Imperium Romanum is a city-builder set in the ancient Roman Empire. If you're thinking, "Hey that sounds just like the old Caesar series" then you're not far off. Much like the old Sierra series, Imperium Romanum places you in a series of towns and settlements and asks you to build housing, establish farming and resource production, and set up industries. You'll also build defenses and armies to protect yourself from barbarian hordes and conquer nearby villages.

I think Imperium Romanum takes a slightly more casual and less complex approach to the genre. First, at least in the missions I played, each level seemed to be completely contained and it didn't seem as though your city carried over throughout multiple stages of the campaign. Rather, each mission starts in a different settlement and gives you goals to accomplish there and then you move on to the next. There is a sandbox gameplay option so if you want to build a super-city, you can do that, but the campaign missions don't seem to be cumulative.

Combat is rather simplistic and basically your troops are limited to a couple of formations, neither of which can actually be changed on the fly once battle has begun.

One thing I did notice here is that unlike a lot of the "historical" city management titles, the game doesn't skirt around the issue that slavery was a common practice. Slaves will do all the building and hauling here, and they get separate "housing" and will not be able to fill the "free" jobs that your settlers will take. If you overwork your slaves (i.e. don't build enough slave shelters) then they are likely to revolt until you get their workload under control.

The graphics are pretty detailed and there is a nice variety of industries and buildings you can introduce in your town.

Overall, it's a nice little city builder for the history buffs, and it offers a more forgiving approach to planning than some of the other similar games I've played. (read this as: I never had to break out a spreadsheet to lay out perfect housing and industrial blocks in Imperium Romanum in order to beat a level. Then again, I might have been an overly compulsive Caesar player. ymmv)

It's hard to look at a Roman city-building game and not think of the venerable Caesar series, but I encourage you to put it out of your mind. There are no wandering agents and maze-like roadways to be found here, but there is some solid construction and management. Having more in common with titles like Children of the Nile or Tropico, Imperium Romanum takes a simple system and spreads it across a bewildering array of scenarios and challenges.

Each scenario sets you as the praetor of a city somewhere in the empire, anywhere from Alexandria to Pompeii to Rome itself. Most of the time you'll be starting from just a forum and stockpile, but some scenarios give you a whole city right from the get-go. From there you have to build houses, mines, farms, woodcutters, and other basics to get the town running. Once your settlement is established you can start looking into trade routes, fortifications, temples, schools, and other advanced constructions. There's a fair number of buildings to build, and you'll be building most of them in each scenario.

What keeps things fresh as you bounce from province to province are the scenario conditions. Many will limit you in some way, like not having any wood or stone on the map. Instead you'll get supplied by Rome while you get established, and then have to fulfill some goal or start trading to make up the difference. These goals and events are conveyed through the tablet system, which you can trigger whenever you want. You can accept up to three tablets at once, and they can give new objectives, bonuses, or serious curveballs. It's an interesting system to direct the scenarios but some of the tablets can be unexpectedly brutal. One map tasks you with establishing a port, and one of the tablets about halfway through is a tidal wave that wipes out anything you've built up to that point.

I know that sounds absolutely terrible, but Imperium Romanum is so relaxed and simple that it's hard to get mad at it. Buildings are usually constructed swiftly and your resource production is very generous in its quantities. There is warfare as well, but it's as simple as building barracks and sending your regiments out to conquer barbarians. About the only real frustration I've found is that our citizens have needs that must be fulfilled to keep them happy and out of trouble, and after six hours and as many scenarios I still can't keep them from turning irate and rebellious. Even if you build them everything you can think of, some of them always seem to get mad about something.

Part of the problem is a lack of information available. You have almost no charts or graphs for your citizens or your resources, and clicking on buildings only gives general information about their contents. This means there's a rough learning curve while you figure out how many wheat farms and bakeries it takes to supply your citizens with bread, but like I mentioned, the game is too relaxed to ever really punish you for it. There's no fail state that I can see, and citizens never move out, instead opting to complain endlessly and maybe riot.

The presentation does a lot to endear Imperium Romanum in spite of its shortcomings as well. The clean, detailed graphics make for picturesque settlements and countryside in every scenario. You can follow your citizens around and watch them gesticulate wildly as they chat or pray. Construction is a bit unpolished, going from a pile of materials to a whole building in the blink of an eye, but the buildings themselves are magnificent. The sound design is fine with its understated bustle and alerts, and it includes some oddly jazzy tunes as well.

While not one of the best city builders I've played, Imperium Romanum still manages to be one of the most enjoyable. The charming look and feel of the game, coupled with the simple building and tablet guidance, make this a great title to relax with. You're bound to run into some small faults and frustrations, but odds are it will win you back across its wealth of scenarios. It might be a bit barebones, but there's a good heart in there that makes it worth a look.



Did you enjoy this review? I certainly hope so, and I certainly hope you'll check out more of them at https://goldplatedgames.com/ or on my curation page!

Really quite fun. Probably the best city-building game I've played. I like it better than CivCity: Rome. This is a lot like Sim City Societies, but with some actual goals. Societies suffered from the problem of "well, now my city has enough X to make more Y. And now I have enough Y to build Z. Great. So?" There was no reason to do anything.

Imperium Romanum is a city builder with very definite goals. "Grow your town to X population. But in this scenario you can only farm wheat." So to keep you upper crust happy, you'll need to export a lot of grain and import things like meat and cloth. There's also a military aspect, but it's somewhat downplayed. This isn't an RTS; it's a city builder. You definitely need a militia, but you don't need to be a tactical genius to make them effective.

You need to keep your economy going by producing... something, keep production running by growing your population, keep your population happy by importing luxuries.

This literally was my Rome fix while I waited for Total War Rome II to be developed. But its a gem on its own. Looking to kill some time at a coffee shop or blow some steam - get out of the real world for a minute - good one. Especially if you're a rome history buff like me.

I have maybe 100 games in my Steam list. This is one of the few I return to every few months to play again. Addictive city builder with just enough combat to keep it interesting. Should be part of everyone's game inventory.

It shouldn't be much of a surprise that the developer of the last three Tropico games was involved here. This is a solid city builder in the spirit of classics like the Caesar series. Playing through all of the various scenarios could take you hundreds of hours, yet so far they don't feel like simple crapware bloat. While there is a system for military forces, it's not strongly emphasized and feels more like a police force against foreign invaders. But then again, you're playing a city builder. If you want to go on conquests, go get Rome Total War.

⠀

Childhood memory.

Many years ago i found a disc of this game and i really enjoyed it. After a few years i lost the disc, but wanted to play it. It wasn't easy, since the games title isn't very good to memorize. Anyways i like this game and it gave me hours of fun

---{Graphics}---
☐ You forget what reality is
☐ Beautiful
☐ Good
☑ Decent
☐ Bad
☐ Don‘t look too long at it
☐ Paint.exe

---{Gameplay}---
☐ Addictive like heroin
☐ Very good
☑ Good
☐ It‘s just gameplay
☐ Mehh
☐ Starring at walls is better
☐ Just don‘t

---{Audio}---
☐ Eargasm
☑ Very good (The narrator voice is just awesome)
☐ Good
☐ Not too bad
☐ Bad
☐ Earrape

---{Audience}---
☐ Kids
☐ Teens
☑ Adults
☐ Average Solitare Players

---{PC Requirements}---
☐ Check if you can run paint
☑ Potato
☐ Decent
☐ Fast
☐ Rich boiiiiii
☐ Ask NASA if they have a spare computer

---{Difficulity}---
☐ Just press ‚A‘
☐ Easy
☐ Significant brain usage
☑ Easy to learn / Hard to master
☐ Difficult
☐ Dark Souls

---{Grind}---
☐ Nothing to grind
☑ Only if u care about leaderboards/ranks
☐ Isnt necessary to progress
☐ Average grind level
☐ Too much grind
☐ You‘ll need a second life for grinding

---{Story}---
☐ Story?
☑ Text or Audio floating around
☐ Average depends an DLC
☐ Good
☐ Lovely
☐ It‘ll replace your life

---{Game Time}---
☐ Long enough for a cup of tea
☐ Short
☑ Average
☐ Long
☐ To infinity and beyond

---{Price}---
☐ There is no „price“
☑ Worth the price
☐ If u have some spare money left
☐ Not recommended
☐ You could also just burn your money

---{Bugs}---
☑ Never heard of
☐ Minor bugs
☐ Can get annoying
☐ Assassin‘s Creed: Unity
☐ The game itself is a big terrarium for bugs

One of my favorite Building/strategy games. You could look at it as an better version of 'Glory of the roman empire'. I like the roman setting, the overal gameplay and economic mechanics work great. Altought it has a basic combat system and sometimes you have to capture a barbarian village, it is still more foccused on the building part. If you want some more action and fighting this might not be the game for you, it's more of a builder, not a destroyer ;)