of this game may have been.

Imperium Romanum is the sequel to the moderately well-received Glory of the Roman Empire, and as such it promises more and better stuff than its predecessor. However, again, like its predecessor, it doesn’t quite deliver on all the hype.

It does do a number of things quite well, though. Imperium Romanum’s city building is elegant, with all the usual nested necessities in place – you must mine X, before you can build Y, and then, finally, when the stars are right, you can construct Z. While you’re going about all this building and resource rap… I mean, management, you’ve also got to look to your citizens’ happiness. If some resources run low, essential shops shut, and people get angry. Angry people either turn to crime, or may even get into the firebug line of work.

As we said, it’s all pretty basic stuff for anyone who’s familiar with any city-building title, from SimCity through to the similarly Roman-themed Caesar series. But where IR excels is just how well it all slots together. An excellent radial build interface opens up pretty much your entire construction inventory with a single click – choose the building you want and you can then use the scroll wheel to swivel it in place before finally settling on the perfect spot. It also leaves that building type selected, so that if, for instance, you need to build a whole mess of citizen-housing, you can do so in an almost painterly manner.

It all looks good, too, with wonderful distance blur, trees waving (and growing) in the wind, running water, flying birds and everything else you’d expect from a modern, 3D city sim. It also must be pointed out that working out the dependencies of certain buildings and resources can be… esoteric at times, and finding those resources can be even harder. A bit more support in this area would not go astray.

Where the game really falls down is in two areas – ongoing gameplay and combat. So, you know, it’s not as if it’s anything important...

There are three modes of gameplay to get your managing and simulating teeth into. There’s scenario mode, which presents you with all kinds of challenges building and managing all kinds of cities all over the Roman Empire. There’s the Rome mode, which essentially gives you an unfinished Rome, with your challenge to build as many monuments and important structures (the Colosseum, shrines and so on) while managing the great city itself. And, finally, there’s the Timeline mode, which lets you manage Rome at key points throughout its long history; this mode offers a branching storyline, which is sadly as close as you’ll get to a ‘grand historical campaign’.

The modes on offer are certainly good, and the Timeline mode is downright educational (as are many aspects of the game, in fact – it’s a history nerd’s wet nubian dream in game form). But we can’t help but feel that the selection lacks compared to other strategy/building titles.

Combat, though… well, it’s an afterthought, to be honest, which given Rome’s bloody history, and how war shaped it as much as philosophical or political action, is a damned shame. It’s also galling given that, once you’ve built your mines, got your shops producing, your farms farming, and your barracks, well, barracking, the stuff you can do with your troops is limited at best.

Combat also falls down graphically, which only makes it seem like even more of a tacked on element. Your basic infantry don’t even bother to carry weapons or shields until they are engaged in combat; it doesn’t effect the game, but given how iconic a Roman column is, marching with its shields and pilums, it’s a serious letdown. Similarly, when you order your units to attack an enemy settlement, they simply wander aimlessly around the buildings while random fires start and buildings collapse. Warfare’s obviously only one single element of the game, and only one out of many, but it’s still an immersion-breaker.

Don’t get us wrong, there’s a lot to like about this game, especially for unrepentant city-building fans, but the flaws do hold back a lot of game’s potential.