CivCity: Rome

CivCity: Rome is a city building strategy game by Firefly Studios and Firaxis Games. As a collaboration between Firefly Studios and Firaxis Games, the game invites players to shift focus from building a multi-city empire and zoom-in on the great cities of the Roman Empire, culminating in Rome itself. In terms of game logic, it includes elements from two well-known game series, i.e., Caesar (primarily) and Sid Meier's Civilization, giving players the opportunity to build, run and maintain various cities of the Roman Empire.

As the player, you will be charged with building, nurturing and managing one of the great cities of Rome as they endeavour to lead the Roman Empire from its humble beginnings to its mighty zenith. As with most city building games, making sure each neighbourhood has access to all the commodities it needs is the primary challenge. The different kinds of items required by the most advanced households will require you to fit a wide variety of shops and services into a very compact area.

Gameplay
The game offers two types of missions: stand alone missions to include free play (or "sandbox") and a campaign based mission which is actually a tutorial. The campaign based mission begins when the player, an engineer, is hired by a local stone works overseer to construct a stone mine colony. The player then gets further opportunities to prove himself, meeting such historic characters as Marcus Licinius Crassus and Julius Caesar. The player is offered various ranks, progressing through such titles as: Quaestor, Aedile, Roman censor, Praetor and Consul.

Each campaign mission begins with a patriarch to the player offering the greeting of "Hail!" and then stating the character's title. Midway through the game, the player can choose to embark on military campaigns which involve combat or continue to play peaceful missions which have harder goals but no risk of invasion.

The game comes with 27 different maps and 34 missions with user created scenarios making this an infinite supply of game play possibilities. There are over 75 unique units in the game with 115 different building types in the game. You can also find over 1000 distinct historical facts in the Civilopedia. One small wonder that can be built is the Trajan's Column. You can also build mighty wonders and influence the direction of your city by building spectacular temples and libraries. Production of these trophy buildings will give your city big advantages and look great too!

Features

 * For the first time in a city builder you can look inside of various buildings such as Villas, Hovels, and Roman baths. Discover, in much greater detail, how Romans went about their daily lives.
 * There are more than 70 technologies can be developed over time to give your city a strategic advantage. Use the research tree to improve many aspects of your city and its relation to the wider empire. A developed research strategy can result in greater production and less time involved to win in certain scenarios.
 * Driven purely by building placement and strong visual feedback, the game lets you create your own living community simply by choosing and placing the wide variety of buildings.
 * An intriguing array of characters will interact with you and bring high drama to your city with their emotions, state of health, and candid feelings about the city. There will even be famous Romans in the city who will comment on and present new challenges for you.

Editor
The editor for CivCity: Rome is an extremely powerful tool, allowing you to create your very own maps and scenarios for the game. User created scenarios can be found at the official fan site forum and an un-official fan site.

Reception
The game was met with average reviews. Reviewers claimed that derivative and monotonous gameplay and graphical bugs dampened the playing experience.