Introduction
Developed by Firaxis Games and Firefly Studios, CivCity: Rome is a City builder that borrows elements from Caesar and Civilization. Released in July 2006 , the game is a City Builder, trying to recapture the glory of Caesar series. While it wasn't the greatest and received average reviews, it is a good game if you want to take a more relaxing approach to city building.
Gameplay
While there is a Campaign that can keep you busy for a bit and help you learn the game, the concept is quite simple! You start with a town center, and depending on the map maybe a few buildings on the side. And then you have to construct work places, homes that are relatively close to the work places and start providing for the people. there are several upgrade levels for a house, starting from a very basic shack and gradually providing the required resources will upgrade their homes and their status. That's on the peaceful side of things. There is also some military system involved but it's quite basic, you either build a barracks which provides some troops that will defend the city or go on the offensive in expeditions against nearby barbarian tribes, of course this is available only on the military maps.
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| People must always be kept happy, and you must also gain profit! |
While it can get tedious or boring if you play only to develop and fill the map, the game can get quite challenging as your city grows since it requires a bit of management to keep all the necessary resources close to all the citizens who need them, thereby forcing you to have a smaller number of upper class citizens. Then there's also the little bit of keeping the citizens happy and having a nice research tree that can make your life a bit easier.
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| The world map of a Military Scenario |
Graphics & Audio
Well the sound quality is average, even for a strategy game, the "narrator/ adviser" is almost like yelling and the ambient sounds feel like something generic and not really immersive. The graphics on the other hand have been quite nice for the time and have aged surprisingly well, even though the textures are not the sharpest, the 3D models of plenty of things can easily seem more modern.
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| A little prosperous city |
Compatibility
The game is pretty much plug and play. as long as you want to play at a lower 4:3 resolution. otherwise going to Documents/CivCity Rome, you can edit CivCityRome.GraphicsSettings.xml using notepad and manually writing your resolution. It worked great with 3840x2160 except for the 2D elements which got a bit streched and at time in some nenus felt a bit out of place.
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| Stretched UI and a bit of the research tree. |
Wrap-up
Yes the game is average, but despite the reviews it had and the scores it got, even now it's good to be picked if you like a city builder that won't ask too much of you and will still feel interesting for that tiring evening when you came from work later and still want to play something before going to bed. I've played it since launch and what can I say? I still find myself picking it a few times every year to play it, even though I mostly play Anno games ore Cities Skylines.
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