Last Day of Rome

Review

Selecting Training will open the tutorial for you where you will be greeted and told about information gathered by your scouts. Your scouts inform you that the Romans are preparing a campaign against the lands of free people. With Rome wanting to expand its territory you must act and prepare. The tutorial will take you around your city explaining the basics of the game mechanics, how to recruit Generals, Army Recruits, Resources etcetera. Once you’ve gone through the training, you’ll be ready to take on Rome.

Upon starting a new game, you will be given the choice of which Faction you’d like to play. There are eight factions to choose from: Picts, Franks, Getae, Burgundi, Alemani, Ants, Venedi and Alans. Selecting each of the factions will give you some information on them to help you decide who to play with. There are two sections with information:  Difficulty (consisting of Faction Complexity, Victory Conditions, Features of the Faction and Hall of Glasses), and Faction (rated from one to five stars depending on the faction, the more stars the more complex that faction is.

Victory Conditions is the number of regions you’ll need to capture to win the game. This is also dependent of the faction and can range from thirty-five to sixty-seven captured regions. Features of the Faction tells you the Initial Number of Regions you start with. Border with Rome, whether your faction borders with those regions under Rome’s control. Strong Units is a faction's strongest units, which could be Fortifications, Archers, Calvary or Infantry.  Some factions also have more than one Strong Units.

Hall of Glasses is the difficulty of the game.  There are three difficulty levels to choose from: Beginner, Standard and Hard. The level you choose will determine your starting Gold, Recruits, Wood and Iron resources. Also, there is Victory Points, points won after defeating an enemy will be multiplied by either x0.50 (Beginner), x0.75 (Standard) and x1.00 (Hard). In the other section of information Faction, you’ll find Background, which tells you the history and background of each of the factions. Also here is Faction (Perks); each faction will have three of these perks. These perks could be buildings in town costing less, starting with more money, increased wood, iron or luxury production and a few others.

After deciding your faction and hitting the Start button your game will proceed. You will then be taken to a view of your town/city. Here you’ll find your Generals, Infantry, Cavalry and Archers barracks, Training Camp, Recruits, Iron Mine, Library, Engineer’s and Woodcutter’s Houses, Suburb and Market.



Selecting the General’s barracks will display any Generals you currently have, and you will also be able to hire more generals from here. Before hiring any new generals, you must capture a certain number of regions, and you can then choose a general from those on offer to you. Each general you control will display their Age, Level and Hero Parameters, Skills and the army under the general's control. You can also upgrade a Generals Basic and Technical Skills for any experience points gain as you progress.

Each general can command twelve unit types, consisting of four infantry, four archers and four cavalries. You can select from any infantry, archers or cavalry you have unlocked and bought and add them to your army. In total there are ten versions of each type of infantry, archer and cavalry. You start with the option of two of these units but before you can add them, you’ll need to buy them, so you’ll need to head over to the barracks.

You can select any of the barracks and once opened, you can swap between the others by selecting the tabs above the unit choices. Clicking on one of the unit types will allow you to receive some information on them, which is on the right-hand side of the window. Here you’ll find information on the Number (Units Health Points), Damage (Attack), Damage to Infantry, Damage to Marksmen, Damage to Cavalry and Damage to Fortifications. At the bottom of this window is the Buy button; it will cost you a certain number of Recruits and Iron resources. How many it will cost can be found just above the buy button. All the army recruits that you buy will be viewable long the bottom of the screen.

You will need Recruit and Iron resources so that you can buy new squad members. To do this you must first upgrade the Recruits building and the Iron Mine, which will cost you some wood. The amount of wood it takes to upgrade a building increases every time you make an upgrade. When selecting to upgrade a building, a window will open; here it will tell you the Productivity (recruits hired per turn and after upgrade), Instant Building Level Bonus (population) and Upgrade Cost (amount of wood for upgrade). Once you have upgraded your iron mine and recruits building you will then start collecting those resources at the end of each turn. The higher the level of your buildings the more resources they’ll give you.

Wood is extremely important in helping your town and army grow, so you will need to upgrade the Woodworker’s House. This will allow you to collect wood each turn and be able to upgrade the rest of your town. The Suburbs will increase your population and a percentage of this population will go towards the Recruit resource which can then be exchanged along with Iron for new unit members. The Engineer’s House will allow you to upgrade your Fortifications of any region under your control. The Library is where you’ll conduct research; each turn will give you a number of Science Points. These points can then be used to upgrade your army’s damage etcetera.

The Training Camp is where you can train your army units and bolster your fortifications. Each unit and fortification can be upgraded to level ten. For each level you can choose from two options on offer to you. It will cost a said amount of Iron for each level upgrade. These upgrades can improve a units Attack Damage, Units Health Points, Attack Dame to Infantry, Archers and Cavalry. So, choose wisely when upgrading your units as it could mean the difference between winning and going home with a sore botty. You can upgrade them again if you wish to change something about them. If you do make a change and then buy those units, then they will have the new upgraded stats when buying new units. So, this means you can have different strengths of the same units depending on the choices you make. The upgrades offered to any unit upgrades are random, so will change each time you upgrade them.

Now that you’ve got your resources sorted and you have bought your army units, it’s time to head back to your General’s barrack and add the units to his command. To add your units to a general’s command you can click on one of the empty twelve slots. This will then open a window allowing you to select any of your units you have from the bottom of the screen. If you like, you can just select the ADD button and it will fill all twelve slots for you. You can also keep an eye on your unit’s health here. If your army needs treatment, it will let you know how many require treatment and how much it will cost in gold to treat your army.

At the market you can sell or buy provisions, and any resources you collect can be sold. In your town you only have wood and iron, although as you capture new regions you can collect resources from them. These regions can then be upgraded to produce more wood, iron, luxury items and other resources. All these resources will help bring in more to help your faction grow. You can also upgrade a region’s fortifications, making it harder for the enemy to attack and capture your towns.

Before you can take advantage of any region’s economy you must first conquer it. You will need to head out of town to the world map, where you’ll be able to see who controls what around the known world. Selecting a region will give you some information on that region, such as its population, its economy and army ranks. In some regions you’ll find other generals of enemy armies, and you will again be able get some information on them and how strong their army is.

If you decide you like the looks of a region and think, “I’m having that”, you can move your General to that region where and attack. If there’s an army in that region, you will enter the battle phase. If you defeat that army then you’ll be able to siege the city after two turns. You can take advantage of the two turns by replenishing your units with fresh meat or to add those units which fare better against fortifications.

When a battle commences, a new window will open; here you’ll find the two armies, and if you’re sieging a city then you’ll have some fortifications to get past before attacking the enemy’s army. Each army has twelve units: four infantry, four archers and four cavalries. Each will have various strengths or weaknesses against certain units; cavalry against infantry would normally be a win for the cavalry. However, this is where training your units comes into play, along with your unit’s attacking power. With the right upgrades your infantry could become strong enough to defeat the cavalry.

Each of the units is identified as a card; the cards consist of all the information you will need to battle your enemy. Each unit’s stats show their attacking damage, how many lives in a unit, and the amount of damage against the other units, Infantry, Archers, Cavalry and Fortifications. The battlefield is divided into four sections, the top and bottom sections belong to you and the enemy you’re attacking. The attacking army is always on the bottom and the defending army at the top; you will take turns attacking each other. The two sections in between both armies are where you’ll place your units for battle, each side can move three units per turn. You select a unit from your side and then select one from the enemy’s side, this will allow you to see the damage percentage that your unit will do to your enemy.

Once you have used all your moves, you select the Finish Turn button in the top centre of the screen. This will then pit both units against each other with the winning units rejoining their army, while the defeated are removed from the battle. To win a battle you must defeat all their army units before losing all of yours. If you are successful in a siege battle, then you will capture that region and be able to take advantage of those lovely resources which are produced there.

Once a region is under your control you can select it from the world map, where it will show you the City’s Resources, All Cities in that region and the Residential Areas. The city resources tell you the Population, Recruitment, Tree, Iron and Research. Also, here is a button to see the regions fortifications. The residential areas are where you produce resources, Wood, Iron, Science Points, Fortifications, Small and Normal Workshop and Craftsman's House. You can also upgrade the region’s fortifications here at the School of Engineering.

You can upgrade the residential area six times, and this will cost varying amounts of wood as you upgrade. What you get in return are workers who you can use, along with wood to upgrade the town’s buildings in the residential areas. The workshops and craftsman’s house will produce resources such as fish, furniture, leather etcetera. These can then be sold in the market back at your main base of operations. Selling these products will bring in gold which you can then use to buy wood or iron to help expand your production and regions and to maintain your army's health through treatment.

To complete the game, you must achieve the objective set out at the beginning of the game at the time you chose which faction to play.

On the Main Menu screen, you’ll find New Game, Training (Tutorial), Load, Save (if you have a saved game), Hall of Fame, Settings and Exit. The options in the settings consist of Music and Sound volume sliders, Language (English, German, French, Italian, Portuguese and Russian), Quality Settings (Minimum, Medium and Maximum) along with Default and Accept.

I’ve got a bit of a way to go before I can claim I spanked the Romans’ botties, but so far I’ve really enjoyed playing the game. I haven’t found it to be overly complicated to learn, which for me is always a bonus. I came across a few bugs while playing, but you can report any bugs from within the game by pressing F1 and submitting a report. After receiving my report, the developers were able to sort the bugs out quickly, which is great to know. Thumbs Up!! Give it a bash!

 

Review written by Piston Smashed™ for Zeepond.com!


Positives

+ Not overly complicated to play
+ Good graphics
+ Achievements
+ Multiple factions
+ Active Developers Fixing Bug Reports

Negatives

- Few bugs here n there but Devs are on them quickly
- No cards currently

Review Summary

As Chief of your faction, hire generals to lead your armies, battle for new regions and resources, and spread across the world as you usher in the Last Day of Rome.

Share this review!

Zeepond Rating: 8/10

Video