Caesar is one of our all-time favorites city building games. We spent hundreds of hours building our Roman Empire, and were thrilled, not only by the historical setting but also the military aspect of management. No need to remind you that in the early 90’s, when the original Caesar was released by Impressions and Sierra Entertainment, we had only played Centurion Defender of Rome, and some other classic strategy games such as Sim City, Populous or North & South (by the way, did you know some of our team members were also involved in this Infogrames’ masterpiece? Well, that’s another story).
The point is we felt truly humbled when our upcoming Rome city building, Citadelum, was compared to Caesar. There have been many players that spoke about Citadelum as the spiritual successor to Caesar III (the latest entry in the series, Caesar IV was developed by a different studio). But is this true? Did we look back to Caesar III while developing our game?
A game like Caesar.
Of course we played a lot of Caesar games before developing this game, as we did with many other city builders and strategy titles. One step in the development is identifying the games you like and why you enjoy them. Which things should your perfect game take from here and there.
But our intention was not making an spiritual successor to any game. We understand why player feel like it, and we intentionally introduced some mechanics or buildings that remind people of classic city building titles. But our main feature is that three layered structure over a city building core that is unique to Citadelum.
We mean, playing in three different levels at the same time: building your settlement, exploring, trading and battling on the territory map, and finally visiting and interacting with gods of the roman pantheon. We managed to link those three layers through a seamless zoom feature.
Classic strategy games as an example.
Actually we did look for a perfect mechanic in classic games, but it is not what you think. While our previous title, One Military Camp, featured “board game mechanics” when it came to battles, we wanted a more tactical “sandals on the ground” experience for Ctadelum.
We looked into RTS, turn based tactical games, and even Heroes of Might and Magic or Centurion: Defender of Rome style until we found what fit better our game. Finally we chose an auto battle system that allowed the player to deploy centuries, choose between different kind of units and formations, reinforce the armies… and enjoy the clash of troops.
While Caesar III was much more RTS oriented in its battles, we could say Citadelum is a new take on the Cohort style gameplay for battles, city defense works in a completely different way. Again, we wanted to deliver a system suitable for beginners and deep enough for strategy experts.
