I'm not much into "sim" type games, so when I first loaded up Glory of the Roman Empire - not knowing at all what kind of game it was - I was a bit surprised. Once I got to playing it, though, I got hooked (much to the consternation of my brother, who was busy carrying my heavy boxes to our new pad...sorry bro!). The tutorial is straight-forward and extremely useful, and after just one "free build" game I got the hang of it and was building a civilization to rival Rome itself (and taking Rome for all the gold it could send me).

The basics are fairly simple. You start off with a stockpile of resources - stuff like timber and stone. You also start off with ten slaves. Slaves do the "grunt work" in the Roman Empire - they carry materials back and forth, they build new buildings, and in general, provide the backbone of society. In order to get citizens, the slaves must build them a house. Citizens do work in the various buildings you have your slaves put up around the area - such as the pig farm and the trading post. You have to balance by how far the citizens need to go to get to work, and also how some work is restricted as to sex - a woman won't work the quarry, for example.

In fact, most buildings are restricted by range. Altars will make the houses get better and give the citizens somewhere to worship, but have a very short range. Houses typically have a fairly long range for where their citizens can work.

And their children! Not only does every citizen have a name, an age, and a job, but they have children who grow up to take new jobs. As you work on your city you'll see the children playing in the streets and their grandparents walking on canes.

All's not fun and roses in the Roman empire, though. If your citizens don't get the things they need (or think they need) they'll get disillusioned, then angry, then rebellious. The altars and temples will help you keep track of that, while the city hall keeps track of how many unemployed men and women (citizens) you have, how hard the slaves are being worked, and how many open jobs there are. In fact, work the slaves too hard and they'll get rebellious, too!

That's not to mention the threat of barbarians. You'll find barbarian villages. Sometimes they're peaceful and quiet, just curious what the Romans are up to. Others are hostile. The former will sometimes become the latter due to your actions. What?!

Well, you see, you still need slaves. Slaves are expensive to buy - 20 gold buys you 10 of them - plus you have to build quarters for them after you buy them. But, if you have a Barracks, you can train up an army of mercenaries. Those soldiers can be sent to a nearby barbarian village to enslave it. If the village is hostile, it may attack you, which is why you have defense towers - or why you go on the offensive, and destroy their village.

There are three basic modes to the game - campaign, challenge, and free build.

Campaign starts off with the tutorial, where you start to build up your city. After a while of that, you'll go to a different city that has different problems, and soon find yourself as a sort of Roman civic consultant, taking care of fires (at times literally) all around.

Challenge gives you a variety of challenges to face in different areas. One may be to get a certain amount of resources, for example. You can give yourself advantages at the cost of points against your total.

Free build lets you pick the difficulty of the area you start your city on. For example, the screenshots I took were all from the "Easy" area of "Mountain Paradise", with ample resources, four starting warehouses (where goods and slaves are initially distributed from), and several non-hostile (before I got to them) barbarian villages. I had two basic "towns" forming my city - my main area, which grew quite large, and a western smaller community that held some valuable mines (including a gold mine). Both parts of my city had trade routes back to Rome, trading my olive oil for gold.

The screenshots give you a good look at the graphics - and they're pretty good. As I mentioned before, you see the children skipping around, the horde of soldiers running into battle at a barbarian village, and even cats wandering the streets. The audio is even better - from the tutorial's narrator, to the ambient music, to the sounds of people talking in the city (get near the marketplace and you'll hear people making deals; get near the temple and you'll hear singing). In fact, you can use the sounds and voices to help you keep your bearing as you swing your viewpoint around freely, using the mouse and the "shift" key.

In short, Glory of the Roman Empire looks to be a great sim. It doesn't shy around from the historical realities of Roman times but instead makes a fun game that focuses more on making people happy than on making them dead.