Grand Ages Rome Review

Introduction

Grand Ages Rome is a real time strategy and city builder game from historical games developer Haemont games. It is set in Roman times and the campaign mode follows important events like the conquest of Julius Caesar, the change to an Empire from a republic, Mark Anthony, Queen Cleopatra of Egypt, and Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus (Pompy).

forum, the centre of your city

Gameplay

Each mission of the campaign you need to build a city that meets the objectives of the mission e.g. build a city with 60 exports of wine, eliminate enemy camp, or build 60 houses. There are many different types of buildings and usually each building has buildings it depends on. You need to satisfy food, religion, and entertainment through building the right buildings. Trading with other cities is possible with either a ship port or a trading post building. At the centre of your city you have a forum and as you get milestones such as building set number of house or researching set number of technologies the forums get upgraded with trees and statues.

The graphics are very impressive and it is possible to zoom in to see individual people or zoom a long distance out to see the entire map. You have complete control of the camera being able to view the game exactly how you like. Sometimes the buildings can look too similar and it is difficult to tell what they do easily.

Some missions need you to eliminate barbarian camps. You take control of squads of soldiers and attack the enemy like you would in any real time strategy game. Each squad has levelling up and as they gain experience they become more powerful. There are lots of different types of squad although if you get the strongest squad in the game (Praetorian Guard) nothing much can stop you. The combat is fun although simple and not challenging enough.

There is some decision making in the game and choosing some missions will side you with or against some people.

One criticism of the game is that building a basic city from scratch is required for every single mission. This gets repetitive and I think it would have been improved if more of the missions gave you prebuilt cities or at least partially build cities.

The sound track to grand ages Rome is very nice and appropriate for the game and I enjoyed it. Multiplayer mode exists in the game although no one plays.

Elephant cavalry crossing a bride

Conclusion

Overall this is a very good city builder and real time strategy game. The career mode felt epic in how you experienced the changing of the roman expire, and the people responsible for it. As many of the missions are based on real historical events you get to learn a lot about the Roman’s from playing this game.

Score 8/10