Demo Available

The demo of "Grand Ages: Rome" is now available here.

Enjoy it!

Happy New Year!

I've released one more video of Imperium Civitas III and a few screenshots of the mission "Gaeta". Enjoy!

I also wish you a Happy New Year!

First impressions about Imperium Civitas III

You’ll start the game by choosing your Roman family. Each family has its own strength and weaknesses.

It’s a good idea to start the game playing the tutorial first. Although the 2 tutorials are very short, they introduce you both the game basics and the military. You’ll have to discover for yourself what most of the buildings do and what they need: while laying down a building a message appears and brief you with useful information.

The first campaign mission is Cabreros/Cambrils. It’s a small island with no trade option. So, you must survive on your patron loans and city taxes revenue.

The City Center is already laid down on each mission. The forum (needed to the equities be available), it’s now a distinct building.

The economic system is simpler: each production building produces and consumes items to work. The “stock” available of your city is the net result of production minus consumption. The salves do not deliver the items anymore. Once laid down, a working building starts to produce immediately.

For each production building to work properly you need a house of plebeians/equities. Later on, you might change the workers from plebeians to equities (increasing the production ration) or to salves (decreasing the production ratio). Certain buildings only work with equities, though.

Through the academy technological search, it’s possible to increase the production rates of you farms, sawmill and mines. Also to get access to some advance buildings and services.

Each mission has some particular goals (both primary and/or secondary) to achieve. It might be food satisfaction, entertainment, religion, population, health or employment, among others.

Now you can level up your buildings using platforms/bases. The houses, either of plebeians, equities or patricians do not upgrade, at least that I could see. But they do need certain services available or else they’ll start to “produce” delinquency and your city might burn to the ground.

The military system rocks! It was largely improved and now we can have a really Roman Empire worth of that name. You can now train troops and each branch (Hastati, Archers, cavalry and gladiators) have their own abilities. You can also recruit mercenaries (elephants for example) and elite troops like praetorians, triarii or balistas.

Bottom line:

This beautiful game is completely new: buildings, economic and military systems. It’s really a step forward of the Imperium Romanum saga and worth every penny I’ve spent.

The down side:

There is no “remove” tool. Although you can delete a building thru its own information panel, the platforms and gardens once laid down, can’t be removed. There no “road” tool also. I hope the international version scheduled to January of 2009 will include those two.

My Christmas gift to you. Enjoy!

I've updated the blog with some screenshots of Imperium Civitas III game and also with a video of the finished city of Cabrera.

I hope, during this weekend, to be able to brief you about my first impressions about IC3.

Merry Christmas!

Imperium Civitas III is already out!

Imperium Romanum II is now called 'Grand Ages: Rome' and is scheduled for an international release in January 2009.

Meanwhile, the Spanish/Italian version - aka Imperium Civitas III, is already out since early December.

I've already ordered my copy here and I expect to receive it in a few days.

I'll brief you about this wonderful game next week!

Production and city mood

My next suggestion isn’t new on PC games. However, citybuilding games won’t use it extensively.

You must think that the availability of certain products in your city, produced or traded as best as you can, is always a good thing.

I don’ agree.

First. On real world, the supply-demand rule says if supply is bigger than demand prices tend to drop; if the demand is bigger than supply price tend to increase.

Some missions of citybuilding games that I’ve played, it was enough pick the most lucrative item to trade, produce it till I drop and expect, comfortably, smooth constant revenue from it.

Second: some items/products have a direct impact on you city/people. A few examples:

Grain

Positive impact: population boost. The number of birth on or city will increase.

Negative Impact: if too much produced/stored the probability of been affected by plague of rats would increase. Entire stocks could be lost.

Vegetables/fruits

Positive impact: better nutrition. Better nourish people live longer and don’t get sick often.

Negative impact: If too much produced/stocked the probability of rotting would increase. Entire stocks could be lost.

Salt

Positive Impact: less time recruiting/training soldiers. After all, salarium argentum, "salt payment" – was the first form of payment to Roman soldiers.

Negative impact: food would taste considerably better. People would consume more food than usually.

Wine

Positive impact: less risk of riots. People would be happier regardless your poor government skills.

Negative impact: drunk or “happier” people tend to work less. Your city production would be affected.

Weapons

Positive impact: you can have heavy infantry and better trained soldiers.

Negative Impact: although lucrative trade route, when available to your enemies they would grow stronger and bolder against you.

Olive Oil

Positive impact: illumination. It might be used as fuel (with a piece of wick you could light up a house). Its extensive use on mines (gold or iron) would allow their production to increase.

Negative impact: Fire spreading. The probability of fire spreading on your city would increase dramatically.

As you can see, managing citybuilding games is no more than careful planning and balance. All produced goods should have positive or negative impact on your city.

We could compensate, however, the negative impact of some goods using others simultaneously: for example, salt and olive oil have been an ancient excellent way to preserve food. The danger of losing stored perishable crops would be reduced.

State and free enterprise

You might think that, reading my suggestions above, the equestrian class would rule the entire economy and profit loads of money from it. This isn’t true.

Although, free enterprise is crucial to an healthy economy, hegemony is always dangerous.

So, how could we avoid it? An example:

When you place an industrial building (potter factory) early on the game, it would be ran 100% by the State. You would employ 50% common people and 50% slaves.

With equites available and willing to join you city, they would start the production and, as an incentive, you would share the industry profits by given them a percentage of the entire production, for example 75/25. They would be taxed (gave you money) on their production share (75%), and the 25% left would be paid on items (potter).

Theses State stocked items would keep your city running on trouble times like natural disasters (earthquakes), city shortages, to satisfy the empire (Caesar) requests and trade if necessary. If sold, their price would be much lower than regular prices, reflecting the less efficiency of the State compared to private entrepreneurs.

Another example. It would be particularly dangerous if you hadn’t the army loyalty. So, they should be pay and fed (with wheat and salt?) at the state expenses.

Finally, you could always ‘control’ (on the Senate panel) the percentage of items of a particular industry given to free enterprise. Too much control (100%) would mean no equites willing to live in your city because of drastic fall of their potential income. The same concept would be applied to the senatorial class on farming.


Next article: Production and city Mood