Why You Can Trust CNET Civ City: Rome review: Civ City Rome
Hail Caesar! Civ City: Rome tasks you with raising a city worthy of the great Roman Empire.
Hail Caesar! Civ City: Rome (no, it's not the next Civilization game, but it does have the same publisher in 2K Games) tasks you with raising a city worthy of the great Roman Empire. There's plenty to build and achieve -- from palaces and colosseums for your citizens to forts and stone towers for your military, all while juggling the economy of a rapidly growing city.
Civ City: Rome
The Good
The Bad
The Bottom Line
Civ City: Rome is a real-time strategy game and, like others in the city building genre, has strong resemblances to SimCity. You start your city from scratch, and must build houses, wells, warehouses, goat farms and other constructs if you are to achieve what are usually resource-oriented goals.
Civ City: Rome is predominantly about resource management. There are some military scenarios, but most of your time will be spent trying to attain a certain level of housing for your citizens, a population requirement, or an amount of a particular good such as wheat. The developers have done well in including plenty of distinctly Roman culture and architecture. Julius Caesar, Cleopatra and Spartacus, among others, all make appearances at some point. Complementing this is the Civlopedia, a historical reference guide to the various aspects of Roman life included in the game. Players can click the Civlopedia at any time to learn and appreciate the different elements of Roman culture. This is only in the form of brief facts, however.
The only thing that distracts from the Roman authenticity is the perplexing use of English accents for the game characters. Granted, developer Firefly is an English company, and while we do acknowledge English probably wasn't the Romans' first language anyway, surely an Italian accent would've been more suitable? At times it's almost laughable to hear your 'Roman' call you "guv'nor".
While you're building your city, you need to keep an eye on indicators such as population and city happiness. The higher these are, the better. Don't provide ample housing or employment opportunities for your citizens, and happiness will fall. As governor, three ways you can immediately impact your citizens' happiness is by setting wage, ration and work/free time levels. You'll set these according to how ambitious you are, or how stretched your resources might be. They'll probably impact your budget, which you'll also need to keep an eye on if you're to avoid running out of Denarii (Roman money).
One of our problems when managing a larger city was locating buildings quickly. While many of the structures in Civ City: Rome are well-drawn and detailed, some are very similar (for example, tunic shops and olive presses). While you can quickly see how many units of a type exist in your city, you must scroll across the city to locate them. In the aforementioned example, we had to click on several buildings to check their function, as we weren't able to tell from sight -- quite time consuming if you have several tunic shops and olive presses.
We were also a little unsure of the realism of being able to move fairly established houses via a couple of clicks, without the loss of time or money. This allows you to position a house closer to a need, such as entertainment, but can balance out in that your relocated house may now be out of range of other needs, such as food. This isn't always easy then, but did make us wonder if Romans were able to move bricks and mortar at the drop of a hat.
The game offers stand alone missions and campaign mode. Each campaign scenario is indispersed with a game character telling you of new plans for your city, and objectives vary from feeding your citizens to setting up trade routes to conquering enemy cities. Similarly, there is some variety in the stand alone missions. Here you can select freebuild (no objectives), economic or military games at any skill level. Coincidentally, the three skill levels in the game can be changed before starting any scenario, whether stand alone or as part of campaign mode. Also certain to prolong the life of the game is the map editor for creating your own Rome landscapes.
Those spoiling for a fight may be interested to know that military scenarios allow you to build forts manned by legionaries (swordsman) and velites (javelin troops). You can also choose your troops' formation when in battle, and whether to attack or hole up defensively. You may even opt to build a stone wall to fortify your city. The military scenarios add a second dimension to the game as you have to prepare for imminent attack, but all the while keep your city chugging along economically. However you don't have much control over a battle itself, so if it's fighting you really want, you're slightly in the wrong genre of game.
Civ City: Rome is a fine simulator of one of the greatest empires in history. While few of its features mark this effort as innovative, if the idea of rebuilding the Roman Empire appeals to you, Civ City: Rome should keep you engaged for a long time. After all, Rome wasn't built in a day.