All alone here?

[ILikePortillos]

I'm a fan. Download the demo first to see if you like it. The main game is just like the demo, except greatly expanded, meaning various maps, scenarios, the historical timeline, etc. If you're a fan of city builders, you should like it. Therein lies the replay-ability. Some people want more and more thrown at them, they want difficult challenges and whatnot. The lure of this game is being able to build your own thriving Roman cities. After you've played through the entire thing, you'll be tempted to do it all over again and make improvements the second time around. You'll often wonder if you could have made one of your cities better by employing better zoning, more symmetry, etc. It's fun. And it's nice to look at. I even like the music.

I got it. Played for a couple of hours so far. I like it. I like the interface (although pause does not seem to pause) and the graphics and gameplay.

But where can we get the manual??? So many questions.

[Smeagolthevile]

I like the game but some things are just overly frustrating. I have issues I will have a firefighter/cops/whatever building (forget the name) right next to a house and I will get a message PEOPLE ARE RIOTING, BUILD (that building whos name I cant remember) from the house RIGHT NEXT TO IT.

[Kaihekoa]

No idea why this game got slammed so hard by 1Up, Gamespot, and PC Gamer. It seems like a pretty decent and average city builder to me. If you like historic civilizations, even better. It's on sale a few times per year for ~$2. Ignore the low metacritic score and the mentioned review scores. This game is realistically about a 7/10 and runs well on integrated graphics.

played 45 hours so far and nowhere near played all the content. great game for relaxing and chilling. ive always been interested in tryig city building kinds of games but havent seen many that motivate me to part with my hard-earned cash. this one is great. 8/10 imho. unlike City Life 2008 which i found tedious and frustrating. so much so that by the time i gave up on it the thought of playing it literaly made me feel ill.

and anyone who likes this i would highly recommend trying Children of the Nile. theyre very similar games in many ways, main differnce being that one's Roman and one's Egyptian. but both great games.

[Dirwulf]

Just got this on sale today. Totally worth the price. This game flew under the radar. I've never even heard of it before. Its not even really being advertised in the sale. I just clicked on "all deals" and scrolled through and saw this one and thought it sounded interesting.

[Hypa]

I also saw it in the sale, i'm going to buy it. Cant realy go wrong for 3,5 euros..

edit: argh to late, its 10 euros again

[Nepablizzard]

Bought it on sale for dirt cheap on steam.

[schull]

I quite enjoy this game. It is very similar to Grand Ages: Rome, CIVCITY Rome, and the Caesar series.

I can't remember much about Civcity, but comparing this game to Caesar 3, Imperium Romanum has a lot more space on the maps and while Caesar had indirect "walkers" bringing demands to the citizens, Imperium has the citizens themselves walking to whatever fulfills their needs provided it is within range of their home. So instead of fulfilling "theatre need" like in Caesar by waiting for the actor-citizens to walk infront of a house, in Imperium, the citizens demanding a theatre will walk to a theatre if it is in range. I like Imperium a lot better for this as you don't have to count on a random walker who may or may not walk in front of a house, the citizens will walk to the theatre on their own.

Comparing Imperium to Grand Ages: Rome. They are made by the same company and it seems the GrandAges is newer. It is essentially the same game sharing many graphics. However, GrandAges:Rome seems to be a dumbed down version. Their are many interface improvements, but citizens no longer walk anywhere and have their needs fulfilled simply by proximty radii. You don't see your citizens going to work, or praying at a temple in GrandAges, and everything is a bit too easy. I like the campaign play of Grandages, with family traits and estates which Imperium does not have, but I think Imperium is the better game.

Originally Posted by KleenHippie

My question is where do we get any information? I've gotten a tip that tells me that I can declare wealthy people enemies of Rome and confiscate their money and possesions and banish them. But I can't find any other explaination of how that is done. Another thing I've tried to find is how to keep the people from getting poor. Do I just keep giving them money or do I demo their house and let them be homeless and hope they leave Rome?

1)If citizens are wealthy enough, usually a family wealth of at least 400, click on their house and you will see a finger pointing icon that enables confiscating the family wealth. Doing this takes the money but of course kicks the family out of the city, so the house will remain empty for a few minutes until new settlers move into it.

2)People get poor because their spend more money fulfilling their needs than they earn from working. This happens for 2 reasons,
i)they are unemployed and have no income coming in to pay for things they need, food, clothing, temple alms, etc
ii)they are underemployed: if they work somewhere where there is little movement of the good produced or demand for the service rendered, they make less money than a worker at a place which produces a good in high demand. eg. if you build an iron mine but have no blacksmiths or trade posts selling iron, the iron mine doesn't do anything with the iron it makes. The Iron miners will go to work but their good is not used and so the iron mine makes no money.

Another example would be woodcutters. Early in the game when you have lots of building to do and many of the houses are low level requiring wood for upkeep, there is a huge demand for wood. Most of the time in early games wood is used as soon as its produced and you will notice that woodcutters make lots and lots of money. However, later in the game as building slows down and as houses develop to where they need other things for maintenance, wood is in less demand and often you will see a big stockpile and wood hanging around your woodcutter shacks not being picked up by the slaves. Your woodcutters will now make far less money and if wood demand is low enough/spread around to too many workers, they might actually begin to earn less than they spend on their demands. A family wealth of many hundreds may evaporate if these workers continue to be underemployed.

Prefectures and herbalists don't make any products and their employees seem to make a decent wage regardless. If you are in position of having to downsize a now underutilised workforce, or if you are unsure about what new settlers should do, making them praetorians or herbalists is a good stopgap. The last thing one should do would be to employ people in an already oversupplied sector. They might have jobs, but it is unlikely that they will make enough to supply their needs, and if a lot of other citizens are already underemployed in that sector, they will get poorer the more people are doing their job.

Originally Posted by Smeagolthevile

I like the game but some things are just overly frustrating. I have issues I will have a firefighter/cops/whatever building (forget the name) right next to a house and I will get a message PEOPLE ARE RIOTING, BUILD (that building whos name I cant remember) from the house RIGHT NEXT TO IT.

The best way to stop a riot is before it begins. People will riot if you let it go too long without satisfying their needs. Note that if you have a full staffed Philospher's Academy, when a citizen goes to a temple/altar their most demanded need is simultaneously met. If you have a built up city and all of a sudden many of your houses go up to villa status and you don't have room to put baths/theatres near them, the Philospher's Academy should provide these needs when the citizens go to temple. Of course if you have many many needs, there is little chance that this will solve your problems. 1 or 2 needs can be satisfactorily met this way, any more than this is too much

As for the Prefectures. From what I have seen they do not stop rioters. They seem to only put out the fires that rioters start and only in the radius of their building. Every 30 seconds or so it seems the citizens rioting check to see if their needs are fulfilled and if you have built a new building or supplied a good they require, they will stop rioting. The prefectures will hunt down criminals they come across in their patrols, but it does take some time and sometimes the criminals get away lol.



EDIT: I just played a map where the outlay necessitated running a long time without fulfilling my citizens needs. I had a large portion of one section riot. Fulfilling their needs and building a prefecture didn't get them to return home. I spent a long time, some of the rioters eventually died of old age. Every minute or so counts as a year in citizen time. But a lot of them were fairly young and it would have taken half an hour or so for them to all die. I was getting really frustrated. But I discovered that if you have rioters, if you select them and tell them to "stop work", they will stop rioting if their needs are supplied and resume normal functioning. Could have saved myself a lot of time so I am going to restart the level now :|

I also noticed that the Temple of Bacchus makes it so that anyone enjoying wine at a tavern will also satisfy an additional need. So if your city has both the temple of Bacchus and a fully staffed Philosopher's Academy, it is possible in a region of your city let's say lacking a bath and a theatre to have it's citizens satisfied of those 2 unfulfilled needs by a visit to temple and the tavern. I haven't followed around my citizens for any length of time, but by periodic surveys of happiness at temples, I have discovered that in suburbs I intentionally built without bath or theatre access that with the Temple of Bacchus and the Philospher's Academy, that out of 90 or so villas, I could expect the majority to be happy, about a quarter to be content, and 10 or so to be disillusioned at any given time. Not bad considering not supplying 2 of their primary needs.

[Shidira]

Originally Posted by schull

Too long and didn't want to repost here

Thank you for the in-depth post about this game. I've owned the game for a while, but haven't played it yet. The more I read of your post, the more I want to play this, so I'll definitely be giving this a try. Thank you very much!

[Under Oath]

thinking about buying it.