I bought this game and played it over the weekend.

I've noticed two things that keep me from playing this game any further:

1) Chain reactions.. I think this a real game design mistake: The demand of goods has no buffer. As soon as an important source of goods stops working (e.g. in case of a fire) chain reactions are triggered - just because people can't live a half day without stones or wheat. This is annoying and completely unrealistic.

2) Fires. Show me a city where buildings catch fires twice a day! This is nothing unusual in GA:R. It get's even worse in campaigns, as soon you have two or more units of soldiers waiting to attack a barbarian village. I don't know if this a meant by design, but the game always keeps me busy with controlling fires as soon as i start building a small army. It feels like playing chess against a computer, which is suddenly turning five of it's chess pieces into queens because it want's to keep the balance of power.

Funny too: Prefectures can't extinct their own fires. They always need another prefecture. It's like a bakery that needs another bakery for buying bread.

3) Knowledge producing buildings are pretty useless in single player mode.
Actually you don't need more than one school.

And still: All these problems are just annoying. The game itself is far too easy. I played it like 6 hours and had a city stuffed with everythings that's possible. This is boring, as long as there's no real endgame.

Thank you.

I completely agree! This will only be my second post on a web site for any issue, in the last 15 years. I REALLY want to like this game but I am sick of putting out those damn fires.
How about another patch to address this issue?
I built the Prefectures but stone buildings are still burning down! I can hardly get accross the map to address another problem.
Thanks.

If you are meeting the needs of your citizens: jobs and food for plebs; jobs, food and entertainment for equites; jobs, food, entertainment, and religion for your patricians you will almost never have a fire in GAR. In fact, if done correctly the reason you build prefectures has nothing to do with fire but with lowering the maintenance cost of buildings.

If you are having problems with fires you might watch the food and entertainment how-to video at the address in my signature. It should show you the basics of building a functioning city of plebs and equites without having fires.

I've played several city-building games extensively and in each of them when something went wrong it led to other problems (chain reaction). The challenge of learning how to control these problems and, better yet, avoid them in the first place is at the heart of city-building games.

Hello Adekyn, i really respect your opinion and experience and even admit, that there will be ways to keep everything in balance. But still - aspects of the game concept are kind of coarse for me, since dependencies are too strong and fast triggering.

Do you instantly set a blaze if you feel bored or loose your job? Most certainly you would not do this, because you're afraid of the consequences. In ancient times you would have been killed by a raging mob since fires where a big threat to everybodys live and property.

A more natural reaction on shortages would be: leaving the town.

Of course you or the development team can always argue: "Hey, you made something wrong! It's your fault!" But still, i have a choice. I can just play games, which handle my mistakes more subtile or realistic. That's all i want to say.

(31-05-2010 09:24 AM)Baskat Wrote:  Hello Adekyn, i really respect your opinion and experience and even admit, that there will be ways to keep everything in balance. But still - aspects of the game concept are kind of coarse for me, since dependencies are too strong and fast triggering.

Do you instantly set a blaze if you feel bored or loose your job? Most certainly you would not do this, because you're afraid of the consequences. In ancient times you would have been killed by a raging mob since fires where a big threat to everybodys live and property.

A more natural reaction on shortages would be: leaving the town.

Of course you or the development team can always argue: "Hey, you made something wrong! It's your fault!" But still, i have a choice. I can just play games, which handle my mistakes more subtile or realistic. That's all i want to say.

I agree this is something I noticed early in the game. If everything isn't perfect it goes to hell too fast. Plebs leaving the city would be a more realistic approach with fires only happening after things get very dire for the city. Aside from that I really enjoy the game and artwork etc. Can be better no doubt about it. Still nice to see at least someone making a decent city building game. I think I still like Tropico 3 better but I want someone to keep making Rome games as I think there is still work to be done in that area

Most important button is the 'pauze' button. Just hit it as soon you see/hear there is a problem and fix it.