The Classic

    Imperium Romanum is one of these escenarios I really like. Maybe because it re-creates the ancient age, maybe because its wonderful units, maybe because it remembers the fight to death between Rome and Carthago.

    Obviously, the historical background of this scenario is the time of the romans; the player can play with romans, carthaginians or macedonians. Each of them have different events files and special and unique units. This makes us feel as we were playing not a single scenario but three scenarios with the same map.

Roman Units

    The strategy would be different depending on which civ you play. Roman starting position is not good at all. Sorrounded by enemies and without posessions, it seems quite difficult that Rome could achieve its destiny. Though, every victory against italian etrurian tribes will give you new legions. An expert player will move his troops to the hills near Capua; when there are enough troops, he will conquer it. It is profitable to be attacked as most times as possible by the etrurians, because this will maximize your legions. After Capua, Clusium and Ravena should be easy to conquer, because the orography will allow your legions to defend themselves good. When Ravena is fallen, the biggest part of your army should turn against southern army, destroying the etrurians first and the greek colonies after. Meanwhile, with a few units you should be able to conquer the barbarian posessions at Mediolanum and Veneto.

    While you advance with your conquests, you must advance with your science to reach 'Triunvirate' to achieve a communist government (the better for Rome in this scenario). Then, try to research naval techs; maybe the first punic war will give you units but try to research them anyway...

Carthaginian elephants and persian camels

    Conquest of Italy should end when you're building the first units of your fleet. This fleet should be used to conquer Corsica and Sardinia, taking profit of the anphibious abilities of your legions. After Corsica and Sardinia, Sicilia must fall. The entire roman army cannot attack these island, so roman empire should conquer the independent cities of french mediterranean coast.

    At this point, there are many strategies, and there are different forms of uniting the world under the roman rule. Usually, I try to have a discrete expansion in spain, possibly reaching Sagunto, while I prepare a huge fleet whose objective should be Carthago: we'll disembark a great expeditionary corpse near the capital with enough engineers to build fortresses (2 per fortress) and avoid a disaster. After Carthago is fallen, the carthaginian army will lose its wonders and won't receive more mercennaires. Though, it still will have a lot of units: Carthago won't be able to make dangerous counter attacks, but the conquest of Spain and Northern Africa will be hard.

Macedonian Infantry

    At the same time this conquest starts to give profits, it is very interesting to launch an attack against Greece to get the many wonders of Sparta, Corinth and Athens. The rest of the game (fight against weak aegyptians, outnumbered persians and hard macedonians) is on your hands.

    Almost the whole scenario. The great graphics (a good job), the evens that will cause historical invasions to appear (carthaginian, barbarian, greek) in Italy when you doesn't expect them. I won't give you more details becaus I don't want to spoil the surprise.

    It is praiseworthy too that the scenario can be played with three different civilizations, with their own events, units, objectives, etc. The tech tree and the economy are very good jobs, and make the scenario even more realistic.

Roman Starting Position

    The only complain we can make about this scenario is the huge map. Most players rennounce to end the game when they only have to conquer the persian empire (very realistic, by the way) or barbarian remains like London or Paris. By the way, to make the game more realistic, conquering London or Paris should give more profits (e.g, these cities could be the origin of barbarian raids). Otherwise, a player doesn't have more stimuli to send expensive and unprofitable expeditions to barbarian terrain while there are still civilizations to conquer.

    A very recommendable scenario that involves a lot of playing hours and surprises you with every civilization you play. Long and hard, it can last a lot of hours more than initially expected.

    As always, Bernd Brosing (BeBro) proves his great graphic skills and his ability to recreate past worlds.