Romans

## **Historical brief**

The **Roman Empire** was the post-Republican period of ancient Rome. As a polity, it included large territorial holdings around the Mediterranean Sea in Europe, North Africa, and Western Asia, and was ruled by emperors. From the accession of Caesar Augustus as the first Roman emperor to the military anarchy of the 3rd century, it was a Principate with Italia as the metropole of its provinces and the city of Rome as its sole capital. The Empire was later ruled by multiple emperors who shared control over the Western Roman Empire and the Eastern Roman Empire.

### Rulebook entry

As the Romans, your path to dominance will likely be through rapid expansion. Conquer cards and use them to declare your glory and earn fame. With your mighty legion, your conquest can continue well into your accession to empire.

## Civilization spotlight

The ancient civilisation of Rome, one of the largest empires in the ancient world, contained roughly 20% of the world’s population at the time. The Rome deck covers the Roman Republic (509 BCE – 27 BCE) and the Roman Empire (27 BCE – 476 CE).

Looking at the Roman power card you can see the two main strategies for Rome: gaining population or gaining fame cards. More on the latter at the end of this blog post.

In the early game you will want to acquire and place regions to build up your nation and make your two prosperity cards as effective as possible. Roman Expansion helps greatly, and you will want to play this before the region common cards are all taken to guarantee you get two regions, even if your opponents have not played regions themselves yet. You can garrison your regions with any cards you do not immediately need (such as cultured cards) as you know you will be seeing them later when you play Glory and abandon them with their associated region. You also want to get the City of Rome into play to give you either a steady income or a way to cycle cards. While your city building proficiency is not quite on a par with the legendary city states of Greece, having Rome in play followed by a city or two acquired from the market can lead to a nice population income or deck speed increase – both of which are essential to scoring as well as the Romans.

Julius Caesar is your accession card and when you take him you become an empire. Ideally you want to play Caesar when there is a tributary or region in the market, but drawing two cards can be useful too.

Once an empire, you have a number of choices: you could develop your Legions so you can continue to conquer more regions or you could be a bit more aggressive and develop Roman Invasion instead. Don’t forget Rome the Eternal City though, as this upgrade to the older City of Rome card will boost your score and save you a card during the Solstice phase.

With this spotlight on the Romans it is worth shining a spotlight on fame too. The fame deck is a separate stack of cards that all players have access to. These are powerful cards and many are worth a significant number of victory points. However, getting them takes a bit of work and is not without some sacrifice. Most nations have a glory card, and when you play that you abandon (discard) 3 played regions to draw two fame cards and choose one of them. One side of the Roman power card lets you draw one more, giving you more choice. Abandoning 3 region cards hurts because you get those cards back into your deck and you will have to spend subsequent actions playing them again. Any cards you’ve stored underneath the regions as a garrison also return to your deck – but whether that’s a good thing depends on whether they’re cards you were saving for this moment, or unrest cards you had hidden away!

Once all the fame cards have been taken, then the next glory card played resolves the King of Kings card instead, which is flipped over to indicate the end of the game has been triggered. So before you take that last glory action, check you are ready for the game to end.

## Strategy

### Barbarian

How much you prioritise Glory vs Prosperity really depends on which nation side you're playing, I think both are valid strategic options. Whichever you go for, Bread and circuses from your dynasty deck is one of the best cards in the game to manage unrest, so you should make the most of it and almost never break through when you can acquire, or return unrest cards by playing them.

### Empire

If you're going for a fame strategy and you're playing versus a slower nation, you should look towards closing up the game by continuing to Glory as often as possible. Overall, your developments are not amazing, but they can adapt nicely to whichever strategy your opponent is going for. If your opponent is going for fame cards, develop Roman invasion first. If you're playing against someone discarding aggressively to cards like City, you should develop Military engineering first instead. Both of these cards have the benefit of slowing down your opponent while also advancing your main plan. If you're not sure what to go for (or after one of these two), The senate is also a good development, letting you continue to get unrest to feed Bread and circuses while making your deck more efficient (just make sure you have enough cards in hand). Continue to generate population with Prosperity if you're not going for fame cards, as this will translate into VP at the end. Emperor Trajan is often a good last card to develop for the VP, even if you don't get a chance to play him.

### Best common cards

Whichever strategy you're going for, you should have more than enough regions in your deck + Roman expansion, so no need to pick up extra ones unless you're getting a bunch of prosperity tokens for them. Keep in mind you'll be on 4 cards during most of the game due to Bread and circuses, so you shouldn't be picking up too many cards that give you bonuses for discarding cards, like City (even if it's tempting for the steady population generation, keep in mind you already have one in your base deck). Oracle is always a great card when going for fame (even picked up as an empire). Mysticism is completely unfair with Bread and circuses (to the point I've decided to cut it from my game - I think it's a problematic card, not just due to this combo).

## Epic matchups

A suggested campaign would start against Greece, hop over to North Africa and fight Carthage, then on to Egypt (or Persia if you don't have Legends), and so on.

## References

1. ↑ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman\_Empire
2. ↑ https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/2691786/advanced-strategic-tips-each-nation
3. ↑ https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/3057124/playing-solo-how-do-you-decide-which-civilisation