Imperium Romanum

Author: Joe Martin
Published: 27th February 2008

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Build, Build, Conquer

To say that Imperium Romanum is completely without innovation though would be a bit of a lie – when it comes to keeping the flow of the scenario going and getting cities constructed then the game has a few nice features which keep things interesting.

At the start of each and every scenario, players have a small cluster of buildings available to them – usually just a house or two, plus a forum. The forum is the most important building in the game as it acts as your base of operations. By clicking on the forum you'll be able to monitor your citizens, land a tax on your population and unlock bonuses by upgrading.

Upgrading the forum is pivotal to the success of your city and has certain pre-requisites to make sure that your population is ready. For each forum upgrade you go through you'll be able to tax your citizens once, taking a tenth of their monies for yourself.

Timing the tax is one of the subtleties that makes the game so interesting – tax your city when your population is low or your people are poor and you'll only get a few hundred denarii. On the other hand, waiting too long means you'll probably run the risk of upsetting your people as they outgrow their facilities. The key is to wait until they are about to peak that curve, tax them and then use the profits to sustain yourself through the next stages.

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Of course, it wouldn't be a proper strategy game if there was only one thing to worry about – piling on the stress with multi-tasking is a hallmark of the genre!

To this end, Imperium Romanum uses a cool new tablet system to keep objectives coming in and to give the game a strong sense of direction as your city grows. The tablet system is basically very similar to a deck of Chance cards in Monopoly, with the exception that the game ends when you have got to the bottom of the deck and that the scenario determines what's on the card and how many you can look at at once.

For example, playing in some of the earlier levels of the game you're able to turn over up to three cards at once if you feel you are going too slowly, while in later levels you can only have one tablet active at a time.

The tablets are used for a wide range of different things in the game. Sometimes they are used to set mandatory goals that push you forwards through the game – such as "Reach a population of 100 people" or "Build a bakery." These objectives are often accompanied by little pieces of historic trivia that makes them a little more entertaining the first time you play through them.

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Other times the tablets you turn over offer immediate benefits or disadvantages – "The Senate is pleased with you. Receive 10 Stone." or "Mount Vesuvius has erupted! Fire rages through the city!" – while other objectives are completely optional and can be discarded if you aren't up to the challenge.

Admittedly the tablet system suffers from its own design. While campaigns move forward faster than a cheetah with its arse on fire the first time, the second playthrough will naturally leave players facing much less of a challenge. Still, the game has to be praised for bringing something at least a little bit clever to the genre, even if it could have been integrated a little bit better.

The interface too is pretty interesting as, unlike other strategy games, the screen isn't cluttered with build queues and menus. Instead the build menu is bought up by right clicking on the ground, summoning a radial menu from which players narrow down their choices. It's an elegant, if slightly fiddly solution the first few times you use it.