Building Blocks - Glory of the Roman Empire Demo
Rome the Beautiful
I’ll admit—I’m a fan of great graphics. Not that I haven’t spent my fair share of time with ugly games that shine because of great design/gameplay, but they could have been shinier with updated graphics. As with any component of game design, great graphics contribute to the overall impression I have of a game. My love for pretty graphics may explain why I was still somewhat lost toward the end of the demo for Glory of the Roman Empire. It took me forever to finish the final mission. To be honest, it was an embarrassingly long time before I figured out how to get my trade up and running. Glory of the Roman Empire is a beautiful game, but there’s more to city building than watching slaves pile up wood and stone, and citizens go to work from day to day. After playing back through the demo a second time, I came up with a few tips I picked up along the way. By no means are these tips secrets to making large, successful cities in the full game, but they are great building blocks for any burgeoning Emperor.
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Demo splash screen. |
Learning to walk. |
Click the Buildings
The interface in Glory of the Roman Empire is very sparse. All the better to watch your beautiful city grow, eh? Well, that’s what the Emperor decrees, so get to staring! Anyway, there is very little information readily available. However, clicking on various buildings brings up a wealth of different information.
For instance, selecting the town hall brings up information on the stature of your town, the number of citizens, how many citizens are working and the number of free jobs, as well as the number of slaves and the severity of their daily work schedule. It’s also very simple to use the “Home” key to quickly select the town hall.
Selecting the tavern shows how much bread, wine, sausages and fish baskets are inside the building for consumption; in addition, there’s also a gossip button that shows how much bread, wine, sausage and fish the local populace are lacking, which is very useful when trying to balance an economy.
Also, choosing the altar building brings up the number of happy, content, disillusioned, angry, and rebellious citizens. Production buildings like the woodcutter’s lodge or the clay pit show how many people are at work inside, and if there are open spots for more workers.
In addition, buildings also have their own influence rings, shown on the map when they are selected by glowing rings. The yellow rings denote area of affect: for instance, if a simple home is selected, the ring shows how far the citizens living in the house will travel for work, food, recreation, and more. Conversely, the yellow ring on a butcher shop shows from how far citizens will come to visit the butcher for their meat. If there’s a house on the outskirts of town without access to the butcher shop, there may be some hungry children nearby. There is also a green ring which shows when an altar is selected denoting the prestige area of affect from the altar. In the demo, any houses inside the radius of this green rings automatically upgrade from the smallish Magalia to the larger Casa home. Growing the citizenry is important, but bigger, better houses also bring different demands from the increasingly wealthy and difficult citizens.
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Overview screen for the scenario that is loading. |
Taverns help you. |
