Review Alea Jacta Est: Birth of Rome gets Reviewed

[Trash]

Tags: AGEOD; Alea Jacta Est; Alea Jacta Est: Birth of Rome

Toss some kids unto the flames or not in Birth of Rome​

Roman legions, Carthagenian fleets and lots of angry Samnites all come together in Ageod's Alea Jacta Est's first stand-alone expansion Birth of Rome. Mraston donned his sandals to try it out for us.

Which brings me to Birth of Rome, the stand alone expansion to Alea Jacta Est. It very much feels like a digitized version of a massive board game covering the Romans bloody rise to power in Europe. The game's ancient world map is covered in symbols reminiscent of board game pieces. You pick up, drag and drop commanders and order pieces like you would when playing on a table (there's even a reference to chits in the game's manual). The game has a transparent rules crunch like a board game, wherein the game's inner workings are explained up front. Fortunately you don't need to do any of the math yourself. You also don't have the problem of someone bumping over a commander piece and not knowing if last turn their army was in Sicily or Northern Africa. You will still need to read the rule book though.​

Hate it when that happens. Anyway, check out our brand new review of Birth of Rome.

 

[Trash]

The review got discussed at the Ageod forums, Mraston. Personally I have to say the options/decisions do sometimes have negatives. Especially the ones that give you something but cost for instance national morale. Ageod really could've done a lot more with them though. There are a few scenarios (at least the Pyrrhic war in BoR and Civil War in AJE) where you have to make a real choice. Go west to Spain or east to Greece in the Roman civil war is a real biggie. Same as deciding to get involved or not in Sardinia in the Pyrrhic war one. Would've loved it if you get more meaningfull choices to make like in those scenarios.

What is nice about both AJE and BOR so far is how this is one of the few Ageod games where winning or losing is not tied mostly to you knowing all the events that are going to pop up beforehand. They really gave the player a lot more freedom and it only strengthens the game for me. Some of the big scenarios really can be rather epic to win as well. Trying to stop Ceasar in AJE and fighting the First Punic War in BOR really are amazingly kewl and massive wargaming campaigns.

 

[Mraston]

Thanks for the pointing that out to me. It seems they generally liked the review, which is good.

This comment made me chuckle;

This review has probably not been paid by Ageod.

 

[Burning Bridges]

Overall a very well written review. A few comments.

I was a bit late to AJE and BoR, but I got the time to play them now.

I got incredibly excited when I saw the potential of this game. But my impression is there are still balance problems. For example I played both Punic Wars scenarios as Carthago and they were much too easy.
Later they also turned into endless grind in Sicily. I heard similar complaints that the Civil War campaign was unwinnable as Pompeius. But that might have been with v1.00 (they now are at 1.02 and this will not be the last).

I don't care about a tutorial or the absence of (unrealistic) historic events. I agree there were too few events, but the ones that were there fit in really well. Like e.g. hiring various Mercenaries or a Greek general at the cost of some Engagement Points. Or later getting rid of the said general because he could not be trusted.

Overall a great game, once the campaigns have been patched up to offer a more balanced challenge.

And yes, there are many new rules, and they are not clear at first. Like how to get artillery (siege weapons), or what ranged fire actually does.

 

[Burning Bridges]

Besides, I'm sure everyone is just waiting for the Second Punic War. Everything before is just public beta test