Yet another great game from the Spanish developer Pyro Studios that is famous of its Commandos games. This time it takes even further back to history - the Great Roman Empire. This time you control not the stealthy group of soldiers but the greatest army at that time! This Real Time Strategy game is set during rule of Julius Caesar between 100BC to 44BC and Pompey the Great 106BC to 48BC. At first glance, it is ordinary RTS game but indeed, it is different then any other. The smart move that Pyro did is that in the game you do not have to collect any natural resources, which allows more time for planning fights, and you are not limited by money shortage.

The game features 3 playable options: Single player, Multiplayer and Skirmish. Single player game has 24 missions in total. During them, you will have to stand against Germanic tribes, Galls, Egyptian soldiers and even Roman traitors. The missions are set in very interesting locations. It varies from German forests and icy lands to Egyptian deserts and Islands of United Kingdom. First 4 missions are the tutorials where you learn all the skills required to efficiently play the game. Of course, you may skip them; however, you might be sorry for this. The neat feature of tutorials is that they are in text format. You have to do orders which are written so to progress to other steps. The controls however are pretty simple. You basically can manage playing without keyboard. Yet, it takes a long time to acquire good skills for game because learning curve is pretty hard!

Totally, there are 3 races: Romans, Egyptians and Barbarians. Each race has its own advantages and disadvantages, but of course, roman race is most advanced. The troops between these races differ but generally, they all are alike. Each race has 12 different troops to make; nine are military such as slaves/infantry, legionaries, praetorians or cavalry/camel riders. The others 3 are very specific: wolf scout, hawk scout and medic.

Those scouts are extremely important for planning battle as it shows you enemy position. Wolf can scout forest and high grass while hawk area in general, which does not show troops hidden in bushes. Some troops have special abilities like legionaries or archers for example. Legionaries can make themselves into turtle formation and so enemy arrows use much less stamina. While archers will take, stationary position and their range will be much further. In addition, you have leaders whom you can get after promoting soldiers, and their main point is to occupy the villages. In most cases, you have main character as leader that you have to preserve at any cost but you do not want to risk him by placing in the village! For example if you leave village without defense, while concentrating all your troops in offence, some hidden enemy soldiers you never knew about before might attack the village and it will be lost.

Each mission you start with small amount of soldiers, whose number you may increase by capturing enemy villages. Most of the game you usually do only that because village provide you with additional troops. Each village has certain amount of population that decreases when you recruit soldiers, so you have to choose whom to recruit wisely. However when all population comes to an end, some time must pass so it would repopulate. Villages are the key to success. The more villages you have the more soldiers you can make and so battles for you will be easier. Sometimes you will even have to defend or attack forts. In that case, many useful gadgets like battering ram, which is device to ruin main entrance to fort or assault tower. Assault tower is device which, when you put it near fort wall allows your troops to climb without being injured. Because the map is 3D, you can strategically use elevations and hills. This will significantly increase range of archers. In addition, nice feature is that you can hide in the forests or high grass and wait for your enemy come into death jaws. You shall not forget that for building some special troops you need to have accumulated some honor points, which you get just by fighting the enemy.