I wish I had time to dwell on all the dud Roman themed games that have passed in front of me. The half finished Pax Romana and Great Invasions, the laughable Legions, the boring Hannibal: Master of the Beast, Haemimont’s Roman city builders, Haemimont’s RTSes. Most of these games aren’t very interesting as reflections on [...]

[Read more →]

It’s hard to believe that Rome: Total War is almost four years old, let alone that the Total War series is not new anymore. Shogun: Total War debuted in 2000, was an instant hit, and Creative Assembly has never really paused since. Aside from a couple of ill-advised forays into action gaming (Spartan: Total Warrior [...]

[Read more →]

Though there is no rule that a discussion series should have ten parts, it felt odd to leave my list at nine. One spot came down to three titles: the HPS Ancient Warfare games, the Tin Soldiers games or Praetorians. All three took their turn on draft lists, and I will certainly get around to [...]

[Read more →]

If you’ve ever wondered what would happen if champion gamers were given a chance to design their own game, then you should probably take a look at Slitherine’s games. Iain and J.D. McNeil are competitive DBA/DBM players, with Iain winning a world championship in 2001 and both regularly placing in the top ten. Slitherine is [...]

[Read more →]

It’s now one of the most established brands in strategy gaming, but it’s easy to forget what an oddball title Age of Empires was at the time. Bruce Shelley, Sid Meier’s partner in design for many years, left Microprose to form his own studio, Ensemble. With real time strategy games quickly becoming the most popular [...]

[Read more →]

Given the long history of portraying ancient battles in board games, it’s surprising that it took so long for historically faithful interpretations of the battles of Alexander, Hannibal and Caesar to hit the computer. Avalon Hill’s Alexander the Great portrayed the battle of Gaugamela way back in 1971. The same year saw SPI do a [...]

[Read more →]

The Caesar series is easily the most successful ancient themed brand in the gaming world. 2006 saw the release of the fourth game under that title. It also spawned a legion of other Impressions developed city builders set in Greece, Egypt and China, a legacy that spawned two new studios – Tilted Mill and Firefly.
Like [...]

[Read more →]

Late in November 2006, I turned in my review of Medieval II: Total War to the editor of Computer Games Magazine. In his reply to that e-mail, he asked if I could quickly turn around a Revisionist History contribution (the magazine’s retro column) connected to the game. I suggested Centurion, the boss man didn’t argue [...]

[Read more →]

In 1988, Cases Computer Simulations and R.T. Smith released Encyclopedia of War: Ancient Battles, a game that was intended to be the first in a series of historical miniature games. The mid 80s was probably the high point of wargame dominance in the computer gaming market, and there were really no ancient wargames on the [...]

[Read more →]

As I noted in an edit to my Annals of Rome entry, I was delighted to get an email from the designer of the game, George Jaroszkiewicz. The fact that he was not credited in the original packaging (“When I created the game, it was inconvenient to publish my name, so I invented the name [...]

[Read more →]