Glory of the Roman Empire

by DreamCatcher Games

Product Features

• Choose Latin game version to experience the height of the Latin language era
• Easy-to-learn, yet challenging city-building management game
• Cultivate an ancient city from a small settlement to worldwide glory and fame
• Defend your town against the attacks of aggressive barbarians
• Detailed graphics engine; authentic settings; Campaign and Challenge modes

Product Details

• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B000FRVHXM
• Item Weight: 5.6 ounces
• Media: CD-ROM
• Release Date: June 26, 2006
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #8,822 in Video Games (See Top 100 in Video Games)

Product Description

From the Manufacturer

The glorious age of Rome--a time when the empire was at its peak. All across its provinces governors spared no resources to found cities of unparalleled splendor and magnificence and leave their mark in history. Enter this time of wonder and use your city-building skills and creativity to build cities the likes of which would humble even Rome itself.

Through careful planning and governing rise to become the empire’s most respected governor in the Campaign mode. Or compare your score with friends and other players all across the Internet in the Challenge mode to determine who is the greatest governor the world has ever seen. Glory of the Roman Empire is an easy to learn, yet challenging city-building management game that boasts authentic settings and beautiful graphics.

Features:

• Lovely and detailed graphics engine
• Revolutionarily easy-to-handle innovative flower interface
• Observe and guide generation after generation from infants to slaves to senior citizens--in the daily life of Ancient Rome
• Cultivate Rome or other historical ancient cities like Florence from a small settlement to worldwide glory and fame on a wide variety of maps
• Defend your town against the attacks of aggressive barbarians
• Experience the height of the Latin language era by choosing the Latin game version
• Challenge mode: upload high scores onto the Internet and see how you match up to other players around the world

Product Description

The glorious age of Rome - a time when the empire was at its peak, envied and feared by friend and foe alike. All across the provinces governors spared no expense to build cities of unparalleled splendor and magnificence and leave their mark in history. Enter this time of wonder and use your city building skills to create cities that would humble even Rome itself. In campaign mode, use careful planning to become the empire's most respected governor. Or go online in challenge mode to best players across the Internet and determine who can build an empire to stand the test of time. Glory of the Roman Empire is an accessible and easy to learn, yet difficult to master city building and management simulation that will challenge players in a historically authentic settings, while lush graphics immerse the player in the culture of the ancient Roman empire.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

47 of 48 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Glory is quick, but making an Empire is Tedious., June 27, 2006

By 

Mattrik Trenal (Marblehead, MA United States) - See all my reviews

= Fun:3.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: Glory of the Roman Empire (CD-ROM)

While the game is indeed very simple and easy to get into, it is incredibly tedious, and will take a certain degree of micromanagement. In the first few campaign missions, the game is wowing. The graphics are better then any other Rome-based city builder I have seen, the interface is simple, and there is minimal micromanagement. The smaller your soon-to-be metropolis, less micromanagement. But, you simply have to use micromanagement, as the game forcibley makes you enlarge your city. As soon as your city gets too large for just a few administrative and distributive buildings, the citizens start complaining about how they need this, that, ect. So, you must provide this, that, ect. for them. Then, maybe they, for some random reason, will catch the plague. Well you have to fix that! Or maybe a house will be on fire. That needs to be fixed too! Thus, you must lay out many scaffolds at once before you even think about houses. I liked how they incorporated slaves into the game, as workers, and how if you worked them too hard they would revolt. However, if you get a notification that a house is on fire, then it's gone. You can try to get a prefacture up to stop it, but it's already gone unless you begin rebuilding it right away. Add this to the fact that the learning curve may be a bit flat for you, and the game gets fairly boring fast. If you get bored with the campaign and jump the gun to the free-build, then woah! What the heck is a Domus? So, simply, you must continue with the campaign, because you can't start the free-build given the fact that there are too many unexplained buildings.
One of my favorite features (probably because I love Latin) is the ability to change the entire game lettering and wording into Latin, the ancient Roman language. The grammer is a sketchy at times (using "ad" in something such as "there are too many"), but overall it really does well. I would have liked to see some slaves that the Romans might have considered "exotic" (such as african, german, british, ect. people) as maybe a trade item.


The game gets a 3 for fun and 4 overall, it will entertain you garenteed for a few hours, but unless you take time to get through the repetitiveness, it will not continue to excite you.

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Not crazy about it, November 7, 2006

By 

balawea (sterling, va United States) - See all my reviews

= Fun:3.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: Glory of the Roman Empire (CD-ROM)

It's limited in complexity compared to the old standards like Age of Empires/Mythology/Kings, and has more than a few irritating quirks. For example, the the panoramic view you are given seems more designed to show off the scenery (which is pretty nice) than to get you a useful view of, say, enemy troops. Unlike Black and White, which gives you full range of motion, here as you move upward for a good overall shot, your field of vision is restricted to only what is directly below you, which is a tiny fraction of the map. No horizon shots whatsoever. That combined with the fact that enemy soldiers aren't marked on the minimap means you are constantly surprised when angry Israelis come to kick you off their land.

I also dislike the lack of control over troops. Archers running out of towers to get slaughtered by axemen. Velits that won't show up to battle til they're good and ready. I also had a case of disappearing mercenaries on one map where the number dwindled to zero before the first battle. Never found an explanation for that. Overall, the battle aspect of the game from a strategy perspective is nearly nonexistant, so don't get your hopes up. No individual control over units means no say in how your guys respond to attacks, and its generally dull even when they manage a win.

Another quirk which I discovered in the challenge mode is that if someone burns down your only woodcutter's lodge and you have less than 4 units of wood stored, game over. It doesn't actually stop, you just can't build anymore buildings, even a woodcutter's lodge, *AND* all your existing buildings that need wood for upkeep go up in flames. Craptacular.

Also (this is the worst of all), the cheat codes don't seem to work. I tried them all.

One big plus, though, is the Latin. You can play the whole game with Latin narration and text. It's also the absolute first game about Romans I have ever played that didn't have British voiceovers. It sounds authentically Latin (to me). The producers are German, so I guess they don't suffer the same delusions as we anglophones. It's a nice touch.

Anyway, aside from the issues, it was an interesting diversion, but at the end of the day I'm going right back to Age of Whatever. Maybe the next version will knock my socks off.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Glory of the Roman Empire, January 9, 2007

By 

Gary L. Buckner (Marion, NC USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

= Fun:4.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: Glory of the Roman Empire (CD-ROM)

To me Glory of the Roman Empire is a work of art and a really great game. The graphics are far above average. Learning to play is simple and the level of the game is not complicated nor demanding. As I mentioned in another interview elsewhere, you can play GotR without having to worry about Caesar making a lot of difficult demands which must be met within a certain period and distract from the actual city building aspects by forcing the player to spend time and exert himself in seeing these are met or, face the possibility of losing the game. There are outbreaks of plague and you will have fires but, these are easily dealt with by building a special building which doubles as a drug store and doctor and erecting fire stations to cover populated areas. All in all I find the game quite enjoyable and my only complaints are that most of the maps are not large enough and the game does not contain and editor.