{"id":1281,"date":"2009-03-20T11:41:22","date_gmt":"2009-03-20T16:41:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/?p=1281"},"modified":"2009-03-24T11:19:52","modified_gmt":"2009-03-24T16:19:52","slug":"unexpected-pleasure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/2009\/03\/20\/unexpected-pleasure\/","title":{"rendered":"Unexpected Pleasure"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A while back I called into question <a href=\"http:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/2008\/11\/14\/tropico-3\/\">the quality of the upcoming <em>Tropico 3<\/em><\/a> because its developer, Haemimont Games, had never really entertained me with one of their games.<\/p>\n<p>So I have to eat a little crow and say that their new Roman city builder, <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/B001Q55D5K?ie=UTF8&#038;tag=flaofste-20&#038;linkCode=as2&#038;camp=1789&#038;creative=9325&#038;creativeASIN=B001Q55D5K\">Grand Ages: Rome<\/a><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=flaofste-20&#038;l=as2&#038;o=1&#038;a=B001Q55D5K\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\" style=\"border:none !important; margin:0px !important;\" \/><\/em>, is a minor delight. It&#8217;s not perfect (there will be a full review sometime soon) but it cribs from larger, better games to good effect. It puts a new spin on the whole campaign by adding factions you can please and the scenario variety is amazing. Crassus wants trade routes, Cicero wants justice, Licinius (Lucullus, I assume) wants you to help him win the war in Asia. They gradually increase in difficulty and give you secondary victory conditions that let you build up your character and make his job easier in the next few missions. If you want to take the military path, you might choose the veteran legions. If you go for the economic scenarios, maybe free farm upgrades are what you want.<\/p>\n<p>It still doesn&#8217;t look like a city &#8211; and that has always been a problem with Haemimont&#8217;s Roman games. They design the maps so that you end up with a bunch of disjointed towns. But it&#8217;s better than it was. <\/p>\n<p>Check the demo. You might be pleasantly surprised.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A while back I called into question the quality of the upcoming Tropico 3 because its developer, Haemimont Games, had never really entertained me with one of their games. So I have to eat a little crow and say that their new Roman city builder, Grand Ages: Rome, is a minor delight. It&#8217;s not perfect [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[12,33],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5GFeQ-kF","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1281"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1281"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1281\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1285,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1281\/revisions\/1285"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1281"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1281"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1281"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}