Note: This game has been discontinued.
Overview
I am entering on the history of a period rich in disasters, frightful in its wars, torn by civil strife, and even in peace full of horrors.
Publius Cornelis Tacitus, The Histories I.2
The year is 300 BCE. All of Italy will soon be trampled under the sandals of the Roman legions and an empire that will last more than a thousand years is about to rise from a small city on the Tiber. It is up to you to muster the legion, conquor the known world, and defend the empire from the hordes of the barbarians.
Description
A Brief History of Rome is a quick-play turn-based strategy game that simulates the rise and fall of the Roman Empire. The aim of the game is to expand from the confines of Italy, civilize the known world, and withstand the tides of the barbarians pouring east from the forests of Germania and the steppes of Scythia.
Available on the Android market.
Designers Notes
A Brief History of Rome (initially called Imperium Mini) is a game that got constructed while I was working on the GUI for Imperium. I needed to test that the stuff I was building would be reusable. As I continued working out the kinks in the GUI and expanded on the game engine to have something to test on, I started fleshing out the test framework with some gameplay until it eventually started be a playable game.
The basic game concept is an old one – an homage to the old classic Annals of Rome. The gameplay here is simpler and streamlined, though, with nods to the genre in the boardgame world (among the most notable games of the genre, you may want to look to the old SPI piece “The Fall of Rome”, Karsten Engelmann’s “Rise and Fall”, David Kershaw’s “Solitaire Caesar”, and Phil Sabin’s “Empire”. The latter two are relatively recent and can still be acquired).
The game itself is simple and fairly minimal, and is intended to be such. I have a number of ideas for extending the game play (improving the behavior of the barbarians / enemies, adding a simple “development” (research) system, and adding a few more scenarios, but work on this title is dependent on me getting some unexpected free time.