ROMA INVICTA [Caesar's Holiday in Gaul]

[The Wall]

Wanna share this little thing I discovered today. Itz coming to Steam Early Access this February. You command legions of Rome and try to convince Gauls to join Rome. With sword, words and ballista. Supply system, army maintance, seasons, war crimes and battles simulated. Looks like Caesar 3.5 esthetically, we'll see how it plays

ABOUT THIS GAME
In Roma Invicta you have the honor of conquering ancient Gaul with your Roman legions. The game combines action oriented real-time battles with turn-based strategy on the campaign map where you raise, supply and move your armies.

The game can best be described as a mixture of the old Amiga classic 'North and South' and the 'Total War' series.

Features

• Experience a lovingly handcrafted scenery of ancient Gaul.
  
• Recruit your troops from legionnaires to scorpion artillery to Germanic cavalry.
  
• Fight in tactical and action-packed real-time battles with hundreds of individual soldiers.
  
• Slow down or pause the battle to always stay in control and give orders with no hurry.
  
• Hand over parts of your army to the AI to always keep control even in larger battles.
  
• Supply your troops and always pay attention to the changing of the seasons.

• You decide whether to bring peace to the Gallic villages or whether to plunder them and thus further ignite the resistance against you.
  
• Different starting conditions and difficulty levels ensure replay value.
  
• Support a hobby game developer in his first commercial game, all done by himself.

 

[Beowulf]

Oh wow, nice pixel art. Is this the modern day Centurion?

 

[The Wall]

Itz being made by single dev, who seems to know what he's doing. Just like A Legionary's Life

 

[Beowulf]

Itz being made by single dev, who seems to know what he's doing. Just like A Legionary's Life

Well, we shall see - but the scutums looks more early empire, than late republic.
Same with armor - even pixelated it resembles lorica segmentata. It all looks heavily inspired by Total War history treatment of the conquest of Gaul.

 

[Axioms]

Not a huge fan of the art but I would pay a solid $10 for this. As long as the supply system and the potential diplomacy is decent.

 

[0wca]

It actually looks nice. How's the gameplay? It kinda looks like a Total War type strategy.

 

[Parsimonious cook]

The Steam says RT battles + TB strategic layer, so yeah, I would say this is going to be Total War type of thing. The RT combat kinda reminds me of RIOT: Civil Unrest, so it could be interesting I guess. I wonder if any sort of base/city building will be included... wishlisted in any case.

 

[Modron]

This is out now

 

[Konjad]

Do Romans actually fight realistically in a formation? Do soldiers switch positions in line? Can they get tired or wounded (but keep fighting, however, with penalties and if seriously injured getting in the back of the line)? Or is it just a silly "whomever stands in the first lines dies!" like in Total Wars?

 

[Joggerino]

Why is it so cheap?

 

[Beowulf]

Played it and requested a refund.
On paper it's a neat little time waster, but the battles (which are the meat of the game) don't work that great.
You have to micro every unit and click on ability buttons (yes, throwing pila has to be triggered manually) and the unit AI is not that great (no falling back, weird charge angles).

Sure, it's nice to look at pixelated soldiers trading blows, but it's to bare-bones.
And you can't pan with your keyboard, only with your mouse when you press MMB, which was the final straw for me.

 

[Silva]

Asking refund for a 10 bucks game. What are you, a jew??

 

[Beowulf]

Asking refund for a 10 bucks game. What are you, a jew??

 

[JarlFrank]

Bought it because it's cheap and I love Total War style battles.

And while it's a cute game and cool effort for a single indie dev, it has several issues that make the battles less fun than your average Total War game.

- units only have two possible facings: left and right; when ordering your legionaries to throw pila, they so so straight ahead in the direction they are facing, which means you can't throw them up or down, only left or right, and they will only hit enemies that are straight ahead - just a little bit off to the side of your formation and they are safe
- for dedicated ranged units you can designate a target, and they'll keep shooting at that target until their ammo is out; they won't switch targets on their own so when a target formation is dead you have to manually switch targets
- ranged units don't have a skirmish option like in Total War, where they'd automatically withdraw whenever an enemy comes too close; you have to either withdraw them manually, or put the unit entirely under AI control
- legionaries and cavalry can charge ahead for big damage... but again, this only works straight ahead to the left or right; you can't flank effectively in this game, you have to go completely around the enemy and hit him in the back, and charges are just like pila, they go rigidly forwards in the direction the unit is facing... the enemy is just a little off to the side of your formation? your guys will charge right past them

These issues severely limit the tactical depth of the game and even nu-Total War with its dumbed down mechanics is better because at least there your units don't have such rigid movement and don't have to be micro-managed as intensely.

 

[Wulfric Pinewood]

Game looks good, like basic version of old goldie Centurion.

 

[Beowulf]

[...]
- legionaries and cavalry can charge ahead for big damage... but again, this only works straight ahead to the left or right [...]

If you order them to move up or down and press charge when they are on the move, they will do a sort of diagonal charge over short distance sometimes (not in the direction of their movement though).
But yeah, you can't use charge reliably unless you want to go directly left/right.